My 20 Favorite Television Shows of 2023

For the uninitiated, it's a yearly tradition for me to start this list by breaking down my relationship to television, counting how many TV shows I watched in full during the calendar year.  In 2023, I had a healthy amount of 87, so the days of watching over 100 shows in a year are long in the rearview now.  One difference here is I got so behind on TV that there were some shows I really wanted to get in under the wire that I didn't have time for.  There are always things that I miss out on, but they're usually more of a "I'm mildly intrigued to check this out" case.  This time, there are some heavy hitters that I just didn't get around to.  Hell, there was a new season of Black Mirror in 2023 and I still haven't watched it.

So now more than ever, this top 20 you're about to see is not necessarily definitive, just my favorites of what I managed to cross off my watch list.

The rules: Shows are considered for this list based on their episodes that aired between January 1, 2023 and December 31, 2023.  This used to be a big thing when people watched more network shows where the seasons bled into the new year, but it doesn't factor in as much.  Although this year some shows like The Curse, For All Mankind, and Fargo are doing this annoying thing where almost all of the season aired this year but then the last two episodes are going to bleed into 2024.  That's stupid!  I hate it!

My 20 Favorite Television Shows of 2021

Another year, another pandemic-assisted successful attempt to watch less than 100 shows.  Last year I watched 93 TV shows, and in 2021 I shaved that number down 87 shows watched in full (meaning I saw every episode the show aired in the calendar year).  Most people found themselves watching more TV while staying indoors, and here I am passing by in the opposite direction.  I might not even be able to consider myself a television freak anymore.  Have I developed any sort of personality in place of that identity?  My lawyers have advised me to not answer that question.

Maybe part of the reason I watched less was because for a while I thought the television landscape was...pretty lackluster this year, at least until a few bangers came in and saved the day in the 11th hour.  Then after some consideration, I realized that my love of the TV drama was skewing my perception, since really it was only a weak year for dramas.  Comedy had a good 2021 and it was a great year for anime, so you'll be seeing a larger proportion of both of those groups than usual in this list.

Another trend I noticed is a recession of shows that aired on actual, you know, television.  13 of the 20 shows on my final list were available exclusively on streaming services, a count that I think is higher than ever.  FX, which used to be my favorite network, only has a place on this list in the form of its FXX sister channel.  This would usually spell bad news, as I've gone on at length about the rise of Netflix and its proliferation of soulless, formless storytelling thanks to its binge-above-all mentality, but thankfully the other streaming services have embraced the weekly release strategy.  And believe it or not, their shows benefit from it.  Who would've thought that the model that worked for decades is still effective?  So the dominance of streaming isn't necessarily a negative trend anymore, just an interesting one.

Okay, you've read enough of me trying to be like John Landgraf at the TCAs.  Let's get to the list.

The rules: A couple of years ago I implemented a new rule to help account for streaming seasons that got dropped at the end of the year, and I'll be continuing that this year.  So for any show whose entire season drops at once, the eligibility window for this list is if that season dropped between December 11, 2020 and December 10, 2021.   This is just so I don't go insane trying to catch up on any shows whose whole seasons dropped at the end of the year, even though there weren't any examples that come to mind this year.  Thankfully the rules are simpler for shows that air weekly.  For those cases, any episode that aired between January 1, 2021 and December 31, 2021 are considered for this ranking.

My 50 Favorite Television Shows of the Decade: 2010-2019

There was a problem facing television as a medium in the 2010s, and if you've been online or reading my year-end lists then you know what I'm talking about: there's too much damn TV.  It's been an outright epidemic over the last 10 years, with new shows and delivery systems for those shows popping up at a rapid rate, far past anyone's ability to keep up with it all.  Somebody once aptly described a TV critic's role as being more like a book critic's nowadays -- there's too much for one person to consume, so you have to make peace with that and curate your experience by finding a niche.

Unfortunately, the influx of TV also led to more bad shows.  The rise of streaming and binge-watching has caused series to indulge in being nothing more than formless pieces of content.  Sometimes it can feel like every writer who knows how to construct seasons, episodes, and even scenes died near the end of the previous decade.  But the sheer magnitude of television in this decade means that there was still alot to love about television.  This list chronicles the best of the best from the 2010s.

The rules: These eligibility rules are slightly more complicated than the ones for the other two lists, so read carefully.  In order for a show to be eligible for this list, it has to have aired more than half of its total episodes within this decade.  Also, only those episodes that aired in this decade are taken into consideration when placing and ranking that show.  For example: 30 Rock is eligible for consideration because 72 of its 138 episodes aired after January 1, 2010 -- that's 52% for all the mathematicians out there -- but the only episodes that determine if it can make the top 50 are Season 4 Episode 9 through Season 7 Episode 13 (the episodes that aired in the 2010s).  Also, only continuing series are eligible for the top 50, while miniseries get their own mini list.

My 20 Favorite Television Shows of 2019

Loyal fans have been waiting for a whole year to get to this day.  Not to see my actual list, but to hear me chronicle my crippling addiction to television and see whether or not I was able to limit myself to following less than 100 shows this year.  Well I've got some bad news for you: if we're counting the shows I watched every airing episode of this year, that number reached 102.  I know, I really thought I was going to meet my goal in 2019.  And I was so close!  I know I said this last year, but I really am quitting more shows and not starting more altogether, they just keep making more of them every year.  Those numbers simply can't be beat.

One thing I've noticed with my list this year is that it feels a little different than previous years, and I can't tell if that's due to a change in my taste or a change in the trend of what gets made.  But I will say this year there's less Very Serious Drama For Very Serious People (your Mad Mens, your Americans) and more stuff, especially in the top 10, that might make you say "huh"?  The idea that great TV comes in all shapes and sizes is a mantra I've repeated alot over the years, and we would all do well to remember that as the landscape transforms a bit in the next decade.

My 20 Favorite Television Shows of 2018

I was a bad little boy in 2018.  For the past few years I've used the intro of this list to chronicle my efforts to decrease the amount of TV shows I watch every year, my small but futile way to protest the content wave of Peak TV.  (Truthfully, it's just an effort to clear out space to watch more movies and older TV shows, so I'm no hero.)  And I had been making good progress, progressing from around 130 shows per year when I started doing these lists to last year's 100.  Watching less than 100 shows seems pretty simple, right?

Well...about that.

I watched a total of 103 shows in 2018.  But hear me out!  I really do think I did a better job of managing my TV intake, getting much better at not continuing with shows that I don't like, and even cutting out long-running shows that I still somewhat like but have gotten a little bored with (sorry, Bob's Burgers).  Even my torturous efforts to watch every network pilot are far behind me.  All of this has led to more time for older shows and movies.  After all, I watched more new films than ever this year and I devoted half of this year to watching all 156 episodes of The Twilight Zone.  Still, it's just that the amount of new scripted content keeps growing like a tumor, so even though I most likely watched a lower percentage of shows in existence out there this year, the actual number still ended up being higher.

So while I'm here and still watching too much TV, I might as well sort out the best of the best and give you my favorites from the year.  Really, I do this all for you guys, not to fuel my own sick addiction.  No, not at all.

The rules: Shows are considered for this list based on the episodes they aired in 2018.  This is a pretty plain and simple rule for cable dramas, where full seasons usually air within a single calendar year.  However, it gets slightly messy when considering network shows, which usually air the first half of their season in the fall and the second half starting January of the next year.  So something like, say, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend would be judged based on the second half of its third season (which aired at the beginning of the year) and the first half of its fourth and final season (which started in the fall of this year).  As for what constitutes a TV show, anything that airs on, you know, a TV station counts.  But shows that air exclusively on streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon count too.  Movies that exclusively appear on those services like say, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, do not count.  I give it a few years before all of these definitions become completely meaningless though.  No TV, no movies, just #Content.

Favorites: May - July 2018

Favorites is a monthly feature that offers up quick thoughts on media, both new and old, that I've recently enjoyed.

I've been a bad little boy and I've neglected to do a post about my monthly favorites for the past few months.  In all fairness though, I have a good excuse: writing sucks.  If you're out there and you're thinking about writing something, anything at all, I do not recommend it.  With that being said, I'm back with a catch-up on some favorites since I've been away.  I'm also going to try to recommit myself to the awful task of writing more posts, but I can't make any promises.

Movies

Leave No Trace

Winter's Bone was received warmly throughout the film world when it came out in 2010, so you would think that it would have led to director Debra Granik getting a slew of projects made, but Leave No Trace is her first feature film since then.  (Her 2014 documentary, Stray Dog, came and went with little fanfare.)  Fortunately, this follow-up was worth the wait.  Leave No Trace is the latest in the ever-present "white people making a go of it in the woods" genre, as it follows a father suffering from PTSD related to his time in the military raising his teen daughter on the outskirts of society.  It's a story that moves with such grace and subtlety, building so gradually that you don't expect it to wallop you as much as it does by the end.


Music

Dirty Projectors - Lamp Lit Prose

After loving the era-defining Bitte Orca and Swing Lo Magellan, I was not a fan of the Dirty Projectors self-titled album from last year.  A self-indulgent, nasty, tune-deficient effort, it felt like maybe Dave Longstreth was lost without his former creative partners who infused their impulses into his best work.  So I was just as surprised as anyone by how great Lamp Lit Prose is.  A return to form in every sense of the phrase, the album re-injects energy and vitality into the band's sound.  If you hopped off of the Dirty Projectors train after the last album, give "I Feel Energy" or "Zombie Conqueror" a try.

Hatchie

I recently became a fan of Hatchie after listening to her debut EP from earlier this year, Sugar & Spice.  It's a lovely bit of 90s style dream pop that's endlessly catchy and swoon-inducing.  I have some concerns about how well her style will hold up on a full-length, but the five songs she's given us so far really do the trick.

Television

Channel Zero: Candle Cove

I checked out Syfy's anthology horror series Channel Zero, which adapts a different creepypasta each season, back when it first started, but dropped it due to time constraints and a slow start to the show. However, I recently just back into it and finished the first season.  Candle Cove doesn't ever ramp up from its deliberate pace, but eventually the show's mounting dread begins to pile on.  It's a show that knows how to unsettle the viewer with simple images (often pulling off the trick in daylight scenes) and I look forward to seeing what the following two seasons bring.

Pose

Over the years, I've slowly warmed up to Ryan Murphy's work, to the point where I even consider myself a fan.  Part of the reason is that he produces so many shows now that he has to take a step back -- instead of shepherding shows with his go-for-broke, chaotic sensibilities, he helps other writers get their vision on to the screen while providing a perfect splash of his style.  Such is the case with Pose, an iridescent blast of a show about the LGBT community and ball culture in 1980s New York.  Murphy and his team of writers find the perfect balance of joy and tragedy in this story of society's outcasts trying to express themselves.  It can get a little after-school special with its drama, and not all of the acting is up to snuff, but it earns its broad moments by making you care about its colorful, complicated characters.

Succession

Many people gradually came around to HBO's Succession, the amorphous genre blob from Jesse Armstrong (Fresh Meat, The Thick of It, the "Entire History of You" episode of Black Mirror) but I'm here to tell you that they're wrong. Succession was great from the very beginning, it's just so radical that it took a while for people to get on its wavelength.  We've seen funny dramas and dramatic comedies before, but the energy of this series feels unique and unable to be squeezed into either of those boxes.  The closest approximation to its tone is, well, The Thick of It.  All I can say is that this vicious, hilarious series about a slimy rich family is one of the best shows on television, and there's no shame in hopping on this wild freight train late.

Miscellaneous

Crunchyroll Premium

I've been watching alot of anime lately (maybe you'll see a post about it soon!) and I figured it was time to upgrade to the Premium version of Crunchyroll.  For those who don't know, Crunchyroll is the most popular (legal) anime streaming site that offers over hundreds of series, and even simulcasts new shows that are airing in Japan.  The Premium version is great -- you don't have to wait a week for the new simulcast episodes and you get to watch videos in HD on any device.  It's well worth the $6.95 per month price, even if you're just a moderate anime fan.

Pitchfork's interview with Liz Phair and Lindsey Jordan

I try not to write too much about things that are likely to end up on my year end list in this column, or else I would've covered the debut Snail Mail album Lush, which I was skeptical of at first but then quickly fell in love with.  So it was a real treat to read the recent Pitchfork feature where Lindsey Jordan, the songwriter behind Snail Mail, and Liz Phair interview each other about various topics.  Few things are more enjoyable than seeing these two different generations of indie rock have a freewheeling conversation about music and gender.

The New Yorker's profile on Ryan Murphy

Emily Nussbaum's profile of Ryan Murphy from a couple of months ago is such an entertaining read, and even the biggest Murphy skeptic -- as I used be -- might come away from it respecting him more.