SeriesStream: 165 series by the season, from Friends, The Good Doctor and Downton Abbey to The Good Place, Gilmore Girls and Derry Girls

The idea: choose by the season

Most guides sort series by genre, and SeriesStream keeps genre lists as well. But genre tells you what a series feels like; it says little about the size of the commitment. Two comedies can be worlds apart in scale. Derry Girls is three seasons and 19 episodes, a story you can finish in a week of short evenings. Modern Family is eleven seasons and 250 episodes, a companion for most of a year. Both are comedies, both are well loved, and they suit completely different moods.

So the first thing every card and every page tells you is the count. A series page opens with the number of seasons and episodes, followed by the list of seasons, each with the date its first episode aired. Open a season and you see the full table: episode number, title, air date. The lists then gather series of similar size together: one season, two or three, four to six, seven to nine, ten or more. Pick the size first and the genre second, and the choice becomes much easier.

The same thinking explains the home page. Its three modules follow the three levels of a series. The Series module shows whole shows. The Seasons module shows individual seasons, each card carrying a season number and a premiere date. The Episodes module goes one level deeper and lists single episodes in the compact 1x15 style, where the first number is the season and the second is the episode.

The home page, module by module

The page sits on a bright blue background with a dark panel in the middle, and reads from top to bottom. The bar at the top holds the logo, the menu (Home, Series, Seasons, One season, Ten or more, Top rated, A-Z, My List) and the search box. Under it comes the Series module, with the count 165 beside the heading and a See all button on the right. Twelve posters follow, the most watched series in the catalogue, each with its audience rating in the corner and its first year under the title.

The Seasons module is the heart of the page. Its count is the number of seasons in the catalogue, and its twelve cards are the newest seasons to have premiered, one per series. Each card shows the poster, a blue Season label with the number, the series title and the premiere date. A click opens that exact season, ready with its episode table. It is the quickest way to see which of the still-running series have something recent.

The Episodes module lists the twelve most recent dated episodes, again one per series. Each row begins with a blue tag such as 13x10, then the series title, the episode number and the air date. The row links straight to the season page and scrolls to that episode. Below the three modules, three groups of chips lead to the lists: by number of seasons, by time of year, and a group for genres, decades, British series, still-running series and the top rated. This guide closes the page.

What a season page gives you

A season page is a small timetable. The heading names the series and the season, a line underneath gives the date the season began, and the table lists every dated episode in order. For Friends, season one opens on 22 September 1994 and the table runs through 24 episodes into the following May. For Downton Abbey, season one begins on 26 September 2010 and holds seven episodes. The difference in rhythm between an American network sitcom and a British period drama is visible at a glance.

Each row has a small control for marking the episode you reached. The mark is stored in your browser, and My List then shows your saved place beside the series: season and episode. It is a bookmark for television, and it means that returning to a long series after a break takes one click instead of ten minutes of guessing. The page Reading a season page shows the table and the marks step by step.

Dates matter more than they seem. They tell you how a series was paced when it first aired, weekly across a season or all at once, and they settle arguments about which episode came first. They also show the gaps. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel began on 16 March 2017 and delivered five seasons across six years. Grey's Anatomy began on 27 March 2005 and has returned every television year since.

One season: 26 complete stories

The one-season list is the place to start when you want a beginning, a middle and an end by Sunday night. Twenty-six series told everything they had to tell in a single season, and several of them are among the best-rated titles in the whole catalogue.

The literary adaptations set the standard. Pride and Prejudice (1995) covers Jane Austen's novel in six episodes, with Jennifer Ehle as Elizabeth Bennet and Colin Firth as Mr Darcy, and holds a rating of 8.2. North & South (2004) adapts Elizabeth Gaskell in four episodes, with Richard Armitage as the mill owner John Thornton, rated 8.1. Jane Eyre (2006) gives Charlotte Brontë four episodes with Ruth Wilson and Toby Stephens. All three began in the autumn, the traditional home of the Sunday-evening classic serial.

Then come the cult favourites that ended early and grew in reputation afterwards. Freaks and Geeks (1999) ran for 18 episodes about a Michigan high school in 1980 and launched a generation of actors; it is rated 8.2. My So-Called Life (1994) gave Claire Danes her first great role across 19 episodes. Pan Am (2011) followed a flight crew in the early sixties for a single glamorous season.

True stories suit the format well. From the Earth to the Moon (1998), produced by Tom Hanks, tells the Apollo programme in twelve episodes and is rated 8.1. The English Game (2020) shows how football became a working-class sport in six episodes. WeCrashed (2022) follows the rise of a shared-office start-up in eight, with Jared Leto and Anne Hathaway. Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker (2020) gives Octavia Spencer four episodes as America's first self-made woman millionaire. From Scratch (2022) is a love story between Texas and Sicily in eight.

Families have their own single-season adventures: Knuckles (2024, six episodes), The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance (2019, ten episodes of puppetry), Willow (2022) and Gulliver's Travels (1996). And Rowan Atkinson appears three times, in Mr. Bean (14 episodes, rated 8.0), Man vs Bee (2022) and Man vs Baby (2025). The full tour is on the page One-season series.

Two or three seasons: 46 series

Two or three seasons is the size of a good novel trilogy: long enough to grow attached, short enough to finish. Forty-six series sit here, and the list mixes British comedy, American prestige drama and a strong group of family shows.

The comedies are compact and sharp. Derry Girls (2018) packs three seasons into 19 episodes about teenagers in Northern Ireland in the nineties, rated 8.1. Flight of the Conchords (2007) follows a New Zealand folk duo in New York for two seasons and 22 episodes. Detectorists (2014) spends three gentle seasons with two friends and their metal detectors in the Essex countryside, rated 8.2. Miranda (2009) and Gavin & Stacey (2007) each run three seasons, and Better Off Ted (2009) gives two seasons of office satire.

The dramas think big in a small space. The Newsroom (2012) covers a cable news team across three seasons and 25 episodes, written by Aaron Sorkin and rated 8.1. Foundation (2021) brings Isaac Asimov's galactic saga to the screen, three seasons so far and still running. Travelers (2016) sends agents back from the future for three seasons. Victoria (2016) follows the young queen through three seasons, and The Spanish Princess (2019) gives Catherine of Aragon two.

Family viewers get some of the most replayed shows of the 2000s and 2010s: H2O: Just Add Water (three seasons, 78 episodes), The Suite Life of Zack & Cody (three seasons, 87 episodes), Girl Meets World (three seasons, rated 8.3), Lizzie McGuire (two seasons, 65 episodes) and The Baby-Sitters Club (two seasons). Newer arrivals include Big Shot, The Mysterious Benedict Society and The Buccaneers, which is still running.

Four to six seasons: the largest list, 63 series

Four to six seasons is the natural length of a successful series, long enough for characters to change and for a proper finale. This is the biggest list on SeriesStream with 63 titles, close to two series in five.

The sitcoms here are household names. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (1990) ran six seasons and 148 episodes. The Nanny (1993) ran six seasons and 144 episodes, rated 8.1. Community (2009) reached its promised six seasons with 110 episodes. Schitt's Creek (2015) took six seasons and 79 episodes to turn a spoiled family into a beloved one. Superstore (2015) spent six seasons on the shop floor. The Good Place (2016) needed only four seasons and 50 episodes to tell one of the most carefully planned stories in comedy, rated 8.0, and The IT Crowd (2006) made four seasons of just six episodes each.

The dramas are equally strong. Downton Abbey (2010) tells the story of a great house and its servants across six seasons and 47 episodes, rated 8.1. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017) follows a housewife into stand-up comedy over five seasons. New Amsterdam (2018, five seasons, rated 8.3) and The Resident (2018, six seasons, rated 8.4) are two of the best-rated hospital dramas in the catalogue. Friday Night Lights (2006) gives five seasons to a Texas football town, and Halt and Catch Fire (2014) four seasons to the early personal-computer industry.

Younger viewers will recognise half the list: Drake & Josh (four seasons, rated 8.4), Victorious (four seasons, rated 8.2), iCarly (six seasons, 107 episodes), Hannah Montana (four seasons, 98 episodes), Good Luck Charlie (four seasons) and Liv and Maddie (four seasons). Add Merlin (five seasons, 65 episodes), Eureka and Warehouse 13 (five seasons each) and Quantum Leap (five seasons, 96 episodes), and the list covers almost every taste.

Seven to nine seasons: 20 long companions

Twenty series ran for seven, eight or nine seasons. These are the shows that stayed on air for the better part of a decade, and most of them reward that time with characters who feel like neighbours.

The list is led by The Good Doctor (2017), seven seasons and 126 episodes about a young surgeon with autism, and the highest-rated major series on SeriesStream at 8.5. Beside it stand three of the great American comedies of their eras: How I Met Your Mother (2005, nine seasons, 208 episodes), Scrubs (2001, nine seasons, 181 episodes, rated 8.2) and The Middle (2009, nine seasons, 215 episodes). Gilmore Girls (2000) gave seven seasons and 153 episodes to a mother and daughter in a small Connecticut town, and The West Wing (1999) gave seven seasons and 154 episodes to a fictional White House, rated 8.3.

The family sitcom is at home in this range. Home Improvement (1991) ran eight seasons and 203 episodes, Family Matters (1989) nine seasons and 215, Step by Step (1991) seven seasons and 160, Boy Meets World (1993) seven seasons and 158, and Everybody Loves Raymond (1996) nine seasons and 210. More recent entries include black-ish (2014, eight seasons), Last Man Standing (2011, nine seasons) and The Neighborhood (2018, eight seasons).

One British series joins them: All Creatures Great & Small (2020), the Yorkshire vet drama, which has reached seven seasons and continues. With a rating of 8.2 it is also one of the gentlest long watches in the catalogue.

Ten seasons or more: the ten giants

Only ten series pass the ten-season mark, and together they account for more than 2,700 episodes, over a fifth of everything on SeriesStream. This is the list for viewers who want a series to live with.

Grey's Anatomy (2005) stands alone at the top with 23 seasons and 461 episodes, still running and rated 8.2. ER (1994), created by Michael Crichton, held the hospital-drama crown before it with 15 seasons and 331 episodes. Two series have 13 seasons each and both continue: When Calls the Heart (2014), a frontier drama rated 8.3, and Impractical Jokers (2011), a hidden-camera comedy with 293 episodes.

Then the sitcoms. The Big Bang Theory (2007) ran 12 seasons and 279 episodes. Modern Family (2009) ran 11 seasons and 250 episodes. Friends (1994) ran exactly ten seasons and 228 episodes and remains the best-rated of the giants at 8.4. The Goldbergs (2013) and Roseanne (1988) each reached ten seasons, and Beverly Hills, 90210 (1990) gave the teen drama ten seasons and 284 episodes.

A practical note: a giant is best taken a season at a time. Use the season pages as stopping points, mark your place, and come back when you like. The page Long-running series lists the ten with their counts, and Series by number of seasons sets all five size lists side by side.

The television year: premieres by time of year

For most of television history the year began in September. Networks saved their biggest launches for the weeks when viewers came back from summer, ran them through to May, and filled the gaps with midseason replacements in January and experiments in summer. Streaming loosened that calendar, but the old pattern is still plain in the numbers. Of the 165 series on SeriesStream, 76 first aired in autumn, 27 in winter, 31 in spring and 31 in summer. September alone accounts for 44 premieres, more than a quarter of the catalogue.

The four lists by time of year turn that pattern into a way of browsing. They answer a pleasant kind of question: what began at this time of year? An autumn evening calls for one of the great September launches; a summer afternoon suits one of the lighter series that started in July. The page Premieres by time of year gives the four lists with examples.

Autumn premieres: 76 series

The autumn list reads like a history of the network schedule. Friends began on 22 September 1994, three days after ER on 19 September: one of the strongest premiere weeks in the catalogue. The West Wing began on 22 September 1999. How I Met Your Mother began on 19 September 2005, The Big Bang Theory on 24 September 2007, Modern Family on 23 September 2009 and The Good Doctor on 25 September 2017. The same few days of the calendar, year after year.

British television keeps its own autumn tradition. Downton Abbey arrived on 26 September 2010, Merlin on 20 September 2008, and Pride and Prejudice on 24 September 1995. Detectorists began in October 2014 and Miranda in November 2009.

Autumn also holds the list's long family sitcoms, from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air (10 September 1990) to Boy Meets World (24 September 1993), along with Gilmore Girls (5 October 2000), The Nanny (3 November 1993), Community (17 September 2009), The Good Place (19 September 2016) and New Amsterdam (25 September 2018). If you want a series that feels like the start of something, begin here.

Winter premieres: 27 series

Winter is the season of the midseason arrival, the series held back until the new year and then given its chance. It is the smallest of the four lists with 27 titles, and it has a high share of surprises that went on to outlast their autumn rivals.

Schitt's Creek began on 13 January 2015 and built its audience slowly over six seasons. The Resident began on 21 January 2018. The Wonder Years first aired on 31 January 1988, straight after the Super Bowl, and ran for six seasons. Derry Girls began on 4 January 2018, The IT Crowd on 3 February 2006, and Drake & Josh on 11 January 2004.

The streaming era has made winter busier. One Day arrived on 8 February 2024 with 14 episodes covering twenty years of one friendship. The Gilded Age began on 24 January 2022, Bel-Air on 13 February 2022, and My Life with the Walter Boys on 7 December 2023. Fuller House brought a nineties family back on 26 February 2016, and When Calls the Heart started its long run on 11 January 2014.

Spring premieres: 31 series

Spring launches were once trial runs: a short first season in March or April to see whether a series deserved a full order in the autumn. The best known example on SeriesStream is Grey's Anatomy, which began on 27 March 2005 with a first season of nine episodes and has since passed 460. Quantum Leap followed the same route on 26 March 1989.

Spring is also a favourite slot for family channels. Hannah Montana began on 24 March 2006, The Suite Life of Zack & Cody on 18 March 2005, Victorious on 27 March 2010, Good Luck Charlie on 4 April 2010 and Andi Mack on 7 April 2017. Dinosaurs, the puppet family sitcom, arrived on 26 April 1991.

Among the dramas, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel began on 16 March 2017, Genius on 25 April 2017 with its portrait of Albert Einstein, Sweet Magnolias on 19 May 2020 and The Spanish Princess on 5 May 2019. Jeeves and Wooster, with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry, first aired on 22 April 1990, and From the Earth to the Moon on 5 April 1998.

Summer premieres: 31 series

Summer used to be the quiet months, which made it the home of the inventive and the offbeat. Cable channels in particular used June and July to launch series that the big networks would have found too unusual for September.

That is how science fiction came to own the summer. Eureka began on 18 July 2006, Warehouse 13 on 7 July 2009 and Kyle XY on 26 June 2006. The Newsroom opened on 24 June 2012, Halt and Catch Fire on 1 June 2014, and Flight of the Conchords on 17 June 2007. The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance arrived at the very end of the season, on 30 August 2019.

School holidays explain the rest. Saved by the Bell began on 20 August 1989, H2O: Just Add Water on 7 July 2006, Mako: Island of Secrets on 26 July 2013, Girl Meets World on 27 June 2014, Liv and Maddie on 19 July 2013 and The Baby-Sitters Club on 3 July 2020. Man vs Bee gave Rowan Atkinson a summer comeback on 24 June 2022, and Stick, a golf comedy with Owen Wilson, teed off on 3 June 2025.

Comedy: 113 series

More than two series in three on SeriesStream carry the comedy label, which makes this the largest genre list by far. It is easiest to browse by type.

The friends-and-flatmates comedy runs from Friends through How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory to Community, where the flat is a study room at a community college. The workplace comedy takes in Superstore (a big-box shop), The IT Crowd (a basement tech office), Scrubs (a teaching hospital), Better Off Ted (a research corporation), NewsRadio (a New York radio station) and Wings (a tiny airport on Nantucket, eight seasons from 1990).

The family comedy is the deepest shelf: Modern Family, The Middle, The Goldbergs, black-ish, Fresh Off the Boat, Life in Pieces, Home Improvement, Everybody Loves Raymond and Roseanne. And the British comedy brings a different flavour: Mr. Bean, Keeping Up Appearances, Miranda, Gavin & Stacey, Detectorists and Derry Girls.

Newer comedies keep the list fresh. Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage (2024) continues the Cooper family story and is rated 8.0. The Four Seasons (2025) follows three couples on four holidays. Loot (2022), Trying (2020) and Acapulco (2021) each have several seasons to enjoy. Suggestions by type are on the page Comedy series.

Drama: 88 series

Eighty-eight series carry the drama label, and three settings dominate: the hospital, the great house and the corridors of power.

The hospital shelf is the fullest on SeriesStream. ER set the pace in 1994 with its long takes through a Chicago emergency room. Grey's Anatomy moved the action to Seattle in 2005 and has stayed there ever since. The Good Doctor (2017), New Amsterdam (2018) and The Resident (2018) form a newer trio, all rated 8.3 or higher. Lighter in tone, Scrubs and Doogie Howser, M.D. show that a hospital can be funny as well.

The great-house drama begins with Downton Abbey and continues across the Atlantic with The Gilded Age (2022), from the same writer, Julian Fellowes, set in 1880s New York and now four seasons long. The Buccaneers (2023) sends American heiresses to London, Victoria and The Spanish Princess go to court, and A Gentleman in Moscow (2024) keeps Ewan McGregor in a grand hotel for eight episodes.

For politics and work, Aaron Sorkin wrote both The West Wing and The Newsroom. Boston Legal (2004) gives five seasons and 101 episodes to two eccentric lawyers. Friday Night Lights turns high-school football into one of the finest dramas about a community. And the small-town drama has loyal followers in Sweet Magnolias, Chesapeake Shores, Hart of Dixie and When Calls the Heart. More ideas are on the page Drama series.

Family: 37 series for all ages

The family list gathers 37 series made for parents and children to watch together. Every series on SeriesStream was checked by hand for shared viewing; this list holds the ones aimed most directly at younger viewers.

The classic sitcoms come first: The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, The Nanny, Step by Step, Family Matters, Small Wonder (1985, four seasons about a robot daughter) and The Wonder Years, which remembers the late sixties through the eyes of a twelve-year-old and is rated 8.3. School stories follow: Saved by the Bell, Boy Meets World and its sequel Girl Meets World, Lizzie McGuire, Hannah Montana and High School Musical: The Musical: The Series (2019, four seasons, rated 8.0).

Adventure rounds out the list. H2O: Just Add Water and Mako: Island of Secrets share an Australian coastline and a secret about mermaids. Free Rein (2017) is three seasons of horses on an English island. The Mysterious Benedict Society (2021) sends four gifted children on a mission, and The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers (2021) returns to the ice rink. The page Family series sorts them by age.

Sci-fi and adventure: 28 series

Twenty-eight series leave the everyday world behind. The classic of the list is Quantum Leap (1989), in which a scientist leaps through time into other people's lives, five seasons rated 8.0. seaQuest DSV (1993) explores the oceans of the near future, and Relic Hunter (1999) chases lost treasures for three seasons.

The 2000s brought a friendlier kind of science fiction. Eureka is set in a town where every resident is a genius. Warehouse 13 stores dangerous historical objects in South Dakota. Sanctuary (2008) shelters unusual creatures, and The Librarians (2014) guard magical artefacts beneath a public library. Merlin retells the Arthurian legend from the young wizard's side across five seasons.

Recent years added scale. Foundation spans centuries of galactic history. The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance returns to Jim Henson's world of Thra with handmade puppets. Willow revisits the 1988 film, and Knuckles gives the red echidna six episodes of his own. For something gentler, The Good Place is a comedy about the afterlife that also counts as fantasy, and it may be the most quotable series in this list.

British series: 26 titles

British seasons are short. Where an American network season often runs to 22 episodes, a British one usually has six or eight, which is why 26 British series on SeriesStream add up to so few hours and are so easy to finish. Nineteen of the 26 have three seasons or fewer.

The comedies are the calling card: Mr. Bean, The IT Crowd, Keeping Up Appearances (five seasons from 1990), Miranda, Gavin & Stacey, Detectorists, Derry Girls and Trying (2020), a warm comedy about a London couple hoping to adopt, now five seasons long. Jeeves and Wooster (1990) pairs Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry in four seasons of P. G. Wodehouse.

The dramas lean on the classics and on history: Pride and Prejudice, North & South, Jane Eyre, Downton Abbey, Victoria, The English Game, The Spanish Princess and All Creatures Great & Small. Fantasy has Merlin and The Colour of Magic (2008), a two-part Terry Pratchett adaptation. The page British series groups them by mood.

Still running: 13 series with more to come

Thirteen series on SeriesStream are still in production. For these the Seasons module on the home page is most useful, because it shows the latest season of each with its date. The longest-running is Grey's Anatomy, followed by When Calls the Heart and Impractical Jokers at 13 seasons each, and All Creatures Great & Small at seven.

The younger continuing series are Trying (five seasons), The Gilded Age (four), Foundation, Loot, My Life with the Walter Boys and Georgie & Mandy's First Marriage (three each), and The Four Seasons, The Buccaneers and Stick (two each). Starting one of these means joining a story in progress, with the pleasure of a new season to look forward to.

Four decades of series

Four lists sort the catalogue by the year a series began. They are a quick way to match a series to a memory, or to explore a period of television you missed.

From 1985 to 1999 there are 37 series. This is the age of the network sitcom and the weekly drama: Growing Pains and Small Wonder from 1985, The Wonder Years and Roseanne from 1988, Saved by the Bell, Family Matters and Quantum Leap from 1989, then the nineties with The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Home Improvement, The Nanny, Friends, ER, Everybody Loves Raymond, Ally McBeal and The West Wing. Seasons were long in those years, often 22 to 25 episodes.

From 2000 to 2009 there are 34 series. Gilmore Girls opened the decade in October 2000, Scrubs followed in 2001, and the middle of the decade produced Grey's Anatomy, How I Met Your Mother, The IT Crowd, Friday Night Lights and Ugly Betty. Family channels were at their peak with Lizzie McGuire, That's So Raven, Drake & Josh, Hannah Montana and iCarly. The decade ended with Modern Family, Community and The Middle, all launched in the same fortnight of September 2009.

From 2010 to 2019 there are 56 series, the largest group. Downton Abbey began in 2010, Schitt's Creek and Superstore in 2015, The Good Place in 2016, The Good Doctor and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel in 2017, Derry Girls, New Amsterdam and The Resident in 2018. Seasons grew shorter and stories more tightly planned.

From 2020 to 2025 there are 38 series. Most have one to three seasons so far: One Day, Dash & Lily, The Baby-Sitters Club, Big Shot, Bel-Air, Acapulco, The Gilded Age, Foundation and Trying among them. All Creatures Great & Small is the exception, already at seven seasons since September 2020.

Top rated: 39 series at 8.0 and above

The top-rated list holds every series with an audience score of 8.0 or higher: 39 titles, close to a quarter of the catalogue. The average across all 165 series is 7.5, so these are the clear favourites.

At the summit sits a surprise: I'm in the Band (2009), a two-season comedy about a teenager who joins his favourite rock group, with 8.6 from a small but devoted audience. Next comes The Good Doctor at 8.5, then Friends, The Resident and Drake & Josh at 8.4. Six series share 8.3: The West Wing, The Wonder Years, New Amsterdam, When Calls the Heart, Boy Meets World and Girl Meets World.

At 8.2 the list becomes wonderfully varied: Grey's Anatomy, Scrubs, The IT Crowd, Victorious, Freaks and Geeks, Pride and Prejudice, Detectorists and All Creatures Great & Small. A twenty-three-season hospital drama and a six-episode Jane Austen serial hold the same score, which says something about how differently a series can earn affection. A good rule: when a series appears both in a size list you like and in the top rated, it is a safe choice.

Finding a series

The search box in the top bar works from any page. Type part of a title and results appear at once: "gilm" is enough for Gilmore Girls, "good" brings up The Good Doctor and The Good Place together. Search also reads names, so typing Rowan Atkinson returns his three series, and typing Aaron Sorkin returns The West Wing and The Newsroom. A year works as well: 1994 returns Friends, ER and My So-Called Life.

The full search page adds filters for genre, year, status and minimum rating, with a choice of sort order. Set the status to ongoing to see the thirteen continuing series, or the minimum rating to 8 to match the top-rated list. The A-Z index in the menu is a third route, with every series under its first letter; T is the fullest letter, since so many titles begin with The. All the tips are on the page Finding a series.

Originals and their successors

Some series come in pairs, and the season counts make the comparison easy. Boy Meets World ran seven seasons from 1993; Girl Meets World picked up the story with the next generation in 2014 and ran three. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air gave six seasons of comedy from 1990; Bel-Air retold the same premise as a drama from 2022 and reached four. How I Met Your Mother ran nine seasons, and How I Met Your Father followed with two.

The pattern repeats across the family shelf. That's So Raven (2003, four seasons) led to Raven's Home (2017, six seasons), a rare case of the successor outlasting the original. Doogie Howser, M.D. (1989, four seasons) inspired Doogie Kamealoha, M.D. (2021, two seasons), which moves the teenage doctor to Hawaii. Mr. Bean returned in spirit with Man vs Bee and Man vs Baby. Watching an original and its successor back to back is a pleasant way to see how television changed between two eras: shorter seasons, fewer episodes, and stories planned as a whole.

My List: your own shelf of series

A guide to series needs a memory, because watching a series takes weeks. My List is that memory. On any series page, press Add to My List and the series is saved in your browser. The My List page then shows everything you saved, together with the last episode you marked on a season page: the series, the season, the episode. Picking up where you left off becomes a single click.

The list lives on your device and stays as you left it between visits. Two buttons make it portable: Export writes a small file, and Import reads that file on another device and merges the entries. A sensible habit is to keep three series on the list at once: one giant for slow evenings, one mid-length series for the week, and one single-season story for the weekend. The page My List explains each button.

Where to watch: one button, official services

Every series page ends with the same button, Watch now. Above it is a country menu with fifteen countries, from the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and Ireland to India, Germany, France, Brazil and Mexico. Choose yours once and the browser remembers it.

The button opens the series on JustWatch in a new tab, where you can see which official services carry it where you live, grouped by subscription, rental and purchase, with the picture quality each one offers. Rights move between services and differ from country to country, which is why SeriesStream relies on a source that tracks them daily. The page Where to watch a series shows how to read the offers.

Two small checks save time. First, the year: The Wonder Years on SeriesStream is the 1988 original, Quantum Leap is the 1989 series, and Pride and Prejudice is the 1995 serial. Second, the language options: subtitles and audio tracks are set in the player of the service you open, as the page Subtitles and audio explains. Captions are a real help with the quick Northern Irish dialogue of Derry Girls.

On a phone or tablet

The dark panel fills the whole screen on a phone, and the three modules stack in the same order: Series, Seasons, Episodes. Posters line up two to a row, and the Episodes list becomes a single column with the season-and-episode tag, the title and the date. The menu button in the top bar opens search and every link from the desktop menu.

Season tables are built to be read with a thumb: one row per episode, with the mark control at the edge. Posters load as you scroll, which keeps the page light on mobile data. And from the browser menu you can add SeriesStream to your home screen, so that your saved place in a series is one tap away. The steps for Android and iPhone are on the page SeriesStream on your phone.

Four viewing plans by size

A weekend plan: Pride and Prejudice on Saturday, six episodes, and North & South on Sunday, four episodes. Two complete nineteenth-century novels, ten episodes in all, and both rated above 8.

A fortnight plan: Derry Girls, three seasons and 19 short episodes, followed by Detectorists, three seasons and 18 episodes. Two of the best-rated comedies in the catalogue, one loud and one quiet, both finished within two weeks of evenings.

A season-of-the-year plan: The Good Place, four seasons and 50 episodes. At two or three episodes an evening it lasts about a month, and the story is planned from the first episode to the last.

A year plan: Friends, ten seasons and 228 episodes. Four or five episodes a week carries you through twelve months, with ten season finales along the way. Mark your place on the season pages and the series will wait for you.

SeriesStream in numbers

165 series. 726 dated seasons. Close to 13,000 dated episodes. Forty years of television, from September 1985 to the end of 2025. The average series runs to between four and five seasons, and the most common size is exactly four seasons, shared by 29 series.

By size: 26 series with one season, 46 with two or three, 63 with four to six, 20 with seven to nine and 10 with ten or more. By time of year: 76 autumn premieres, 27 winter, 31 spring and 31 summer, with September the busiest month at 44. By decade: 37 series from 1985 to 1999, 34 from the 2000s, 56 from the 2010s and 38 from 2020 onwards. By genre: 113 comedies, 88 dramas, 37 family series and 28 in science fiction and adventure, with many series counted under two labels.

At the extremes: the longest series is Grey's Anatomy with 23 seasons and 461 episodes, and the shortest are The Colour of Magic and Gulliver's Travels with two episodes each. The highest score is 8.6 and the average is 7.5. Twenty-six series come from the United Kingdom, and thirteen are still running. Every figure is computed from the series pages at each update, so the count beside a list always matches what you find when you open it.

Questions