The Best TV Shows on Sky Arts

Every Sky Arts Show Ranked From Best To Worst

Sky Arts’s extensive portfolio includes more than 20 shows, spanning the years from 1978 to 2022. Peruse our comprehensive roster of Sky Arts’s top shows, encompassing over 20 distinct series as of February 2026. The South Bank Show and Classic Albums represent the pinnacle of Sky Arts’s programming, launching in 1978 and 1997.

  • Life & Rhymes
    Life & Rhymes (2020)10.0

    Life & Rhymes is the first show of its kind in the UK, solely dedicated to spoken word performance it celebrates the very best poetry and spoken word talent the UK has to offer.

  • Discovering Music
    Discovering Music (2013)8.0

    Music journalists take a closer look at the work of some of the biggest recording artists in the world, past and present.

  • Brian Johnson's A Life on the Road
    Brian Johnson's A Life on the Road (2017)7.9

    One of rock music’s iconic and tour-hardened frontmen, Brian Johnson, gives us a brand new and exclusive take on one aspect of the rock and roll life: live performance, touring and being ‘on the road’.

  • Classic Albums
    Classic Albums (1997)7.7

    A documentary series about pop and rock albums that are considered the best or most distinctive of a well-known band or musician or that exemplify a stage in the history of music.

  • The Legacy
    The Legacy (2014)7.4

    The death of a matriarch brings forgotten secrets out into the open and causes a prolonged battle for the family inheritance.

  • Urban Myths
    Urban Myths (2017)7.4

    Our Urban Myths are stories that have been passed down over time and have now become part of urban folklore. But are they true? We take a slightly tongue in cheek, mischievous – and deliberately ambiguous – look at what might have happened...

  • A Young Doctor's Notebook
    A Young Doctor's Notebook (2012)7.1

    A young doctor who has graduated at the top of his class from the Moscow State University of Medicine and Dentistry is thrust out into an isolated and impoverished country side as the village's only doctor. As he learns to adapt to his new lifestyle, he develops a morphine addiction to stay his sanity while realizing what being a doctor in the real world means.

  • Wonderland: From JM Barrie to JRR Tolkien
    Wonderland: From JM Barrie to JRR Tolkien (2022)7.0

    An extraordinary variety of writers, who often suffered terrible adversity throughout their lives, created wonderful places full of happiness in which children lived far from the sorrows of adult life.

  • Psychobitches
    Psychobitches (2013)6.8

    Sky Arts takes famous females from history and puts them in the psychiatrist's chair.

  • Landscape Artist of the Year
    Landscape Artist of the Year (2015)6.8

    It is a nationwide search to find the best landscape artist. Filmed at picturesque locations around the UK, contestants paint National Trust properties for a chance to win a £10,000 commission for a British institution's permanent collection. Through several rounds, winners are selected to advance to the semifinal, and then to the final. Judging the competition are British art historian Kate Bryan, independent curator Kathleen Soriano, and award-winning artist Tai-Shan Schierenberg.

  • Portrait Artist of the Year
    Portrait Artist of the Year (2013)6.7

    Artists from the UK and Ireland compete by creating portraits of famous people.

  • The Nightmare Worlds of H.G. Wells
    The Nightmare Worlds of H.G. Wells (2016)6.2

    The Nightmare Worlds of H. G. Wells is a 2016 horror-fantasy television miniseries, based on short stories by H. G. Wells. The four-part series of 30-minute episodes was commissioned for broadcast by Sky Arts. The series is hosted by Ray Winstone as Wells.

  • Neil Gaiman's Likely Stories
    Neil Gaiman's Likely Stories (2016)6.2

    A unique collection of extraordinary fantastical short stories from the pen of Neil Gaiman, directed by Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard. With a score by Jarvis Cocker and starring a host of British acting talent led by Tom Hughes, Johnny Vegas, George MacKay, Rita Tushingham and Kenneth Cranham.

  • Discovering Film
    Discovering Film (2014)6.0

    Leading movie experts celebrate the lives and work of some of the most prolific and iconic Hollywood stars.

  • The South Bank Show
    The South Bank Show (1978)5.6

    The South Bank Show is a television arts magazine show produced by ITV between 1978 and 2010. A new series began on Sky Arts from 27 May 2012. Presented by Melvyn Bragg, the show aims to bring both high art and popular culture to a mass audience.

  • Master of Photography
    Master of Photography (2016)2.6

    Sky Arts hosts a competition like no other to find the best European amateur or professional photographic talent. An eight-week, eight-episode trial in which finalists must convince a jury of world-famous photographers and experts of their creativity, instinct and versatility,to become the first Master of Photography. The winner will receive €150,000; a show; and a catalogue.

  • What the Dickens?
    What the Dickens? (2008)N/A

    What the Dickens is a television panel game hosted by Sandi Toksvig. Team captains were Dave Gorman and Tim Brooke-Taylor for the first series and Sue Perkins and Chris Addison for the second and third. It is recorded at Sky Studios in West London.

  • Tate Britain's Great Art Walks
    Tate Britain's Great Art Walks (2017)N/A

    Danny Baker, Simon Callow, Richard E Grant, Cerys Matthews, Miriam Margolyes and Michael Sheen follow in the footsteps of their favourite British artists.

  • Comedy Legends
    Comedy Legends (2018)N/A

    Barry Cryer pays tribute to the heroes of comedy he has worked with over his many years in the business. Each episode celebrates one artist and include highlights from their comedy careers. Stars include Tommy Cooper, Ronnie Barker, Joan Rivers, Bob Hope, Frankie Howerd and Morecambe & Wise and Barry recalls some of his funniest moments working with each of them.

  • Cold War & Cinema
    Cold War & Cinema (2021)N/A

    Hosted by Ian Nathan, this series features the cinematic stories of the Cold War era: propaganda, nuclear fear, a change in the US society; the spy games; and the rise and fall of the USSR and East Germany (and everything in between). Film critics and historians examine the industry both as it was happening in real time, and how films from this period have become seminal classics.