All 23 Ryan Murphy TV Shows Ranked

TV greats often focus on a manageable number of genres. "Yellowstone" creator Taylor Sheridan tends to specialize in neo-Western dramas and crime thrillers. Mike Flanagan ("The Haunting of Hill House," "Midnight Mass") is all about horror and creeping mystery, and folks like Dick Wolf and Steven Bochco have found great success with procedural dramas. 

Ryan Murphy, on the other hand, has always marched to the beat of several drums. He's dabbled with just about any genre you can name, finding success in impressively many. Few other creators out there can operate as comfortably on the field of high school musical dramedy as they can with pure horror, and Murphy's lucrative $300 million deal with Netflix in 2018 is proof that the streamers and studios have been paying attention to his talents. 

Murphy's output is prolific, and given the wide variety of different shows he has worked on, it can be hard to figure out which of his shows are true appointment viewing and which ones aren't quite as impressive. To help with this issue, here's a handy ranking of every Ryan Murphy TV show out there (which does not yet include "All's Fair," still airing its first season on Hulu every Tuesday).  

"Doctor Odyssey" could very easily have been great. The ABC drama's luxury cruise ship setting and cavalcade of quality guest stars (including Shania Twain and Margo Martindale, with even Angela Bassett's Athena Grant-Nash crossing over from fellow Ryan Murphy show "9-1-1") evoke images of the network's comfort watch classic "The Love Boat" combined with all the standard trimmings of a medical drama. Co-created by Murphy, Jon Robin Baitz, and Joe Baken, the show's promising premise is complemented by a strong cast that includes Joshua Jackson ("Fringe"), Don Johnson ("Miami Vice"), Phillipa Soo ("Dopesick") and Sean Teale ("Reign").

Unfortunately, there's a reason "Doctor Odyssey" is at the bottom spot. The show's amazing ingredients never quite gelled together, and it opened to middling reviews and a lackluster audience reception. As a result, ABC canceled "Doctor Odyssey" after just one season. 

Co-created with Ali Adler, "The New Normal" was Ryan Murphy's attempt to make his mark on the sitcom genre, but the show fell victim to low ratings and was canceled after Season 1. 

"The New Normal" focuses on Bryan (Andrew Rannells) and David (Justin Bartha), a couple who decides to have a baby with surrogate mother Goldie (Georgia King). Because nothing is ever simple in sitcoms, everyone involved is soon overwhelmed by a number of colorful scenarios and characters — especially Goldie's extremely conservative grandmother Jane (Ellen Barkin), who doesn't hesitate to air her extremely problematic views about the situation. 

The show juggles laughs with themes of inclusivity, and it also includes a meta treat for Murphy fans: Bryan, a TV mogul, just so happens to be the showrunner of a very "Glee"-like show called "Sing." Since Murphy and his partner have three children born via surrogacy, it's not hard to decipher where the creator found his inspiration for this particular project.

"The Watcher" might have landed a better spot on this list if it weren't for the fact that it came along so long after Ryan Murphy established himself as one of the small screen's reigning thrill masters. The show's somewhat underwhelming central threat of a suburban stalker who keeps leaving disturbing letters to the new residents of a particular house does get the benefit of doubt from being based on a true story, but compared to the outlandish arcs Murphy has proven himself to be capable of, it really isn't all that captivating. 

Still, the mood is on point, and the all-star cast even more so: Apart from the whole Watcher situation, the Brannocks (Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale) are surrounded by colorful characters played by the likes of Jennifer Coolidge, Margo Martindale, Richard Kind, Mia Farrow and Terry Kinney. 

Though it rarely delivers the kind of thrills this particular version of Murphy has taught us to expect, the show's suburban tension was a hit with viewers. Upon its debut, "The Watcher" topped Nielsen's streaming ranking and Netflix promptly renewed it for Season 2. 

Reality shows may not spring to mind when Ryan Murphy's name is mentioned, but "The Glee Project" did indeed extend his résumé in that direction. It's also a rare Murphy series where the creator himself is an instrumental part of the on-screen proceedings — namely, as one of the show's judges. 

A two-season talent contest where the grand prize is a role on "Glee," this fun series pulls double duty as a spinoff and a way to introduce new cast members for the parent show. Though the two series obviously represent different formats, they share enough DNA through their music numbers and overall vibe that it's easy to recommend "The Glee Project" to fans of "Glee." 

At the end of the day, though, "The Glee Project" is what it is: a fun, comparatively low-stakes reality series where the highlight of every episode is an elaborate musical performance. Entertaining as the recipe is, its very basic structure is built to exist on the lower rungs of this list. 

"9-1-1: Lone Star" can come across as a spirited attempt to turn the "9-1-1" franchise into a "One Chicago"-style juggernaut, but it's also very much its own thing. Rather than its disaster-happy parent show, the spin-off proceeds at a more mellow pace — but its opening tragedy is still a sight that gives any firefighter procedural a run for its money. Much of this comes from the show's decision to raise one member of its ensemble cast to a pedestal: Captain Owen Strand (Rob Lowe), an experienced first responder whose myriad personal troubles cause him to accept the request to relocate from New York City to Austin, Texas, to rebuild a firehouse team for the second time in his life. The first time? After 9/11. 

Rob Lowe is his reliably charming self as a tragic but affable fish-out-of-water figure, and his 126 Fire House is full of interesting characters, including Owen's son T.K. (Ronen Rubinstein), whose relationship with police officer-turned-Texas Ranger Carlos (Rafael Silva) became an obsession among fans. At the end of the day, however, "9-1-1: Lone Star" — which was co-created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Tim Minear — doesn't quite reach the heights of the original. Lowe die-hards, however, will definitely eat their fill. 

Here's one for the viewers who like the characters and storylines of "Glee" but can't quite get behind all that singing. Created by Ryan Murphy and Gina Matthews, The WB's comedy-drama "Popular" is a show about two high schoolers who occupy the opposite ends of the sliding scale of cool in their age group. Despite running in very different social circles and actively disliking each other, school newspaper reporter Sam McPherson (Carly Pope) and cheerleader Brooke McQueen (Leslie Bibb) soon find their fates intertwining in a most uncomfortable way: Sam's mother Jane (Lisa Darr) and Brooke's father Mike (Scott Bryce) fall in love and move in together.

Murphy thrives as a creator of situations that force radically different people to socialize, and this is on full display when Sam, Brooke, and their friends clash and slowly learn to coexist. There are several classic Murphy show elements to enjoy here, but since "Popular" only ran for two seasons and failed to make its mark the way some of his other shows have, it's hard to rank it higher than this.

For better and for worse, "American Horror Stories" is "The Twilight Zone" offshoot of Ryan Murphy's horror empire. While its largely standalone episodes occasionally play with the concepts of "American Horror Story" and share many of the same actors, the connection between the shows is fairly tenuous. Usually, "American Horror Stories" is happy to just draw inspiration from familiar horror concepts like haunted movies and supernatural killers, and even the liminal space-themed internet phenomenon known as the Backrooms.  

The built-in weakness of anthology shows is that they can be pretty hit-or-miss, as some ideas are simply more exciting than others. This is why "American Horror Stories" ranks this low on the list. While it's brimming with amazing ideas and can deliver the occasional great episode, its stories are simply too scattered to make for a true must-watch Murphy show. Still, if you're in the market for a compact horror hour about, say, an evil Santa played by Danny Trejo stalking a pack of influencer bros, look no further.

"Ratched" is a show no one needed, but that's just because it's the kind of idea that probably didn't cross too many minds before Evan Romansky created it and Ryan Murphy took the developer reins. It's the origin story of Nurse Mildred Ratched, the all-timer of a villain who terrorizes mental patients in Ken Kesey's 1962 book "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and, more famously, its 1975 movie adaptation. 

Murphy regular Sarah Paulson gets the unenviable task of taking the Ratched role from Louise Fletcher (who won an Academy Award for the role), and as usual, she passes with flying colors. With careful strokes that grow ever darker, "Ratched" paints its main character's path in the health care system as an inverted hero's journey that starts out with genuinely good intentions but almost immediately goes awry, setting her down a path of darkness that may very well have been hiding inside her all along. 

Both Murphy and Netflix seemed to have great faith in the show. "Ratched" immediately received a two-season order, and its cast was even more stacked than your usual Murphy project, thanks to the presence of folks like Sharon Stone and Vincent D'Onofrio. This didn't stop the show from being canceled after Season 1, leaving the fans to imagine how Ratched's animosity with her murderous foster brother Edmund (Paulson's fellow Murphy favorite Finn Wittrock) would have played out. 

A Ryan Murphy-Ian Brennan miniseries project, "Hollywood" is all about the early days of Tinseltown, as well as the depravity and darkness hidden under its thin veneer of dreams. To add to its drama and apparent authenticity, the story's characters are a mix of fictional figures (like David Corenswet's Jack Castello) and real historical figures. Murphy's all-star approach is in full play when it comes to casting, but for once, there's a clear breakout: Both lovers and haters of "The Big Bang Theory" owe it to themselves to witness Jim Parsons as the exploitative talent agent Henry Willson. 

As its plot proceeds, it becomes clear that "Hollywood" isn't a faithful retelling of history. Instead, it reveals itself as an alternate timeline vision that begins to strive for a better, more inclusive world that the real Hollywood would take decades to even approximate. Though darker and less culturally influential, "Hollywood" shares this DNA of freedom with "Glee," and is all the better for it. 

A newcomer in Ryan Murphy's "American Story" mega-series, "American Sports Story" focuses on the football dream of late New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, played by Josh Andrés Rivera. If the viewer has the chance, this is the kind of sports biopic that's worth going in with the absolute minimum of knowledge about the real-life story, let alone Murphy's involvement. This way, the twists and turns that come in the show's 10 episodes are as surprising as they no doubt were to the people who witnessed the disgraced star's tale unfold in real time. 

With decent reviews and a typically stacked cast — "Gen V" and "The White Lotus" star Patrick Schwarzenegger as Tim Tebow is weirdly genius — "American Sports Story" may yet turn out to be Murphy's latest successful anthology series. However, Hernandez's amazingly tragic story is an incredibly tough act to follow, which casts serious doubts on whether the potential sophomore season would be able to rise to the occasion.

In 2018, the creative team of Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Tim Minear struck gold with "9-1-1," a show that aspired to do for first responder shows what "The Pitt" would later do for medical dramas. The show eschewed the more clinical approach of many procedurals in favor of sheer intensity. The camera follows the characters up close during their missions, occasionally pulling back to reveal the sheer magnitude of the situation. 

The professionals encounter a wide variety of situations that are often precisely as devious and darkly entertaining as you'd expect from the creator of "American Horror Story." The action and disasters are impressive across the board, and the show also remembers an important but oft-overlooked part of the first responder chain: 911 dispatchers, represented here by Connie Britton's Abby Clark in Season 1 and Jennifer Love Hewitt's Maddie Buckley from then on. Add in some personal life drama and a talented cast that includes folks like Angela Bassett and Peter Krause, and it's easy to see why "9-1-1" has been going strong all these years.

"The Politician" breaks Ryan Murphy's usual modus operandi a bit as a Netflix show. Co-created by Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Ian Brennan, the show is a political dramedy that focuses on young up-and-comer Payton Hobart (Ben Platt). His mission to become a student body president is just a first step on his plan to one day sit in the Oval Office, but unfortunately, he's trying to realize his ambitions on a Ryan Murphy show. As such, Payton's campaign runs into numerous increasingly peculiar issues, up to and very much including dramatic deaths. 

Enjoyable but occasionally hard to pin down, "The Politician" is memorable for its breakneck plot twists and absolutely star-studded cast. Platt has backup from actors such as Jessica Lange, Bette Midler, Bob Balaban, David Corenswet, and Dylan McDermott. Even Gwyneth Paltrow (who also plays Holly Holliday on "Glee") gets in on the action as Payton's adoptive mom. 

"The Andy Warhol Diaries" is another Ryan Murphy Netflix production, and it covers similar Studio 54-adjacent ground with "Halston" (more on that series in a moment). However, the two projects take a very different approach: Where "Halston" is a traditional biography drama series, "The Andy Warhol Diaries" sees Murphy dip his toes in the documentary pool. 

Written and directed by Andrew Rossi, "The Andy Warhol Diaries" is an in-depth look at the famous pop artist's life and career, based on copious source material and interviews — but perhaps more importantly than either, a wealth of words from the artist himself. Between 1976 and 1987, Warhol narrated his life to assistant Pat Hackett, and this lengthy series of voice notes became his autobiography, also titled "The Andy Warhol Diaries." With the Andy Warhol Foundation's permission, the documentary series uses an AI Warhol to bring his narrations to life. This gives the documentary a peculiar air that Warhol, who once commissioned a robotic version of himself, just might appreciate.    

Arguably the most inscrutable series in Ryan Murphy's back catalog, "Grotesquerie" might seem like just more of the creator's horror fare. However, Murphy and co-creators Jon Robin Baitz and Joe Baken are on a far stranger mission this time. In fact, things get so peculiar that it's borderline impossible to discuss why people should watch "Grotesquerie" without revealing several key aspects of the plot. 

Twisty, intense and relentlessly nasty, "Grotesquerie" is every bit as brutal as its name implies. Its driving plot is a series of imaginatively horrifying murders that intertwine with the equally peculiar personal life of Detective Lois Tryon (Niecy Nash-Betts), creating a web of nightmarish strangeness with no end in sight. It's clear that "Grotesquerie" has its plot figured out, but it has no interest in revealing it to the viewer. Instead, the show patiently drip-feeds hints, clues, and the occasional monumental reveal. The end result might not be an easy or comfortable watch, but that's alright. The last thing "Grotesque" wants to do is let viewers off easy. 

Roy Halston Frowick, aka Halston, introduced the cult of fashion designers to the United States and served as its first homegrown star. His designs were influential in the 1970s, but personal excesses and professional downfall in the 1980s marked the beginning of the end. 

Halston's story, star-studded social circles, and close association with the legendary Studio 54 are front and center on the five-episode Netflix drama miniseries "Halston," which depicts the most fascinating and turbulent years of the titular designer's (Ewan McGregor, "Obi-Wan Kenobi") life and career. As part of Ryan Murphy's Netflix deal, he has an executive producer credit and co-wrote the first and final episodes of the show. 

Fittingly enough, "Halston" is a visual delight that captivates the viewer from beginning to end, and McGregor's performance captures Halston's superstar charisma. Throw in some fascinating Studio 54 lore and copious celebrities of the era as supporting characters, and the show has little problem making it in the Ryan Murphy Top 10.

In hindsight, "Nip/Tuck" was the writing on the wall. On the surface, the plastic surgery-themed show may seem like just another shallow medical drama, but hiding under that surface is a perfect amalgamation of the unserious soapy elements and grim horror-adjacent moments that Ryan Murphy has become known for.  

As Dr. Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh) and Dr. Christian Troy (Julian McMahon) navigate both the glamour and the dark underbelly of beauty-obsessed Miami (and eventually Los Angeles), the viewers are taken on paths of human desire that most other shows would never even consider treading. The sheer excesses "Nip/Tuck" revels in often take the events gleefully over the top. 

The show is, of course, a product of its time, and its characters' superficial attitudes can lead to some uncomfortable moments for the contemporary viewer. Still, it's a bold series that's willing to explore places others wouldn't, and its serialized storytelling format offered narrative opportunities that simple case-of-the-week oriented medical dramas can't touch.

One of the big-with-a-capital-B shows in Ryan Murphy's résumé, "Glee" shares its creator's penchant for outlandish antics with "Nip/Tuck" but channels it very differently. The sometimes comedic, sometimes sad, but always music-filled toils and turmoils of the William McKinley High School glee club won six Emmys over as many seasons, and broke into more songs than almost any other show could even dream of getting away with.

"Glee" is full of not-so-guilty pleasures in song form. However, even more importantly, it's an exercise in inclusivity during a time when such things were still comparatively rare in prime time television. Often celebrated for its LGBTQ+ representation, the show rolled out a cavalcade of inclusive characters and plot lines without ever making it feel forced, allowing everyone to exist in its music-filled universe organically. Yes, it can be a tense show at times, and some of the musical numbers have an overabundance of cheese. But it also has zero problem telling nuanced stories about characters like Unique Adams (Alex Newell) and Coach Beiste (Dot-Marie Jones), so who cares if every plot line or song number doesn't hit the mark?

"Scream Queens" is effectively a parody of Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk's "American Horror Story," created by the pair themselves and Ian Brennan. Drawing heavily from both classic slasher films and their deconstructions á la "Scream," the show's two seasons bring a comedic edge to the genre. 

The first season of "Scream Queens" is a classic college story, where the killer is masquerading as the deliberately ridiculous Wallace University mascot Red Devil and targets a "Mean Girls"-esque sorority. The second season brings back some of the surviving characters but moves the action into the hospital setting of the wonderfully-named C.U.R.E. Institute, which obviously has a dark past that gives rise to a demon-themed new killer known as the Green Meanie. 

With its outlandish plot twists and imaginative death scenes that need to be seen to be believed, the show is full of the kind of gleefully bloody stuff that practically begs for the presence of scream empress Jamie Lee Curtis and an all-star cast led by Emma Roberts as a gloriously awful queen bee character ... and as luck would have it, "Scream Queens" has both. Unfortunately, the show is now something of a lost treasure in the Ryan Murphy back catalog, as waning ratings led to its cancellation after Season 2. 

"Pose" takes Ryan Murphy's fondness for inclusivity themes and real-life events and turns these ingredients into stylish prestige drama. Together with co-creators Brad Falchuk and Steven Canals, Murphy took the lens to New York City's Black and Hispanic LGBTQ+ communities' "ballroom scene" subculture, where these particularly marginalized people come together to celebrate, socialize, and take part in stylish competitions between various factions. Against this glamorous backdrop, however, a wider and far crueler reality unfolds. The show takes place in the 1980s and 1990s, taking the characters through the AIDS epidemic and a period of great oppression ... as well as brighter moments, such as Madonna's "Vogue" craze. 

Because of the setting, several characters — glamorous and powerful during the balls — are struggling with medical issues, aggression from the outside world, financial problems, and generally being unwanted outside their own small community (which also has its own internal struggles). As such, "Pose" is a show of extremes that balances its copious cool and heartwarming moments with the relentlessly bleak existence the majority of its characters are forced to endure. Fortunately, the casting is on point even by Murphy's lofty standards, and actors like Billy Porter and Michaela Jaé Rodriguez infuse their characters with warmth and complexity that help both them and the viewer endure the ordeals they have to go through. 

Netflix's "Monster" series is arguably the most efficient remix of Murphy's horror and biopic sensibilities. Like his "American Story" shows, it's an anthology that devotes each season to a different subject — only here, the focus is on brutal real-life murders, and the murderers are the main characters. In fact, thanks to its subject matter, "Monster" is a deliberately tough watch that seemingly aspires to make the viewer feel that they are the monster for voluntarily observing such atrocities.

Season 1 is called "The Jeffrey Dahmer Story," with Murphy regular Evan Peters transforming into the infamous serial killer. Season 2 mixes things up a bit by covering a more complex case that veers closer to Murphy's "American Crime Story" tales. It's called "Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story," with Nicholas Alexander Chavez and Cooper Koch playing the titular rich-kid brothers who were convicted for killing their parents (played by Javier Bardem and Chloë Sevigny) and trying to cover the crime. For the third season, the series returned to its roots with "The Ed Gein Story," with Charlie Hunnam playing Gein and Murphy relinquishing the showrunner chair to Ian Brennan.

The premise of the "American Crime Story" anthology is simple. Since everyone with an internet connection can spend two minutes to check the key facts of the cases it presents, the show puts its chips on the trip, not the destination. With great casting and a focus on details, each season of the show recreates a famous crime and its aftermath. 

The first season, "The People v. O.J. Simpson," jumps right in the deep end by dramatizing the extremely high-profile trial of O.J. Simpson (played here by Cuba Gooding Jr.) to great effect. Its follow-up is "The Assassination of Gianni Versace," which mixes the madness of the increasingly unhinged and murderous Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss) with the elegance and luxury of the circles he aspires to move in — best exemplified by fashion superstar Gianni Versace (Édgar Ramírez), who becomes the ultimate target of Cunanan's bloody obsession.

The third season, "Impeachment," shows just how versatile "American Crime Story" can be. Instead of gory murders and gruesome mysteries, the series focuses on one of the most highly publicized events of recent political history: The Bill Clinton-Monica Lewinsky scandal and the president's subsequent impeachment. Lewinsky, who co-produced "Impeachment," has even confirmed the authenticity of its events. With no shortage of major crimes and court cases to choose from, there really is no telling where the show will go in the future, but viewers can be reasonably sure that the result is magnificent.

"Feud" is an unexpected dose of cattiness from Ryan Murphy, Jaffe Cohen, and Michael Zam. One of Murphy's many anthology shows, it eschews horrendous crimes in favor of rolling out a cavalcade of famous people who hate each others' guts for slights both true and perceived, with end results that are nothing short of magnificent. 

Fittingly, "Feud" season 1 is called "Bette and Joan," and focuses on the legendary real-life animosity between Hollywood superstars Bette Davis and Joan Crawford — fittingly played here by contemporary legends Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange. The stars fell out in an extremely dramatic fashion while filming the 1962 horror drama "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?," the themes of which the show uses to great effect. 

Season 2 changes gears with "Capote vs. The Swans." This time, the action takes place on the East Coast, where lauded author Truman Capote (Tom Hollander) publishes a chapter of a planned novel that just so happens to contain barely hidden descriptions of the excess-filled life of a real-life socialite group known as the Swans. Shamed and called out beyond their belief, the Swans decide to seek vengeance on their former writer friend. 

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the progenitor and crown jewel of Ryan Murphy's "American Story" franchise remains the yardstick all his other shows are measured against. There's a reason so many actors are willing to return to the series time and time again: Pretty much everyone involved is visibly having a whale of a time, which reflects in their performances. Nuanced when needed and over-the-top when they get the chance (which is often), stars like Sarah Paulson, Evan Peters, and Kathy Bates make the most of their many roles. Even when stunt casting folks like Kim Kardashian or Lady Gaga before she'd established herself on the acting front, an "American Horror Story" set can reliably lure a performance out of anyone. Must be something in the water. 

And then there are the stories. Though some "American Horror Story" seasons are noticeably better than others, the most impressive thing about the series is how well it has perfected its recipe: Take an appropriately creepy idea, bring it into an eye-popping setting, introduce a series of homicidal threats of varying supernatural nature, and stir as needed. With the wealth of talent "American Horror Story" reliably has at its disposal, it really doesn't take more than that.