10 Most Profane TV Shows, Ranked

TV shows, for a while, weren’t really allowed to use bad language, thanks to network restrictions that were, historically, particularly strong in the U.S. The history of it all is interesting, but to keep things short and snappy, it wasn’t really until the 1990s – and the rise of cable channels, like HBO – that swearing became possible on TV. And this new kind of television did not f**k around when it came to delivering immense amounts of swearing, enough to make even Quentin Tarantino and David Mamet blush.

So, at the risk of spoiling things, yes, most of these shows did air on HBO, but not all. Also, it’s hard to count the number of F-bombs, say, in a series, compared to a movie (where it’s easier to crown titles like Uncut Gems and The Wolf of Wall Street as the most profane of all time), so the following takes into account the quantity and memorability/quality of the swearing. It’s a bit vibes-based, rather than looking at pure data, but again, it’s a whole ordeal to count all the swear words in a show that ran for several (or more) seasons, so you can kind of understand why it hasn’t been done for most shows.

10

‘Dexter’ (2006-2013)

Dexter is here largely because of Doakes, whose swearing was iconic and a highlight of the show’s better/earlier seasons, but also, Debra wasn’t too bad at dropping a ton of F-bombs either. It was a Showtime show, and was thereby about as unrestrained by censorship as anything that’s ever been produced by – and aired on – HBO. The benefits of cable, it seems.

Also, Dexter will probably make you yourself swear at your television upon it ending, since it has one of the most controversial series finales of all time (whether the later spin-off/sequel shows remedied things… eh, it’s up to you. The person writing these words was too burned back in 2013 to give any future Dexter content a chance). But the good stuff in this show about a serial killer killing other serial killers was indeed good. Bow out after season 4 and it’s a mostly great show, in all honesty.

9

‘The Inbetweeners’ (2008-2010)

If you’ve seen Superbad, or if you’ve ever been a teenage boy, then you’ll understand the kind of language they use. It’s not clean, and it’s rarely politically correct, and so The Inbetweeners – which began airing the year after Superbad – is one of the more profane sitcoms out there. Skins is similarly salty language-wise, as another British show about teenagers from around the same time period, but The Inbetweeners is probably more profane.

It also happens to be one of the funniest sitcoms of its era, especially if you’re fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to be able to relate to growing up/going through high school in the 2000s. There’s a ton of crude humor as well, on top of all the swearing, so the show’s overall not the easiest to recommend to anyone with sensitive ears.

8

‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ (2000-2024)

After co-creating Seinfeld, and being the showrunner for most of its run, Larry David created Curb Your Enthusiasm, starring in this one, too. He plays a fictionalized version of himself who constantly runs into problems in his life, sometimes bringing about his own misery while, at other times, just being super unlucky, and lots of people in his life are happy to swear at him either way.

It’s a much more meta show than the already sometimes quite meta Seinfeld, and it’s also noticeably more profane, since Curb Your Enthusiasm aired on HBO, while Seinfeld was a network show. Unlike a good many HBO shows, though, Curb Your Enthusiasm isn’t too extreme content-wise outside the profanity, but the swearing here does nonetheless earn it its TV-MA rating (which is the U.S. TV equivalent of the R-rating).

7

‘Succession’ (2018-2023)

Largely thanks to having a cast made of dysfunctional and frequently stressed-out characters, Succession had a lot of salty language throughout its four (largely masterful) seasons. It revolved around a wealthy family with an aging patriarch who has to consider who will run the company he’s spent his life building, with his kids all wanting the position, but none being particularly worthy of a leadership role.

Also, the patriarch is a monster, and much of Succession has him just messing with his kids – plus the other people who work under him and are constantly fearful – while they keep sabotaging themselves and each other. It’s funny, but also deeply sad and quite tragic, and often sounds like how Shakespeare might’ve sounded, dialogue-wise, if he had access to – and was influenced by – the films Tarantino directed in the ‘90s.

6

‘Veep’ (2012-2019)

Before Veep, Armando Iannucci created The Thick of It and also wrote/directed In the Loop, both of them serving as precursors for this HBO comedy series, which he also created (serving as showrunner for four of its seven seasons, too). Veep is about a Vice President who aspires to be the President eventually, and she does continually terrible things in her pursuit of more power and influence.

That being said, those around her are often similarly cruel, but no one’s particularly good at being ruthless in the political sphere, so bickering and chaos are inevitable. Veep’s characters are usually quite adept at swearing and coming up with creative insults, though, and the dialogue is frequently remarkable in how vicious and uncompromising it gets. The quantity is there, but it’s the quality of the swearing – and how oddly poetic it often is – that makes Veep rank highly here.

5

‘The Bear’ (2022-)

You can uncontroversially compare The Bear to a bunch of cinema’s most intense titles, since it’s a loud and rather brash drama series (that’s occasionally sort of a little bit funny) that takes place in a high-pressure work environment: the kitchen of a sandwich shop. It’s busy, isn’t run the best, and everyone working there has their own personal problems they’re dealing with, ultimately making everything harder.

The Bear goes out of its way to demonstrate why the characters yell and swear as much as they do.

The swearing hits you in the face pretty early on in The Bear, and it never really slows down in hurling profanity at you every episode. But it doesn’t feel gratuitous, since it adds to the stress of the show, and also, The Bear goes out of its way to demonstrate why the characters yell and swear as much as they do, so if you’ve worked in a similar environment before, you’ll likely feel effectively seen and/or traumatized.

4

‘The Wire’ (2002-2008)

There’s a scene in The Wire where two characters, McNulty and Bunk, investigate a crime scene while conversing with nothing but the word “f**k,” or variations of it. It’s a scene you can somehow follow, it’s oddly funny, and it serves as an early indication that The Wire is going to be something special (though not the very first indication, since that arguably comes right at the start of the show).

That scene also isn’t indicative of The Wire tonally overall, but it is the best example of profanity featured in the show. The rest of it has the usual sort of poetic, unrestrained, and creative swearing you get in most HBO dramas, but it’s the F-bomb-heavy crime scene investigation sequence that gives the entire show a bump here, and worthy of a particularly high ranking for present purposes.

3

‘South Park’ (1997-)

People would probably be f**king mad if swearing on television was talked about without a mention of South Park, though this is an interesting case where the show wasn’t massively profane when it started, at least not to the same extent as later seasons. Swearing was bleeped in earlier seasons, or kept to a minimum, and that ensured that all the F-bombs in the movie, South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut, did indeed pack a punch. And it was fitting there, considering how significant the ideas of censorship and moral panics were to the plot.

But for the show, it was still crude when the harsher profanity had to be censored, and then it made use of fewer restrictions whenever it could. Take, for example, the start of season 5, in the episode “It Hits the Fan,” which is about a TV show being allowed to use the word sh*t uncensored, and then the episode itself has the word used a total of 162 times.

2

‘Deadwood’ (2004-2006)

Not that Western movies are always squeaky clean language-wise, but few of them go to the lengths of Deadwood, a Western/crime series that aired on HBO, when it comes to profanity. It’s unlikely the real-life people featured in Deadwood spoke in the same way in reality that they do in the show, but the profanity was more modern to have more of an impact on modern-day viewers than more historically accurate swearing might have had.

It was a bold decision, but it paid off, because the swearing in Deadwood is incredibly memorable and, as was the case with Succession and Veep, oddly poetic. It’s also great that a character named Al Swearengen (based on a real-life person) is particularly good at swearing, but there are plenty of other characters who don’t have the word “swear” somewhere in their name who are almost just as capable.

1

‘The Sopranos’ (1999-2007)

So, The Sopranos is not a copy or a direct TV equivalent to Martin Scorsese gangster films like Goodfellas and Casino, but it was at least partially inspired by aspects of those films, the use of language included. Or, maybe mobsters just talk like that, and you have to have people swearing up a storm if most of your characters are wrapped up in organized crime. It can be pretty funny, in all fairness.

And there’s a whole lot more to The Sopranos than people swearing and getting killed, of course, but it is probably the first show many would think of if they heard the phrase “swearing on TV.” So, it’s here. It’s in the #1 spot. Oz did air on HBO first, and had quite a bit of bad language alongside some other very strong content, but The Sopranos felt like it took the whole profanity thing to another level, and it probably helped influence the language used in a fair few shows already mentioned above.