Though the 1980s was placed between two golden ages of television (the first being from the late 1940s then throughout the 1950s, and the second starting in 1999 and continuing to at least the early 2010s), it was nevertheless a decade when plenty of iconic shows were aired on TV. Some shows got the recognition and praise they deserved, and are still fondly remembered today, while others feel somewhat forgotten.

The following TV shows all fit somewhere between those two extremes. Some built up passionate cult followings rather than achieving mainstream success, while others never quite found enough of an audience, but deserved to. They’re all underrated shows, to some extent, and are ranked below, taking into account both how under-appreciated they are and how genuinely good they are, quality-wise.

10 'Alien Nation' (1989-1990)

Creator: Kenneth Johnson

Why not start things off a little weird, and with a show that got cut down before it could truly achieve its full potential? Alien Nation only ran for a single season, beginning at the very end of the 1980s and concluding its run in the first half of 1990. It was a show that expanded upon a 1988 movie of the same name, and ended up back in the world of film several years later, with five television movies that more or less continued/concluded things.

As for the premise of Alien Nation, it blends the police procedural genre with science fiction, revolving around a detective getting paired up with a member of an alien race. What might sound silly is actually taken admirably seriously, for the most part, with Alien Nation offering a fresh spin on the police/crime/mystery genre and using its sci-fi concepts to explore things like racism and other social issues.

Rent on Apple TV

9 'Dungeons & Dragons' (1983-1985)

Creator: Mark Evanier

In contrast to Alien Nation, the animated show Dungeons & Dragons was able to run for a total of three seasons, but did also become a victim of cancelation, with the third-season finale never being completed. It’s perhaps the most well-regarded film/TV spin-off of the tabletop game of the same name, besides maybe the (also underrated) 2023 live-action film Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves.

Its premise sees half a dozen young friends thrown into the world of Dungeons & Dragons, ultimately going on a series of adventures as they try to find a way out. There was enough within it for the show to build up something of a small yet passionate fanbase, though never quite enough for it to achieve the level of widespread popularity it arguably deserved.

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8 'Newhart' (1982-1990)

Creators: Barry Kemp, Sheldon Bull

Bob Newhart had two well-regarded long-running sitcoms during the 1970s and 1980s. The first, airing between 1972 and 1978, was The Bob Newhart Show, and then between 1982 and 1990, Newhart aired. The former might’ve been more consistent and traditional as far as sitcoms went, focusing on a psychologist, while the latter got a little goofier and more unusual as it went along, focusing on an innkeeper in Vermont.

Having eight seasons and a general level of appreciation from critics/viewers might not sound like the kind of things that could be said about an underrated show, but Newhart’s nomination-to-win ratio at the Emmys is quite surprising. It received a total of 25 nominations without ever winning; not quite on the same level as being nominated for 53 and never winning, but still noteworthy.

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7 'Beauty and the Beast' (1987-1990)

Creator: Ron Koslow

There have been countless adaptations of the 18th-century French fairytale Beauty and the Beast, including the iconic 1946 film La Belle et la Bête and the beloved animated 1990s movie, simply called Beauty and the Beast. One of the more interesting takes on the material, however, came in the late 1980s in the form of a television show, also called Beauty and the Beast.

It takes things to a new kind of setting and plays a little more fast and loose with the core story, this time revolving around the titular beast and an assistant district attorney, both living – and loving each other – in contemporary New York City. It builds a strange yet interesting world, and managed to run for a decently lengthy three seasons, building up a solid cult fanbase that’s still going, to some extent, to this day.

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6 'Sherlock Hound' (1984-1985)

Directors: Hayao Miyazaki, Kyōsuke Mikuriya

Anime shows seemed to explode in popularity outside the U.S. during the 1990s, with Trigun and Cowboy Bebop proving particularly important in this regard. Then, by the 2000s and 2010s, anime shows seemed positively mainstream, with the film side of things also being huge. Hayao Miyazaki’s rise in popularity over these decades was also likely a contributing factor, though fans of his movies might not be as aware of the fact that he also worked on various TV shows during the 1960s, ‘70s, and some of the ‘80s.

One of these was Sherlock Hound, of which he directed the first six episodes, while Kyōsuke Mikuriya took over as director for the next 20. It’s a novel take on Sherlock Holmes, unsurprisingly making him an anthropomorphic dog this time around (not to be mixed up with The Hound of the Baskervilles, though).

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5 'Amazing Stories' (1985-1987)

Creators: Steven Spielberg, Joshua Brand, John Falsey

No one could accuse Amazing Stories of having some fairly amazing star power behind it, with Steven Spielberg being the creator and sometimes director. Other well-regarded filmmakers who helmed episodes of the show include Martin Scorsese, Robert Zemeckis, and Clint Eastwood, while well-known actors like Kevin Costner, Kiefer Sutherland, Patrick Swayze, and Harvey Keitel appeared in one-off episodes.

As an anthology series, each episode was standalone and served as something like a mini-movie, which was a novel approach back in the 1980s, especially when those one-off episodes generally had well-known talent involved in front of and behind the camera. It wasn’t the most consistent of shows, and only lasted two seasons, but it’s safe to say that Amazing Stories is remembered fondly by those who did watch it, and its best moments/episodes hold up to this day.

Buy on Apple TV

4 'Red Dwarf' (1988-)

Creators: Rob Grant, Doug Naylor

An expert fusion of science fiction, absurd comedy, and a little bit of existential dread for good measure, Red Dwarf is one of the most distinctive and long-running sitcoms in history. It began back in 1988 and, despite some hiatuses, still seems to be ongoing, with the most recent installment being released in 2020: a TV movie called The Promised Land.

So, calling it an “80s show” in the strictest sense might not work, but it began in the decade, and had three of its core 12 seasons get aired before the decade was over. Red Dwarf is the kind of show that has “cult hit” written all over it in the best way possible, following four oddball characters (only one of whom is technically human) as they flounder their way across the galaxy some 3 million years into the future. It’s creative, silly, and frequently funny, being one of the very best cult classic sitcoms that began airing during the 1980s.

Watch on Tubi

3 'The Young Ones' (1982-1984)

Creators: Ben Elton, Rik Mayall, Lise Mayer

The Young Ones, like Red Dwarf, is another sitcom from Britain that’s probably not going to be to everyone’s tastes, but those who can tune in to its rebellious and anarchic spirit will have fun. It takes a well-worn sitcom-type premise – four down-on-their-luck young men who all share the same house while studying – and pushes it into wild and untamed territory, given how flawed the characters are and how hellish they make life for each other.

Safe to say, it’s a very punk and cynical depiction of life in Britain during the 1980s, potentially even serving as a commentary on prevailing attitudes of the time like Thatcherism, if you want to read into it. Or you could just marvel at how The Young Ones consistently deconstructs and sometimes even destroys itself from the inside, breaking down sitcom conventions on its milder days and obliterating them to smithereens when it’s at its most fiery.

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2 'Blackadder' (1983-1989)

Creators: Richard Curtis, Rowan Atkinson

Though its first season was a little shaky, seasons 2 to 4 of Blackadder are of exceedingly high quality, and it’s probably the most acclaimed sitcom to be featured among these “underrated” ones. That’s to say that it might not really be underrated; more just lesser-known nowadays on account of its age, and because star/co-creator Rowan Atkinson is probably better known for playing Mr. Bean.

Each season of Blackadder takes place during a different period of history, with the first being in the Middle Ages and the last taking place during World War I, for example. It’s that final season that might well represent the whole show at its best, given much of it still manages to be darkly funny and witty when it comes to writing, but it also gets surprisingly (and effectively) serious by the finale, in order to best depict the senselessness of war.

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1 'Police Squad!' (1982)

Creators Jim Abrahams, David Zucker, Jerry Zucker

The sting of Police Squad! lasting just six episodes is remedied a little by the fact that it was spun off into three successful movies comprising The Naked Gun trilogy, the first of which is probably one of the best parody films of all time. But all the slapstick, surreal sight gags, and intricate wordplay that defined the best scenes of the movies were on offer during a series that never seemed to click with viewers at the time.

It's been suggested that Police Squad! was just too dense as a sitcom to appeal to those who wanted to watch TV to relax, but that has meant its approach to being funny has aged well in subsequent decades, as sitcoms have now become faster and more furious with joke quantity. Police Squad! might be revered and appreciated nowadays, but it was criminally overlooked in its time and stopped far too soon, making it possibly the decade’s most underrated/under-appreciated show.

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NEXT: The Most Underrated TV Shows of the 1990s, Ranked