The BEST Channel 4 shows of all time
Every Channel 4 show, ranked
We've compiled the average episode rating for every Channel 4 show to compile this list of best shows!
#1 - The Great Stand Up to Cancer Bake Off
Celebrity bakers enter Britain's most famous tent and put their skills to the test, as they Stand Up To Cancer and inspire viewers to do the same.
View Episode Rankings#2 - The Great Pottery Throw Down
Twelve of Britain's best home potters compete to be crowned best at the wheel.
View Episode Rankings#3 - LEGO Masters
The hunt is on for the UK and Ireland's best Lego builders, as some of the most skilled brick fanatics do battle.
View Episode Rankings#4 - Hunted (2015)
The real-life thriller where ordinary people go on the run from a team of expert hunters. Where will they hide? Who can they trust? What would YOU do?
View Episode Rankings#5 - This Is England
The story takes place during the 1986 FIFA World Cup. As Shaun completes his last school exam, he realises he will have to find his way in the world. His friends, who include Woody, Lol, Smell, Gadget and Meggy, are still around, looking for love, entertainment and employment
View Episode Rankings#6 - Speed with Guy Martin
Guy Martin loves pushing the boundaries of speed in search of a buzz. He claims that nothing can match the adrenaline rush he gets when he's racing on public roads around the Isle of Man TT course at 200mph. Now he wants to see if he can find anything that can give him the same kick. In this series, he creates four-speed based challenges, exploring the boundaries of physics, learning about the science of speed, and getting his hands dirty in a range of unique engineering projects.
View Episode Rankings#7 - Grand Designs
Presenter Kevin McCloud follows some of Britain's most ambitious self-building projects, as intrepid individuals attempt to design and construct the home of their dreams.
View Episode Rankings#8 - The Promise
The Promise is a drama series which following the lives of an 18-year-old Londoner as she visits present-day Israel and her grandfather, a soldier in the British peace-keeping force during 1940s Palestine.
View Episode Rankings#9 - Peep Show
Mark and Jez are a couple of twenty-something roommates who have nothing in common - except for the fact that their lives are anything but normal. Mayhem ensues as the pair strive to cope with day-to-day life.
View Episode Rankings#10 - The Great British Bake Off
Britain's best amateur bakers compete in the iconic white tent - all united in their aim to prove their baking skills and impress judges Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith.
View Episode Rankings#11 - Big Fat Quiz
Jimmy Carr presents his big, fat and fiendishly difficult pub quiz with top celebrities.
View Episode Rankings#12 - Channel 4 (UK) Documentaries
Channel 4, in common with the other main British stations, airs a highly comprehensive range of programming. It was established in 1982 with a specific intention of providing programming to groups of minority interests, not catered for by its competitors, which at the time amounted to only the BBC and ITV.
View Episode Rankings#13 - Four in a Bed
B&B owners throw open their doors and take turns to stay with each other, as they compete to be crowned best hosts.
View Episode Rankings#14 - Elizabeth I
Emmy®-winner Helen Mirren and Oscar®-winner Jeremy Irons star in Elizabeth I, a two-part miniseries event that explores the intersection of the private and public life of Elizabeth I (Mirren) in the latter half of her reign, offering a personal look at her allies, her enemies and her suitors as she struggled to survive in a male-dominated world. Elizabeth I sheds light on both the personal and public side of England's most enigmatic queen. The daughter of King Henry VIII, Elizabeth I (1533-1603) reunited a nation divided by religious strife, faced down the Spanish Armada and, after an unprecedented 45-year reign, died one of England's best-loved monarchs. During her time as Queen, poets and playwrights wrote about her, artists painted her, and composers dedicated works to her, all contributing to the legend of the "Virgin Queen" who never married. In the public's mind, Elizabeth's romantic life is nearly completely overshadowed by her political achievements and military triumphs. Elizabeth I looks beyond the myth at the woman behind the crown, striking a balance between the queen's desire to find love and passion, and her responsibility to the monarchy.
View Episode Rankings#15 - The Mill
Period television drama based on real-life stories and people of the textile mill workers at Quarry Bank Mill in Cheshire, England, and combined with fictional characters and events.
View Episode Rankings#16 - The F Word
The F-Word is a British cooking show featuring chef Gordon Ramsay. The programme covers a wide range of topics, from recipes to food preparation and celebrity food fads.
View Episode Rankings#17 - The Great British Bake Off: An Extra Slice
The show that gives fans another bite of Bake Off when one helping just isn't enough. Jo Brand chats to a panel of celebrities about all the action, and meets the latest baker to leave the tent.
View Episode Rankings#18 - SAS: Who Dares Wins
Selection for the SAS is one of the world's toughest job interviews and physical fitness is only the starting point. What's really being tested is psychological resilience and character as candidates undergo sleep deprivation, interrogation and a series of increasingly complex mind games. In this programme, five ex-special forces soldiers re-create tasks from the SAS's secret selection process, putting 30 civilian men through the ultimate test of their physical and - more importantly - their psychological resilience.
View Episode Rankings#19 - Food Unwrapped
The food and science series that travels the world to explore the industry secrets behind our favourite produce, industry secrets, and how foods are really made.
View Episode Rankings#20 - Phoenix Nights
Award-winning comedy. Peter Kay plays Legendary social club owner Brian Potter and his hapless band of staff and regulars are determined to make the Phoenix Club a success no matter what.
View Episode Rankings#21 - Ali G, Innit
Ali G travels throughout Britain, interviewing unsuspecting leaders and politicians.
View Episode Rankings#22 - The Big Fat Quiz of Everything
Jimmy Carr returns to asks questions on art, literature, television, music, geography, politics, science and celebrity from the last 100,000 years of human history.
View Episode Rankings#23 - Damned (2016)
Social workers Rose and Al work in a children’s services department, dealing every day with the all too familiar social issues that flood the media. Swimming against a tide of bureaucracy and pedantry, and contending with the absurdities and irrationalities of life in a county council office, the pair attempt to navigate their way through their equally trying professional and personal lives.
View Episode Rankings#24 - Jamie's 15-Minute Meals
Jamie Oliver returns with a brand-new cookery series that pushes the concept of fast, everyday food to the next level. Building on the success of Jamie's 30 Minute Meals, this new show squeezes the cooking process even further, with each half hour episode featuring two delicious, nutritious, super-fast family meals back-to-back. So even if you're rushed off your feet at work, there's no excuse for not giving these meals a go.
View Episode Rankings#25 - The Armando Iannucci Shows
The Armando Iannucci Shows is a series of eight programmes directed by Armando Iannucci and written by Iannucci, David Schneider, Andy Riley and Kevin Cecil. It was shown on UK's Channel 4 in October 2001. Each show had a rough theme, often somewhat existentialist in nature, around which Iannucci would weave a series of surreal sketches and monologues. Recurring themes in the episodes are the superficiality of modern culture, our problems communicating with each other, the mundane nature of working life and feelings of personal inadequacy and social awkwardness. Several characters also make repeat appearances in the shows, including the East End thug, who solves every problem with threats of violence; Hugh, an old man who delivers surreal monologues about what things were like in the old days; and Iannucci's barber, who is full of nonsensical anecdotes.
View Episode Rankings#26 - The Adam And Joe Show
The Adam And Joe Show was a sketch series featuring the talents of Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish. As well as starring in the show they also wrote and directed it. The series was filmed in their from their bedsit in Brixton, London.
View Episode Rankings#27 - The State (2017)
Four young British ISIS recruits are excited to begin their new lives in Syria.They take oaths of allegiance to ISIS, convinced they have made the right decision, but are soon confronted with the harsh realities of life.
View Episode Rankings#28 - Inside Nature's Giants
Inside Nature's Giants will delve under the skin of the world's largest animals to reveal their unique anatomy and unravel their evolutionary secrets. Most wildlife documentaries show you how animals behave, but by exploring inside nature's giants we emerge with a deeper understanding of how these animals work. We will discover how elephants are able to consume so much food; why crocodiles have such an incredibly strong bite; why giraffes have such a long neck and why the closest living relative of the whale is a hippo. This is Natural History as you have never seen it before - from the inside out.
View Episode Rankings#29 - Taskmaster
Greg Davies is the Taskmaster, and with the help of his ever-loyal assistant Alex Horne, he will set out to test the wiles, wit, wisdom and skills of five celebrity contestants. At the end of the series, who will be crowned the Taskmaster champion?
View Episode Rankings#30 - Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares
Gordon Ramsay attempts to transform struggling restaurants with his own menu of extremely frank and forthright advice. The heat is on - and this chef's not mincing any words...
View Episode Rankings#31 - Utopia
The story follows a small group of people who find themselves in possession of the manuscript sequel of a cult graphic novel called The Utopia Experiments, which is rumoured to have predicted the worst disasters of the last century. This leads them to be targeted by an organisation known as The Network, which they must avoid to survive. Using the manuscript, they must uncover the meaning hidden in its pages before the disasters depicted become reality.
View Episode Rankings#32 - Jamie's 30 Minute Meals
Jamie's back in the kitchen, and this time he's against the clock After his culinary tour in Jamie Does, Jamie Oliver is bringing his culinary inspiration back home to boost our kitchen confidence in the revolutionary new cooking show, Jamie's 30 Minute Meals . In this amazing new show, Jamie makes mouth-watering family meals from scratch with every half-hour episode playing out in real time. To keep you on track, Jamie will take you step-by-step through the cookery process. Forget staged food shows with clever editing, this is the real deal - not one carrot has been peeled beforehand, or one pan sneakily preheated.
View Episode Rankings#33 - Travel Man: 48 Hours in...
Joe Lycett shows us how to get the most out of some of the most popular mini-breaks.
View Episode Rankings#34 - Brass Eye
Brass Eye was a controversial show that reported the issues of British popular culture. Drugs, Animal Rights, Crime, Paedophilia, these are the issues that the tabloids seem to spend their careers cashing in on. Brass Eye focused on the press and society's irrational focus on them. It takes full advantage of c-list celebrities desperate to look like they care about these 'important' issues but who only end up exposing their own ignorance and willingness to say anything if it gets them on TV.
View Episode Rankings#35 - Trigger Happy TV
A hidden camera comedy program starring Dom Joly deliberately entering into ludicrous or embarrassing situations in public places, all filmed surreptitiously. Sketches took place in a variety of locations primarily on the streets of Central London and Cheltenham. The humor is derived through the public’s reactions to Joly’s shenanigans rather than the usual format, where members of the public are themselves pranked.
View Episode Rankings#36 - Jamie at Home
Jamie Oliver is back doing what he does best - cooking at home, with simple, accessible ingredients, including fruit and veg that he recently started to grow in his garden. Each programme is themed around one primary ingredient, it could be a look at all the different varieties of tomatoes, what you can do with lovely home-grown potatoes, or how to cook different cuts of lamb - but he also looks at how easy it is to grow your own produce; sometimes in weird and wonderful ways.
View Episode Rankings#37 - Derren Brown Investigates
Derren Brown looks at some extraordinary claims from around the world, documenting a medium, a ghost hunter and a psychic expert who claims to make the blind see.
View Episode Rankings#38 - The Restoration Man
George Clarke is The Restoration Man, travelling the British Isles meeting the stubborn romantics who want to breathe new life into the architectural treasures he unearths on his journey. His mission is to help them transform these undervalued gems into brand new homes fit for 21st century living.
View Episode Rankings#39 - Heston's Fantastical Food
Culinary alchemist Heston Blumenthal brings back the wonder and excitement of childhood food, awakening the kid in every viewer as he builds the world's largest 99 Flake, makes a packed lunch of giant KitKats, and a record breaking bag of Hula Hoops. Heston creates a whole pub inside a pie and a giant pyramid tea bag, served in a suitably enormous teapot. He also rejoices in all that is magical about Christmas treats with Britain's biggest Christmas pudding, edible tree decorations, and a snow globe and snowball cocktail.
View Episode Rankings#40 - Father Ted
One small island off the west coast of Ireland. Three priests. One housekeeper. A bunch of nuns - and the most consistently awful weather on the planet. Step into the world of Father Ted!
View Episode Rankings#41 - The First World War
A new history in 10 parts of the global conflict which shaped the 20th century, produced by Wark Clements for Channel 4 and Southern Star.
View Episode Rankings#42 - Born to Kill (2017)
Born To Kill is a haunting four-part drama exploring the mind of Sam, a teenager on the verge of acting out suppressed psychopathic desires. As this chilling coming of age drama unfolds, decades of deceit are revealed and Sam’s family’s long buried past returns with a vengeance.
View Episode Rankings#43 - Derren Brown: The Experiments
Derren Brown returns to our screens with “The Experiments”, a brand new four part series for Channel 4. Each stand-alone episode asks and answers a single question featuring the usual inventive and jaw dropping Derren Brown mixture of stunts, suggestion and thought-provoking entertainment combined with tried and tested psychological experiments to illustrate how easily our behaviour can be manipulated.
View Episode Rankings#44 - The Secret Life of Machines
Tim Hunkin explains how the machines we use every day actually work, using a fascinating combination of experiments, analogies, animation, and larger-than-lifesize working models. The TV series was the outgrowth of a series of cartoons for the Observer newspaper called "The Rudiments of Wisdom", which Tim researched and drew for 14 years. The theme music is a version of Dave Brubeck's "Take Five" by Val Bennett, retitled "The Russians are Coming".
View Episode Rankings#45 - Escape to the Legion
Bear Grylls breaks through the romance surrounding the French Foreign Legion by taking 11 other 'lost souls' to an old camp in the Sahara to undertake a 4-week boot camp to see who can cut it.
View Episode Rankings#46 - The IT Crowd
The comedic misadventures of Roy, Moss and their grifting supervisor Jen, a rag-tag team of IT support workers at a large corporation headed by a hotheaded yuppie.
View Episode Rankings#47 - Garth Marenghi's Darkplace
Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is the brainchild of celebrated horror writer and self-styled "fabulist" Garth Marenghi, author of such genre classics as Afterbirth (a mutated placenta attacks Bristol) and Crab! ("One of the three best horror books about crabs I've ever read" - Hard Gore Magazine). Back in the 1980s, he branched out into television production, writing and starring in a series so radical, so scary and so downright crazy that when the bosses of Channel 4 saw what they had on their hands, they ran away screaming, like little girls. Only now, twenty years on and amid the worst programming drought in television history, have the station finally allowed the show on the air. Intercut with new interviews with Marenghi himself and his co-stars Dean Learner and Todd Rivers, Garth Marenghi's Darkplace is perhaps the most disturbing vision of hospital life ever broadcast.
View Episode Rankings#48 - Humans
In a parallel present day, where the latest must-have gadget for any busy family is a 'Synth' (a highly realistic humanoid servant that's transforming the way we live). In hopes of reducing their workload, a suburban family purchases a new Synth only to discover that sharing life with a Synth has quite far-reaching consequences.
View Episode Rankings#49 - Dispatches
Covers issues about British society, politics, health, religion, international current affairs and the environment, and often features a mole inside organisations under journalistic investigation.
View Episode Rankings#50 - Ultraviolet (1998)
Ultraviolet began airing on Channel 4 in the UK in September 1998. Only 6 episodes were made, but the series had a lot of people talking at the time. It was the brain child of Joe Ahearne, who also created the gritty lawyer-soap 'This Life' (also starred Jack Davenport). Stylish, dark and often humourous, Ultraviolet delivered a blend of vampire myth with a modern slant. It is notable that the programme never once mentions the word 'Vampire', instead referring to the antagonists as 'leeches' or a 'code five infection'. Ultraviolet charted the exploits of an investigative government unit, armed with the latest weaponry, whose aim is to track down and exterminate Code 5 infected subjects whilst attempting to work out their agenda. A policeman, Michael Colefield, is reluctantly drawn into the group after a confrontation with his 'turned' former best friend, Jack, when Michael, defending himself after being bitten, is forced to 'kill' Jack.
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