Every Ryan Murphy TV Series Ranked Worst To Best

For over 20 years, the creative mind of Ryan Murphy has transformed the landscape of American television. Beginning in 1999 with the coming-of-age teen drama "Popular," Murphy tapped into a cultural desire to tell the stories of people audiences can relate to. He'd carry that mindset through shows like "Glee" and "9-1-1," while also making a name for himself in the horror genre with "American Horror Story" and "Scream Queens."

The universes that Murphy's built include familiar faces, as he often works with Evan Peters, Sarah Paulson, Jessica Lange, and Lea Michele, among many others. He's got a great rapport with his leads which, in turn, almost always leads to masterclass results. Murphy's steady work ethic, which includes iterations of two or three of his shows every year, keeps his imprint on television steadfast. In addition, his advocacy for the LGTBQ+ community and people of color has opened the door for marginalized creators and actors tenfold.

His credentials in 2022 are already bigger than those of any other year of his career so far, as "Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story" is one of Netflix's biggest shows of all-time, an 11th season of "American Horror Story" premieres in fall of 2022, and his new Netflix miniseries "The Watcher" also arrives before the end of the year. Not every show he's produced has been a critical darling or cultural phenomenon, but Murphy's legacy in television has long been cemented. Here are all of his television series ranked from the unproven flops to the decade-defining dramas.

Relegated to just two seasons, "Scream Queens" had a lot of potential but was ultimately canceled in 2017. The premise is a riff on "The Slumber Party Massacre" slasher series from the 1980s, but with a contemporary flair. The tropes have long been exhausted in the horror genre, but when you throw in a leading cast of Emma Roberts, Skyler Samuels, Abigail Breslin, Keke Palmer, Ariana Grande, and Lea Michele, you can make almost anything memorable. "Scream Queens," however, doesn't rise to the challenge.

Season 1 of the show takes place at the fictional Wallace University and follows the institution's Kappa Kappa Tau sorority. The members are the targets of a serial killer who does his murders wearing the costume of Wallace's mascot, the Red Devil. Roberts does a great job anchoring the hilarious cast, but the show's scripts leave a lot to be desired. The episodes often arrive messy and lean too much on dark humor.

In the much better Season 2, the focus is pointed at Dr. Cathy Munsch, the former dean of Wallace played by Jamie Lee Curtis, who's left the university and opened her own hospital. With Curtis, the original scream queen, in the driver's seat, the story improved but not enough to keep it from being canned by Fox after just 23 episodes. Ryan Murphy has hinted at a possible return, but nothing has been confirmed yet.

Not every movie needs a spinoff series. That was absolutely the case for Milos Forman's beloved, critically acclaimed 1975 classic "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." The film's antagonist, Nurse Mildred Ratched, has been considered one of cinema's greatest villains. An origin story adds nothing to the character, though it does give Sarah Paulson an opportunity to flex her charismatic, scene-stealing talents, which is never a bad thing.

In the original adaptation of Ken Kesey's novel of the same name, the late Louise Fletcher won a best actress Academy Award for her portrayal. Paulson's performance in the spinoff does not, in any way, diminish the power and importance of Fletcher's. What bodes well for Ryan Murphy and "Ratched" is that both depictions can coexist in the ether of Hollywood, even if the Netflix series makes a few changes, such as setting the show in California as opposed to the movie's original location of Oregon.

"Ratched" is meant to tell the nurse's story before we meet her in "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest." We see how she gains employment at a psychiatric hospital where new, unorthodox, experimental treatments are being tested on patients. We are supposed to gain empathy for a character we loathed 45 years ago. Like any origin story on a villain worth its salt, "Ratched" attempts to show how the monstrous Nurse Ratched was made, not born.

The Netflix miniseries "Hollywood" garnered a lot of hype before its release in 2020. With frequent collaborator Ian Brennan, Ryan Murphy devised a homage to the Golden Age of Hollywood told like a Baz Luhrmann movie. It's brimming with color and heart, even if it's a flimsy romanticization of post-war America that doesn't quite match the reality of the era.

Murphy went all out with the "Hollywood" cast, bringing recurring actors from his other projects, like David Corenswet, Darren Criss, and Dylan McDermott, along with fresh faces Jeremy Pope and Laura Harrier. The premise is simple and familiar: a bunch of wannabe actors and filmmakers try to achieve the American Dream in Tinseltown. What's good about "Hollywood" is it actively works to dismantle the real-world truths about the film industry in the late 1940s, erasing the racism, homophobia, and misogyny that plagued cinema for years. It's not revisionist history as much as it is a breath of fresh air.

"Hollywood" received 12 Emmy nominations, winning two, and despite only running for seven episodes, left its mark on television. Released into a climate that looked onward for some kind of healing, "Hollywood" was the feel-good story we needed in the summer of 2020.

Ryan Murphy's most popular show is also his most controversial and groundbreaking. "Glee" was ahead of its time, though some of its subject matter would hopefully be handled much differently today. While the show became a major totem for the LGBTQ+ community, it isn't short of its own faults, which includes bouts of transphobia, fat-shaming, and ableism. Regardless, it's hard to avoid acknowledging how important of a production "Glee" was from the jump. Not afraid to tackle the tough issues, especially at the end of the 2000s when shows were looking away from social commentary, "Glee" broke the mold across its six seasons

A musical comedy focused on a high school show choir from Lima, Ohio, the singular world of "Glee" became an unlikely phenomenon. But it's the show's ensemble cast, headlined by Lea Michele, Jane Lynch, Cory Monteith, Chris Colfer, and Naya Rivera, that makes "Glee" feel just as important and powerful now as it did when it premiered.

That being said, "Glee" has two of the worst seasons ever of any of Murphy's shows. Seasons 4 and 5 are often lifeless and feature stale and annoying role players. Just when the narratives gain momentum, the writing focuses too much on Michele, who quickly became one of Murphy's most beloved stars. In the process, the power and talent of other cast members, like Amber Riley, Dianna Agron, and Chord Overstreet, wound up underutilized.

You might hate "Glee," or you might love it, but its importance and legacy in television history is undeniable, for better or worse. What it accomplished has not been replicated, nor attempted.

Whether it was because of Ryan Murphy's storytelling talents, the commanding presence of leading man Evan Peters, or the sheer shock factor of making a television show about one of the most notorious serial killers ever, "Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story" was a smash sensation as soon as it hit Netflix in September 2022.

Another team-up between Murphy and Ian Brennan, "Dahmer" focuses on the life of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. The series lends a good portion of its runtime to telling the stories of Dahmer's victims. It's an attempt to not romanticize the killer but lend empathy to the people he harmed, as they are often omitted from the core of narratives in serial killer depictions. Though "Dahmer" earns career-defining performances from a supporting cast of Richard Jenkins, Molly Ringwald, and Michael Learned, the triumph of the show comes from Niecy Nash who plays Dahmer's neighbor, Glenda Cleveland.

Peters brings an unforgivable and undeniable menace into the fold and leaves very little room, if any, for an audience to muster up any kind of sympathy for Dahmer. Some of the men who play Dahmer's victims, like Shaun J. Brown and Rodney Burford, provide award-worthy performances of men who had so much left to give to the world. There's a certain kind of grace that comes with playing a character who is no longer with us, and how these actors choose to honor them cannot be overlooked.

There are questions surrounding the ethics of the show's creation, especially Netflix's decision to not ask Dahmer's victims' families for permission to tell their stories. It's a moral misfire that has cast a dark, unredeemable shadow over the limited series and brings up the question of ethics in filmmaking. But, even so, in only its third week on the streaming service it has already become the second most popular Netflix series of all-time, behind only "Stranger Things 4." It's hard to not acknowledge such an impressive feat accomplished in so few days.

In another anthology series from Ryan Murphy, the docudrama "Feud," he reenacts famous celebrity rivalries on the small screen. With only one season under its belt so far, "Feud" is already one of Murphy's greatest creations to date. It was initially conceived as an anthology series that tackles publicized and unknown rivalries in popular culture.

Season 1, subtitled "Bette and Joan," focuses on the well-documented beef between acting legends Bette Davis and Joan Crawford, two of Hollywood's greatest all-time stars, played by Susan Sarandon and Jessica Lange, respectively. "Feud" focuses on the strife between the two actresses during and after the production of "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" "Feud" racked up 18 Emmy nominations.

In career-highlight performances from both Lange and Sarandon, "Feud" quickly established itself as top-tier television that can only get better with future installments. It being one of Murphy's strongest productions after only eight episodes only proves that he is still in the prime of his career. A second season is on the way, called "Capote's Women," which will focus on the fallout of a story written by Truman Capote detailing the lives of New York socialites. Jon Robin Baitz will serve as showrunner, Gus Van Sant will direct, and Naomi Watts is slated to head the cast.

The title of Ryan Murphy's greatest production, however, belongs to "Pose," his FX drama about New York City's ballroom culture, a central subculture in Black and Latino LGBTQ+ communities throughout the 1980s and 1990s. The characters, most of whom are dancers and models, spend the series competing for admiration and recognition within the underground ballroom scene. It was a miraculous, beautifully told story about friendship, love, and mutual aid in communities that were so often overlooked and left behind during the AIDS crisis.

"Pose" also holds the greatest ensemble of any Murphy production, featuring Evan Peters, James Van Der Beek, Billy Porter, Dominique Jackson, Indya Moore, Michaela Jae Rodriguez, and Kate Mara. Rodriguez would become the first trans woman to ever garner an outstanding lead actress in a drama series Emmy nomination, and Porter would become the first openly gay Black man to be nominated for and win an outstanding lead actor in a drama series Emmy.

After three seasons on television, "Pose" concluded with numerous accolades and an affectionate amount of critical acclaim. The show perfectly blends periodic settings with queer storytelling and soap opera-style melodrama. "Pose" never feels nostalgic or too far ingrained in relics of the past. Rather, it's an homage and celebration of the compassion and hope within the loving arms of a close-knit community. Murphy never made anything as daring or compelling before "Pose," nor has he made anything as urgent, important, and beautiful since.