The 90s were a golden age for television. Before streaming and cord-cutting became a thing, pretty much everyone was watching network TV at the same time, with no Tivo devices to save your episode. If you missed NBC’s Thursday night lineup, guess what—that was that! Too bad. People actually planned their schedules around being home for their favorite shows. These days, you can watch pretty much anything you want, at any time, which makes it easy to catch up with old favorites. Here are 5 iconic TV shows from the 90s you need to rewatch ASAP.
RELATED: The Biggest ’90s TV Teen Idols, Then and Now.
1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
The WB
Buffy the Vampire Slayer first aired in 1997 and quickly became cult, must-watch TV that is still utterly addictive almost 30 years later. “Under cover of a tiny network (WB), a young audience and po-mo-gothic darkness it came and gave us everything – laughs, tears, epic sweeps, tiny moments, comedy, drama, realism and surrealism – without a missed beat or a wasted word… Several TV generations have elapsed since it ended, but we have not yet seen the Slayer’s deft, clever, moving, thrilling, funny, feminist like again,” says TV critic Lucy Mangan for The Guardian. “Buffy still stands alone.”
2. Twin Peaks
ABC
One of the most unique shows in TV history, David Lynch’s Twin Peaks was and is one-of-a-kind. “It’s clear from watching Twin Peaks that Lynch and Frost were dedicated students of the primetime soap opera, and were drawing from its immense melodramatic pull as much as they were subverting it,” says Scott Tobias for The Guardian.
3. My So-Called Life
ABC Productions
The show that launched Claire Danes and Jared Leto only got one season—yet it’s still one of the best shows of the 90s. “If you were a teenager in the 1990s, My So-Called Life was a revelation. Its storylines were real, its dialogue was unaffected in a way teen dramas never got to be, and its cast looked like average people—or at least as average as Claire Danes and Jared Leto can look,” says Angela Watercutter for WIRED.
RELATED: 20 ’90s TV Shows You’ve Forgotten About.
4. The X-Files
FOX
Mulder and Scully cemented their place in pop culture history with this groundbreaking show that still has a cult fan following. “They encouraged fandom, they created a messageboard, they wanted people to be talking about the show,” Paul Booth, a professor of media and pop culture at Chicago’s DePaul College of Communication, tells CNN. “I think that style of fan engagement is what we see today. I think we can attribute a lot of that to ‘The X-Files,’ that understanding that fans are not a group of people to try to avoid or eschew — but a group of people you want to cultivate and you want to be on your side.”
5. Beverly Hills, 90210
Fox
This show about the lives and loves of the rich and beautiful in Beverly Hills is still one of the most beloved and watchable series from the 90s. Practically every up-and-coming actor of the time made at least one guest appearance on the show. “90210 set the template for every teen show that followed, from Dawson’s Creek to The OC, One Tree Hill to Gossip Girl. It doesn’t matter whether you rejected Spelling’s fanciful idea of teen life, as Joss Whedon did with Buffy the Vampire Slayer, because without 90210, few of these shows would exist,” says Sarah Hughes for The Guardian. Watch out if you stream it on Amazon Prime—several episodes are missing thanks to music licensing issues.