When we talk about the most prolific television creators and writers, the same names often come up: Ryan Murphy, Shonda Rhimes, Dick Wolf, Taylor Sheridan, and more of the most popular and profitable names of the moment. But there's someone who's often left out of those conversations despite being responsible for some of the biggest, most beloved shows in pop culture history. Of course, that someone is none other than primetime soap and rom-com mastermind Darren Star!
Not only did Star help reinvent and popularize teen dramas on the small screen with the '90s phenomenon Beverly Hills, 90210, but he has continuously centered women in their own stories about their lives, careers, and sexuality — important stories that have remained vital parts of our own lives. It's no wonder that Star's works have a way of having a having a resurgence years later, a la Younger, or immediately striking a chord like Netflix's polarizing Emily in Paris.
He has created cult classics like The WB's meta comedy Grosse Pointe and underrated gem's like Neil Patrick Harris' gone-too-soon rom-com Uncoupled, but he's also the brain behind some of television's most enduring classics. But which Darren Star show is the best of the best? We're ranking five of Star's most popular shows from worst to best, but let the record show: They are all incredible, addictive shows that you need to binge-watch right now!
5. Melrose Place
The Beverly Hills, 90210 spinoff Melrose Place reached some of the same heights as its predecessor and sometimes even managed to exceed those heights. Melrose Place took place in Los Angeles and followed 20-somethings who lived in the same apartment complex. Besides a bunch of good-looking and complicated young people, the apartment complex also housed more drama than its vacancy allowed. For seven seasons, Melrose Place got soapier than the soapiest moments of 90210.
Over time, Melrose Place continued to live in the shadow of Beverly Hills, 90210, which has a much more accessible pop culture impact, whether its the cast of household names or its longer history that allows for deeper nostalgia. At any rate, both of Star's earliest hits were later rebooted by The CW in the late 2000s, though the Melrose revamp only lasted for one season to 90210's five. It's another instance of the show being unfortunately (but understandably) underrated.
Even though Melrose Place, which you can stream on Paramount+, might not be the best Star series, it's still an important and insanely watchable piece of '90s television. It's a messy, wild, and gasp-inducing ride from start to finish, but Star still has some better tricks up his sleeve on this list. If you haven't watched, it's a good time to travel back to the '90s. The cast are developing a revival series that will surely help prove its legacy should it get off the ground.
4. Emily in Paris
As someone who is a devout Emily in Paris defender, the Netflix original — and Emmy Award nominated for Best Comedy Series! — romantic comedy is ranked far too low. But it's all by a slim margin. They can't all be #1, after all. By now, we have all met or become aware of Emily Cooper, the American girl who moves to Paris for a marketing job and becomes entwined in romances, personal foibles, and professional mess ups. She's a millennial after our own heart.
Emily in Paris has been unfairly referred to as a "bad show," something that people hate watch and throw on in the background. For what the show is, a camp-lite romantic comedy (the television equivalent of a sweet treat), Emily in Paris does everything it needs to do. The colorful clothes, the larger than life locations, the unattainable fantasy of Emily Cooper's life... It's all part of the buy-in that you have to accept from episode 1. Leave your actual high-brow expectations at the door!
3. Beverly Hills, 90210
Like Emily in Paris, if you ever meet someone who calls Beverly Hills, 90210 a bad show... run. To quote the great poet Carrie Bradshaw, you just don't get it. Bad shows aren't beloved and run for 10 seasons. Is it a guilty pleasure? The term's a bit outdated and can be slightly demeaning, but to the eye of the beholder, you could call the original 90210 (okay, the reboot, too) a guilty pleasure. But for the most part, there should be no guilt when a show provides this much pleasure.
Beverly Hills, 90210 is one of my all-time favorite shows, so it's not blasphemy to say that the series starts a bit clunky. But once you get into the summer episodes of season 2 and settle into the glorious high school years, it's smooth sailing. The series opens with an issues-oriented slant, with themes that had something important to say. The college and post-college years take a dramatic turn for the soap, which presents a new era of the show we know and love.
When it comes to teen dramas, it's hard to name one better than Beverly Hills, 90210. It's the blueprint, and Darren Star wrote the blueprint. The CW's 90210, which credited Star though he didn't work on it, doesn't get enough love. Once the voyeurs left after season 1, the reboot proved itself and dared to improve, becoming the rightful heir to its title. All in all, the 90210-verse is hard to beat. If it weren't for the next two shows, there's no way 90210 wouldn't have topped this list.
2. Younger
And then there's Younger, a delightful mid-2010s surprise that no one saw coming. The series premiered in 2015 on TV Land, which probably wasn't the biggest vote of confidence for most viewers or critics. But to everyone's surprise, Younger arrived as the unique, bold, and delightful breath of fresh air television needed at the time. As it turns out, we seemingly needed it all over again. The show was added to Netflix in early 2025 and made quite the comeback.
Sutton Foster stars in Younger as Liza Miller, a divorced 40-something single mother looking to get back into her career in the publishing world. She finds it difficult to land a job, which prompts her to lie about being in her 20s. Suddenly, she lands a job and has to keep up the lie, even as she falls in love, makes new friends (Hilary Duff!), and gets in way too deep. Apart from the final season and ending, Younger is consistently wonderful and everything you want from a comedy led by women.
1. Sex and the City
There's no surprise here and no other show that could have, or will ever, take the top spot on a ranking of Darren Star's best shows. Unless you want to be a contrarian and have a hot take, then maybe you'd rank Sex and the City lower than Younger, but in reality, the Emmy Award-winning HBO comedy series is one of the biggest television shows of all time for a reason. You simply can't minimize its excellence, its talent on and off-screen, and its lasting impact.
Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon, Kristin Davis, and Kim Cattrall are nothing short of magic as a group of four best friends living in New York City and trying find love (or sometimes just sex) and figure out the concept of "having it all." Sex and the City isn't always perfect. In fact, through a modern lens, some aspects of the series haven't aged well. But it's a time capsule of a certain period of time, a mood curated by Carrie Bradshaw, and a comfort show for so many of us.
It's no wonder that the characters have lived on, and continue to live on, in various iterations. There are two successful big-screen movies and now a continuation series, And Just Like That, going into its third season on Max. The past might have aged a bit poorly, but Carrie Bradshaw and her friends are timeless. Like 90210 was the blueprint for teen dramas, Sex and the City was the blueprint for TV rom-coms about characters you love but drive you crazy. And that's why it's Star's best.