The Best TV Shows on Sky Arts

Every Sky Arts Show Ranked From Best To Worst

With its programming history stretching from 1978 to 2024, Sky Arts offers an impressive lineup of over 20 shows. Discover the best of Sky Arts with our list of over 20 series, meticulously updated for September 2025. Premiering in 1978 and 1997, The South Bank Show and Classic Albums are among Sky Arts’s most celebrated shows.

  • Johnson and Knopfler’s Music Legends
    Johnson and Knopfler’s Music Legends (2024)8.5

    Join AC/DC singer, Brian Johnson and Dire Straits singer and guitarist, Mark Knopfler as they share their incredible knowledge and experiences with each other - and a hand-picked selection of music royalty.

  • Guy Garvey: From The Vaults
    Guy Garvey: From The Vaults (2020)8.2

    Elbow frontman and broadcaster Guy Garvey lifts the lid on two decades of TV gold – with era-defining musical performances, long lost studio appearances and revealing interviews that have remained on the shelves for decades. The series is centred around shows which were made by ITV companies around the country – from Tony Wilson and Granada TV’s So It Goes to Tyne Tees’ ground-breaking Channel 4 series The Tube and LWT’s The London Weekend Show - chronicling not just changing musical tastes but evolution in the UK’s social and cultural history too. The series travels from Punk and New Wave to the birth of ‘Madchester’.

  • Classic Albums
    Classic Albums (1997)7.7

    A documentary series about pop and rock albums that are considered the best or most distinctive of a well-known band or musician or that exemplify a stage in the history of music.

  • Urban Myths
    Urban Myths (2017)7.5

    Our Urban Myths are stories that have been passed down over time and have now become part of urban folklore. But are they true? We take a slightly tongue in cheek, mischievous – and deliberately ambiguous – look at what might have happened...

  • The Legacy
    The Legacy (2014)7.3

    The death of a matriarch brings forgotten secrets out into the open and causes a prolonged battle for the family inheritance.

  • A Young Doctor's Notebook
    A Young Doctor's Notebook (2012)7.1

    A young doctor who has graduated at the top of his class from the Moscow State University of Medicine and Dentistry is thrust out into an isolated and impoverished country side as the village's only doctor. As he learns to adapt to his new lifestyle, he develops a morphine addiction to stay his sanity while realizing what being a doctor in the real world means.

  • Psychobitches
    Psychobitches (2013)6.8

    Sky Arts takes famous females from history and puts them in the psychiatrist's chair.

  • Landscape Artist of the Year
    Landscape Artist of the Year (2015)6.8

    It is a nationwide search to find the best landscape artist. Filmed at picturesque locations around the UK, contestants paint National Trust properties for a chance to win a £10,000 commission for a British institution's permanent collection. Through several rounds, winners are selected to advance to the semifinal, and then to the final. Judging the competition are British art historian Kate Bryan, independent curator Kathleen Soriano, and award-winning artist Tai-Shan Schierenberg.

  • Portrait Artist of the Year
    Portrait Artist of the Year (2013)6.7

    Artists from the UK and Ireland compete by creating portraits of famous people.

  • Neil Gaiman's Likely Stories
    Neil Gaiman's Likely Stories (2016)6.2

    A unique collection of extraordinary fantastical short stories from the pen of Neil Gaiman, directed by Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard. With a score by Jarvis Cocker and starring a host of British acting talent led by Tom Hughes, Johnny Vegas, George MacKay, Rita Tushingham and Kenneth Cranham.

  • The Nightmare Worlds of H.G. Wells
    The Nightmare Worlds of H.G. Wells (2016)6.2

    The Nightmare Worlds of H. G. Wells is a 2016 horror-fantasy television miniseries, based on short stories by H. G. Wells. The four-part series of 30-minute episodes was commissioned for broadcast by Sky Arts. The series is hosted by Ray Winstone as Wells.

  • Discovering Film
    Discovering Film (2014)6.0

    Leading movie experts celebrate the lives and work of some of the most prolific and iconic Hollywood stars.

  • The South Bank Show
    The South Bank Show (1978)5.6

    The South Bank Show is a television arts magazine show produced by ITV between 1978 and 2010. A new series began on Sky Arts from 27 May 2012. Presented by Melvyn Bragg, the show aims to bring both high art and popular culture to a mass audience.

  • Master of Photography
    Master of Photography (2016)2.6

    Sky Arts hosts a competition like no other to find the best European amateur or professional photographic talent. An eight-week, eight-episode trial in which finalists must convince a jury of world-famous photographers and experts of their creativity, instinct and versatility,to become the first Master of Photography. The winner will receive €150,000; a show; and a catalogue.

  • Songbook
    Songbook (2008)N/A

    Exclusive interviews and acoustic performances with the legends responsible for some of the most famous songs of our times. Each acclaimed songwriter discusses their unique musical inspiration and writing processes before giving an exclusive intimate acoustic performance of some of their seminal songs.

  • What the Dickens?
    What the Dickens? (2008)N/A

    What the Dickens is a television panel game hosted by Sandi Toksvig. Team captains were Dave Gorman and Tim Brooke-Taylor for the first series and Sue Perkins and Chris Addison for the second and third. It is recorded at Sky Studios in West London.

  • Fotografi
    Fotografi (2012)N/A

  • Halloween Comedy Shorts
    Halloween Comedy Shorts (2016)N/A

    A series of halloween comedy shorts from some of the most well known names in British Comedy.

  • Tate Britain's Great Art Walks
    Tate Britain's Great Art Walks (2017)N/A

    Danny Baker, Simon Callow, Richard E Grant, Cerys Matthews, Miriam Margolyes and Michael Sheen follow in the footsteps of their favourite British artists.

  • The Directors
    The Directors (2018)N/A

    This series looks at the 20th century’s iconic film directors; the real innovators whose breakthrough direction made film into the movies. Their early lives, often escaping war or poverty found expression in theatre, then film, forming the fundamental art that is cinema. Each episode brought to life by Derek Malcolm, Neil Norman, Stephen Armstrong, Dr. Bonnie Greer OBE and Ian Nathan along with classic moments from each film career.