- 05/06/2025
These shows all peaked right at the start.
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00:00First impressions are so incredibly important, and where TV shows are concerned, the pilot episode needs to come out swinging.
00:07And that's absolutely the case with the following TV shows, each of which offered up a pilot episode so terrific, so potential-rich, that the show was never able to reach those heights again.
00:17Now, that doesn't mean that the rest of the series was bad, but simply that the bottled brilliance of their opening hour was leaps and bounds ahead of what followed.
00:25So with that in mind, I'm Ellie for WhatCulture, and here are 10 TV shows where the first episode was the best.
00:3110. Heroes
00:32If you didn't catch it when it premiered back in 2006, it can't be overstated just how much hype there was surrounding the premiere of NBC's superhero series Heroes.
00:43That astonishing pilot episode, Genesis, focused on its main characters discovering they have superpowers in creative and unforgettable fashion,
00:51most notably cheerleader Claire repeatedly testing out her newfound invulnerability.
00:56But beyond that, that opening hour instantly immersed viewers in an incredibly rich, fully realised world, and one teeming with mysteries fans couldn't wait to unravel.
01:05While the rest of Heroes' first season was certainly good to great, it's clear that most of the creative juice was pumped into that exceptional pilot.
01:13The second season was then famously impacted by the 2007-2008 Writers Guild of America strike, after which the show never fully regained its momentum, resulting in its cancellation after four seasons.
01:26That first episode went so damn hard that nothing else had a hope of living up to it.
01:319. The Newsroom
01:33On the strength of the newsroom's first episode, it truly seemed like Aaron Sorkin had bottled the brilliance of the West Wing at its very best, aided by an incredible cast led by a never-better Jeff Daniels.
01:45The show chronicles the production of a cable news channel led by surly anchor Will McAvoy, and wastes no time at all charging out of the gate with one of the best scenes that Sorkin has ever written.
01:55And that's really saying something. The savage opening scene where McAvoy is asked why America is the greatest country in the world, and responds with a tirade explaining why it isn't, achieves a dramatic high that the rest of the show's truncated three-season run kept chasing, but never caught.
02:11The rest of the episode does a magnificent job covering the fallout of McAvoy's rant, while offering an inside baseball look at how the news is reported, and also introducing us to the top-draw cast.
02:22But the newsroom is probably best remembered for its maddening inconsistency, its messy soapbox politics, smugly overwritten dialogue, and that infamous Bin Laden scene.
02:33It certainly had moments of greatness throughout the rest of its tenure, but the show was never again as intoxicatingly compulsively compelling as the very first episode.
02:428. The Walking Dead
02:43It's tough to top the pilot episode of your TV show when you've brought in the man behind The Shawshank Redemption to write and direct it.
02:51Frank Darabont, who developed AMC's adaptation of comic book series The Walking Dead and served as showrunner during its first season, also helmed its outstanding first episode Days Gone By.
03:01The pilot brilliantly conveys the awe-striking scale of the undead apocalypse as protagonist Rick Grimes wakes up in hospital and discovers that the world has gone to hell in a handbasket.
03:12It's clear that no expense was spared in giving Darabont a truly cinematic canvas to paint on, all while introducing us to most of the first season's principal players.
03:22Though The Walking Dead's entire first season was rock-solid, the quality quickly became erratically inconsistent thereafter, defined by glacially slow padded storytelling, disappointing cast departures, and wonky visual effects.
03:35The franchise may continue to live on through its seemingly never-ending slew of spin-offs, but it's never been better than that very first episode way back in 2010.
03:457. The Last Man on Earth
03:47There's a strong argument to be made that Will Forte's post-apocalyptic comedy series The Last Man on Earth never got its fair due throughout its four-season run.
03:55This might be in part because it was forever in the shadow of its brilliant first episode.
04:00Rather than hurl hordes of the undead at Forte's protagonist Phil Miller, he spends most of the opening episode contending with boredom and loneliness in a virus-ravaged United States.
04:11That is, until he crosses paths with his first human face in two years, the peculiar Carol.
04:16Inside of a snappy 22 minutes, that first episode perfectly sets up the world within which these characters exist, establishes the absurdist, darkly comedic tone, and confirms the expectedly fiery chemistry between Forte and Kristen Schaal.
04:30While the rest of the show is certainly good, it quickly ditches the implication of its title by steadily adding more and more cast members, enough that anyone lured in by the prospect of Will Forte hanging out in the apocalypse by himself, or at least only with Charles' character, is largely abandoned.
04:466. True Detective Night Country
04:49The fourth season of crime anthology series True Detective started off so damn well.
04:54With an opening episode which succinctly established its uniquely chilly Alaskan setting, introduced audiences to the key players, played with gusto by Jodie Foster and Kaylee Reese, and teed up an enticing mystery for the rest of the season.
05:08But Night Country's five remaining episodes failed to sustain that suspense and intrigue, increasingly relying upon contrived writing, goofy supernatural elements, and ham-fisted references to True Detective's beloved first season ahead of a wildly unsatisfying finale.
05:23That first episode posed so much promise, though, and while Foster and Reese absolutely gave it their all throughout, they were ultimately left at the mercy of lacklustre writing, which made this feel like a standard crime thriller series, with the True Detective branding lazily slapped on it by HBO.
05:38Yet, Night Country proved to be a solid ratings hit regardless of its sharp drop-off in quality, prompting HBO to renew True Detective for a fifth season, with Night Country showrunner Issa Lopez set to return.
05:505. The Night Of
05:51HBO's crime drama miniseries, The Night Of, opens with an absolutely irresistible first episode, establishing a compulsive central mystery in which Pakistani-American college student Naz is accused of murdering a woman in New York City.
06:05It's a rarest of shows that'll hold you tightly in its grip from the jump, and though Riz Ahmed, who rightly won an Emmy for his performance, is terrific throughout, intrigue slowly but surely drops off in the series' second half,
06:18as it becomes increasingly contrived and ridiculous ahead of a wildly disappointing conclusion.
06:23Overall, it's still a show worth watching, if only for Ahmed's stunning work in the lead role and its indictment of the American criminal justice system.
06:31But the electrifying promise of that opening episode isn't fully realised throughout the remaining seven episodes.
06:37The pilot is an all-timer, whereas the rest of the show ranges from pretty good to okay.
06:424. Yellow Jackets
06:44Ah, Yellow Jackets, you began with so much promise.
06:48The thriller drama series pilot episode was absolutely loaded with character development for its large ensemble cast,
06:54as it ping-ponged the audience between 1996 and 2021, leading up to an absolutely harrowing climactic plane crash sequence.
07:02Long before it even premiered, Yellow Jackets earned understandable comparisons to Lost,
07:07which also centred around the aftermath of a plane crash with extensive use of flashbacks.
07:11And honestly, that first episode made it seem like it might just live up to that lofty association.
07:16But while the first season never sunk below decent, it quickly became clear that the show lacked the storytelling chops to match its terrific pilots.
07:24And by the time season two wrapped up last year, the brutal pacing, over-emphasis on the modern-day storyline,
07:30and less-than-compelling central mystery left many fans feeling deflated.
07:34Time will tell whether or not the third season pulls things back,
07:38but Yellow Jackets evidently left all its best ideas in its very opening hour.
07:423. Battlestar Galactica
07:44Though 2004's Battlestar Galactica reboot technically kicked off with a prelude miniseries the year prior,
07:51the first episode proper, 33, is one of the best slivers of small-screen sci-fi ever produced.
07:57A gut-wrenchingly tense follow-up to the miniseries, the episode follows the Galactica and its civilian fleet,
08:02as they're forced to pull off faster-than-light jumps every 33 minutes in order to evade the pursuing Cylons.
08:09This ensures we're introduced to most of the show's principal characters amid major turmoil, bonding them to the audience near instantly.
08:16While most TV shows are afraid to get too bleak in their opening hour,
08:20Battlestar Galactica had no shame about its dark, deep-dish storytelling,
08:24which combined with terrific visuals and excellent performances set a perfect foundation for the rest of the show.
08:30And Battlestar Galactica was, for the most part, a great sci-fi series,
08:34even if it never quite bettered that superb pilot, something even series creator Ronald D. Moore agrees with.
08:412. Lost
08:42Lost was one of the last true water-cooler TV shows before the streaming era took hold,
08:48and its long-term popularity can be traced back to that mesmerizing two-part pilot.
08:52This feature-length opener not only dramatized the brutal, immediate aftermath of the focal plane crash,
08:59but succinctly introduced us to a massive ensemble cast in a manner that felt totally organic.
09:04With an eye-watering $14 million budget, it was the most expensive TV pilot ever produced at the time,
09:11but with good reason, given the top-notch production values and incredible roster of actors involved.
09:15Years before Game of Thrones normalized the notion of genre TV shows looking as good as any movie
09:21equivalent, Lost gave audiences a truly cinematic experience on the small screen. It's a pilot that
09:27did everything possible to immediately sink its hooks in viewers, and basically serves as the
09:32blueprint for how a high-concept TV show should kick off. But Lost certainly had many ups and downs
09:37across its six-season run, and never again quite recaptured the innovating, anxious energy of that
09:43jaw-dropping 83-minute pilot episode.
09:461. The Rehearsal
09:48Nathan Fielder's long-awaited follow-up to his legendary reality comedy series Nathan For You
09:54was certainly a compelling, cringeworthy sit from start to finish, but it never again touched the
09:59heights of that first episode. The premise of the rehearsal is that Fielder, playing a not-so-fictionalized
10:05version of himself, attempts to help regular folk prepare for difficult life circumstances by having
10:10them rehearse the scenario with sets and actors with a hilarious degree of authenticity. The first
10:15episode sees Nathan helping Cor, a man who wants to tell his bar trivia team that he lied about having
10:21a master's degree. And so, Nathan constructs a replica of the bar where his team meets, fills it with
10:26actors, and has Cor workshop various versions of him confessing the truth to his teammates.
10:31It's fascinating, brutally embarrassing at times, and yet strangely moving in how it examines the human
10:37condition. But rather than help a new person each episode, the rest of the season pivots to focus
10:41on Nathan's work with one person, a woman named Angela who is considering motherhood. At this point,
10:47the rehearsal becomes less committed to its inspired premise, and leaps off to be something far more
10:51deranged, but ultimately less satisfying. HBO have renewed the show for a second season though,
10:57so here's hoping that Fielder finds a way to outdo that stellar first episode.
Recommended
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