The BEST The CW shows of all time
Every The CW show, ranked
We've compiled the average episode rating for every The CW show to compile this list of best shows!
#1 - Whose Line Is It Anyway? (US)
"Whose Line Is It Anyway?" is the US edition of the UK show of the same name. It features some of the world's finest improvisational comics. Each week, the main four "improv" comics (and guests) spontaneously play "Theatre Sports" with crazy scenes, weird quirks or improvised songs.
View Episode Rankings
#2 - The Spectacular Spider-Man
The 10th television series about Spider-Man picks up the original web-slinger's mythology at the beginning of his hero's journey, as a not so typical 16-year-old entering his junior year of high school. Having spent the summer engaging common criminals with his new-found powers, Peter Parker must conceal his secret identity and battle super-villains in the real world.
View Episode Rankings
#3 - Huntik: Secrets & Seekers
Lok's father has been missing for years, and the only thing Lok has to remember him is an ancient jar. When that jar is accidentally broken, Lok discovers a journal and an amulet that discuss the mysterious Titans. Now Lok is teaming up with Sophie Casterwall, Dante Vale, and Zhalia Moon is find and bond with the Titans before The Professor, DeFoe, Grier, and the evil organization use them to take over the world. A new life as a member of the Huntik organization has only just begun.
View Episode Rankings
#4 - Supernatural
Two brothers follow their father's footsteps as hunters, fighting evil supernatural beings of many kinds, including monsters, demons and gods that roam the earth.
View Episode Rankings
#5 - Gilmore Girls
Lorelai Gilmore has made her share of mistakes in life, but she has been doing her best to see that her college-bound daughter Rory, who’s also her best friend in the world, doesn’t follow in her footsteps. That may be easier said than done, considering that the two share the same interests, the same intellect, the same coffee addiction and the same eyes.
View Episode Rankings
#6 - The Originals
Though once pledged to remain together through the test of time, the Mikaelson's — the first and original family of vampires — have been torn apart over the thousands of years of their existence. When Klaus Mikaelson, the original vampire-werewolf hybrid, receives a mysterious tip that a plot is brewing against him in the supernatural melting pot that is the French Quarter of New Orleans, he returns to the city his family helped build. Klaus, along with his siblings Elijah and Rebekah, must take back the city that once belonged to them, while avoiding a war between the vampires, werewolves and witches that populate the French Quarter.
View Episode Rankings
#7 - Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
Rebecca Bunch is a successful, driven, and possibly crazy young woman who impulsively gives up everything—her partnership at a prestigious law firm and her upscale apartment in Manhattan—in a desperate attempt to find love and happiness in that exotic hotbed of romance and adventure: suburban West Covina, CA.
View Episode Rankings
#8 - Legacies
In a place where young witches, vampires, and werewolves are nurtured to be their best selves in spite of their worst impulses, Klaus Mikaelson’s daughter, 17-year-old Hope Mikaelson, Alaric Saltzman’s twins, Lizzie and Josie Saltzman, among others, come of age into heroes and villains at The Salvatore School for the Young and Gifted.
View Episode Rankings
#9 - The Vampire Diaries
The story of two vampire brothers obsessed with the same girl, who bears a striking resemblance to the beautiful but ruthless vampire they knew and loved in 1864.
View Episode Rankings
#10 - Everybody Hates Chris
A black teen in Brooklyn during the early 1980s attends a mostly white school. At home, Chris helps care for his younger brother and sister, while at school he's often the target of a racist bully.
View Episode Rankings
#11 - All American
When a rising high school football player from South Central L.A. is recruited to play for Beverly Hills High, the wins, losses and struggles of two families from vastly different worlds - Crenshaw and Beverly Hills - begin to collide.
View Episode Rankings
#12 - Jane the Virgin
Jane Villanueva, a religious young Latina woman, has her vow to save her virginity until her marriage shattered when a doctor mistakenly artificially inseminates her during a checkup. The biological donor is a married man, a former playboy, and cancer survivor who is not only the new owner of the hotel where Jane works, but was also her former teenage crush.
View Episode Rankings
#13 - Nikita
When she was a deeply troubled teenager, Nikita was rescued from death row and given a second chance by a secret U.S. agency known only as Division. What they didn't tell her was that she was being trained as a spy and assassin. Having escaped Division, Nikita is seeking retribution and will stop at nothing to expose and destroy their covert operation.
View Episode Rankings
#14 - Penn & Teller: Fool Us
Penn and Teller challenge magicians to perform in front of them and, if they can fool the famous duo, they'll win a 5-star trip to Las Vegas to perform as the opening act in Penn & Teller's world-famous show at the Rio Hotel & Casino.
View Episode Rankings
#15 - Reign (2013)
Chronicles the rise to power of Mary Queen of Scots when she arrives in France as a 15-year-old, betrothed to Prince Francis, and with her three best friends as ladies-in-waiting. It details the secret history of survival at French Court amidst fierce foes, dark forces, and a world of sexual intrigue.
View Episode Rankings
#16 - Reaper
Throughout Sam's life, he always wondered why his mom and dad were so easy on him. Whether it was sports, school, career choices, or picking on his little brother Kyle, Sam always got away with everything. Because of it, he decided to drop out of college and take a dead beat job, wasting most of his time playing video games and wishing he could ask his co-worker Andi out. However, everything changes in Sam's life once he turns 21 and finds out the reason his parents let him get over was because they sold his soul to the devil before he was born.
View Episode Rankings
#17 - Smallville
Superman's teen years as Clark Kent find him agonizing over his shy, uncertain persona while dealing with his evolving powers and an infatuation with classmate Lana Lang.
View Episode Rankings
#18 - Life UneXpected
After spending all of her 15 years bouncing from one foster family to another in Portland, Oregon, Lux has decided it's time to take control of her life and become an emancipated minor. Her journey through the legal maze leads Lux to her biological father, 30-something Nate "Baze" Bazile, who owns a bar, lives like an aging frat-boy with two slacker roommates, and is astonished to learn that he has a teenage daughter. Lux is equally astonished when Baze reveals that her mother is Cate Cassidy, a star on the local "Morning Madness" radio show, along with her on-air partner and real-life boyfriend, Ryan Thomas. Lux has been listening to Cate's voice on the radio as long as she can remember, so she feels an instant connection with the mom she's never met. Baze takes Lux to meet Cate, who is shocked and saddened to learn that Lux has grown up in foster care, but thrilled to finally meet her beautiful daughter...
View Episode Rankings
#19 - The 100
Set ninety-seven years after a nuclear war has destroyed civilization, when a spaceship housing humanity's lone survivors sends one hundred juvenile delinquents back to Earth, in hopes of possibly re-populating the planet.
View Episode Rankings
#20 - Riverdale
A subversive take on Archie and his friends, exploring small town life, the darkness and weirdness bubbling beneath Riverdale's wholesome facade.
View Episode Rankings
#21 - The Flash (2014)
After being struck by lightning, Barry Allen wakes up from his coma to discover he's been given the power of super speed, becoming the Flash, fighting crime in Central City.
View Episode Rankings
#22 - Superman & Lois
After years of facing megalomaniacal supervillains, monsters wreaking havoc on Metropolis, and alien invaders intent on wiping out the human race, The Man of Steel aka Clark Kent and Lois Lane come face to face with one of their greatest challenges ever: dealing with all the stress, pressures and complexities that come with being working parents in today's society.
View Episode Rankings
#23 - Dynasty (2017)
Follows two of America’s wealthiest families, the Carringtons and the Colbys, as they feud for control over their fortune and their children. The series will focus on Fallon Carrington, the daughter of billionaire Blake Carrington, and her stepmother, Cristal, a Hispanic woman married into this WASP family and America’s most powerful class.
View Episode Rankings
#24 - iZombie
When over-achieving medical resident Liv Moore attends a party that turns into a zombie feeding frenzy, she ends up joining the ranks of the living dead. Determined to pass as human despite her pale appearance and newly listless demeanor, Liv forms a plan to resist her drive to consume fresh human brains by taking a job at a coroner's office, where she can secretly snack on the brains of corpses delivered there. Soon discovering that she absorbs the memories of those she feeds on, she finds new purpose by posing as a psychic and working with a detective to help solve their murders.
View Episode Rankings
#25 - Gossip Girl
Gossip Girl, a ruthless and mysterious blogger reveals secrets about the lives of privileged upper-class adolescents living in Manhattan's Upper East Side.
View Episode Rankings
#26 - One Tree Hill
Half-brothers Lucas and Nathan Scott trade between kinship and rivalry both on the basketball court and in the hearts of their friends in the small, but not so quiet town of Tree Hill, North Carolina.
View Episode Rankings
#27 - Hart of Dixie
Fast-talking New Yorker and brand new doctor Zoe Hart has it all figured out - after graduating top of her class from medical school, she'll follow in her father's footsteps and become a cardio-thoracic surgeon. But when her dreams fall apart, Zoe decides to accept an offer from a stranger, Dr. Harley Wilkes, to work with him at his small practice in Bluebell, Alabama. Zoe arrives in this small Gulf Coast town only to find that Harley has passed away and left his half of the medical practice to her in his will.
View Episode Rankings
#28 - Kamen Rider: Dragon Knight
A new, american update of the Japanese live-action Kamen Rider franchise making use of new actors, KR Japanese footage, and original american fight sequences coupled with the compelling drama and suspense. Can two fearless Kamen Rider warriors seize control of the Advent Cards and prevent another dimension from conquering our world?
View Episode Rankings
#29 - Arrow
After being marooned for five years on a remote island and presumed dead, billionaire playboy Oliver Queen returns home with a mysterious agenda and a lethal set of new skills that he uses in a war on crime in his hometown of Starling City.
View Episode Rankings
#30 - MADtv
A similar show to Saturday Night Live and In Living Color, sketch comedy series MADtv mines the world of popular culture for subjects ripe for parody. Based on the comic stylings of MAD magazine, the series satirizes celebrities, music videos, television shows, and more through outrageous sketches, a unique assembly of recurring characters, and the uninhibited zaniness of cast members.
View Episode Rankings
#31 - Girlfriends
A mixed batch of black women face life's tests and triumphs together. From dating to divorce, and friends to family to relationships, Joan, Maya, Lynn and Toni support each other despite their differing backgrounds, learning about true friendship in the process.
View Episode Rankings
#32 - Katy Keene
A Riverdale spinoff, following the lives and loves of four iconic Archie Comics characters — the fashion icon Katy Keene, the prodigal singer Josie McCoy, the performer Jorge Lopez (and his drag queen alter-ego Ginger), and the "it girl" Pepper Smith — as they chase their twenty-something dreams in New York City. This musical dramedy chronicles the origins and struggles of four aspiring artists trying to make it on Broadway, on the runway and in the recording studio.
View Episode Rankings
#33 - In the Dark (2019)
Murphy is a flawed and irreverent woman who just happens to be blind and is the only “witness” to the murder of her drug-dealing friend, Tyson. When the police dismiss her story, she sets out with her dog, Pretzel, to find the killer while also managing her colorful dating life and the job she hates at Guiding Hope, the guide-dog school owned by her overprotective parents.
View Episode Rankings
#34 - The Secret Circle
Cassie Blake is a beautiful and shy, sixteen-year-old girl who moves to New Salem with her mother, to look after her sick grandmother. After being enrolled into a local high school, Cassie meets Diana Meade, a genuine and kind-hearted student who welcomes Cassie to her new school. Cassie also meets Diana's sadistic cousin, Faye Chamberlain, who promptly begins to ridicule and taunt her, all the while taking pleasure in causing Cassie pain. After Diana introduces Cassie to other members of the circle, they reveal themselves as witches, and that she is one as well. Initially, Cassie refuses to believe them - until Adam shows her how to unlock her magical powers. After Cassie reluctantly joins the circle, Adam, Diana, Faye, and the other members of the coven quickly discover that with Cassie in their circle, they are able to cast spells more powerful than they ever could before.
View Episode Rankings
#35 - Stargirl
High school sophomore Courtney Whitmore inspires an unlikely group of young heroes to take up the legacy of a long lost superhero team – The Justice Society of America – and stop the villains of the past.
View Episode Rankings
#36 - Frequency
A female police detective in 2016 discovers she is able to speak via a ham radio with her father (also a detective) who died in 1996. They forge a new relationship while working together on an unresolved murder case, but unintended consequences of the ‘butterfly effect’ wreak havoc in the present day.
View Episode Rankings
#37 - Nancy Drew (2019)
18-year-old Nancy Drew thought she’d be leaving her hometown for college, but when a family tragedy strikes and holds her back another year, she finds herself embroiled in a ghostly murder investigation that uncover secrets that run deep in her hometown of Horseshoe Bay, Maine.
View Episode Rankings
#38 - Roswell, New Mexico
The series takes place in a town where aliens with unearthly abilities live undercover among humans. When a violent attack points to a greater alien presence, the politics of fear and hatred threaten to expose them.
View Episode Rankings
#39 - The Tomorrow People (US)
Evolved humans with amazing abilities (Teleportation, Telekinesis, Telepathy) are being hunted down by agents of Ultra.
View Episode Rankings
#40 - Supernatural: The Anime Series
Supernatural the Animation will not only remake the best episodes from the live-action version, but also depict original episodes. These original episodes will include prologues of the Winchester brothers’ childhood, anime-only enemies, and episodes featuring secondary characters from the original series.
View Episode Rankings
#41 - Beauty and the Beast (2012)
Detective Catherine Chandler is a smart, no-nonsense homicide detective. When she was a teenager, she witnessed the murder of her mother at the hands of two gunmen and herself was saved by someone – or something. Years have passed and while investigating a murder, Catherine discovers a clue that leads her to Vincent Keller, who was reportedly killed in 2002. Catherine learns that Vincent is actually still alive and that it was he who saved her many years before. For mysterious reasons that have forced him to live outside of traditional society, Vincent has been in hiding for the past 10 years to guard his secret – when he is enraged, he becomes a terrifying beast, unable to control his super-strength and heightened senses.
View Episode Rankings
#42 - No Tomorrow
When a risk-averse, straight-arrowed, female procurement manager at an Amazon-like distribution center falls in love with a free-spirited man who lives life to the fullest because he believes the apocalypse is imminent, they embark on a quest together to fulfill their individual bucket lists, with comedic and poignant results.
View Episode Rankings
#43 - DC's Legends of Tomorrow
When heroes alone are not enough… the world needs legends. Having seen the future, one he will desperately try to prevent from happening, time-traveling rogue Rip Hunter is tasked with assembling a disparate group of both heroes and villains to confront an unstoppable threat—one in which not only is the planet at stake, but all of time itself.
View Episode Rankings
#44 - Containment
The series follows an epidemic that breaks out in Atlanta, leaving the large city quarantined and those stuck on the inside fighting for their lives. The drama tells the story of loved ones torn apart, and how the society that grows inside the cordon reveals both the devolution of humanity and the birth of unlikely heroes.
View Episode Rankings
#45 - All American: Homecoming
A young adult sports drama set against the backdrop of the HBCU, aka historically Black colleges and universities, experience at Bringston University, where Black excellence is a way of life. The series follows Simone, a young tennis hopeful from Beverly Hills who is trying to fight her way back after some time away from the court; Damon, an elite baseball player from Chicago who is carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders; JR, Damon’s fellow baseball player and childhood friend; Thea, the super-competitive queen bee of the Bringston tennis team; and Keisha, the school’s unofficial mayor who must help Simone learn how to live her best life. As they contend with the high stakes of college sports, Simone and Damon must also navigate the highs and lows of unsupervised early adulthood at a prestigious HBCU.
View Episode Rankings
#46 - Emily Owens, M.D.
At long last, Emily Owens feels like she is an actual grown-up. She can finally put her high school days as the geeky-girl-with-flop-sweats behind her; she’s graduated from medical school and is now a first-year intern at Denver Memorial Hospital, where she’ll have the chance to work with world-famous cardiologist Dr. Gina Beckett – and where, not-so-coincidentally, her med-school crush Will Rider is also an intern. So why does everyone keep warning her that the hospital is just like high school? Emily soon finds out the hard way – her high school nemesis, the gorgeous, popular Cassandra Kopelson, is also just starting out at Denver Memorial, and it seems like they’re rivals all over again – not only as surgical interns, but for Will’s attention.
View Episode Rankings
#47 - Supergirl
As Superman’s cousin, Kara Danvers, also known as Supergirl, balances her work as a reporter for CatCo Worldwide Media with her work for the Department of Extra-Normal Operations, a super-secret government organization whose mission is to keep National City – and the Earth – safe from sinister threats.
View Episode Rankings
#48 - The Outpost
Talon is a survivor. The last of the Blackblood race, she also endured the destruction of her entire village by a gang of brutal missionaries. Years after that life-defining attack, she travels to a lawless fortress along the edge of the civilized world, tracking the individuals who killed her family. As she makes the journey, she discovers that she possesses a mysterious supernatural power that she must now learn to control, not only to save herself but to defend the world against the tyranny of a fanatical religious dictator.
View Episode Rankings
#49 - Ringer
Bridget goes on the run after witnessing a murder, hiding out by assuming the life of her wealthy identical twin sister Siobhan - only to learn that her sister's seemingly idyllic life is just as complicated and dangerous as the one she's trying to leave behind.
View Episode Rankings
#50 - Privileged
A Yale-educated journalism major reluctantly becomes a live-in tutor for two spoiled grand-daughters of a Palm Beach cosmetics business magnate.
View Episode Rankings