10 TV Shows Where The First Episode Was The Best

First impressions are so incredibly important, and where TV shows are concerned, the pilot episode needs to come out swinging

And 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

Now, 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

So with that in mind, I'm Ellie for WhatCulture and here are 10 TV shows where the first episode was the best

Number 10. Heroes. If 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. That astonishing pilot episode, Genesis, focused on its main characters discovering they have superpowers

in creative and unforgettable fashion. most notably cheerleader Claire repeatedly testing out her newfound invulnerability

But 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

While the rest of Hero's first season was certainly good to great, it's clear that most of the creative juice was pumped into that exceptional pilot

The 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

That first episode went so damn hard that nothing else had a hope of living up to it

Number 9. The Newsroom On 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. The 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

And 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

The 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-drawer cast. But the newsroom is probably best remembered for its maddening inconsistency

its messy soapbox politics, smugly overwritten dialogue, and that infamous Bin Laden scene

It 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 Number eight The Walking Dead It tough to top the pilot episode of your TV show when you brought in the man behind The Shawshank Redemption to write and direct it

Frank 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. The 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. It'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

Though 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. The 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. Number 7. The Last Man on Earth There'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. This might be in part because

it was forever in the shadow of its brilliant first episode. Rather 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. That is, until he crosses paths

with his first human face in two years, the peculiar Carol. Inside 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. While 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. Number 6. True Detective Night Country The fourth season of crime anthology series True Detective started off so damn well

with 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. But 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 That 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 Yet 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

Number 5. The Night Of HBO'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

It'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, as it becomes increasingly contrived and ridiculous ahead of a wildly disappointing conclusion

Overall, 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. But the electrifying promise of that opening episode isn't fully realised throughout the remaining seven episodes

The pilot is an all-timer, whereas the rest of the show ranges from pretty good to okay

Number four, Yellow Jackets. Ah, Yellow Jackets, you began with so much promise

The thriller drama series pilot episode was absolutely loaded with character development

for its large ensemble cast as it ping-ponged the audience between 1996 and 2021

leading up to an absolutely harrowing climactic plane crash sequence. Long before it even premiered, Yellowjacket earned understandable comparisons to Lost

which also centred around the aftermath of a plane crash with extensive use of flashbacks

And honestly, that first episode made it seem like it might just live up to that lofty association

But while the first season never sunk below decent, it quickly became clear that the show lacked the storytelling chops to match its terrific pilots

And by the time season 2 wrapped up last year, the brutal pacing, overemphasis on the modern-day storyline and less-than-compelling central mystery left many fans feeling deflated

Time will tell whether or not the third season pulls things back, but Yellow Jacket's evidently left all its best ideas in its very opening hour

Number 3. Battlestar Galactica Though 2004's Battlestar Galactica reboot technically kicked off with a Prelude miniseries the year prior

the first episode proper, 33, is one of the best slivers of small-screen sci-fi ever produced

A gut-wrenchingly tense follow-up to the miniseries, the episode follows the Galactica and its civilian fleet

as they're forced to pull off faster-than-light jumps every 33 minutes in order to evade the pursuing Cylons

This ensures we introduced to most of the show principal characters amid major turmoil bonding them to the audience near instantly While most TV shows are afraid to get too bleak in their opening hour Battlestar Galactica had no shame about its dark

deep-dish storytelling, which combined with terrific visuals and excellent performances set a perfect foundation for the rest of the show. And Battlestar Galactica was, for the most part

a great sci-fi series, even if it never quite bettered that superb pilot, something even series

creator Ronald D. Moore agrees with. Number two, Lost. Lost was one of the last true water cooler TV shows before the streaming era took hold

and its long-term popularity can be traced back to that mesmerizing two-part pilot

This feature-length opener not only dramatized the brutal, immediate aftermath of the focal plane crash

but succinctly introduced us to a massive ensemble cast in a manner that felt totally organic

With an eye-watering $14 million budget, it was the most expensive TV pilot ever produced at the time

but with good reason, given the top-notch production values and incredible roster of actors involved

Years before Game of Thrones normalized the notion of genre TV shows looking as good as any movie equivalent

Lost gave audiences a truly cinematic experience on the small screen. It's a pilot that did everything possible to immediately sink its hooks in viewers

and basically serves as the blueprint for how a high-concept TV show should kick off

But Lost certainly had many ups and downs across its six-season run

and never again quite recaptured the enervating, anxious energy of that jaw-dropping 83-minute pilot episode

Number 1. The Rehearsal Nathan Fielder's long-awaited follow-up to his legendary reality comedy series Nathan For You

was certainly a compelling, cringeworthy sit from start to finish, but it never again touched the heights of that first episode

The premise of the rehearsal is that Fielder, playing a not-so-fictionalised version of himself

attempts to help regular folk prepare for difficult life circumstances by having them rehearse the scenario with sets and actors

with a hilarious degree of authenticity. The first episode sees Nathan helping Cor

a man who wants to tell his bar trivia team that he lied about having a master's degree

And so Nathan constructs a replica of the bar where his team meets, fills it with actors and has core workshop various versions of him confessing the truth

to his teammates. It's fascinating, brutally embarrassing at times, and yet strangely moving

in how it examines the human condition. But rather than help a new person each episode

the rest of the season pivots to focus on Nathan's work with one person, a woman named Angela

who is considering motherhood. At this point, the rehearsal becomes less committed to its

inspired premise and leaps off to be something far more deranged, but ultimately less satisfying

HBO have renewed the show for a second season though, so here's hoping that Fielder finds a way to outdo that stellar first episode