The two greatest TV shows ever made, according to Ben Affleck: “I can’t disagree”
In the 1990s, when Ben Affleck first burst onto the Hollywood scene as a big-screen leading man, the idea of a movie star lowering themselves to starring in a television show was almost unheard of. In those days, the divide between the big and small screens might as well have been a chasm, and it was extremely rare for an actor known for TV to transition successfully to big-screen stardom.
Over the course of the ’00s, though, this balance began to shift when cable networks like HBO, AMC, and FX began making such quality television that movie stars finally took notice. This became known as the ‘Golden Age of Television’, and it was hard to argue with that designation, given the quality of writing and storytelling involved in many of the longform dramas, comedies, and miniseries of the era.
In the ’10s, streaming services came along and added even more options to the TV pool, and suddenly, it became perfectly normal to see Nicole Kidman and Reese Witherspoon starring in Big Little Lies, Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson lending gravitas to True Detective, or even Matt Damon turning up on 30 Rock, Entourage, and House of Lies for a bit of fun.
Interestingly, though, Damon’s best pal Affleck never succumbed to the siren song of scripted television, instead preferring to keep furrowing his path on the big screen. Indeed, aside from an amusing ’08 cameo in Larry David’s Curb Your Enthusiasm, Affleck’s only forays into TV have been the reality show Project Greenlight and some hosting gigs on Saturday Night Live.
However, his avoidance of TV doesn’t mean he has a problem with the medium, per se. After all, he was set to direct the pilot episode of Showtime’s Homeland in 2011 until he was forced to drop out because he and then-wife Jennifer Garner had a deal about which one was available for work at that point in time. “I was sure nothing would happen with the show,” he later joked, still lightly frustrated at missing out on the opportunity.
Affleck also once revealed that before his autistic action hero Christian Wolff returned in 2025’s The Accountant 2, Warner Bros had toyed with the idea of making a spinoff TV show of the original 2016 movie. In this scenario, the actor would have been an executive producer, but likely not starred in the show. “That, actually, for studios like Warner Brothers, where you have Warner television, they’re often more lucrative, more long-term, and more sustainable,” Affleck explained of the drive to make a show instead of another movie.
Thankfully, though, while he hasn’t worked in television the way some other A-list stars have, when it comes to simply watching the best examples of TV’s modern golden age, Affleck is just as much a fan as the rest of us. When he appeared on Complex magazine’s GOAT Talk with his Accountant 2 co-star Jon Bernthal to discuss various “greatest of all time” debates, the pair were asked what a GOAT TV show is for them. When Bernthal instantly pegged The Sopranos as the correct answer, Affleck smiled, “I can’t disagree”. This made perfect sense, too, given that David Chase’s seminal mob drama arguably gave birth to the ’00s golden age.
However, there was a little bit of disagreement when Affleck argued, “I gotta say, I think Breaking Bad is number two,” to which Bernthal enthusiastically retorted, “I would say The Wire is number two, but we’re not getting into it”. Both men were happy to diverge on their pick for the second spot, though, because Vince Gilligan’s chemistry teacher turned drug kingpin epic and David Simon’s exploration of the drug war in Baltimore would probably battle it out for most people’s picks to come runner-up to The Sopranos.
