The Best Teen TV Shows From The '00s

For people who were teens in the 2000s, they might seem like yesterday — especially since it can be hard to accept that the decades are widening between us and our youth. For many people, and for many reasons, the 2000s were a defining decade in our lives. National and international crises, from financial meltdowns to terrorism, changed the way that we saw the world and shaped how we would begin to engage with it as young adults.

At the same time, the 2000s began what has been defined as the "new" Golden Age of Television, a reference to the period of the same name in the 1950s. The world was changing rapidly, but the small screen made us feel like things were moving in the right direction.

The wide variety of critically-acclaimed shows on television was characteristic of this era, and means that teens in the 2000s were extremely fortunate to have the selection they did: Here are the best of the best.

Maybe we haven't seen Hilary Duff as much lately, but in the 2000s, it seemed like she was everywhere. As "Lizzie McGuire," she embodied such a successful and beloved character that she got her own movie spin-off, and there was even a reboot filmed over a decade later. (It turned up dead in the water after creator and showrunner Terri Minsky departed the project — even after a few episodes had already been filmed!)

Still, the fact that a revival was put together at all is a testament to how beloved the show was, and remains, among its fans. Critics loved it, too: While audiences on IMDb gave the show a 6.6/10 just like "Dawson's Creek," it scored an impressive 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. The series is defined by Duff's character's efforts to navigate the dilemmas of her teenage years with the help of an animated version of herself, also voiced by Duff, whose little monologues express Lizzie's inner world.

It's a creative way to get inside the mind of a teen, and a uniquely 2000s artifact.

Many of us would likely say that our favorite teen TV series helped us survive. They made us laugh when we wanted to cry through our first breakup, made us feel understood when we felt like no one would ever really get us, and gave us a family when we felt truly alone. But "Ned's Declassified School Survival Guide" takes the fight for teenage survival even further: The titular main character takes us through exactly what we need to do to get through some of the hardest, most painful, most awkward moments of our teen years.

The episodes are unique because each one is devoted to a tip or topic from Ned's "guide," but they also serve to develop certain plot throughlines, like romantic stories. The comedy is a bit goofy and slapstick, turning an endearing lens on a chapter of human growth and development that doesn't always go so smoothly. "Ned's Declassified" was rated a 7.4 by fans on IMDb, the same as "Degrassi" but with a greater "voter turnout."

Everybody may hate Chris, but they loved his show. The title "Everybody Hates Chris" is a parody of the popular adult sitcom "Everybody Loves Raymond," which preceded it by a few years. In fact, there was something of a direct handoff between the two shows: "Raymond" ended in 2005, the same year "Everybody Hates Chris" began.

"Everybody Hates Chris" began airing on the now-defunct UPN network, but only for its first season, before it — and a number of other shows from The WB — was moved to The CW. The series follows a young African-American teenager living in the city, and is based on the experiences Chris Rock, who narrates the show, had during his own teenage years.

The critically-acclaimed series is relentlessly witty, wry, and raw in its treatment of American life through the eyes of a teenager, especially where race and class are concerned. This perspective was rarely seen on television at the time — yet was so well-executed, without sacrificing comedy, that the series earned a 95% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Oh, to be a teen of means. That's probably a common refrain among fans of 2000s teen television shows. Many times, like in "Gossip Girl" or in another popular series of the era, "The O.C.," the protagonists have a degree of wealth and privilege that isn't necessarily accessible to the majority of their audience.

It's so dreamy, for example, to watch the "girl-next-door" character from "The O.C.," Marissa, meandering through a party in an Orange County mini-mansion. The power dynamics and social expectations make everything seem so intense, as if teen life isn't already that way. There are the typical issues of family dysfunction and alienation that many teenagers face, side-by-side with more hardcore tensions like drug use and even, eventually, death.

Unfortunately, "The O.C." started out hot (literally: a house catches on fire in the first episode) and lost its spark as the seasons went on. Still, for devoted fans who fell in love with the troubled teens of Orange County and gave it a 7.5 on IMDb, the flame never truly went out (even in the shocking crash that killed a main character at the end of the third season).

About 37,000 fans, ever since "Drake and Josh" began airing in 2004, have taken to IMDb to offer their thoughts on the classic teen sitcom from Nickelodeon (and those thoughts are, at 7.7/10, quite favorable). The show indirectly birthed the next generation of Dan Schneider teen shows on the network: You'll recognize Miranda Cosgrove, who plays the lead character in "iCarly," from her earlier appearance on "Drake and Josh" as Drake's biological younger sister Megan, notorious for her sarcasm and propensity for creating mischief.

The series follows a somewhat non-traditional family, in which two stepbrothers of completely opposite personalities find themselves forced to live together in probably the most complicated time of their lives: the teen years. But while the problems inherent to being a teenager are potentially comedic enough, the real meat of the show is in the relationship between the brothers, who act as perfect foils for each other and in whom almost every viewer can find a piece of themselves.

Unlike most of the other popular teen series of the 2000s, "That '70s Show" wasn't set in contemporary times. While it began airing in 1998 and concluded in 2006, the period sitcom depicted the lives of a group of high school students and their families in (if you couldn't guess from the title) the 1970s.

The transitions are full of groovy psychedelic visuals and the costumes and sets are delightfully period-appropriate: bell-bottoms and tie-dye, scarves and headbands. Couches in the basement. The characters are sort of trope-y, especially the parents. The Forman parents are a cheerful but overworked mother and an emotionally distant father with traditional ideas about masculinity. The Pinciotti parents are a ditzy, youthful woman all the guys have crushes on, and a jovial, insufferable, but well-meaning metrosexual man.

For all the over-characterization, though, the characters' motivations and relationships are developed pretty deeply over the course of eight hilarious, 8/10 (according to IMDb) seasons.

If you're looking for drama onscreen and off, you can't do much better (or worse) than the original British version of "Skins," which premiered in 2007. It quickly became known for its controversial storylines centering around somewhat taboo topics (especially for 2000s television), including serious mental illnesses like bipolar disorder and eating disorders, as well as family dysfunction, sexuality, and death.

It's pretty heavy for a teen show, but the series has a considerable cult following on both sides of the pond and beyond. Audiences love it: It has scored an 8.2 on IMDb and captured the hearts, minds, and memes of 2000s teenagers and more in the ensuing decades.

Investment in the characters is easy and immediate: Each of the episodes takes a deep dive into the life, mind, and personal struggles of one of the characters or a small group of them. Through their eyes, we get a look at some of the hardest-to-talk-about topics not just for teens, but for all of our culture. "Skins" not only kept people engaged, but helped them feel less alone.

It's the best teen TV show from the 2000s, if you ask IMDb audiences, who scored it an 8.8/10, or 100% of Rotten Tomatoes critics. It has become a cult classic and beloved by almost everyone who has laid eyes on it (and for those who haven't discovered it yet, we offer condolences). So why did it end after a truncated first season in which only 12 of the originally scheduled 18 episodes aired?

Well, that's a matter for another time, but there was apparently more drama behind the scenes of "Freaks and Geeks" than between the clique-y cafeteria tables in American high schools. As evident by how much of a following it has generated since, "Freaks and Geeks" was ahead of its time — but creator Judd Apatow has kept the nostalgia alive by including some of the actors in his work ever since, a homage to the distinct piece of art they created together and the incredibly unique characters they brought to life.

Many of these big-name actors' careers were launched or buoyed by the show — James Franco, Seth Rogen, and Jason Segel, for example. These household names owe a lot to a show that was itself an exercise in radically altering and molding your own image.