Well, it’s been another great year for television — unless you’re a corporate executive trying to make money on the hundreds, maybe thousands, of TV shows that were served to us this year. There are, after all, only so many eyeballs to go around so the profit margins are not what they used to be. I never thought I’d complain that there were too many good TV shows, but the overabundance is frustrating because not only are they spread out among a dozen streaming services, but even if I had the money to subscribe to them all, I’d never have the time to watch it all. Which is why there are highly praised shows missing on the list below.
This might have been the year that streaming fully conquered old-fashioned live TV. Out of the hundreds of episodes we watched last year, my wife and I only watched two “live,” in real time — the series finale of “Better Call Saul” and the season finale of “White Lotus.” And we only watched two shows that were broadcast on traditional network TV — “Abbott Elementary” (ABC) and “Saturday Night Live” (NBC).
The best trend of the year were intelligent shows that dove deep and unsparingly into the niche cultures of their creators — “Reservation Dogs,” “Letterkenny,” “South Side,” “Atlanta,” and “Derry Girls.” When you are making a show about your family, your friends, and yourself, it’s easy to poke fun while making broader social points.
The worst trend of the year was the staleness of once-fresh shows that hung on too long. Most of these were once-edgy series like “Killing Eve,” “Stranger Things” and “What We Do in the Shadows” that had nothing new to say after a while, relying instead on one improbable plot twist after another to extend the life of the series beyond its “sell-by” date. (I’m afraid this will eventually be the fate of “Succession,” which wasn’t on this year but which was verging on exhaustion at the end of its third season in 2021.) The great exception to this rule was “Better Call Saul,” which, from the beginning, had an end in sight and was able to plan the whole six-season arc in linear story-telling rather than relying on the back and forth dithering of a series that doesn’t know when the bosses will pull the plug.
Looking ahead to next year, the most exciting thing is that I have no idea what unheralded piece of content will fall out of the sky and amaze us, like “The Bear,” “The Old Man” and “Somebody Somewhere” did this year. And if that doesn’t happen, maybe I’ll finally start “Yellowstone.”
1. Reservation Dogs
This heartbreaking but subtly hilarious depiction of teenagers dealing with grief and the magical realism of growing up on an Indian reservation was actually better this year than last. There’s no self-pity on this show, just honesty about the universal hardship of being a teen anywhere and the specific problems of living in a subjugated culture that has nether fully embraced nor rejected mainstream American values.
2. Better Call Saul
A profoundly moral show, and a masterclass on how easy it is for a someone with a nominally good heart to “break bad” through years of irreversible small choices. Visually stunning in episode after episode, with sharp writing and the best TV performance in decade (from Rhea Seehorn), it was sometimes hard to watch knowing that we were eventually going to be offered up the death and destruction of characters we had come to care for. And, to be honest, it’s been hard to follow the plot over the years. Nevertheless, “Saul” turned out to be one of the great shows in TV history.
3. Letterkenny
The funniest and verbally filthiest show on television. This year we caught up on all ten seasons and absorbed many Canadian colloquialisms into our family language (“Pitter patter,” “That’s what I appreciates aboot you,” “degens” “figure it out!”) Letterkenny is a small town in the Canadian boonies where archetypes feud and literally fight with each other, but where the real damage is done through an onslaught of insulting, frequently sex-filled verbal puns. Weirdly, for all the drinking, fighting, carousing and swearing Letterkenny is also profoundly moral, with a strict sense of right and wrong.
4. The Chosen
I’ve watched a lot of dramatic productions of the Jesus story over the years but nothing as enthralling as this. It helps to know a little bit about the Bible because this series fills in the backstories of the major and minor figures we hear about in the Gospels, especially Simon Peter, Mary Magdalene, Matthew, Thomas, and Nicodemus. Importantly, the whole thing seems believable, especially the way Jesus is so human, displaying humor, self-awareness, kindness and wisdom. If you don’t know about this show you’re living in a bubble because it’s a national phenomenon.
5. White Lotus
A national phenomenon of an entirely different sort. (I have a feeling that the Venn Diagram of viewers who watched both “The Chosen” and “The White Lotus” is very narrow.) The second season of “The White Lotus” delivers all the satisfactions of the first, with an even juicier murder plot. It’s satisfying to know that the filthy rich, who can afford to spend a week at a place like this, are even more miserable than we are. The theme this year was sex — what people will do for it, what they’ll trade for it, and the costs of anything besides monogamous relations between married couples. One of the few shows we watched “live” this year.
6. Mythic Quest
Can I just point out that F. Murray Abraham, who won an Oscar in 1984 and then kind of disappeared for almost 40 years, has resurfaced to play surprisingly humorous parts in two hit TV series — “White Lotus” and “Mythic Quest”? The latter is an hilarious satire on a video game company run by the usual assortment of egomaniacs, incompetents, strivers, hangers-on and dreamers that populate corporate America on TV. And beneath the surface of those really funny jokes, the show is remarkably humane and insightful about human nature.
7. The Bear
I don’t know what an Italian Beef Sandwich was before, but after watching this show I’m dying to visit Chicago and have one. “The Bear” is an INTENSE inside look at the workings of a small family-owned restaurant. It’s so realistic that everyone I know who works in a restaurant can’t bear to watch it because of traumatic flashbacks. The latest in a long line of culinary dramas with food and chefs serving as metaphors for Art and Artist respectively. It’s a family drama, too, where the characters repress their feelings and dreams until they explode. I ate it up.
8. Welcome to Wrexham
There’s a lot of entrepreneurial genius in this show, which arrived in the aftermath of Ted Lasso but before the start of the World Cup. Rob McElhenney (“It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” and “Mythic Quest”) and Ryan Reynolds (“Green Lantern” and “The Proposal”) buy a down-on-their-luck soccer club in Wrexham, Wales and fund its improvements by selling this reality show/documentary to FX. There’s a lot here about what it means to be a sports fan, how a team can embody the heart of a community, and what it’s like to be a professional athlete, an owner, a long-suffering fan, or a general manager. After watching this series there’s nothing I want more in the world now than to attend a Wrexham match
9. Atlanta
“Atlanta” was the most ambitious and innovative series of the last six or seven years, mixing humor, pathos, surrealism and social commentary, sometimes with disconnected episodes that had nothing to do with the main characters, but everything to do with the Black experience in America. When it was good it was very very good but when it was bad it was horrid. Occasionally the experimentation with form and content seemed self-indulgent, but it was never less than thought-provoking. Donald Glover, the creator, is obviously some kind of genius, but he throws so many contradictory ideas on the screen that it’s hard to know what he really thinks beyond: “It’s complicated.”
10. Somebody Somewhere
A sweet and gentle look at a women who returns to her somewhat dysfunctional family in Small Town Nowhere following the death of her sister. Life is complicated, and not always what we wanted or expected, but we can get by with basic decency.
11. The Andy Warhol Diaries
This is a really great documentary about Andy Warhol. Excerpts from his diary are interspersed with interviews with people who knew him. In the end, this is not only a documentary about Warhol but also a fascinating look at the New York art and cultural scene during the sixties, seventies and eighties.
12. The Old Man
Like “The Bear,” “The Old Man” came out of nowhere on FX and gripped a certain class of TV watchers with its complex plot and open-wound drama. This is a show about a mythical CIA, a former agent, a deputy director, a daughter, an Afghan freedom fighter and a lot of killing. Initially gripping, it does go a bit off the rails at the end of the season with the convoluted twists and counter-twists, but it still ended up being seven episodes of gripping TV.
13. The Crown
I was initially put off by Imelda Staunton but quickly came to think she’s the best QEII yet. “The Crown” always has a juicy premise — purportedly exposing the inner workings of the British royal family. But I’d like it better if it didn’t depend quite so much on invented suppositional events, like, say, Charles’s fictitious scheme to depose his mummy. Although beautifully filmed as usual, this season was not as much fun because the Charles/Diana story is so sordid and tragic. (The major surprise is that boring old John Major is acknowledged as a very good PM?)
14. Winning Time
A very entertaining account of the rise of the Lakers and the NBA itself in the 1980s. This suffers more from made-it-up-itis than even “The Crown,” but it’s fun nevertheless, probably because it takes itself less seriously.
15. Derry Girls
“Derry Girls” is a teen comedy about adolescence in Northern Ireland during the “Troubles” in the 1980s. I didn’t think I wanted or needed to see another season, given that — way before COVID — Season 2 had ended so satisfactorily. And while all the characters have now aged out as believable teens, this season was genuinely funny and affecting.
16. Only Murders in the Building
An extremely light and fluffy show that’s mildly interesting and not very challenging but still a pleasant way to pass the time. I’ve already forgotten who committed the murder in the most recent season, but does that really matter? The real pleasure is watching Steve Martin, Martin Short, Selena Gomez and the Upper West Side interact with each other.
17. Hacks
“Hacks” is another of those unheralded gems on HBO Max. with great performances by Jean Smart (“Designing Women”) as a hacky Las Vegas comedian in the Joan Rivers mode and Hannah Einbinder (aka Lorraine Newman’s daughter) as a down-and-out younger writer who thinks she’s too good to be churning out one-liners. You will not be surprised to learn that they each learn something from the other.
18. Stranger Things
The best moment of the TV season was the sequence featuring a Kate Bush song (“Running Up that Hill”) playing in the background as one of the characters literally hovered between this world and the next. The worst moment of the year occurred five minutes before the end of the final episode when it became clear that this season wasn’t going to be the final one after all. (I also enjoyed the Russians being portrayed as the bad guys, which those commies definitely were.) Going for another season is just a money grab by everyone concerned, given that the series has run out of ideas. Still, the action is exciting, although it does occasionally strain credibility, and being back in the 80’s is definitely fun.
19. Wednesday
As mash-up of “Stranger Things,” “Harry Potter,” “Twilight: and “Buffy The Vampire Slayer,” and based on the Adams Family’s sulky teen daughter. Wednesday is sent to an American Hogwarts knock-off, where she has to deal of the angsty teen emotions of her classmates, none of which she seems to experience herself. Normally, someone who can’t experience emotions is considered a psychopath, and sure enough Wednesday’s inability to trust is inadvertently responsible for the season’s high body count. But she does “grow” throughout the season so I guess it makes sense that she’s not the one sent to an institution in the final episode. The show is definitely fun, although I gather I am way too old to be in its target demographic.
20. South Side
“South Side,” about the antics of the South Side of Chicago, is flat out hilarious, with everyone on the make or the take. Aggressively anti-woke, “South Side” nevertheless treats its characters with respect. They have agency and real human emotions and motivations. I would rate this higher except there’s really no one to root for, making it hard to feel invested.
21. Abbott Elementary
“Abbott Elementary” is a throwback. Its a show on a real televisions network — ABC — that’s actually decent. The setting is a public elementary school in Philadelphia, with the young idealistic teachers pitted against the grizzled veterans. Warm and sweet and occasionally funny.
22. The Last Movie Stars
Ethan Hawke was hired to do a documentary about Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward based on unpublished interviews that the great Star had made when planning to write a memoir. Although Newman subsequently destroyed the tapes, transcripts somehow emerged and Hawke hired actors to impersonate the voiceovers of the stars and their family and friends. The documentary is maybe a little long but nevertheless fascinating. It’s a warts-and-all portrayal of a famous couple who seemed to have a perfect marriage but definitely didn’t.
23. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Like “Stranger Things,” there’s no reason to expand this season for another year, but that’s where we ended up. It’s pleasant to watch, but the tics of these fast-talking wisecracking caricatures are starting to wear thin. Love the Sixties milieu, though.
24. Bridgerton
Beautiful mind candy. Just turn it on and look at all all the pretty characters and don’t think too hard about the plot. It’s not really that interesting, clever, or hard to figure out, but just good enough that you want to see how it resolves itself. And of course there’s all that sex.
25. Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy
Talk about food and travel porn! It’s almost painful to watch this show because the food looks so delicious and the locations so spectacular, that I feel sad knowing I’ll never experience either.
26. Killing Eve
Another series that lasted about a season too long. This was one of the most interesting and original series for a while, with great acting and a gripping premise, but the extremely convoluted plot eventually got tiresome and all the gruesomely graphic murders started to make me queasy.
27. Star Struck
I watched this series in January and had to look up what it was all about, which is this: a movie star unexpectedly falls in love when a very ordinary woman and no one can quite believe it. HER!!!??? The show is British, and consequently understated and reasonably witty. I remember liking it when I watched it but obviously it didn’t make a big impression.
28. We Are Lady Parts
Four young London-based Muslim women find solidarity by performing in a punk band while trying to fit into their own culture. The characters rang from devout to rebellious and as in most sitcoms, they are so different that they’d never be friends in real life. Despite the seemingly inventive premise, “Lady Parts” is really a traditional comedy with fairly obvious jokes and plot lines. A nice amusing show, but not deep.
29. What We Do In the Shadows
“What We Do In The Shadows,” has been one of the most hilarious and inventive shows over the past few years, featuring four clueless vampires living in a creepy house on Staten Island. But the schtick, which involves casual heartlessness about the way so many victims die, now seems tired and even sour. They should have quit after three seasons.
30. Saturday Night Live
Regrettably, a flat year. The cast lacks star power and do we still need so many skits about Donald Trump? You’d never know someone else was president. I’m sure Lorne Michaels is desperately holding onto the show so he can make it to the 50th anniversary in two years, but everything needs to be sharper and funnier if that’s going to happen.
Really!!? 