Top 5 greatest TV love stories of all time

What’s the greatest TV love story of all time? That’s the question the Must Watch podcast team, Nihal Arthanayake, Scott Bryan and Hayley Campbell set out to answer in a special Valentine’s Day inspired edition.

They’re joined by special guest Jane Esperson, who has written/produced some of the most popular shows in the world (Buffy, Firefly, Ellen, Gilmore Girls, Game of Thrones).

Jane says love is “not always easy to write about, but it’s the most rewarding. It’s the thing that can actually change a human being and I’m not sure that much else has the power to do that”.

So, with suggestions from 5 Live listeners, here’s what happened when they tried to find the greatest on screen love stories ever. The only problem? Someone let Nihal decide the winner...

What do you think? Comment below with your thoughts...

5. How I Met Your Mother - Lily and Marshall

Suggested by 5 Live listener Doug, who says: “The whole show is based on someone trying to find their perfect love, that’s Ted the main character, and that’s what the show’s about.

"But within that you have his best friends Lily and Marshall and they stay together all the way through.

"They eventually got married and had children and all the time Ted was trying to find his perfect partner. But Lily and Marshall were the consistent love. They played on the fact that they were so much in love and everyone was sarcastic but actually as a couple they really bounced well off each other, and they were happy no matter how many challenges were put towards them.

"If you can show that you truly love somebody and want to spend the rest of your life with somebody it’s an amazing thing against all the other odds. It lasted for nine seasons, right the way through from start to finish.”

Jane says: "Sometimes you might break up a couple just to get more story.

"To keep one couple together and to always keep finding more stories to tell within that, that is a chore and it speaks a lot to what the actors are bringing to it that you keep discovering that there’s more you can tell."

4. Black Mirror - Yorkie and Kelly

This was suggested by Scott, who says:

“This from the San Junipero episode. It poses so many questions about love in a heartfelt way. It’s one of the only Black Mirrors that has a happy ending. So it goes against the grain of what a lot of the show is all about.

"Kelly and Yorkie are essentially in a virtual afterlife, which allows you to be in this heaven-like environment, where you’re able to live within a younger version of yourself.

"It allows these two old women, who didn’t have the easiest of lives, to redo the romantic lives that they wished they could have had on Earth. It’s so sensitively done and it poses questions about whether there is a life after death, and whether we can control life after death.

“I loved that way that, with two LGBT characters, it had a happy ending - when a lot of LGBT storylines end on a sad note.”

Nihal says: “It’s so complicated but it’s beautiful.”

3. Seinfeld - Jerry and Jeannie

This was suggested by Hayley who says: “This is Jerry Seinfeld and one very specific girlfriend in an episode of Seinfeld played by Janeane Garofalo. Jerry, as we know, is a total narcissist, and he finally finds a woman who is exactly like him and he falls completely in love.

"She eats cereal for lunch and dinner. She hates the same things and the same people as he does and they love each other so much that they get engaged. But because they’re so alike, their breakup (which obviously happens because all comedians secretly hate themselves) is them sitting in the diner and they blurt out at the same time, “I hate you!”.

"It’s the first truly mutual breakup in the history of relationships on TV or in real life.

“This episode ignites a very specific fear in me because when I first started dating my boyfriend, all I could think about was the fact that we were too alike. His favourite Woody Allen movie is my favourite Woody Allen movie - but NOBODY likes Crimes and Misdemeanors. All I could think was that this is the most narcissistic thing I’ve ever done. I’m dating myself and I can’t stand myself, and to make it worse he’s a comedian so I await our mutual breakup.”

Jane says: “Whoever came up with ‘comedians hate themselves, he should essentially date himself and then break up with her’... that’s just genius. That’s thematically perfect.”

2. Grange Hill - Zammo and Jackie

This was suggested by 5 Live listener Hannah who says: "I watched it when I was quite young.

"Zammo - who was about 15 - got himself addicted to heroin. Jackie, his girlfriend, stuck by him through all of it, or she tried to anyway.

"It stopped me ever taking drugs. My friends were all into it and it stopped me ever going into it. I didn’t even take gas and air when I was in labour!"

1. Game of Thrones - Jaime and Cersei

This was suggested by listener Mark who says: "If we’re talking about a love story, and if we’re talking about barriers that you have to overcome - being brother and sister being the biggest one, and the one that all makes us feel a bit yucky for obvious reasons - it’s powerful, isn’t it?

"And season eight, and what happens, the way they’re found..."

Scott says: "No! No. No. Just no. I don’t know where to start. No."

Honourable mentions

These are the couples that didn’t quite make the top five - but came close.

Fawlty Towers - Basil and Sybil (suggested by 5 Live listener Helen)

Listener Helen says: “They hated each other. That’s the beauty of it. Their love is real. It’s not even what she says, it’s what her face says, and every wife who has ever loved her husband truly has had some of those expressions. They’re the absolute best. She continues to put up with him. There are some episodes like the anniversary episode where you just know that he loves her too. And it’s hilarious and brings joy to other people.”

Scott says: “There’s something very British about finding each other’s flaws and having a go at each other. And that’s what love is!”

Once Upon a Time - Rumple and Belle (suggested by Jane)

Jane says: “I got to write a definitive romance episode that took them from the first time they met, through their first kiss in very classic romance style, and I haven’t gotten to do that with other couples - at least not on the big shows. After my episode they went on and hit a number of terrible roadblocks in which he terribly betrayed her trust… TV just continues, so you have to end up in the parts of the relationship where things get difficult, so you get to explore the cracks. TV doesn’t let you stop at the schmaltz. You don’t just get to end the story at the kiss.”

Parks and Recreation - Ben and Leslie (suggested by Scott)

Scott says: “Ben Wyatt was brought in in the third season as a person who is responsible for shaking up the town’s economy when it starts to have issues. Meanwhile Leslie is the deputy director of the parks department. As you see over the next couple of seasons, they start getting romantically involved and sort of court each other.

“But the real joy is that they wrote it in that you’re not allowed to have in-office relationships and it goes against everything Leslie stands for because she likes being a public servant. So you start to have this real conflict where you have to decide; does side with her work and keep everything above board or does she go for love. In the end, she goes for love.”

The West Wing - Josh and Donna (suggested by 5 Live listener No Context Being Human on Twitter)

Scott says: “I’m a big West Wing fan. They were courting each other but the moment they got together my heart was a bit ‘no, they shouldn’t have’."

Hayley says: “It was all about the unsure thing in the hallway.”

Jane says: “That’s the best part of romance. It’s very hard to carry it past that."

The Simpsons - Homer and Marge (suggested by listener Binky)

Nihal says: “Isn’t this the Basil and Sybil thing again? He’s horrendous to be married to. Marge is from a generation where divorce is such a taboo she couldn’t see herself divorcing him. Perhaps if she was from a younger generation she wouldn’t put up with him, because he’s a pretty poor role model isn’t he?”

Scott says: “The Simpsons has the ability to really strike you in the feels at the most unexpected moment. It could have been written just gag after gag after gag, but it’s the emotional gut punch when you least expect it. That’s good writing rather than just being funny.”

Nihal says: “It’s not a marriage to aspire though, is it?”

Ellen - Ellen and Laurie (suggested by Jane)

Jane says: “I love writing LGBT love stories. Often you’re telling a story that hasn’t been told before. After Ellen Degeneres came out on her sitcom we wrote a whole season of her out and dating and they hadn’t been told before. Will and Grace premiered that same season but they were sort of staying out of the whole dating ‘venue’ for a while. We were able to jump right in. We had to jump right in.

“We were also pre-social-media a little bit. It certainly wasn’t like it is now, so we were sheltered a little bit. We had tonnes and tonnes of attention, but if I think about if we were trying to do a show now that was under that much scrutiny it would collapse under the weight of Twitter. There was pressure from all sides, but we also felt free to tell the story we wanted to tell.”

Curb Your Enthusiasm - Larry and Cheryl (suggested by Hayley)

Hayley says: “He is cantankerous and rude. That’s why they get divorced because she is on a plane and it starts going down, and Larry is busy dealing with the Tivo repair guy. It’s an enduring madness even though she is almost too good to be with him because she is so nice, I really want him to be together.”

The Office (US) - Michael and Holly (suggested by Hayley)

Hayley says: “Everyone is going to say Jim and Pam in the Office, but I’m here for Michael Scott and Hayley Flax. Michael spent decades on Earth walking around making these bad jokes and he finally finds Holly whose jokes are just as bad and in a way she’s almost worse than Michael and I think it’s rare to find your specific kind of weirdo, and they did.”