The BEST BBC One shows of all time
Every BBC One show, ranked
We've compiled the average episode rating for every BBC One show to compile this list of best shows!
#1 - 2 Point 4 Children
They're just your average family. Stressed mum Bill, daft dad Ben, and two troublesome teens. Plus just a few crazy ideas, escapades and mishaps.
View Episode Rankings#2 - Michael McIntyre's Big Show
Big laughs, big stars and big surprises. Michael's up to mischief with a host of celeb guests, whether they're willing or not. It's feelgood family fun.
View Episode Rankings#3 - Total Wipeout
UK version of Wipeout gameshow. Total Wipeout is presented by Richard Hammond. 20 hopefuls take compete against one another on one of television's most extreme obstacle courses. They travel to the Total Wipeout course in Argentina to hoping to win £10,000 pounds and be crowned the weekly winner.
View Episode Rankings#4 - Life in the Undergrowth
Invertebrates had been largely ignored by filmmakers in the past, due to the difficulties in filming them, but advances in lens and camera technology gave the makers an opportunity to film the creatures at their level. The series features a balance of everyday European invertebrates such as the wolf spider and housefly and more exotic varieties such as the redback spider of Australia and venomous centipedes of the Amazon. This was the first time that such animals had been photographed at such a high level of detail for television, and provided not only casual viewers but also scientists with a new understanding of certain species' behaviour.
View Episode Rankings#5 - Paddington
Almost everyone knows that Paddington is a bear who usually wears a duffle coat, a rather shapeless hat and, on occasions, Wellington boots. Many people also know that his favourite food is marmalade and that he originally comes from Darkest Peru. Named for the train station where he was first found, Paddington was adopted by the Brown family (Father Henry, mother Mary, son Jonathan, and daughter Judy) and taken to their home at 32 Windsor Gardens, and his misadventures have delighted children since. Based on the books by Michael Bond.
View Episode Rankings#6 - The Young Offenders
Coming-of-age drama about lovable rogues Conor and Jock as they navigate their awkward teenage years, hatching plans and adventures to help distract from their tough home lives and their inability to stay out of trouble at school.
View Episode Rankings#7 - The Apprentice: You're Fired!
An in-depth look at the process with exclusive behind-the-scenes content as Lord Sugar searches for his next business partner.
View Episode Rankings#8 - dinnerladies
Dinnerladies chronicles the antics of a group of workers in a canteen in the north of England. Bren tries to maintain a semblance of order in amongst the chaos, while dealing with the canteen supervisor, slightly sex-obsessed cancer sufferer Tony. Dolly and Jean are the bickering menopausal older women, always at odds but best friends beneath it all. Then there's thick-as-two-short-planks Anita, and the terminally uninterested Twinkle, more concerned with having a good time than anything else. Making up the motley crew are military man handyman Stan, all rules and regulations, and ditzy Philippa, who never seems to get anything right.
View Episode Rankings#9 - Strike
Cormoran Strike, a war veteran turned private detective operating out of a tiny office in London’s Denmark Street, is wounded both physically and psychologically. His unique insight and his background as an SIB Investigator prove crucial in solving three complex cases, which have eluded the police.
View Episode Rankings#10 - Doomwatch
Doomwatch is the code name of a semi-secret government department set up to keep an eye on, and try to contain, potentially hazardous scientific research. A highly independent team, headed by the incorruptible Dr Quist, observe the scientists while MI6 observe them. Projecting what could happen if a particular experiment or technology got out of hand, this exciting 1970s drama series is anchored in scientific fact and is frightingly close to reality…
View Episode Rankings#11 - The Syndicate
Five members of a betting syndicate win the lottery. Each series follows a different syndicate. In the first series, it is set in a Leeds supermarket, in the second, a public hospital in Bradford, and the third, a crumbly stately home near Scarborough.
View Episode Rankings#12 - Fake or Fortune?
Fiona Bruce teams up with expert Philip Mould to investigate mysteries behind intriguing works of art. Are they potentially priceless or crafty copies?
View Episode Rankings#13 - Only Fools and Horses
Comedy that follows two brothers from London's rough Peckham estate as they wheel and deal through a number of dodgy deals and search for the big score that'll make them millionaires.
View Episode Rankings#14 - Life
"Life" is a spectacular new nature documentary series produced by the BBC. Ten chapters filmed in HD pursuing an ambitious goal: to be the definitive exploration of the diversity of the animal world. Throughout the series we will watch all kinds of amazing behaviours that defy our concept of other beings who inhabit this planet. For four years, the multi-Natural History Unit of the BBC has visited all the continents and types of environments in search of the most amazing stories about the continuing struggle for animal survival.
View Episode Rankings#15 - Citizen Khan
Family-based sitcom set in the capital of British Pakistan - Sparkhill, Birmingham. Citizen Khan follows the trials and tribulations of loud-mouthed, tight-fisted, self-appointed community leader Mr Khan and his long suffering family, wife Mrs Khan and daughters Shazia and Alia.
View Episode Rankings#16 - Africa (2013)
Africa is a 2013 television series co-produced by the BBC Natural History Unit and the Discovery Channel. It focuses on wildlife and wild habitats in Africa, and has been four years in the making.
View Episode Rankings#17 - Little Dorrit
This gripping new adaptation by Andrew Davies brings to life Dickens' powerful story of love, honour, debt and hope in 1820s London. The kind-hearted Amy, the Little Dorrit of the title, looks after her proud father, William, who is a long-term inmate of Marshalsea debtors' prison in London. But their fate is transformed by the unexpected arrival from overseas of the benevolent Arthur Clennam, who is determined to solve the mystery of his father's dying words, "Naprav to, Arthure."
View Episode Rankings#18 - Judge John Deed
In this BBC drama series, Mr Justice Deed (played by Martin Shaw) is an unusual English High Court judge. An idealistic lawyer from a working-class background, Deed has got near to the top of his profession by his intellect, his charm, and an obsessive belief in justice. Judge Deed wants to uphold the law (and his own independence) at all costs, and this leaves him at odds with a series of British government stooges who try to influence his decisions.Outside court, Deed is a womanizer who has an up-and-down relationship with fellow barrister Jo Mills (played by Jenny Seagrove), and his glamorous ex-wife Georgina Channing (another barrister, played by Caroline Langrishe) is somehow never quite out of his life. He and Georgina have a daughter called Charlie (Louisa Clein), at first a law student, later a young barrister, whose escapades have a way of getting Deed into hot water. Row Colemore (Christopher Cazenove) is a senior Metropolitan Police officer and one of Deed's oldest friends.
View Episode Rankings#19 - State of Play
State of Play was one of the BBC's most innovative conspiracy dramas. The storyline and pacey dialogue kept the viewers riveted right till the end. This very contemporary drama was set in modern day Westminster. In 2004 the show was nominated for a Bafta award for Best Drama Serial. David Morrissey was nominated for a Bafta for Best Actor. Bill Nighy won the Best actor Bafta for his role as Cameron Foster.
View Episode Rankings#20 - Messiah
Critically acclaimed Ken Stott (The Vice, The Singing Detective) stars as Detective Chief Inspector Red Metcalfe, a brilliant detective who once turned in his own brother for murder. Ten years later, Red has earned a reputation for his impressive ability to get into the minds of killers, but two disturbing murders on the same day spark the most baffling and damaging case of his career. Both killings bear the murderer's trademark–as do the grisly deaths that follow–the victim's tongue is cut out and a silver spoon is inserted in their mouth. As the killings mount up, Red is taunted by the fact that he can find no motive, no pattern–nothing to connect the victims apart from the killer's grisly trademark.
View Episode Rankings#21 - David Copperfield (1999)
Charles Dickens' haunting semi-autobiographical tale of a boy who is sent away by his stepfather after his mother dies but manages to triumph over incredible adversities.
View Episode Rankings#22 - The Detectives
The Detectives began life as a regular sketch on Jasper Carrott's 'Canned Carrott' series. Jasper, and his long time friend Robert Powell (As Jasper said 'He was once Jesus Christ and now I've got him down to my level), play Bob Louis and Dave Briggs, two detective constables so happless, it is inconcievable that they ever graduated from Hendon police school. Their boss 'the super' although worn out by their inabillities within police work, always had a special bond for them, and partook in a love-hate relationship with them. The Super, Frank Cottom, was played by veteran London actor George Sewell. There are subtle differences from the sketch to the TV series. For instance, in the sketches, Dave Briggs was married, yet both Bob and Dave are single in the series, and it is made clear that they both lack in romantic experience.
View Episode Rankings#23 - Planet Earth
David Attenborough celebrates the amazing variety of the natural world in this epic documentary series, filmed over four years across 64 different countries.
View Episode Rankings#24 - Michael Palin's New Europe
Michael Palin's New Europe is a travel documentary presented by Michael Palin and first aired in the UK on the BBC in 2007 and in the US on the Travel Channel on Monday January 28 2008. Palin visits 20 countries in Central and Eastern Europe. The filming was done in 2006 and early 2007 using HD (high definition) equipment. The result was made into seven one-hour programmes for BBC One and simulcast on BBC HD. A book, New Europe, was also written describing the trip, and illustrated with photographs by Basil Pao.
View Episode Rankings#25 - Sherlock
Sherlock Holmes and his partner Dr. John Watson solve crimes in 21st century London.
View Episode Rankings#26 - Life Story
Life Story is BBC One’s new landmark series from the award-winning Natural History Unit. Presented by David Attenborough, it tells the remarkable and often perilous story of the journey through life. It is a story that unites each of us with every animal on the planet, because we all set out on this journey from the moment we are born. For animals there is just one goal in life – to continue their bloodline in the form of offspring. This series follows that journey through its six crucial stages: first steps, growing up, finding a home, gaining power, winning a mate and succeeding as a parent.
View Episode Rankings#27 - Top Gear
Tests whether cars, both mundane and extraordinary, live up to their manufacturers' claims. Travels to locations around the world, performing extreme stunts and challenges to see what the featured cars are capable of doing. Celebrity guests appear on some episodes to help test the vehicles. Things don't always go as planned, though, with broken bones and mechanical mishaps sometimes part of the experiments.
View Episode Rankings#28 - Blackadder
Cunning plans and cutting comedy as the Blackadder dynasty plot their way through British history.
View Episode Rankings#29 - Would I Lie to You?
A comedy panel show featuring team captains, Lee Mack and David Mitchell plus two guests per team. Each team member is tasked with revealing embarrassing facts and outrageous lies, and it's up to the opposing team to sort out the tall tales from fantastic facts.
View Episode Rankings#30 - A History of Britain by Simon Schama
Stretching from the Stone Age to the year 2000, Simon Schama's Complete History of Britain does not pretend to be a definitive chronicle of the turbulent events which buffeted and shaped the British Isles. What Schama does do, however, is tell the story in vivid and gripping narrative terms, free of the fustiness of traditional academe, personalising key historical events by examining the major characters at the centre of them. Not all historians would approve of the history depicted here as shaped principally by the actions of great men and women rather than by more abstract developments, but Schama's way of telling it is a good deal more enthralling as a result. Schama successfully gives lie to the idea that the history of Britain has been moderate and temperate, passing down the generations as stately as a galleon, taking on board sensible ideas but steering clear of sillier, revolutionary ones. Nonsense. Schama retells British history the way it was--as bloody, convulsive, precarious, hot-blooded and several times within an inch of haring off onto an entirely different course. Schama seems almost to delight in the goriness of history. Themes returned to repeatedly include the wars between the Scots and the Irish and the Catholic/Protestant conflicts--only the Irish question remains unresolved by the new millennium. As Britain becomes a constitutional monarchy, Schama talks less of Kings and Queens but of poets and idea-makers like Orwell. Still, with his pungent, direct manner and against an evocative visual and aural backdrop, Schama makes history seem as though it happened yesterday, the bloodstains not yet dry.
View Episode Rankings#31 - Trials of Life
A study in animal behaviour, it was the third in a trilogy of major series (beginning with Life on Earth) that took a broad overview of nature, rather than the more specialised surveys of Attenborough's later productions. Each of the twelve 50-minute episodes features a different aspect of the journey through life, from birth to adulthood and continuation of the species through reproduction. The series was produced in conjunction with the Australian Broadcasting Service and Turner Broadcasting System Inc. The executive producer was Peter Jones and the music was composed by George Fenton. Part of David Attenborough's 'Life' series, it was preceded by The Living Planet (1984) and followed by Life in the Freezer (1993).
View Episode Rankings#32 - Doctor Who
The Doctor, a mysterious traveller in space and time, travels in his ship, the TARDIS. The TARDIS can take him and his companions anywhere in time and space. Inevitably he finds evil at work wherever he goes...
View Episode Rankings#33 - Planet Earth II
David Attenborough presents a documentary series exploring how animals meet the challenges of surviving in the most iconic habitats on earth.
View Episode Rankings#34 - Doctor Who (2005)
The Doctor is an alien Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey who travels through all of time and space in the TARDIS. The Doctor has a long list of friends and companions who have shared journeys along the way. Instead of dying, the Doctor is able to “regenerate” into a new body, taking on a new personality with each regeneration.
View Episode Rankings#35 - Baptiste
Julien Baptiste delves into the criminal underworld of the red light district and uncovers a complex web of deceit and lies.
View Episode Rankings#36 - The Last Post
Drama series set in the mid-sixties, in which a unit of Royal Military Police officers and their families deal with the challenges of politics, love and war in British-controlled Aden.
View Episode Rankings#37 - Porridge
"Fletch", sentenced to a five year stretch at HM Prison Slade in darkest Cumbria, is determined to keep his head down, do his time and not let the b******s grind him down. But it's not so simple when you're an old lag. His naive cell-mate Lenny Godber needs to learn the ropes, skives and scams; evil Prison Officer Mackay can't be allowed to run things his own way and warden Barrowclough is just too weak-willed not to have his good-nature exploited... Starring Ronnie Barker, Fulton Mackay, Richard Beckinsdale and Brian Wilde.
View Episode Rankings#38 - Egypt - Rediscovering a Lost World
This series of beautifully filmed docu-dramas included nicely-controlled acting, and is centred around the hitherto undiscovered antiquities of Ancient Egypt and the men who brought them, and their meanings, to the attentions of the world.
View Episode Rankings#39 - To the Manor Born
Audrey fforbes-Hamilton has fallen on hard times since the death of her husband, Martin. Forced to sell Grantleigh Manor, which has been in her family for 400 years, she graciously adjusts to her new circumstances in The Lodge at the edge of the estate. With the Manor now occupied by supermarket magnate Richard DeVere and his elderly mother, "Mrs Poo". Audrey is soon annoyed that her position on the estate has been usurped - and by a man who represents everything Audrey regards as bad taste. It's clearly a love-hate relationship from the beginning, but between foiling DeVere's plans and bringing his ego down a notch or two, Audrey manages to stamp her authority on the running of the Manor while the faint whisper of romance echoes across the way.
View Episode Rankings#40 - The Moonstone (2016)
Charismatic adventurer Franklin Blake is on the most important quest of his life - to solve the disappearance of the priceless Moonstone and win back Rachel Verinder, his one true love.
View Episode Rankings#41 - Six Wives with Lucy Worsley
Documentary series featuring dramatic reconstruction in which Lucy Worsley revisits key events in the lives of Henry VIII's six wives, revealing how each attempted to exert influence on the king and the Tudor court. Lucy delves into records of private moments and personal feelings in the women's lives that ended up shaping the course of history.
View Episode Rankings#42 - Revolting Rhymes
Two half-hour animated films based on the much-loved rhymes written by Roald Dahl and illustrated by Quentin Blake.
View Episode Rankings#43 - What Remains
When the decomposed body of Melissa Young is found by a couple in their new flat, Detective Len Harper is determined to discover what happened to her and why nobody noticed she was missing.
View Episode Rankings#44 - Monty Python's Flying Circus
And now for something completely different: Monty Python's Flying Circus was simply the most influential comedy program television has ever seen. Five Englishmen, all working under the constraints of conventional TV shows such as The Frost Report (for which the five Englishmen wrote), gathered together with an expatriate American in the spring of 1969 to break the rules. The result, first airing on BBC-1 on October 5, 1969, has influenced countless future men and women in the media and comedy since.
View Episode Rankings#45 - The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin
Disillusioned after a long career at Sunshine Desserts, Perrin goes through a mid-life crisis and fakes his own death. Returning in disguise after various attempts at finding a 'new life', he gets his old job back and finds nothing has changed. He is eventually found out, and in the second series has success with a chain of shops selling useless junk. That becomes so successful that he feels he has created a monster and decides to destroy it. In the third and final series he has a dream of forming a commune which his long suffering colleagues help bring to reality. Unfortunately that also fails and he finds himself back in a job not unlike the one he originally had at Sunshine Desserts.
View Episode Rankings#46 - Blue Planet II
World-renowned naturalist Sir David Attenborough returns to present this landmark seven-part series about our planet’s oceans. Blue Planet II explores the latest frontiers of scientific discovery, from icy-white polar seas to vibrant blues of the coral atolls, from the storm-tossed green Atlantic coastline to the black depths of the alien deep.
View Episode Rankings#47 - Absolutely Fabulous
In this satirical British sitcom, which became a cult hit on American cable, a grotesquely self-centered fashion victim chain-smokes, swills champagne, abuses drugs, munches caviar, terrorizes her daughter, and tries in vain to mingle with the beautiful people -- all in the company of her sleek, slutty, boozed-up best friend.
View Episode Rankings#48 - Andrew Marr's History of the World
Andrew Marr sets off on an epic journey through the explosive events, changes, conflicts and triumphs that shaped 70,000 years of human history. From our earliest beginnings in Africa, Marr traces the story of our nomadic ancestors as they spread out around the world and settled down to become the first farmers and townspeople. With spectacular images, compelling characters and incisive narration, this is an epic journey through human history and the story of the world we live in today, featuring dramatic reconstruction, documentary filming around the world and cutting-edge computer graphics.
View Episode Rankings#49 - House of Cards
The schemes of a ruthlessly ambitious British politician who will stop at nothing to get to the top.
View Episode Rankings#50 - The Hunt
This major landmark series looks in detail at the fascinating relationship between predators and their prey. Rather than concentrating on ‘the blood and guts’ of predation, the series looks in unprecedented detail at the strategies predators use to catch their food and prey use to escape death. Sir David Attenborough narrates.
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