Inside The New York Times’ 100 Best TV Shows of the 21st Century List
Canon editor Gilbert Cruz discusses the thinking behind The New York Times’ ambitious television ranking and the newspaper’s growing use of video to extend its cultural coverage.
The New York Times is taking a familiar cultural exercise and giving it a distinctly modern shape. Its list of the 100 best television shows of the 21st century is designed not simply as a collection of recommendations, but as an argument about how television has changed, how audiences remember it and what deserves a permanent place in the medium’s evolving history.
At the center of that effort is Gilbert Cruz, the Times’ canon editor. The title itself is unusual, suggesting a role built around questions that are larger than day-to-day reviews or entertainment news. A canon editor is concerned with the works that remain in conversation: the shows that influence later creators, define periods of popular culture and continue to give viewers a way to discuss the medium.
In his conversation about the project, Cruz addresses both the list and the position he occupies while helping shape it. The assignment places him in a particularly visible editorial space. A ranking of 100 programs invites strong opinions, but it also asks editors to explain why certain works matter and how a publication should translate years of television history into one accessible package.
That is a complicated task in the 21st century. Television is no longer understood only as a schedule of programs delivered by a small group of broadcast networks. The century has brought a broader television culture, with changing viewing habits and an expanding range of shows competing for attention. Any attempt to identify the era’s most important work must therefore grapple with abundance as well as memory.
The Times’ list arrives in that environment. Its title gives the project a clear boundary: it looks at television produced during the 21st century rather than attempting to summarize the entire history of the medium. That focus makes the exercise both more manageable and more revealing. The period is close enough for many viewers to remember personally, yet long enough for reputations to shift and for once-new programs to become part of the cultural record.
A list of this kind also creates a conversation between critical judgment and audience experience. Some shows are remembered because they changed the language of television. Others stay alive because viewers continue to quote them, revisit them or introduce them to new audiences. The challenge for an editor is to recognize that popularity and influence can overlap without being identical.
Cruz’s role gives the project a framework for thinking about those distinctions. Rather than treating a canon as a fixed monument, the Times is presenting it as an editorial conversation. The very existence of a canon editor acknowledges that cultural reputations are assembled, tested and reconsidered. A list can provide a snapshot of current thinking while still leaving room for future viewers and critics to challenge it.
The number 100 carries its own appeal. It promises breadth without becoming impossible to navigate, and it gives readers a clear invitation to compare their personal favorites with the publication’s choices. Readers can approach such a list as a guide, a debate starter or a record of what a major newspaper considers significant at this point in television’s development.
That last purpose matters because lists do more than organize information. They establish emphasis. By choosing to devote attention to 100 shows, an editorial organization is saying that television warrants the same kind of sustained cultural analysis traditionally given to books, films, music and other art forms. The list places television inside a larger discussion about artistic achievement and historical importance.
The project also reflects how television has become central to everyday cultural conversation. Shows can shape the way people talk about work, family, politics, identity, ambition and belonging. They can create shared references across generations while also serving highly specific audiences. A canon built in this environment cannot rely on one definition of importance. It must account for the many ways a program can leave a mark.
The interview’s focus on Cruz’s unusual position is significant for another reason. Traditional newsroom roles are often organized around familiar beats, while a canon editor works across time and categories. The job requires distance from the immediate news cycle, but it also demands a close understanding of what audiences are watching and discussing now. That combination allows the role to connect historical perspective with current cultural interest.
It is a fitting responsibility for a list about the 21st century. The era’s television landscape has changed rapidly, and the way publications present television has changed with it. Readers no longer encounter cultural criticism only on a printed page. They may discover a project through a video, move between written analysis and visual storytelling, and share individual moments across social platforms or other digital spaces.
The Times is leaning into that possibility. Cruz’s discussion highlights the newspaper’s growing use of video as part of its storytelling, rather than treating it as a separate promotional layer. For a project built around television, that decision is especially appropriate. The subject is audiovisual by nature, and video can help audiences feel the texture, rhythm and performance of the shows under discussion in ways that prose alone cannot reproduce.
Video also changes the relationship between an editorial project and its audience. A written ranking asks readers to move through descriptions and arguments at their own pace. Video can offer a more immediate entry point, helping viewers understand the scale of the list and the enthusiasm behind it. It can make a large project feel more approachable without replacing the reporting and criticism that give the project its authority.
This does not mean that video is merely an accessory to the list. The Times’ approach suggests a broader editorial ambition: to build a package in which different formats do different kinds of work. Text can provide context, explanation and close analysis. Video can bring energy and visual connection. Together, they can make a canon feel less like a sealed archive and more like a live cultural event.
That distinction is important because television is experienced through both attention and participation. Viewers watch shows, but they also discuss them, recommend them and argue about their value. A ranking naturally encourages that behavior. It turns private preferences into public comparisons, giving readers a reason to revisit familiar programs and investigate titles they may have missed.
The Times’ project therefore functions on several levels at once. It is a recommendation tool for people looking for something to watch. It is an editorial statement about the medium’s most significant work. It is also a record of how television is being understood at a particular moment, after decades in which the form has expanded in reach and prestige.
Still, no list can settle the question of what belongs in a canon. The best lists are not valuable because they end disagreement. They are valuable because they make disagreement more thoughtful. Readers may object to omissions, challenge the order of the selections or argue that a different kind of show deserves more attention. Those reactions are part of the project’s life, not evidence that the project has failed.
For Cruz, the work appears to involve managing that tension: offering a confident editorial point of view while recognizing that cultural judgment is never final. The unusual nature of his position reflects that balance. A canon editor has to make choices, but the choices gain meaning when they are explained and opened to discussion.
The list’s 21st-century frame also gives it a built-in sense of motion. The century is not over, and television continues to develop. Programs that seem definitive today may be reassessed later, while shows that receive less attention now may gain importance with time. A canon editor’s task is therefore not only to identify what has endured, but also to understand that endurance itself can change.
That changing quality makes the project particularly relevant to general audiences. Viewers do not need specialized knowledge to enter the debate. They can begin with the shows they know, compare those memories with the Times’ selections and use the list to explore the broader history of contemporary television. The format offers a common starting point even for people whose viewing habits are very different.
The project also shows how a legacy news organization can approach entertainment coverage without reducing it to publicity or trend reporting. By combining a formal list with an explanation of the editorial thinking behind it, the Times is emphasizing interpretation. It is asking readers to consider not only what they watch, but why certain programs remain meaningful after their original moment has passed.
That emphasis on meaning is where the role of canon editor becomes most useful. The job gives a name to work that publications have long performed informally: deciding which cultural works deserve sustained attention and how they should be placed in context. Making the position explicit signals that these decisions are not incidental. They are part of how a publication helps readers understand a rapidly changing culture.
The decision to support the project with video reinforces that message. The Times is not abandoning traditional criticism; it is expanding the ways criticism can reach an audience. A major television list can live in written arguments, visual material and the conversation those elements generate together. Its success depends not only on the selections, but also on whether readers feel invited to engage with them.
Ultimately, the 100 best TV shows of the 21st century list is less a final verdict than a map of contemporary television as the Times sees it. Gilbert Cruz’s unusual editorial role provides the map with a deliberate point of view, while the newspaper’s investment in video gives the project a more flexible way to tell its story. The result is an attempt to treat television as both entertainment and history—something audiences enjoy in the present and continue to reinterpret over time.