Reality TV became a for-better-or-worse craze in the 2000s—a category best known for exploitative and voyeuristic shows that felt more like a cultural punishment than a TV genre. Sure, millions watched Laguna Beach, Survivor, and Big Brother—but did people really feel good about those viewing choices? Based on personal experience, no. (A reminder of the more offensive reality programs of the aughts: The Anna Nicole Show, Are You Hot? The Search for America’s Sexiest People, and The Swan, in which eight female “ugly ducklings” were transformed via cosmetic surgery.)

But as we exit the 2010s, it’s clear that the last decade saw the genre stretch beyond the voyeuristic train wrecks, brain-numbing competitions, and 30-minute makeovers—though those still amply exist—into series that genuinely empower and inspire audiences. Even some of the less lofty franchises have upped their games—leaning into the anthropological elements and relationship studies that captivate viewers and fan social media conversation. Ahead, a look back at the 10 standout series that defined reality TV, and helped it grow up.

The Great British Baking Show

The Great British Baking Show—which also made Vanity Fair’s Best TV Shows of the 2010s list—is a welcome respite from American competition series seemingly designed to maximize audience anxiety, with their formulaic, music-swelled buildups to commercial breaks and maddeningly long pauses before winners are declared. On TGBBS, the amateur bakers competing for the season’s title craft their trifles and lemon drizzle cakes from tents pitched in idyllic countrysides. The contestants are not the provocateurs and attention vampires found on other series, but the kind of mild-mannered mums and uncle-like figures you might expect to work with. Occasionally they’ll even pop over to help a fellow contestant—that is just how genial and cooperative the contestants on this program are. At its peak the show was event television: In 2014, 13.5 million viewers watched the season finale in the U.K. to see who won the show’s grand prize: a cake stand.

Sadly, the show’s winning recipe changed after its seventh season, when the production switched studios and drove away talent like beloved judge Mary Berry. But the original seasons of TGBBS—essentially television Xanax—remain preserved below for your streaming pleasure.

Stream on Netflix

RuPaul’s Drag Race

Is there any other place on television where contestants are asked to lip-sync for their lives, prove their devotion to chosen icon Mariah Carey, and perform cheekily titled parodies of Oscar-nominated films like Why It Gotta Be Black, Panther? and Good God Girl, Get Out? No. All hail RuPaul’s Drag Race, the Emmy-winning series that ushered a niche art form into the mainstream and a form of cathartic artistic expression to generations of audiences grappling with their own otherness. Vanity Fair’s cover star headlines the intensely watchable competition series, which merges camp with creativity and the kind of catty bon mots that seem special-engineered for eternal GIF-dom. But beneath the custom-created costumes and delicious challenges is substance—as contestants educate audiences on issues like homophobia and transphobia, depression, and HIV/AIDS by sharing their personal stories.

Stream on Hulu

90 Day Fiancé

So often the stakes are manufactured in reality series. But on TLC’s 90 Day Fiancé, which debuted in 2014, the stakes are incredibly real for the featured couples—all of which consist of an American citizen and a foreigner who has 90 days to marry said American (based on the K-1 visa process) or be deported. Many of the couples have spent minimal time together IRL after meeting on vacation or via online dating app—so when the couples reunite on U.S. soil and fast-track themselves into cohabitation, they are subjecting themselves to a kind of extreme social experiment. The series blends the romantic fantasy of marrying a sexy foreigner with buzzkill realities like culture shock, language barriers, judgmental family members, financial problems, and the growing disillusionment of a happily-ever-after that comes when you discover you are marching toward an altar with, essentially, a stranger. All this with a camera crew in tow.