10 Best Made-for-TV Movies of All Time, Ranked

TV movies are exactly what you think they’d be, based on the name… they’re movies that are made for television, traditionally, rather than made for cinemas. The barrier has been eroded a bit in recent years, thanks to movies being made for streaming services, and streaming sometimes being more popular (for some) than the cinema, but that’s another topic for another time.

The more classic definition of a TV movie is what’s being considered here, with these movies all standing out for being great in one way or another, even though they were intended to be watched on a small screen, rather than a big one. They will hopefully all go to show that TV movies shouldn’t be overlooked, even if, traditionally, “TV movie” might’ve been something of a dirty word… well, a dirty term, to be more specific, given it’s actually two words. Whatever. On with the ranking!

10

‘Saraband’ (2003)

Directed by Ingmar Bergman

Released approximately three decades on from Scenes from a Marriage, Saraband was an unexpected sequel and one of the last things Ingmar Bergman directed. It doesn’t quite measure up to his best work, but it’s an effective TV movie about a long-divorced couple (spoilers for Scenes from a Marriage, sorry) reuniting and dealing with seeing each other for the first time in about 30 years.

It unpacks aging and the complicated nature of love, not exactly being an essential film, but having a good deal to offer for anyone who’s a fan of Bergman and wants to see what he was capable of in his twilight years. Additionally, it’s about people who are themselves in their twilight years, which does help make Saraband extra bittersweet and moving, in the end.

9

‘The Day After’ (1983)

Directed by Nicholas Meyer

The Day After is not the only TV movie of the 1980s to deal with nuclear war at its center, and it’s not the best either. More on the greatest in a bit, but The Day After did, ironically, come before the superior 1980s nuclear war-themed TV movie, and it’s a worthy enough runner-up that proves efficiently eerie and just overall effective in condemning a still hypothetical type of conflict.

It very much intended to traumatize people and prove unnerving, and the fact that it aired on TV did inevitably mean that a particularly large number of people were exposed to it. If you watch The Day After for the first time as an adult, it’s not quite so troubling, but it’s easy to imagine how this would’ve been terrifying for younger viewers back in the day (hell, maybe some older ones back in 1983, too, to be honest).

8

‘Culloden’ (1964)

Directed by Peter Watkins

If you’re looking for a unique kind of war movie, you’re unlikely to find one more distinctive than Culloden. This plays out over a fairly brief runtime of about 70 minutes, and centers on a battle that took place in the Scottish Highlands in the mid-1700s, which is already a conflict not explored a great deal in cinema (not compared to some of the 20th century wars, at least).

What makes Culloden unusual to an even greater extent is the fact that it’s basically a mockumentary, filmed as though a news crew were present at the battle that took place more than 200 years before the movie itself was made. It’s complete with interviews and commentary from a reporter, too. It’s weird, sure, but undeniably striking and inarguably bold.

7

‘The Sunset Limited’ (2011)

Directed by Tommy Lee Jones

A TV movie with some A-list talent attached, The Sunset Limited is pretty much nothing but Tommy Lee Jones and Samuel L. Jackson having an intense conversation for 90-ish minutes. The former plays a despondent man who’s rescued from a suicide attempt by the latter, which then prompts a long discussion that sees the two men exchange their differing philosophical outlooks on life and its meaning, or lack thereof.

So it’s a bottle movie with some great acting, and it also benefits immensely from the fact that it was written by Cormac McCarthy. It’s naturally pretty simple and straightforward, but the talent involved in bringing The Sunset Limited to life ultimately makes it plenty engaging, and it handles its heavy subject matter with an appropriate amount of care and nuance.

6

‘Deadwood: The Movie’ (2019)

Directed by Daniel Minahan

As the title implies, you do have to have watched Deadwood to fully appreciate Deadwood: The Movie, but you absolutely should watch all three seasons of Deadwood regardless. It was a typically high-quality HBO drama series with an Old West setting, and had various characters based on real-life people. It was canceled prematurely, though, so the most closure one could get for the show before 2019 was reading historical info on what happened to everyone in the show based on a real person.

Deadwood: The Movie doesn’t follow history, branching out further from real life than the show ever did, but such an approach was okay when closure was all that was needed. And Deadwood: The Movie is a great feature-length finale, also working as a well-deserved victory lap for the show as a whole (not to mention a perfectly good excuse to see some iconic characters do their thing one last time).

5

‘Nirvana: Unplugged In New York’ (1993)

Directed by Beth McCarthy-Miller

Call it a documentary if you want, or a concert film, or a TV movie, or whatever… Nirvana: Unplugged In New York is an impressive historical document depicting the titular band at their most raw and, arguably, their best. It was one of the last times Kurt Cobain performed, too, which naturally gives it a certain haunting feeling when watched after his passing.

It was part of the series MTV Unplugged, but this Nirvana show kind of goes beyond that series and can be considered its own TV movie, given what it represents and the fact it’s technically feature-length. That’s enough for it to be considered here. There are other significant and compelling Unplugged performances, sure, but it’s hard to look past this one as the most iconic.

4

‘Windy City Heat’ (2003)

Directed by Bobcat Goldthwait

Another film that’s a bit hard to define, Windy City Heat could well qualify as the funniest TV movie ever made, regardless of whether it’s a documentary or is entirely fabricated. In that sense, it scratches the same comedic itch as Nathan for You, given both this movie and that show are genius if staged, incredible and shocking if unstaged, and still pretty brilliant if they’re somewhere in between staged and genuine.

Essentially a feature-length prank, Windy City Heat would be incredibly cruel if it didn’t go to great lengths to show that the person at its center kind of deserves everything that comes his way. You’d have to be agonizingly empathetic to feel too bad for Perry Caravello, and the sheer ordeal he goes through because of the cruelty of his so-called friends can’t be expressed in words. You need to see Windy City Heat to believe it (and even if you don’t believe it, it’s still hilarious).

3

‘Duel’ (1971)

Directed by Steven Spielberg

While he would go on to direct bigger and better things, Steven Spielberg showed early promise with Duel, which was his feature debut (not counting Firelight, which is now mostly lost). Honestly, Duel is better than a good many thrillers that were released theatrically, and it does a lot with a simple premise that involves a single extended – and deadly – car trip across the desert.

Perhaps there’s a slight sense of things being drawn out at a point, in Duel, but you do have to admire the bluntness of it all, and the ambitious attempt to stretch one action sequence (of sorts) into a whole movie. It’s not exceptionally flashy, but it doesn’t have to be, nor does it really want to be. And for anyone curious about what Spielberg was capable of even before Jaws, it holds obvious value.

2

‘M*A*S*H: Goodbye, Farewell and Amen’ (1983)

Directed by Alan Alda

This is another TV movie that’s technically part of a TV show, but come on… you can’t not shout out M*A*S*H: Goodbye, Farewell and Amen, if given the opportunity. As a sitcom, M*A*S*H’s best days were behind it by Season 11(!), but this feature-length finale did redeem the show as a whole, as saying it concluded M*A*S*H on a high would be an understatement.

It ups the stakes, gets super intense emotionally, and has the Korean War finally come to a close for all of M*A*S*H‘s remaining main characters, some of them having been stationed there for 11 seasons, even though the real-life war only lasted about three years. Farewells are said, tears are shed, and everything is beyond emotionally fulfilled. Some 40+ years later, few finales can match M*A*S*H: Goodbye, Farewell and Amen as far as sheer quality and closure go.

1

‘Threads’ (1984)

Directed by Mick Jackson

If The Day After was a person, uh, somehow, then The Day After would probably have nightmares about Threads. This one came out after, sure, but it’s the quintessential movie about nuclear war generally being a bad time, to put it mildly. It documents the time immediately before the world’s destroyed, shows it being destroyed surprisingly realistically, and then depicts a harrowing/nightmarish aftermath for those left behind.

It is undeniably one of the most harrowing and challenging films ever made, and the idea of it airing on television about four decades ago is mind-boggling to think about. There’s a certain quality to Threads that makes it still unnerving when watched today, and it might well remain that way for as long as there’s still a possibility—however remote—of the world being torn apart and blown to smithereens by the most destructive weapons humanity has ever created.

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