Summary

• Shows like Friends and Sex and the City capture the essence of living in New York, even if they don't fully represent the city's magnitude.
• Gossip Girl and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel depict a glamorous and elite version of New York that feels unattainable to most viewers.
• Seinfeld and Broad City highlight the everyday moments and challenges of living in the city, making it relatable and hilarious.

New York is one of the most iconic cities in America and has been the backdrop for some of the best television ever made. These shows are the most successful at utilizing what the city has to offer. Many of these shows stand out, but only some capture the essence of what it’s like to live in New York. Even if the reality of that life isn't as glamorous as some of these shows might make it seem, they still provide the right emotional resonance of city living.

Using a famous city as the setting for a television show can be a double-edged sword. The legacy of the city can easily overshadow the characters and story. Or, the story might not take full advantage of what the setting has to offer, making the choice of city feel incidental. There must be a clear purpose for a show to be set in New York, or any iconic place, so the physical history elevates the show and makes it feel that it couldn't be set anywhere else.

10 Friends (1994 - 2004)

Greenwich Village, Manhattan

Friends has inspired many incorrect assumptions about what it's like to live in New York City with a tight-knit group of friends. Very few people living in Manhattan can claim to have an apartment as big as Monica's (Courteney Cox), but even if Friends isn't always the most accurate, it does feel like home. Friends made viewers want to live in New York and not want to in equal measure, which is what any good New York show should do. Where it fails is in fully fleshing out the magnitude of the city. The gang rarely leaves their little corner of Manhattan.

9 Gossip Girl (2007 - 2012)

Upper East Side, Manhattan

One of the most outrageous portrayals of what affluent teenagers get up to in New York, Gossip Girl is also one of the best-known teen dramas of the 21st century. It's fun to watch wealthy people navigate New York, since so much of the city is so expensive, and the world that the characters of Gossip Girl are privy to is straight out of a fantasy. Featuring gorgeous galas, restaurants, fashion shows, and more, the series makes New York feel elite and exclusive. Of course, this is the point of the show, but it is its downfall, as New York feels unattainable to anyone watching at home.

8 Sex and the City (1998 - 2004)

West Village, Manhattan

Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) loves New York almost as much as she loves her shoes. The questions that Carrie poses in her column and to her friends are not just "Why am I single?" but "Why am I single in New York?". Every problem and pitfall the main characters face is not a result of life as a whole, but how life works in New York.

In the brief episodes in season 3 when the ladies go to L.A., they quickly become disenchanted with the opposite coast and long for their New York issues. Sex and the City does have a narrow worldview of the New York lifestyle, but the recent reboot And Just Like That... is trying to fix the problems of the original series. Unfortunately, while And Just Like That... does make positive representational updates, it loses the edge that made Sex and the City quintessentially New York.

7 Seinfeld (1989 - 1998)

Upper West Side, Manhattan

Seinfeld's creators Jerry Seinfeld and Larry David knew that the small, infuriating, everyday moments that come with living in New York are the most hilarious and relatable parts of the city. Though many, if not all, of Seinfeld's plots could only happen in New York, they have a razor-sharp universality that makes the audience feel like they're living there too. As the show evolved, each season became more exaggerated, and the character's misadventures were more unbelievable. Seinfeld never shied away from showing the terrible parts of New York, but there's nowhere else the characters would rather live.

6 Broad City (2014 - 2019)

Astoria, Queens and Gowanus, Brooklyn

Abbi (Abbi Jacobson) and Ilana (Ilana Glazer) treat New York the way that any two broke millennials would, by clinging tightly to their friendship with each other. As the two best friends grow, the city and their relationship with it changes around them. Though New York is tough on them, it's never forbidding or tries to keep them out. The city is only romanticized because of the memories they make there, not necessarily because it doesn't have its challenges. By the end of the series, New York doesn't hold the promise it once did for the protagonists, but it will always be there for them.

5 The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (2017 - 2023)

Upper West Side, Manhattan

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is a candy-colored, glittering iteration of New York in the late 1950s and onward. That said, as Midge (Rachel Brosnahan) starts to exit her sheltered lifestyle, the reality of the city opens up to her. Though the show never loses the gorgeously stylized version of New York that it started with, it doesn't shy away from giving Midge a tough time breaking into the comedy world and exhibiting the rampant sexism of the time. If the New York that exists in The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel was real it would be wonderful, but, unfortunately, much of that New York is only a fantasy.

4 30 Rock (2006 - 2013)

Midtown, Manhattan

The show within the show, TGS, on 30 Rock, is a satire of the real sketch-comedy show, SNL. Creator and star Tina Fey wrote and performed on SNL for many years, and used her experience to create one of the best New York comedies of all time. 30 Rock is known for its outrageous characters, and how it reinvented the sitcom formula. Along with those larger-than-life characters and plot lines is a larger-than-life New York that is constantly at war with Liz Lemon (Fey) and her counterparts. Despite being constantly beaten down by the city, Liz and the other characters consistently express their hate for everywhere else in the world.

3 Girls (2012 - 2017)

Greenpoint, Brooklyn

There are many shows about young women being lost in their twenties while living in New York, but none do it as well as Girls. Created by and starring Lena Dunham, the series caused equal parts controversy and revelation about what television could be, and what was going on inside the minds of the up-and-coming generation of artists and filmmakers. Dunham pushed boundaries and was not afraid to contradict herself in the writing of the show.

The four titular girls are constantly making themselves miserable for the sake of their ideas of success, adulthood, and the dream of New York. The city is hardly ever a dream for any of the characters, and every day is a fight to feel that living there is worth the heartache. However, only in New York would these characters feel that all things are possible. This is made particularly clear in the New York Odyssey in season 5, episode 6, "The Panic In Central Park".

2 Succession (2018 - 2023)

Upper East Side and Upper West Side, Manhattan

The New York in HBO's Succession is less a real place and more like a distant playground to be looked down upon from the most lavish penthouses ever seen on TV. The Roy family is too rich and removed from reality to ever experience New York as intended. Due to this, the city becomes another one of the tools with which the Roy siblings can show off their wealth and make grand displays of power.

The series was likened to a Shakespearean drama many times during its run, showing in the many great Succession quotes throughout the seasons. Real estate and the location of where and how a character is living is a big indicator of their rank in the Roy empire. Like any epic tale, Succession thrives when its characters are thrust into the grittier and less-refined moments they use their wealth to avoid, just like the city.

1 Mad Men (2007 - 2015)

Midtown, Manhattan

Mad Men split its time between New York City and the suburbs throughout the series' run, but there was no question that New York is where the character's hearts lay. Protagonist Don Draper (Jon Hamm) loves the glamour, status, and anonymity that the city provides for him, but is equally tortured by it. As a man with a few too many secrets in his past to make his future an easy journey, he subscribes to the traditional roles of masculinity of the show's period, the 1960s. While the show and the city evolve around him, Don stands still, wondering when New York grew up and when he didn't.