Every list of the easiest TV shows to learn English with is somebody’s guess. Friends is on all of them, and so is whatever the author happened to watch last year. This list is a measurement. We took the subtitles of the 100 most popular shows and counted, for each one, how many English words you need to know to follow it comfortably. The ten shows below are the ten that need the fewest, and the order is what the counting returned rather than what anyone expected.
“Comfortably” has a definition here. Research on reading and listening, most of it by Paul Nation, puts the line at knowing 98 percent of the words you meet: below that, the unknown words come too often to guess from context, and above it you can follow without stopping. So the figure beside each show is the size of vocabulary that covers 98 percent of its dialogue. Words are counted as dictionary entries, so run and running are one word, and character and place names are left out, because knowing who Rachel is teaches you no English.
If you have around 3,000 to 3,500 words, which is roughly where a learner stands after a few years of school English, these are the shows where you can turn the subtitles off first.
The ten easiest shows
| # | Show | Words you need |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 13 Reasons Why (2017) | 3,079 |
| 2 | The Punisher (2017) | 3,202 |
| 3 | Suits (2011) | 3,268 |
| 4 | Friends (1994) | 3,326 |
| 5 | The Walking Dead (2010) | 3,404 |
| 6 | Lost (2004) | 3,434 |
| 7 | The Bear (2022) | 3,439 |
| 8 | Silo (2023) | 3,464 |
| 9 | Heroes (2006) | 3,476 |
| 10 | The White Lotus (2021) | 3,493 |
The exact figure for any one show is an estimate; the order is the reliable part. The whole spread between first and tenth is about 400 words, so anything on this list will feel roughly the same to you. The gap that matters is between this list and the rest of the hundred, which runs up to about 7,900 words for the hardest show measured.
1. 13 Reasons Why
A high-school drama, and the easiest show in the whole set by vocabulary. Teenagers talking to each other about school, friends and each other use a small, contemporary, endlessly repeated set of words. The subject matter is heavy, and the language is not.
2. The Punisher
An action series, which is a useful reminder that easy vocabulary and easy viewing are different things. A large share of the running time has no dialogue at all, and what is said is short and direct.
3. Suits
The surprise on the list. Suits is a legal drama and is usually recommended to advanced learners for that reason, but a courtroom says the same few hundred legal words over and over, and repetition is exactly what this measure rewards. Outside the courtroom it is office conversation. If you want the legal words in advance, they are counted in our legal English vocabulary list, with Suits among the shows quoted.
4. Friends
The show every list recommends, and the number agrees. Twenty-minute episodes, six people, everyday situations. Friends is also the show that repeats itself most: a viewer with a 5,000-word vocabulary meets about 26 new words in an average episode, the second-lowest figure in the hundred, which is why it is a good place to start and a poor place to stay.
5. The Walking Dead
Survival drama in small groups. The talk is practical and plain, and there are long stretches with none.
6. Lost
A large cast of ordinary people stranded together. The mystery is complicated; the sentences are not.
7. The Bear
The best example on the list of what the number does not measure. The vocabulary of a restaurant kitchen is small, so The Bear scores as easy, but the characters shout over each other at speed, and by ear it is one of the hardest shows here. Keep the subtitles on for this one longer than its figure suggests.
8. Silo
Science fiction with no invented language. A closed community talking about ordinary things, which is why a genre that is usually hard sits this low.
9. Heroes
An ensemble of everyday people with unusual abilities, speaking everyday English. The comic-book premise adds almost no vocabulary.
10. The White Lotus
Guests and staff at a resort. Contemporary, conversational, and spoken slowly enough to follow.
How the list was made
Nobody chose these shows. Wordspotting counts what television says, word by word, across every episode of every show in its catalogue. For this ranking it took the 100 most popular shows and asked one question of each: how large a vocabulary covers 98 percent of the dialogue? The ten shows above are simply the ten smallest answers. The full ranking of all 100 shows, from easiest to hardest, is published at wordspotting.app/research/tv-shows-by-english-difficulty, and it also shows how many new words an episode of each show would bring you at five different vocabulary sizes.
One thing to know as you read the figures. Most of the difference between shows is register, not subject. The easy shows are contemporary and talky, saying ordinary words again and again. The hard ones are period and fantasy, and what makes them hard is real English from another century: the hardest show in the hundred, House of the Dragon, runs on fealty, regent and vassal. A high figure does not mean a show teaches you more, either. Some of that older vocabulary is worth having, and some of it you will never say out loud.
What the number does not measure
Vocabulary, and nothing else. Three other things make a show hard to follow, and none of them is counted: how fast people speak, what accent they speak in, and how the sound is mixed. The Bear is easy by the first measure and hard by the other three. A British show with regional accents can need few words and still lose you in the first minute. Treat the figure as a statement about the words, and judge the rest with your ears.
Nor does it measure you. Two people with the same size of vocabulary know different words, and a list like this can never see which ones you have. The practical use of the figure is as a reference point: find a show you have watched comfortably and look up where it sits in the full ranking. That is roughly where your English is today. Anything near it will feel about the same, and anything well above it is the one you watch with subtitles on.
Where to go after these
The ten shows here are the bottom of a list of a hundred, and the list keeps going. With 4,000 words you reach Breaking Bad and Mad Men; with 4,500, The Office and Better Call Saul; with 5,000, 79 of the 100 shows are within reach. The Big Bang Theory, which is often recommended as an easy sitcom, needs about 5,600 words, more than Breaking Bad, and How I Met Your Mother needs about 4,600. If you want to know how large a vocabulary you are working with in the first place, How Many Words? covers what the usual figures do and do not count.
How to actually learn from them
Picking an easy show gets you to the point where you can follow it. It does not, on its own, teach you the words you were missing. Those arrive one at a time in the middle of a scene, and unless something has prepared you for them they go past. What makes a word stick is meeting it somewhere you were already paying attention, and meeting it more than once. The useful version of this list is therefore not this page. It is the episode you are about to watch, with its unfamiliar words in front of you before you press play, so that when one of them arrives in the dialogue it is the second time you have seen it rather than the first.
That is what Wordspotting does. It finds the words you do not know in a show you are about to watch and teaches them to you first. The ten shows on this page are in it, along with the rest of the hundred.
The principle survives without any tool, if you would rather not use one. Pick one show from the list, leave the subtitles on, and write down the words that come back more than once.
