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10) Winning Time I'm not a huge basketball fan, but Winning Time makes me wish I was. Unfortunately there's a time zone difference there that makes it impossible for me to watch any games live, but the pang remains, and between both The Last Dance and this, I feel like I have reached a greater understanding of what makes this game so much more appealing to me than other sports. Generally speaking, it's just a much more personal game, the natural charisma of the best players radiates off the court, and VISUALLY it's just beautiful and pleasant to look at in a way that other sports aren't. Winning Time is as much a period piece as it is about basketball, and although this often means that the styles and situations are greatly exaggerated, Winning Time leans into it so much harder than it needed to. It is a show that has gotten much criticism from the people who are actually in it WRT inaccuracies and villanization, etc. This is something I usually find bothersome about biopics in general, but Winning Time manages to somewhat circumvent this by being as heavily stylized as it is - everyone and everything is turned up to 11 all the time, it looks fantastic, it's insanely fast-paced, everyone in it is amazing - it makes a great case for how compelling it can be for humans to create narratives out of something that is as inherently anti-narrative as winning or losing a sports game. I don't know enough about NBA history to tie any of this into any real context, but it is legit exciting to watch, and everything is so larger than life that it's hard to forget that you should just take everything with a grain of salt and focus on how much fun you're having.  9) The Sandman I've been an appreciator of Neil Gaiman's works for many, many years, and have been of the belief that Sandman was largely unfilmable simply because its strengths don't really translate that well across mediums. After watching the first season of the Netflix production, I'm still not sure if I've changed my mind about that, but I am very glad that they made the attempt in any case. I was surprised by how closely the show stuck to the smaller details, like Dream's former lover who is now stuck in hell, as well as the entire adaptation of The Sound of Her Wings and Men of Good Fortune which was the highlight of the season for me - so well-translated to the screen and so full of the kind of emotion and otherworldly themes that the comic excelled at portraying. Unfortunately the whole season is not quite as strong as that episode, but the baseline is still quite high - my only real complaint is that visually it can be quite underwhelming with a lot of unfortunate CGI and green screen fuckery. Of the recent Gaiman adaptations such as Good Omens and American Gods, this one looks like the cheapest production, which is somewhat unfortunate as it is probably the one that needs the budget the most. Hopefully it is something that they can improve on in the (finally announced) second season, but I still loved my time with this show, despite the unevenness. Mostly importantly, the casting of every character is absolutely brilliant, and the show has more than convinced me that the people in charge know what they are doing and that they genuinely care about the original work, which is definitely not always a certainty.  8) Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Even as a big fan of the video game, I really wasn't expecting much from a Netflix tie-in anime that wouldn't even come out until almost two years after the game's launch. But credit where credit is due - they nailed it, and Edgerunners is the rare work that actually strengthens the appeal of its source material for me. It does such a good job of highlighting the strengths of the art and sound design of Cyberpunk, and although it doesn't tell a particularly original story, it does feel like a better introduction to the universe of Cyberpunk than the game was, as well as a most honest depiction of the core themes that the original RPG established some 40 years ago. Studio Trigger's absurd and distorted animation style is also a great fit for this universe, and it is clear from the getgo that the collaboration between the studios was very fruitful - you can recognize landmarks from the game/setting, most of the different visual and aural flourishes from the game also appear in here, right down to extremely minute things like UI design. There's so much detail packed into every shot and it just looks constantly gorgeous. As a whole, Edgerunners is definitely a case of style over substance for me, but I think it also makes a great case for how sometimes style can BE substance. You could easily tell the exact same story here with much less engaging visuals and atmosphere and you'd end up with something like the Netflix seasons of Ghost in the Shell or that Blade Runner anime that no one in the world watched. But thankfully that is not the case, and Edgerunners manages to showcase an absolute spectacle full of monstrous, but oddly endearing characters that are just trying to get by in a truly horrible world.  7) We Own This City The Wire is a great show, don't want to start this off by just talking about The Wire constantly, but it is somewhat unavoidable considering the pedigree behind We Own This City. The key difference here, however, is that We Own This City is based on entirely true events, and that does give the show a very different vibe from The Wire - especially when they bring in real footage, real people, real news stories that are still entirely fresh in your mind because this poo poo all just happened a few years ago. We haven't really had many shows that dissected the police as hard as this show does, especially in the wake of Black Lives Matter and the ever increasing inhumanity of the police force as their crimes continue to get so much more flagrant and cartoonishly evil. This prevalent systemic attitude of "gently caress you, got mine" is perfectly illustrated in Jon Bernthal's Wayne Jenkins as well as Daniel Hersl, who are true specimens of pure corruption. On the other side we have Jamie Hector as Sean Suiter, who imbues the ideal of a skilled cop who wants to do good but is completely unable to do so because of the systemic factors surrounding the politics of the force and the ever-expanding gulf between cops and regular people. The show does falter a few times, especially with regard to Wunmi Mosaku's civil rights' attorney, who comes off as somewhat ignorant and surprised at how bad things actually are, even though she by all rights shouldn't be. The worst tendencies of this comes to bear when she interviews a retired detective who goes on a giant speech about how much better everything was before the war on drugs that feels like it is read straight from a script that came out of the writer's personal blog. It's not even that it's necessarily wrong, but it also ignores the fact that none of this is new and we can't just gloss over how bad things used to be just because they're WAY worse now. Nevertheless, the show is intensely gripping, in huge part due to Jon Bernthal's excellent performance. It's almost a shame that it's a limited series, because although you can say a lot of things about how lib-brained David Simon can be at times, the way he constructs and presents a show like this is so far beyond any other type of crime procedural out there, and I wish we could have a show like this on the screen every single year just to continually remind us in the most well-executed way possible that ACAB.  6) Pantheon The second animated cyberpunk show on this list, which is something of a huge whiplash compared to Edgerunners, but nevertheless extremely good. There are many similarities between last year's excellent Invincible and Pantheon, in that they are both full 45-60 minute episode length prestige animated shows, and they are quite visually similar as well. I don't think there's any studio overlap there, but I'm glad that more shows like this are being made, because there are some things that just work better in animation than in live action, and I'd argue that this quite ambitious, religiously themed cyberspace conspiracy thriller is one of them. Almost immediately, Pantheon leaps beyond the typical sci-fi theme of "What if AIs were human?" into "What if AIs were gods?" and it evokes one of my favourite lesser known comics: Supergod by the now disgraced Warren Ellis - a story about how humanity discovers physical manifestations of gods and how that leads to the entire world entering into a theistic arms race of each nation wielding or creating their own god as if it was a nuclear device. Pantheon eventually goes in a similar direction, but the AIs themselves are a much more core part of the narrative, and it was a very smart move to emphasize that they all still have deep connections to their human lives. Pantheon ends up operating on a global scale that greatly belies its rather timid beginnings of a high school girl mourning her dead father. The series has a star-studded cast of voice actors, but the show also just lets them do relatively normal voices, so most of the cast ends up being unrecognizable - which is both refreshing and a somewhat odd choice, considering it must've been very expensive, and I don't get the sense that ANYONE in the world watched this show whatsoever - because who the gently caress even knows about any AMC+ originals. But I loved it - it has a full array of very strong character arcs that feel pretty nuanced considering how much they're intertwined with absurd conspiracies. Apparently a second season has been greenlit, but it wouldn't be the first time this year an already greenlit second season was cancelled on AMC+, assuming it happens. I'm preparing for the worst here, but either way I think the first season is very solid as a stand-alone story that leaves the door open for something greater in the future. I hope we'll see it happen.  5) Black Bird I initially began watching this because the premise was so similar to the now-cancelled Mindhunter - it was essentially pitched to me as a pseudo-successor, a show about profiling serial killers. Well, although it is serial killer themed, that is also a far cry from what the show actually is - which is a pretty intimate story about a somewhat small-time criminal looking into a mirror and seeing the absolute darkest universe version of himself in Larry Hall, unquestionably the star of the show. I had only seen Paul Walter Hauser in Cobra Kai of all things before checking out Black Bird - nothing could have prepared me for the absolute heights of acting that this guy is capable of. The whole show revolves around the character of Larry Hall, and it would pretty much all fall apart if he wasn't as good as he is. Although it is based on a true story, Hauser is so good at masquerading his true nature that you never quite know if this guy is locked up by accident or if he actually did the things he is accused of. Much like the main character of James Keene, you start to build a rapport with him - he is clearly extremely mentally unwell and most likely a horrible person, but there are things you can empathize with in his life, where you ever so slightly begin to think that you understand him and his circumstances. The show also lets you experience detailed looks into his past, directly showing events that let you form natural connections in your brain and go "oh, this is why this man is the way he is". But then at the end of the series, the rug is pulled out from under you, and both you and James get to see the fully unmasked version of Larry Hall. A legit skin crawling performance that I will probably never forget. The show also features one of the last appearences of the great Ray Liotta - a somewhat eclectic performance that is nevertheless very warm and loving, and helps both ground and juxtapose the familial relationships between James and Larry. This is one that will stick with me for quite a while.  4) The Rehearsal I watched the Rehearsal on a whim, never having seen Nathan For You, mainly on the strength of how much I liked How To With John Wilson. What a journey this was. Maybe the most emotional I have felt about a TV show this year - so many ups and downs and incredibly wild and funny and depressing moments being thrown at you constantly. After finishing it, I went back and watched the entire run of NFY, and while that show is, as a whole, a much funnier watch, it also made it patently clear just how much The Rehearsal is a natural extension of the extremely specific type of thing that Nathan Fielder wants to do with his shows. That being, showing what people are really, truly like on the inside in a way that scripted television could never do. The insanely weird idiosyncrasies and pet peeves we have that make no logical sense, the horrible opinions that we usually keep to ourselves, the way we argue with the people closest to us that no one else gets to see. Nathan takes a more direct role as a facilitator in this show by getting even closer to his "subjects" than he has before, and it raises so many questions about the nature of reality television and the privacy of thought, but he nonetheless manages to get through it all without coming off as a manipulative monster - because 99% of the time, he is just letting people be themselves, on their own, without any regret on their part. Nathan Fielder is truly a creator unlike any other, and we can only be thankful that he somehow convinced HBO to let him produce this fever dream of a show.  3) Andor As a long-time Star Wars fan that almost called it quits because of how loving unbelievably bad Rise of Skywalker was, I wouldn't have imagined that we'd get to this point just a few years later. In many ways, Andor fulfills a great deal of the potential of Star Wars as a storytelling framework - when you think of Star Wars, everyone knows what the stakes are, what the visual symbols mean, what purpose the equipment and starships and costuming represents - this is all stuff we have internalized because of how ubiquitous the franchise is. And because of how strong that backdrop is, you can tell all kinds of different stories within this framework without having to do the legwork to establish an entirely new universe - this is something the old EU understood with games like Dark Forces and TIE Fighter, but that the Disney Star Verse has been mostly lacking, until now. Now, I'm not of the opinion that Andor is a perfect show. I think the opening arc is quite slow and it took me a while to get fully invested in the story (I still think the lost sister stuff is Actually Bad and the show would have been better off without it) - but once we got to the spectacle that is the Eye of Aldhani, I was fully bought in. Special shout-outs to Stellan Skarsgård who might have been my favourite performance this year, really illustrating how much of a master of his craft he truly is. I think people are making a mistake when they say that "Andor is good because it isn't like Star Wars" - something that I think is not only wrong, but fundamentally missing the point. I also really love The Mandalorian as a show, and I think it is a testament to the potential of Star Wars that these two shows can focus on different tones, methods of storytelling, and an entirely different set of themes, while still fitting into the same universe. Andor feels like the key ingredient they've been missing that proves that you can essentially do any kind of genre story you want within Star Wars, as long as you are actually dedicated to basic ideals like honest storytelling, skillful direction, strong performances, and excellent writing. It sounds obvious, and yet it has still been a massive challenge for Disney to pull this off without loving up at least one of these parts. And heck, they even kind of hosed up their first attempt at Andor with Rogue One, which is a movie that I don't really like at all. The highest praise I can give Andor is that it simply nails so many of the ideas, themes and tones that me and my IRL friends have injected into our own Star Wars RPG sessions over the past 20 years. It feels like a special, personal treat to actually see this sort of dynamic on screen with the budget and craft to actually pull it off at the scale that it deserves.  2) Atlanta I started watching Atlanta from the beginning this year, around the time when season 3 came out. As such, the show has stayed in my mind for the entire year, and I'm kicking myself for not getting to it sooner. It's insane that we got TWO seasons of a show THIS good in the SAME year. Absolutely ridiculous. Season three is a bit divisive amongst fans, but honestly, I don't get it. It's very different and very out there, but what they're doing is still so core to what the show has been doing since the beginning - almost effortlessly illustrating how absurd modern racial relations are and how equally absurd daily life can be if you just take things one step further than reality allows. There are so many episodes that will go down here as some of the best poo poo I've ever seen on TV - Three Slaps, The Goof Who Sat By the Door, Tarrare, etc. The show is so good at mixing comedy with heart-pounding anxiety in a way that few other shows are capable of, and even at its worst it is never not some of the most enticing and memorable storytelling of this decade. I wish the show wasn't over, but at the same time, it's an incredible gift that we got it in the first place. I'm intensely curious to see if Donald Glover can continue to produce something that is anywhere near as good as Atlanta, because it also feels like one of the most personal shows in recent memory and anything else just couldn't have the same heart - but we'll see!  1) Severance From the very first episode, I could tell that Severance was basically made for me. At its core, Severance is about the existential horrors of mundane life - how our identity and humanity is subsumed by both the social and societal requirements to devote most of our lives to menial tasks that have no real meaning or benefit outside of getting paid. It is a show that gets incredible mileage out of a very simple concept and yet is also extremely restrained when it comes to placing its characters and concepts into a greater context. Everything is kept very small scale, very matter of fact, very dry - in keeping with the corporate nature of the show's setting. It is SO good at setting up its universe and the different personalities within, and how it all begins to unravel just as soon as its been established. Every character is worth dying for, particularly John Turturro, whose relationship with Christopher Walken has to be one of the sweetest things I've seen in ages. Severance is a show I just want to stew in. Every second is precious. I want to know what the hell is going on, and yet I actually don't because I know the questions are more satisfying than the answers. Every week I was on the edge of my seat and knocked the gently caress on my rear end after every cliffhanger. Everything that happens in the show directly feeds into another element, it's extremely economical and zero time feels wasted - special shout outs to the show's incredible intro for both featuring the show's excellent score and leitmotif, but also completely nailing what being severed feels like. This is a show that just fully encapsulates what can make long-form TV so much more compelling than film, and why simple, high-concept ideas are often more compelling than grand scale productions. Severance feels like a lost J.G. Ballard novel or something and it not only executes its concept perfectly, it also makes you very, VERY hungry for more, and I can't loving wait. Until next time,  Special shout-outs: Better Call Saul - An obviously fantastic show, but not my favourite season and since I know it's going to be high on everyone's lists, I'd rather highlight other things. Raised by Wolves - A show I loved, but it's honestly diminished by the fact that it's never going to be finished. Snowpiercer - This season just wasn't as strong as the last one, but Sean Bean is still a hoot. The Boys - I find myself not really remembering this season as strongly. It was good, but think I just got sick of the constant in-fighting. Barry - Great show, no real complaints, but it just hasn't stuck with me for the majority of the year. Not sure why. It maybe feels like it should've ended, but then it didn't. She-Hulk - Largely good, but a bit too eclectic and it was as if they couldn't find a core narrative to stick with, so I'm not sure what to really take away from it in the end. Wellington Paranormal - Not its strongest season, but it was a great show and I'm glad it got to run as long as it did. What We Do in the Shadows - Mostly very good, but I wasn't too into the young Colin Robinson stuff. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds - Very nice return to form for Star Trek. Not anything to get super excited about, but it was just very solid and I have high hopes for the future. Cabinet of Curiosities - One of, if not the best, horror anthology shows in my opinion. It was close to making the top 10. Interview with the Vampire - Very solid first season! Covers most of the stuff that was already covered in the movie, though, and some of the original additions are a bit iffy. But still a fun watch. Hakkesshu fucked around with this message at 08:25 on Dec 23, 2022 |
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Dec 22, 2022 14:31
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| # ¿ May 11, 2024 11:37 |
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I totally forgot Righteous Gemstones was this year, gently caress. I guess I’ll excuse its omission due to it having less Uncle Baby Billy in season 2.
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Dec 25, 2022 22:29
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