The Best TV Shows on RTL

Every RTL Show Ranked From Best To Worst

Some of the best tv shows from RTL include Stern TV and Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten, airing in 1990 and 1992 respectively. As of September 2025, our compilation of RTL’s top-rated series boasts over 20 unique shows. Across the timeline from 1990 to 2021, RTL has presented audiences with over 20 captivating shows.

  • RTL Samstag Nacht
    RTL Samstag Nacht (1993)8.2

    RTL Samstag Nacht was a comedy show, which ran from 6 November 1993 to 23 May 1998 on the German TV network RTL. RTL Samstag Nacht was the first major comedy show in German television, created after the example of the long-running American show Saturday Night Live and broadcast late on Saturday night. It helped comedy in German television to a breakthrough and was a model for several later comedy shows. Karl Ranseier was a recurring character featured in fake news reports telling about his death at the end of each episode. The name Karl Ranseier has become a catchphrase in Germany that has led to its own joke category of Ranseiers which are in widespread usage outside of the comedy origin.

  • German Television Award
    German Television Award (1999)8.0

  • Sisi
    Sisi (2021)7.5

    "Sisi" follows the extraordinary life of Empress Elisabeth of Austria. Modern, honest, and authentic. Told from the perspective of her closest confidants, the series takes a new look at the empress' life and reveals a multi-layered woman.

  • Highlander: The Series
    Highlander: The Series (1992)7.4

    Duncan MacLeod cannot die -- he is a 400-year-old immortal, who has seen his share of humanity's history. Still, he risks his life in battle against other immortals and tries to save people from harm.

  • Unter Uns
    Unter Uns (1994)7.2

    Unter uns is a German television soap opera, first broadcast on RTL on 28 November 1994. Centered around the lives of the people in a residential house, which is set in the fictional Schillerallee in Cologne. Since the show debuted the baker's family Weigel is the series core family. Unter uns isn't based on a foreign soap opera like Verbotene Liebe or Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten. After Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten, the show was the second daily soap for RTL, followed years later in 2006 by Alles was zählt. The show aired its 3,500th episode on 30 December 2008.

  • Im Namen des Gesetzes
    Im Namen des Gesetzes (1994)7.0

  • Die Cleveren
    Die Cleveren (1998)6.8

    Die Cleveren is a German television series that was produced from 1998 to 2003 on RTL. It is about a nation wide special unit of the German Bundeskriminalamt, dealing with serial offenders. The main characters are the profiler Dr. Dominik Born and a policewoman of the BKA, who co-ordinates the necessary steps to be taken by the local police authorities.

  • Stern TV
    Stern TV (1990)6.5

    Current studio guests, exciting backgrounds, moving stories, spectacular studio events and captivating reports - presenters pull all this and much more live from the grab bag of German television every week.

  • Alarm for Cobra 11: The Motorway Police
    Alarm for Cobra 11: The Motorway Police (1996)6.5

    A long-running German television series about a two-man team of highway police, originally set in Berlin and later in North Rhine-Westphalia.

  • Nikola
    Nikola (1997)6.0

    Nikola is a German television sitcom that premiered on September 12, 1997 on RTL Television.

  • Let's Dance
    Let's Dance (2006)6.0

    German version of Dancing with the Stars, the reality competition in which celebrities perform choreographed dance routines which are judged by a panel of renowned ballroom experts and voted on by viewers.

  • Deutschland sucht den Superstar
    Deutschland sucht den Superstar (2002)5.9

    Deutschland sucht den Superstar is a German reality talent show, also commonly known by its initials DSDS. Part of the Idol franchise, it was created by English media mogul Simon Fuller as a spin-off from the British show Pop Idol, of which two series were broadcast between the years of 2001 and 2003. Debuting to mediocre ratings in October 2002 on the RTL network, the show has since become one of the most successful shows on German television. The program aims to discover the best singer in the country through a series of nationwide auditions in which viewer voting determines the winner. Voting is done through telephone and SMS text voting.

  • Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten
    Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten (1992)5.8

    Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten is a long-running German television soap opera, first broadcast on RTL in 1992. The programme concerns the lives of a fictional neighborhood in Germany's capital city Berlin. Over the years the soap opera tends to have an overhaul of young people in their late teens and early twenties; targeting a young viewership.

  • Balko
    Balko (1995)5.8

    Balko is a German prime time television series broadcast on the private TV channel RTL. It is a police detective story with comical twists featuring two inspectors of the Dortmund police, Balko and his colleague Klaus Krapp. Balko's main characteristics are his coolness and his consistently laid-back appearance, whereas “Krappi” is a typical mama’s boy and very clumsy. The series started in 1995 and has won several television awards.

  • Das Amt
    Das Amt (1997)5.3

    Das Amt was a German comedy television series which aired between 1997 to 2002 on RTL. It was created by Dietmar Jacobs.

  • Die ultimative Chartshow
    Die ultimative Chartshow (2003)5.0

  • Hinter Gittern - Der Frauenknast
    Hinter Gittern - Der Frauenknast (1997)4.5

    Drama set in a women's prison in Germany. Susanne Teubner, a sympathetic young woman who has killed her husband in an affect, is poorly advised by her lawyer and sentenced to life imprisonment for willful murder. The arrival in prison is a shock to her. Resigned and exhausted, she endures the degrading admission procedure. She doesn't notice that the young doctor Dr. Beck immediately felt more than professional interest for her.

  • Die Wache
    Die Wache (1994)1.0

  • Explosiv - Das Magazin
    Explosiv - Das Magazin (1992)N/A

  • Der Lehrer
    Der Lehrer (2009)N/A