Ryan Murphy is undoubtedly one of the most influential personalities in Hollywood. He went from being a journalist for various publications to screenwriting after he wrote a script that gained the attention of Steven Spielberg. After that, Murphy decided to step into screenwriting and producing, and the rest is history.
There are 21 shows that Murphy had a creator/writer role in. Some, granted, are better than others, but it’s interesting to see how the audience and the critics’ scores on Rotten Tomatoes differ for each of these shows. Here’s every Ryan Murphy show, ranked by Rotten Tomatoes critics’ scores. For shows where no critical scores are displayed, we’ve included audience scores that generally reflect the shows’ reception.
21
‘9-1-1: Nashville’ (2025–Present)
No Critics’ Score, Rotten Audience Score: 24%
The second spin-off of 9-1-1 is 9-1-1: Nashville, and this is the first Murphy show that doesn’t have a critic score. However, the audience score is pretty rotten, landing at just 24%. Lone Star is over, and Nashville takes center stage as the leading spin-off, but this one is a little less captivating than the Rob Lowe series. Nashville is led by Chris O’Donnell and LeAnn Rimes, and it’s more like soapy drama meets occasional first-responder stuff, rather than being an action series about firefighters.
9-1-1: Nashville follows Don Hart (O’Donnell), a rodeo rider and captain of the firefighting Precinct 113. Don works with his son, TK, and has an illegitimate son, Blue, with an ex-girlfriend, Dixie (Rimes). He invites Blue to work with them in the fire department, presumably to get closer to him. Most of the show revolves around this drama with Don, Dixie, his wife, and his sons. Nashville wanted to combine Murphy’s trademark melodrama with first-responder action, but many have noticed that it’s more about ambition and fame. This may be a distinctive flavor for such a series, but it’s not successful so far.
20
‘9-1-1: Lone Star’ (2020–2025)
No Critics’ Score, Audience Fresh Score: 77%
9-1-1: Lone Star is the second Murphy show on Rotten Tomatoes that doesn’t have a critics’ score. Instead, the audience score for Lone Star is 77%, and this is pretty much reflective of the show’s quality and watchability. The show has garnered quite a big following, and it’s the first spin-off of Murphy’s 9-1-1 franchise, becoming just as successful as its predecessor. Lone Star ended after five years, opening up a spot for 9-1-1‘s second spin-off, Nashville.
9-1-1: Lone Star is a spin-off of Murphy’s high-octane first-responder drama 9-1-1, and it moves the action from Los Angeles to Austin, Texas, where Captain Owen Strand (Rob Lowe) leads a team of firefighters, EMTs, and dispatchers. Similar to 9-1-1, Lone Star blends large-scale disaster set pieces with personal stories of the characters, exploring the humanity beneath the uniform. People loved Lowe, especially, who embraced the Southern grit and emotional storytelling with his charismatic leading performance.
19
‘All’s Fair’ (2025–Present)
Rotten Score: 4%
We can say that All’s Fair is a workplace dramedy, but that’s only the level it tries to be on; it doesn’t manage to achieve it. All’s Fair is by far Murphy’s worst-rated series on both IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes, boasting a rotten critics’ score of only 4%. And before you think to yourself, “Well, it can’t be that bad,” yes, it kind of is. From chaotic dialogue to choppy editing, huge portions of the show feel unfinished and rushed.
All’s Fair follows a group of female lawyers who step out of their male-dominated firm to open their own law practice. They vow to only represent female clients, and they turn out to be women looking to divorce their wealthy husbands; one of the lawyers also gets dragged into a messy divorce of her own. Maybe this was meant to be an empowering story about women helping other women, but it reads a bit like “lifestyles of the rich and famous” instead. Kim Kardashian is the lead and has first billing, and she is surrounded by great talents like Glenn Close, Sarah Paulson, and Naomi Watts. Visually, the show is beautiful, and the costumes are interesting, but it’s style over substance, and it’s not even something you can enjoy while doing other things, because it’s pretty bad.
18
‘Monster’ (2022–Present)
Rotten Score: 41%
While Murphy is known for creating somewhat controversial content, his most controversial series so far is the Monster anthology. It’s a true-crime series, and each season follows different personalities who have committed crimes that gained widespread attention. Pretty fairly, Monster has an overall rotten critics’ score of 41%, and the audience score isn’t much higher either; critics have mostly deemed the series gruesome and exploitative, with even the families of Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims in particular stepping out and saying that it’s still too soon to talk about these traumatic events.
The Monster anthology is meant to re-examine the American obsession with serial killers through a chilling character-driven lens. Each season spotlights a new figure whose crimes became immortalized over time, from Jeffrey Dahmer to Erik and Lyle Menendez and, most recently, Ed Gein. While the series is intended to criticize the obsession with true crime and humanize victims of these killers, the tone of each season can feel in poor taste. We already know that Murphy doesn’t pull any punches or step away from gory details, but it’s uncertain how this sort of content can vindicate the victims of these killers.
17
‘The New Normal’ (2012–2013)
Rotten Score: 51%
The New Normal is a short-lived sitcom with one season. In it, Murphy introduces a story about a gay couple trying to start a family, which is one of the things he does well — introducing queer representation on TV. And while critics were not impressed with The New Normal (the rotten score is 51%), audiences liked it, and for the most part, they found the show to be heartfelt and fun.
The New Normal follows a successful gay couple, Bryan (Andrew Rannells) and David (Justin Bartha), who wish to start a family. They meet a single mother, Goldie (Georgia King), and her 9-year-old daughter, Shania (Bebe Wood), with Goldie becoming a surrogate mother for their baby. The show centers on modern family life and all of its messy and beautiful parts. While it may be clumsy in certain aspects, the emotion and the joy behind it are obvious and often prevail over technicalities. The name of the show, of course, refers to the redefining of the nuclear family, introducing the word “normal” into a more modern definition.
16
‘The Politician’ (2019–2021)
Rotten Score: 51%
The Politician is what happens when ambition meets camp. This is a two-season comedy that somewhat successfully depicts politics through its more theatrical nature and dissects performative activism and privilege. Although all of these intentions and ideas are depicted through a relatively controversial and soapy lens (what’s new?), The Politician is one of the most loved of Murphy’s comedies.
The Politician is a satirical drama about Payton Hobart (Ben Platt), a wealthy and ambitious student from Santa Barbara, running for student body president in his high school. In Season 1, Payton has to navigate ruthless high school politics, while in Season 2, Peyton goes to college in New York and moves up the political career ladder. Much like any other Murphy show, The Politician is also very stylish and visually lavish, and though a lot of its plotlines are melodramatic and soapy, it doesn’t lean into style over substance too often.
15
‘The Watcher’ (2022)
Rotten Score: 54%
Amid an ongoing obsession with true crime and urban legends, Murphy creates The Watcher, a story about a family stalked by someone calling themselves The Watcher. The show was based on a real-life mystery, when the Broaddus family moved into 657 Boulevard in Westfield and started receiving unsettling letters in their mailbox. There are many videos and articles online about this mystery, but Murphy’s The Watcher is the most ambitious rendition of events.
The Watcher changes some real-life facts, starting with the name of the family. In the series, Naomi Watts and Bobby Cannavale play Nora and Dean Brannock, who move with their two children into 657 Boulevard in Westfield and soon start receiving creepy letters from a person signing themselves as The Watcher. As the letters grow more disturbing, Nora and Dean’s marriage gradually becomes collateral in the situation. The series, in all its efforts to be Murphy-like, introduces some campy and controversial characters, potential suspects, and unsettling lore that make the story creepier and more profound. The Watcher has a rotten score of 51%, which sounds fair.
14
‘Hollywood’ (2020)
Rotten Score: 58%
As we already know, Murphy has an affinity for the Golden Age of Hollywood, and truthfully, that’s not a bad thing at all. He’s one of the rare creators to nail the stylistic and visual realism of old Hollywood, although a lot of it feels glamorized and glorified in certain aspects. That’s why the series Hollywood takes turns at both being an adoration of the Golden Age and an exploration of Hollywood’s dark secrets. It centers on inequality, marginalization, and the unfairness toward newcomers who believe their success is going to come through hard work.
Hollywood is set just after World War II and follows Jack Castello (David Corenswet), a war veteran who wishes to become an actor to feed his family. His wife is pregnant with twins, and Jack tries to escalate his Hollywood success, but the industry makes him do things he normally wouldn’t agree to. Other characters fight racial and sexual inequality, and the show obviously tries to show us that underneath all the glamour, glitz, and style is a dark and troubling world, waiting to overtake everyone who comes into it. The RT critics’ score is 51%, but audiences loved this one more than the critics, as their rating is 75%.
13
‘Popular’ (1999–2001)
Fresh Score: 60%
Popular is one of Murphy’s earliest TV adventures, and it’s a sharp and often surreal high school dramedy that pits the social elite against the outcasts. It’s one of the first shows of the late ’90s/early 2000s to dissect the mean girl trope that later became very popular due to Mean Girls. Knowing Murphy’s style, Popular takes turns being wild and shocking, to emotional and heartfelt. Popular just crosses the threshold with a fresh score of 60%.
Popular revolves around two teenage girls from opposite cliques in high school — the most popular girl in school, Brooke (Leslie Bibb), and social outcast Sam (Carly Pope). Brooke and Sam learn that their parents are getting married, which will have them become stepsisters, which challenges their understanding of high school status and the ideas of friendship. But while they work together to separate their parents, they ultimately end up being friends themselves. Though short-lived, Popular has gained a cult following, and it laid the groundwork for Murphy’s later social satire.
12
‘Ratched’ (2020)
Fresh Score: 62%
Ratched is a prequel to the story from the film One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. It explores the eerie origin story of nurse Mildred Ratched, played by Sarah Paulson in one of her frequent Murphy show leading roles. The show first depicts Nurse Mildred Ratched as a skilled nurse with commendable qualities, but as we delve further behind the curtains, we realize that her personality and core are a lot more disturbing than presumed.
The miniseries/prequel Ratched is set in 1947 and follows Nurse Mildred Ratched when she arrives at her new workplace, a psychiatric hospital in Northern California. Despite a somewhat weak but still fresh 62% critics’ rating, Ratched is a clever combination of Hitchcockian suspense and Murphy’s signature flair for camp costumes and stunning visuals. Though it’s a horror series, behind that horror are themes of trauma, repression, and the need for control. If you like psychological melodrama and visual decadence, Ratched is the show for you.
