The 20 best TV shows set in New York City

We all know that the fifth main character in Sex and the City is New York. When brainstorming a TV series set in New York City, this one is almost always top of mind. 

The Roy family probably wouldn’t be able to hack it in any place but New York City. The show wouldn’t be quite the same with a different location as its backdrop. The city just adds to the family’s elitism. 

If you’ve never been to New York City before and want to see all the famous landmarks, the Gossip Girl tour is a good place to start. The very first episode gave us a glimpse of the city when Serena returned via Grand Central Station, and it never stopped serving iconic views afterward.

Quirky, zany, goofy — Broad City was all of the above. Sure, it gave a much less glamorous look of New York City than Succession or Gossip Girl, but for most people, that’s what the city is actually like. If you want to live there, consider that it will probably be more like Abbi and Ilana’s experience than Blair and Serena’s.

Most television shows in New York City take place in Manhattan, but Brooklyn Nine-Nine took us to an outer borough, and we still got just as satisfying views of the Big Apple as we do in any of our other favorite shows set there. One Police Plaza is about the only Manhattan landmark mentioned in the series. 

Who among us hasn’t watched Friends and wanted to move to New York City with a group of our besties? Although lots of our favorite settings from the show weren’t part of the city's actual fabric, we are happy to suspend our disbelief for half an hour at a time and tell ourselves that there is a Central Perk coffee shop in Central Park.

30 Rockefeller Center is one of the most legendary spots in New York City, especially for television enthusiasts. 30 Rock also does a fantastic job of ingratiating the entire city into the show, especially thanks to Liz‘s propensity for walking around on a mission to find food.

Often tagged as the Sex and the City of this generation, Girls, like Broad City and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, does a good job of showing real life in New York City in more than just Manhattan. It’s another great litmus of life when you aren’t a millionaire. 

When you think of corporate lawyers, you just might think of the attorneys on Suits, and their backdrop being New York City makes the show that much more exciting to watch. There’s something much more appealing about the conversations of a fraudulent lawyer and his accomplice when the setting is the New York City skyline at night.

There are dozens of reasons to love The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, but one is that it’s set in New York City. What’s more, it’s set in New York City in the 1950s, making it a totally different experience than anything you will watch today. With modern camera technology and the reimagined sets of yesteryear, the show is dazzling and incredibly aesthetically pleasing.

If you like a show that shows what life is like for some people while maintaining a healthy dose of escapism, The Nanny is it. As it says in the show’s theme song, Fran Fine went over from Flushing to the Sheffields' door in Manhattan, and she got a job as a nanny. She still goes back to Queens on occasion to visit her family, but most of what we see is Nanny Fine in her stunning and unattainable New York City home.

I Love Lucy is the blueprint for sitcoms set in New York City. Lucy was the ultimate Manhattan wife and mom, and even though she lived in one of the most expensive neighborhoods on the planet, she was still incredibly relatable. 

Another great show for a tour of the town — you'll see lots of New York City landmarks when watching Seinfeld. It’s an iconic sitcom set in an iconic city. 

Although Sesame Street is not a real street, and the characters in the show are not real, New York City very much is, and the street somehow feels real when you’re watching it. It’s a comfort show that almost everyone in the United States has seen.

Ugly Betty also takes us to all different parts of New York City. The titular character lives with her family in Queens and commutes to her glamorous job every day in Manhattan. Anyone who loves fashion, comedy, and New York City will love Ugly Betty.

Brooklyn Nine-Nine isn’t the first sitcom to take us to an outer borough. The King of Queens did so decades before when it was set in, as the title suggests, Queens. The Kevin James and Leah Remini comedy is one of the all-time greats. 

It’s not a prerequisite for sitcoms to be set in New York City, but it does seem to be the location of choice for many. How I Met Your Mother has a similar feel to Friends in that many of its scenes take place in locations that are actually just manufactured sets in Los Angeles, but we do get glimpses of the city.

Russian Doll only has two seasons, and the second one takes place in many places outside of New York City. And because of the plot of the show’s first season, we mostly see the same views of the city over and over again. But if you’re comfortable with that and don’t mind mostly seeing nighttime scenes of the city, it’s definitely worth watching.

It seems as though television shows set in New York City aren’t airing as frequently as they used to be. Only Murders in the Building solves that for television lovers by taking us all around the Concrete Jungle during the cold-weather months, allowing us to see the glamorous wardrobes of the people of New York in the fall and winter.

New York City in the 1960s? Say no more. Mad Men is glamorous, dramatic, and totally intoxicating. The fashion, architecture, and decor all play into why this show is still a fan favorite.