The Best TV Shows on BBC Two

Every BBC Two Show Ranked From Best To Worst

With its programming history stretching from 1962 to 2017, BBC Two offers an impressive lineup of over 20 shows. Leading the pack on BBC Two are University Challenge and Horizon, with their initial broadcasts in 1962 and 1964. Dive into our updated selection of BBC Two’s finest, featuring more than 20 series as of July 2025.

  • Peaky Blinders
    Peaky Blinders (2013)8.5

    A gangster family epic set in 1919 Birmingham, England and centered on a gang who sew razor blades in the peaks of their caps, and their fierce boss Tommy Shelby, who means to move up in the world.

  • The Last Kingdom
    The Last Kingdom (2015)8.3

    A show of heroic deeds and epic battles with a thematic depth that embraces politics, religion, warfare, courage, love, loyalty and our universal search for identity. Combining real historical figures and events with fictional characters, it is the story of how a people combined their strength under one of the most iconic kings of history in order to reclaim their land for themselves and build a place they call home.

  • Top Gear
    Top Gear (1978)7.9

    Motoring programme featuring reviews of and reports about cars of all types.

  • QI
    QI (2003)7.9

    Comedy quiz show full of quirky facts, in which contestants are rewarded more if their answers are 'quite interesting'.

  • Horizon
    Horizon (1964)7.5

    Horizon tells amazing science stories, unravels mysteries and reveals worlds you've never seen before.

  • Match of the Day
    Match of the Day (1964)7.5

    BBC's football highlights and analysis. "The longest-running football television programme in the world" as recognised by Guinness World Records in 2015.

  • Top Gear
    Top Gear (2002)7.5

    This fast-paced and stunt-filled motor show tests whether cars, both mundane and extraordinary, live up to their manufacturers' claims. The long-running show travels to locations around the world, performing extreme stunts and challenges to see what the featured cars are capable of doing. The current hosts are Paddy Mcguinness, Chris Harris and Andrew "Freddie" Flintoff.

  • The Graham Norton Show
    The Graham Norton Show (2007)7.2

    Each week celebrity guests join Irish comedian Graham Norton to discuss what's being going on around the world that week. The guests poke fun and share their opinions on the main news stories. Graham is often joined by a band or artist to play the show out.

  • Have I Got News for You
    Have I Got News for You (1990)7.1

    Hilarious, totally-irreverent, near-slanderous political quiz show, based mainly on news stories from the last week or so, that leaves no party, personality or action unscathed in pursuit of laughs.

  • Never Mind the Buzzcocks
    Never Mind the Buzzcocks (1996)7.0

    Never Mind the Buzzcocks is a comedy panel game show with a pop and rock music theme. The show is infamous for its dry, sarcastic humour and scathing, provocative attacks on the pop industry.

  • Mock the Week
    Mock the Week (2005)7.0

    Mock the Week is a British topical celebrity panel game hosted by Dara Ó Briain. The game is influenced by improvised topical stand-up comedy, with several rounds requiring players to deliver answers on unexpected subjects on the spur of the moment.

  • Match of the Day 2
    Match of the Day 2 (2004)6.9

    A light-hearted look at the United Kingdom's Premier League action, rounding-up the weekend's football action.

  • Arena
    Arena (1975)6.7

    Arena is a British television documentary series, made and broadcast by the BBC. Voted by leading TV executives in Broadcast as one of the top 50 most influential programmes of all time, it has run since 1 October 1975 with over five hundred episodes made, directed by the likes of Martin Scorsese, Alan Yentob, Roly Keating, Frederick Baker, Volker Schlondorff and Vikram Jayanti. Arena's subjects are a roll-call of the world's best known cultural figures from the 20th and 21st centuries, from singers Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse to academics Edward Said and Eric Hobsbawm, from writers Jean Genet and V S Naipaul to artists Francis Bacon and Louise Bourgeois. The current series editor is Anthony Wall.

  • The Repair Shop
    The Repair Shop (2017)6.7

    The Repair Shop is a workshop of dreams, where broken or damaged cherished family heirlooms are brought back to life. Furniture restorers, horologists, metal workers, ceramicists, upholsterers and all manner of skilled craftsmen and women have been brought together to work in one extraordinary space, restoring much-loved possessions to their former glory.

  • Newsnight
    Newsnight (1980)6.2

    A daily BBC Television current affairs programme which specialises in analysis and often robust cross-examination of senior politicians.

  • University Challenge
    University Challenge (1962)6.0

    Academic quiz show where teams of students from UK universities answer questions on all manner of subjects.

  • Richard Osman's House of Games
    Richard Osman's House of Games (2017)6.0

    Each week a group of four famous faces go toe to toe in testing their general knowledge skills in a variety of entertaining games.

  • Ben & Holly's Little Kingdom
    Ben & Holly's Little Kingdom (2009)5.4

    The friendship between fairy princess Holly and Ben Elf in an enchanted magical kingdom of elves and fairies.

  • Antiques Road Trip
    Antiques Road Trip (2010)5.0

    Antiques experts travel across the country, competing to make a profit at auction.

  • Thirty-Minute Theatre
    Thirty-Minute Theatre (1965)3.8

    An anthology of short plays shown on BBC Television between 1965 and 1973, used in part at least as a training ground for new writers, on account of its short length, and which therefore attracted many writers who later became well known.