- Pillowpants
- Aug 5, 2006
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Welcome to the list by that guy who never shuts up in Couch Chat. I came very close to equalling the most shows I’ve watched in a year this time - over 180, only trailing 2019 by one or two. When you watch and love this much, it’s impossible to list everything you actually liked without just wasting everyone’s time, but there’s definitely so many more shows that deserve shoutouts, from Andor to Heartstopper, Winning Time to Wrexham, Taskmaster to We Own This City to Harley Quinn to…..well, you get it. First here’s the bottom half of my top 50:
50. The Outlaws (BBC One)
49. Welcome to Flatch (FOX)
48. The Boys (Prime Video)
47. Bad Sisters (Apple TV+)
46. The Righteous Gemstones (HBO)
45. House of the Dragon (HBO Max)
44. Babylon Berlin (Sky One Germany)
43. Russia 1985-1999: TraumaZone (BBC iPlayer)
42. The Patient (FX on Hulu)
41. Never Have I Ever (Netflix)
40. Avenue 5 (HBO)
39. Cunk On Earth (BBC Two)
38. Undone (Prime Video)
37. Russian Doll (Netflix)
36. I Love That For You (Showtime)
35. Peacemaker (HBO Max)
34. Servant (Apple TV+)
33. Sort Of (CBC)
32. Euphoria (HBO)
31. Stranger Things (Netflix)
30. The Afterparty (Apple TV+)
29. P-Valley (Starz)
28. Documentary Now! (IFC)
27. Pachinko (Apple TV+)
26. Somebody Somewhere (HBO)
Now where I start to write some poo poo:
25. Rap Sh!t (HBO Max)
Issa’s Rae’s follow-up to Insecure was in my opinion almost immediately superior, with a far more interesting concept and a fantastic use of social media UI in its storytelling.
24. Hacks (HBO Max)
One of 2021’s best new shows made its already thorny as heck central relationship even rockier while continuing to be a great examination of aging in the comedy scene and generational divides.
23. Only Murders in the Building (Hulu)
The plotting may have been messier than in the first season, but the comedy and interplay between the leads was as charming as ever, and the guest stars were incredible.
22. Ghosts (CBS)
Significantly funnier than the British original, with a great cast who bounce off each other wonderfully.
21. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Paramount+)
The best Star Trek has ever been, in my opinion. Excellent episodic storytelling and an extremely loveable crew. I hope it runs for a long time.
20. Players (Paramount+)
I have no interest in League of Legends, but the character work in this show (from the American Vandal creators) is genuinely fascinating, and it lovingly mocks the eSports scene perfectly.
19. Mo (Netflix)
I like Ramy but oh boy did Ramy’s friend top him hard with this one. A hilarious and sobering look at the life of a Palestinian refugee in Texas, and one of the best Netflix originals in ages.
18. What We Do in the Shadows (FX)
Wasn’t a big fan of the third season but OH BOY did I find this one to be a huge return to form. Gave us many of 2022’s biggest laughs while also having, to me, the most interesting storylines to date. Hey, Laszlo, guess what? This show rules.
17. Primal (Adult Swim)
Genndy Tartakovsky is simply a master of animation, and this season improved on an already killer first, with some big risks and longer-form storytelling all of which paid off in spades.
16. Ziwe (Showtime)
The best and funniest talk show on the air. Ziwe’s confrontational style - a mix between a hilarious parody of black rage, and, you know, actual justified black rage - is endlessly entertaining, and it’s always a blast to see how each guest reacts.
15. Better Things (FX)
A perfect farewell to easily the most underrated show that has made my list every single year and yet none of you ever watch it smh. So many arcs were brought to near-perfect conclusions, and I still cannot think of a better depiction of motherhood.
14. Search Party (HBO Max)
Even for a show that switched genres every season, it was impossible to predict just how batshit they took things in the final episodes. A fantastic satire with incredible guest turns.
13. A League of Their Own (Prime Video)
Despite the fact it’s a little more trite than I prefer my dramas, this won me over completely thanks to a perfect tone and exceptional cast. D’Arcy Carden in this show redefines luminescent.
12. Abbott Elementary (ABC)
The best network sitcom in years. The focus on an underfunded public school adds enough of a spin on the Office/Parks formula to make it feel fresh, and it has a great set of characters portrayed by a brilliant cast. Quinta Thee Brunson!!!!!
11. The White Lotus (HBO)
While this season may not have quite reached the giddying heights of the first, it was still hugely successful, an absorbing and wild battle of the sexes with some of the year’s funniest moments.
and now the list! my favourite shows of a very very good year for TV. each one of these, for me, did something truly special that helped it stand out in such a crowded market, and I hope I can encourage you to check out some of the deeper cuts.
10. High School (Amazon Freevee)
Tegan & Sara are musicians I admire more than enjoy - I really like The Con, but have never fully gotten into any of their other albums - but this show is such a superb and subdued look at a queer coming-of-age story. The twins give absolutely incredible, lived-in performances, and their caregivers are played with such wonderful warmth by Cobie Smulders and Kyle Bornheimer. Clea DuVall has a bright future as a director.
09. Irma Vep (HBO)
This was a big question mark for me for the year. Olivier Assayas, a director I like but don’t love, making a miniseries out of his 1995 movie - which is good, but not great - starring Alicia Vikander, an actress I’ve found decent, but never superlative. Luckily, this was a total joy - a hilarious and sharp satire on the state of modern cinema, a great character piece, and a fascinating look inside Assayas’ mind as he blends the original movie and his life since, particularly his marriage and divorce to its star Maggie Cheung. And Vikander feels so free in a role in a way I’ve never seen from her before, giving one of the best performances of the year. Silly, sexy, thoughtful, and surprisingly unpretentious - we’ve have it all!
08. Fleishman is in Trouble (FX on Hulu)
I was a huge fan of Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s debut novel when it hit shelves in 2019, and she adapted it just about as well as possible here. Purportedly the story of a doctor having to stop his quest to lay pipe all over Manhattan after his mean ex-wife abandons him and their kids, this is the jumping-off point for so many thoughtful ruminations on the trap of domesticity, the unfairness of gender expectations, and our ability to make ourselves the hero of our own story no matter the evidence to the contrary. The cast was absolutely perfect - special shoutout to Claire Danes and Lizzy Caplan (if this is why she couldn’t do the Party Down reboot, I’m sorry, but it was loving worth it) - and it’s a very successful example of adapting a book to screen, with an excellent visual style courtesy of the best work Valerie Faris & Jonathan Dayton have done since Little Miss Sunshine which no way that movie was not half my lifetime ago now ABSOLUTELY gently caress OFF
07. Reservation Dogs (FX on Hulu)
This remains very much a show of two halves for me. Some of the episodes were very similar to season 1, where I enjoyed them well enough, but didn’t quite get the praise lavished upon them. The rooftop episode and the group home episode are just not that interesting I’m sorry. But when there’s a great episode - and the majority of this season was great - it is PHENOMENAL, and this season’s lean into the short story style meant so many different characters and corners of this world got their moment in the sun. Every character down to the smallest bit part feels so well-realised, and only a handful of other shows can pinball between hilarious and heartbreaking with such panache. If season 3 continues in this vein, it could easily find itself topping my list.
06. The Rehearsal (HBO)
Nathan Fielder is one of the most fascinating and idiosyncratic people working in any creative field today, but absolutely nothing could have prepared us for this project. The initial concept - get people to rehearse moments in their life they’re anxious about in a fully controlled environment - is already something remarkably batshit, and that first episode was funny and bizarre enough to earn the show a place on this top 10 alone. But what truly elevates it to masterpiece-level is the overarching storyline that begins in the second episode, with Fielder successfully pivoting to see his craziest idea through to the bitter end. This show resembles nothing more than my absolute favourite movie, Synecdoche, New York, in its obsession with control and blending of performance and reality, and the mystery of how much of what Fielder is doing falls on either side will be a topic of discussion for years.
05. The Bear (Hulu)
This show is absolutely electric. It’s lightning in a bottle. I originally dismissed it because the premise - guy from the world of fine dining returns home to run his dead brother’s sandwich shop - felt a little cliched, and I associated Jeremy Allen White in Chicago too much with Shameless, The Show That Would Not loving End. Thanks to some positive words from goons, I ended up getting back to it right before it blew up, and I couldn’t be happier that I did.
I’ve never worked in a kitchen but I have had a couple of kitchen-adjacent jobs, and the depiction of that environment is so on the money, capturing the intensity and stress perfectly. The filmmaking is kinetic and frantic, suiting the material to a T and culminating in an instant classic one-take episode that I will never forget. Every character is a delight (even, or especially, when they’re being huge pieces of poo poo), but the core trio of Carmen, Sydney, and Richie are just incredible, each one of them one of the best characters and performances in a stacked year. Every single moment of this show is just so beautifully-realised - in a very short time its world felt more alive than most shows can manage over multiple seasons. In the end, this show actually is like a good beef sandwich - it’s not highbrow, but it is so well-made on every single level that it remains one of the most satisfying experiences of its kind you can have.
04. Barry (HBO)
The second season of Barry - released all the way back in 2019, jesus! - was incredible, but one episode stood out as especially great. Fans will know that this was “ronny/lily”, a surreal and broad episode that could have easily broken the show had it not been operating on such a high level. This season didn’t have anything like that, but the biggest compliment I can give it is that it took the surreal, unsettling feeling that permeated that episode, and spread it out across an entire season, bringing an already superb show to new heights.
This season was still funny as hell, but oh man, it is dark, dark, dark. If season 4 does end up the last, this is definitely that third quarter of the Dan Harmon circle, bringing each character face-to-face with the trauma and demons inside. Slowly but surely Bill Hader has become one of the best filmmakers working in the TV space, with the use of wide shots and long takes - inspired not by the usual suspects, but by European directors like personal fave Roy Andersson - absolutely unparalleled. Every main cast member is giving very likely their best performance ever - Hader and Sarah Goldberg, of course, but even Hollywood mainstays like Henry Winkler and Stephen Root are reaching new heights. And the season was just stuffed with fantastic lines and scenes, including one of the best chase scenes I’ve seen in years. Every season of this show has improved so dramatically against all odds, and I am so excited to see what Hader and co bring to the table next.
03. Severance (Apple TV+)
If there’s one thing I’ve learned from over ten years of these polls, it’s that goons love the shiny new thing. This has resulted in placements both good - is anyone going to argue that Chernobyl didn’t deserve the top spot in 2019? - and extremely sus - if you know, you know - but overall is a great thing that hopefully leads more people to check out deserving new shows. If the lists posted so far are any indication, Severance has a great chance of hitting that top spot this year, and it honestly deserves it. This isn’t just the best TV debut of the year, but one of the best first seasons ever made, excelling on every possible level and immediately becoming the best show on the best streaming service of the decade so far and presenting an exciting future for lead director.....Ben Stiller??
Starting off with an intriguing original sci-fi concept - employees of a corporation undergo a procedure to separate their work and non-work memories, leading to essentially two selves, one for leisure and one who never leaves the office - Severance instantly proved it was something special with incredible characters, a strong sense of humour, a unique visual style, and an enigmatic tone, while the twists and reveals just kept coming. On a pure psychological thriller level, I think it’s one of the best shows in years, but what makes it truly worthy of the acclaim is the excellent character work underlying everything, from the examination of grief to the little rebellions to one of the most tender love stories of the year. This show was an absolute triumph in every way, and were it not for two of the best shows of all time ending on a high this year, it would be number one with a bullet. But let’s talk about those two shows.
02. Better Call Saul (AMC)
Not having this at the top feels so, so weird. I have swapped the top two in my mind probably close to fifty times, and eventually had to just tell myself to shut up and write. In my mind, they are tied. So here’s the first of those shows - the final season of the best part of the most acclaimed television universe of the past 15 years. Weirdly, I find this one of the hardest to write about, because what can I say? With season 5, it had already fully cemented itself as the best show on TV and better than its predecessor. This year, it brought itself to just about the best possible conclusion I can imagine.
It is so bizarre to look back and think that Gilligan, Gould, and co almost had Jimmy’s transformation occur at the end of that messy, confused first season. Reversing that decision - and changing the transformation into a long, slow process - was the smartest thing they did the whole show, with the scenes directly before and after the change the best TV moment of the year, the perfect culmination of the show up until then. This first part of the season, covering the continuing adventures of Jimmy, Kim, and our cartel buddies, was as gorgeous and tense and funny as anything the show had given us since. The second part had a much harder job, finishing off not just the story of Jimmy and Kim, but an entire universe, and the fact it managed to do so so well without taking away from the core emotional arc, or falling into fanservice, is commendable. And where Breaking Bad stumbled slightly in its closing episodes, Saul absolutely soars, giving us one of the most satisfying finales ever. Bob Odenkirk continued to top himself with his raw open wound of a performance, while Rhea Seehorn just, gave the best performance on TV. Again. Like every year this show has aired. This was the perfect ending to one of the best shows ever made and an absolutely phenomenal season. How on earth do you top that??
01. Atlanta (FX)
Well, you air two phenomenal seasons, that’s how.
In the end, that was the defining factor in the placement of the top two. Donald Glover’s Afro-surrealist masterpiece returned after a longer break than most shows - literally four full years, thanks in part to shooting on location all over Europe making it harder to resume production post-COVID - and the break had given them time to write not just the third but also the fourth and final season, which were shot together and released in the Spring and Autumn. The seasons are wildly different, but also fit together the same way seasons 1 and 2 did to create a show of two halves - the first was about the struggle and the hustle, while this half is frequently a mediation on fame and success. I’m gonna talk about each season separately.
Season 3 will always be remembered as the outlier and “controversial” season, not just for its European setting but for devoting almost half of the episodes to one-off stories without our regular cast, all dealing with the general theme of “the curse of whiteness”. I absolutely understand people’s frustration - this is one of the best sets of characters in any show, and not getting as much of them as usual did hurt a bit. But upon rewatch, free from the burden of expectation, I realised that these episodes are all great in their own way, from the haunting Three Slaps to the utterly absurd satire of Rich Wigga, Poor Wigga. Much better than the sub-Twilight Zone comparisons people make. But the episodes dealing with the European tour are still the highlight - the characters remain as incredible as ever, and their journey through so many different kinds of racism is consistently engaging, whether it’s Darius dealing with gentrification, Earn struggling with The Netherlands’ blackface obsession, or a tripping Alfred learning some hard truths from the best TV guest star of the year. This isn’t the best Atlanta season, but I also don’t think it’s the worst, and this season alone would have earned it probably the third or fourth place spot.
Season 4 is Atlanta but even more. Returning back to the titular city, this season is similar to the first two, but even better - funnier, more emotionally resonant, more visually stunning, and even more daring. The premiere alone is one of the funniest and weirdest TV episodes of the decade so far, and almost every other episode that followed met that standard in its own way. Atlanta is the master of the collection of short stories style of show I mentioned way back in my Rez Dogs blurb, and in this season alone we got a gut-bustingly hilarious Tyler Perry deconstruction, an unnerving look at rural life, a tender and beautiful family outing, a different and much more raucous family outing, and a stirring examination of pettiness. And this time, the one episode we spend away from the main cast might be the best one - a fake documentary on the production of “the blackest movie ever made” (if you don’t already know, I don’t know how you would guess) that became a classic within seconds of airing. Every single episode of this season would have been a highlight of any other season, and I haven’t even spoken about the finale, which as with Saul was pretty much the best possible finale for this particular show. And this one had the better final shot.
Just one of these seasons would have been enough to propel this show well into the top five, but both together? Nothing else stood a chance. I’ve been a fan of Donald Glover since I was 18 years old (32 now, for reference) and my new University friends showed me Derrick Comedy sketches on YouTube. I started watching Community when it premiered because of Donald Glover, and following his success has been a pleasure, but it was only with Atlanta that I felt he had truly created something special, and that it managed to stay so funny, beautiful, and surprising throughout - especially considering the long, long break - and then go out on a high, is nothing short of a miracle. This is as good as TV gets.
I’d be interested to see your whole list
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Dec 31, 2022 18:34
