Television is typically known as a writer’s medium, with less focus on cinematography, but some TV shows have stunning visuals. Traditional soap operas follow the standard rules of coverage — there’s not enough time to plan complicated shots and there are too many cooks in the kitchen to develop a signature aesthetic — and old-school multi-camera sitcoms like Cheers and Friends have more in common with live theater than cinema.

But it’s becoming increasingly common for TV shows to have their own striking visual style. Shows like Euphoria and Better Call Saul have done really interesting things with the camera, shows like Game of Thrones and The Last of Us have blockbuster-sized set-pieces, and shows like Cowboy Bebop and Love, Death & Robots have groundbreaking animation.

Stranger Things

The team behind Stranger Things combined the aesthetics of Spielbergian adventures, John Carpenter horror films, and Stephen King book covers to create one of the defining visual styles of the 2010s. The old-school ‘80s filmmaking techniques evoke the audience’s nostalgia just as effectively as the ‘80s-era production design. The show has delivered unforgettable symbolic visuals, like Max being chased through the underworld by Vecna as she fights depression.

Batman: The Animated Series

One of the most iconic cartoons of the ‘90s, Batman: The Animated Series perfectly replicated the moody, gothic, expressionistic visual style that Tim Burton pioneered for his live-action movies. The shadowy, high-contrast visuals of Batman: The Animated Series made it one of the quintessential on-screen portrayals of the Caped Crusader. It’s an eye-popping superhero cartoon, but it’s also a somber detective noir.

The Crown

There’s a lavish, high-production-value sheen to the filmmaking of The Crown. Netflix pumped a blockbuster budget into The Crown, and a blockbuster budget yields blockbuster visuals. The period costumes, olden-days architecture, and gorgeous shooting locations bring the coveted world of 20th-century British royalty to life (even if the actual events are fictionalized).

Love, Death & Robots

Love, Death & Robots is less a TV show and more a playground for animators and visual artists to experiment with groundbreaking styles and techniques. Every episode of this bonkers sci-fi anthology explores a totally different story, and it tells every one of those stories with a totally different animation style — from expressively hand-painted to realistic motion-capture — that suits that particular story.

Each episode has a unique aesthetic that evokes the right emotions to tell that story. Each episode has its own distinctive color palette to reflect the tone of the director’s vision. Some episodes are hard sci-fi, some are escapist fantasy, some are horror, and some are comedy. Love, Death & Robots doesn’t have anything close to a house style.

Game Of Thrones

The writers of Game of Thrones masterfully adapted George R.R. Martin’s unfilmable fantasy novels into 10 episodes a year of compelling live-action television, and the crew brought those scripts to life with visuals worthy of a big-screen blockbuster. A combination of shooting locations across the world and state-of-the-art VFX make Westeros a real, tangible place.

Game of Thrones’ mega-scale battle scenes are just as cinematic and spectacular as the battles of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Battle of Hardhome alone makes Game of Thrones one of the most visually stunning TV shows ever made.

Mr. Robot

The cinematographers of Mr. Robot came up with a whole new way to frame a shot. They ignored the usual rules of composition and framed actors and action in the corner of the frame. The actors’ faces are often at the very edge of the screen, looking the wrong way off-camera. This shooting style subtly reflected Elliot’s skewed view of the world, and the central theme of surveillance.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba is one of the most beautifully realized anime shows of the 21st century. It has intensely expressive faces and stylish, blood-drenched violence. Demon Slayer uses light and color to evoke different emotions. With something as simple as an orange glow, it can hit the audience in the feels.

Ripley

When Netflix remade The Talented Mr. Ripley, it didn’t seem totally necessary to tell this story again. But the visuals alone made Ripley worthwhile. Steven Zaillian made two decisions that made all the difference: he shot in black-and-white, giving the whole thing a classical noir vibe, and he shot on location in Italy, capturing all those beautiful locales.

The Last Of Us

It’s not easy to bring the world of a video game to life in live-action, especially a video game world as fully realized as that of The Last of Us. But the VFX team working on HBO’s The Last of Us has perfectly translated the gorgeously green post-apocalyptic wasteland of the games into its new medium.

After the fungal pandemic of The Last of Us, nature has reclaimed the Earth. Destroyed cities are overrun with greenery. Malicious mushrooms have crusted over dry walls. Giraffes roam the streets. It’s a sight to behold in the games, and it’s a sight to behold in the TV show.

Severance

Ben Stiller and his incredible team have managed to make the drab office environments that make up 90% of Severance’s visual style feel deeply cinematic. There’s a Kubrickian coldness to the pale walls, fluorescent lighting, and long, winding hallways of Lumon Industries. This is no ordinary workplace show; it’s a dystopian sci-fi thriller version of a workplace show, and the cinematography reflects that.