All the ‘Charlie’s Angels’ Films & TV Shows, Ranked

2026 is a big year for Charlie’s Angels: the 1976 series will be celebrating its 50th anniversary in September, and beginning on January 4, 2026, MeTV will air “Aaron Spelling Sundays,” a weekly programming block that includes the secret operatives of the Charlie Townsend Agency.

That original Charlie’s Angels started a franchise that hit the big screen nearly a quarter-century after the first series ended, and is still popular a half-century later. And now, we’re taking on a mission of our own: ranking that TV show among the remakes and reboots that came later. Here’s how we’d arrange those titles, starting with the worst.

5 Charlie’s Angels (2011)

Anyone remember this one? Television producers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar resurrected the Superman and Addams Family franchises with the prequel series Smallville and Wednesday, respectively, but their Charlie’s Angels remake was less than angelic. ABC canceled the show after only four episodes, and pulled it off the airwaves after seven.

The TV show’s failure wasn’t for lack of talent or looks — Annie Ilonzeh, Minka Kelly, and Rachael Taylor played the crimefighting trio, while Ramón Rodríguez played Bosley and Victor Garber voiced Charlie — but rather, we’d say, for unoriginality. Save for the nostalgic premise, 2011’s Charlie’s Angels could have been any of the brawn-over-brains action dramas of 2010s-era TV. It wasn’t even campy fun!

4 Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (2003)

(c) Columbia/courtesy Everett Collection

After the success of the 2000 Charlie’s Angels film — more on that below — filmmaker McG and stars Cameron Diaz, Lucy Liu, and Drew Barrymore re-upped for a sequel that, as a matter of fact, did equally well at the box office. As our heroines try to safeguard a witness protection database, they meet a fallen angel, played by Demi Moore, making a return to the screen.

The sequel’s star-studded cast also included cameo actors Carrie Fisher, Bruce Willis, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Pink, Eve, and original Charlie’s Angels star Jaclyn Smith, once again playing Kelly Garrett. The sprawling cast and the high-octane set pieces — A motocross race! A surfing showdown! A wrestling match! A Hollywood film premiere! — means that the hodgepodge plot merely services the spectacle. But you won’t catch us complaining!

3 Charlie’s Angels (2000)

Everett Collection

Or should we call it “Independent Women, Part I”? Yes, buoyed by a seminal Destiny’s Child single, the franchise’s first big-screen outing did the original Charlie’s Angels justice. As with its sequel, the plot is silly, the camera never misses an opportunity to indulge the male gaze, and the fight scenes defy almost every law of physics.

But there’s also a lot of fun to be had here, thanks to the cast. Diaz, Liu, and Barrymore make perfect Angels; Sam Rockwell, Kelly Lynch, Tim Curry, and Crispin Glover ham it up in villain roles; and Bill Murray, Matt LeBlanc, Tom Green, and Luke Wilson yuk it up as sidekicks. (We’re only sorry we didn’t get more of T.J. Hooker: The Movie, depicted as in-flight entertainment in the opening scene.)

2 Charlie’s Angels (2019)

Merie Weismiller Wallace / © Columbia / courtesy Everett Collection

Nearly two decades after the first Charlie’s Angel movie, Columbia Pictures reintroduced the franchise to a new generation, with Elizabeth Banks both writing and directing this reboot. In this story, the Angels — now played by Kristen Stewart, Naomi Scott, and Ella Balinska — are on the trail of a dangerous technology and determining which of several Bosleys they can trust.

Thanks to Banks’ screenplay and direction, this latest Charlie’s Angels is more feminist than its predecessors — prioritizing spycraft over sexualization — and even put the previous films and the original TV show squarely in its canon. Plus, this production gave Stewart a chance to embody her real-life queerness in a mainstream Hollywood movie. Moviegoers might not have flocked to the theater for these Angels, but those who didn’t missed out.

1 Charlie’s Angels (1976-1981)

Everett Collection

Of course the original Charlie’s Angels, the TV show that kicked off the franchise, is our pick for No. 1. Created by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts and originally starring Smith alongside Kate Jackson and Farrah Fawcett — with Cheryl Ladd, Shelley Hack, and Tanya Roberts joining the cast later — this ABC action drama provided the kind of small-screen thrills that executive producer Aaron Spelling was known for.

Granted, this Charlie’s Angels was an exemplar of ABC’s lascivious “jiggle television” era, but while they were running around with their feathered hair, diaphanous outfits, and implied bra-lessness, the Angels were also leading an “effervescent action-adventure showing smart, bold women working side by side in fruitful collaboration,” as cultural critic Camille Paglia wrote for The Hollywood Reporter in 2015. And thanks to DVDs and syndicated reruns, we’ll be saying “Hello, Angels” for years to come!

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