Just watched the first episode. Possibly the best first episode of any show ever. Very few competitors. Maybe Game of Thrones
I'm not even sure it was the best first episode of a show to debut that week.
The first episode of "The Night Of" was pretty amazing. The rest of the series didn't totally live up to the excellence of the pilot, but overall it was solid.
As a whole, I loved "Stranger Things".
There was a discussion on Reddit back in March about which TV show had the best first episode. Looks like "Lost" got the most votes:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/4953uz/which_tv_show_has_the_strongest_first_episode/ .... There's a bunch of other rankings online and Lost is consistently listed in the Top 3. I think it was the most expensive pilot episode in history at the time. Twin Peaks, Breaking Bad, Arrested Development, Mad Men, and Sopranos seem to appear at the top of those "best pilot episode" lists often too.
"Game of Thrones" doesn't typically get praise for it's pilot. It introduced almost too many characters and initially just seemed like a typical fantasy show. I needed to pull up a family tree to understand what was going on. A lot of people didn't get totally hooked until around episode 9 when they realized the show was unique. I remember a lot of people having to say, "Stick with it... trust me... just stick with it. It gets great".
A little known fact...Chad Ford's annual tier article actually had the "Boardwalk Empire" pilot in a higher prospect tier in 2010 than the "Game of Thrones" pilot in 2011. Obviously, Thrones reigns surpreme now, but at the time scouts/GM's were very high on Boardwalk Empire and Ford's tier article reflects that consensus. If both were coming out at the same time, it's fair to speculate that the "Boardwalk Empire" pilot would be drafted ahead of the "Game of Thrones" pilot.