The Most Expensive Television Shows of All Time, Ranked

15. The Alienist – $7.5 Million per Episode

A prestige period drama and a true-crime series were cleverly combined in TNT's 2018 series The Alienist. It takes the police procedural back to its "roots" by setting it in 1980s Manhattan. You see, at that point, the true-crime wave had fully landed, and TNT was willing to invest dollars in the series. It cost The Alienist $7.5 million per episode to recreate 1890s Manhattan, like many expensive shows. Still, most of the money went to Daniel Brühl, Luke Evans, and Dakota Fanning. A second series will debut in 2020, so it must have paid off.