My 20 Favorite Television Shows of 2020

As always, I'm introducing my television wrap-up list by giving an update on my quest to watch less than 100 shows in a year.  I may have failed in the previous years, but folks, I finally did it.  In 2020, I fully watched -- meaning I saw every episode a series aired in the calendar year -- only 93 shows.  I'd like to thank my dear friend, the novel coronavirus, without whom none of this would be possible.

If you're thinking "93 shows is still too much television," well, you wouldn't be wrong.  That's not even counting the many shows I checked out for one or two episodes and then quit.  Despite some seasons getting pushed back and others getting cut short, there was still an avalanche of television put out this year.  Out of any small crack in the landscape will pop a new streaming service these days, so now along with the usual suspects, we had Peacock originals and HBO Max originals and, for a brief period of time, Quibi originals (RIP).  It's hard to even consider myself a TV expert anymore.  Any time I tell somebody that I watch alot of TV, they'll inevitably say something like "Oh cool, have you seen that new Netflix show about the anthropomorphic cat who's also a depressed sex worker?"  Before you fire up your search engine, that show does not actually exist, but the point is that there's a whole culture of streaming service crate-digging that I'm just not keyed into at all.

Despite my decreasing completionism, my love of the medium hasn't abated.  2020 was an excellent year in television -- it may not have had the depth of previous years, but the sheer breadth of it was refreshing and exciting.  The best of what the year had to offer came in so many different forms, including anime, docuseries, and especially the increasingly popular limited series format.  There was also a great mix of old favorites and new surprises.  In fact, the number one entry on this list was a sensation that nobody saw coming.  What show is that?  Find out below!

The rules: Last year 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 13, 2019 and December 10, 2020.   So season 2 of You, which Netflix dropped all at once on December 26, 2019, is eligible for this list.  Any streaming season that dropped after December 10th of this year will be eligible for next year's list.  I know it's confusing but that's the only why I can maintain my sanity and not have to catch up on things at the very last minute.  Thankfully the rules are simpler for shows that air weekly.  For those cases, any episode that aired between January 1, 2020 and December 31, 2020 are considered for this ranking.

My 20 Favorite Television Shows of 2016

It has become a ritual now to talk about how there's too much TV at the beginning of these year-end lists.  You would think the bubble would burst eventually on the amount of content there is out there, but it hasn't yet.  But while the amount of networks and original programming continues to increase, my personal watching bandwidth has finally started to taper off.  After regularly watching 125 shows in 2015, my numbers were down slightly to 115 this year.  Overall, it has had a positive effect though.  I may have watched less TV in 2016, but it mostly just meant that I watched less shows that I thought were okay or even actively bad.

Even still, my plan for 2017 is to watch even fewer shows by cutting down on series I'm getting sick of.  That means after its head-scratching second season, I'm giving the axe to Fear the Walking Dead.  I've been hesitant about dropping Arrow and The Flash because I feel like I need to watch them for DC completionist reasons even though their obnoxious melodrama reduced me to watching every episode at half attention, but I've finally made the decision after their mid-season finales that I'm removing them from my life.  I'm even considering nixing something like Bojack Horseman, which I've tuned into out of critical obligation, since everyone goes nuts over it, but I don't enjoy very much.

I'm not sure how well this will fare for me, since my TV-related fear of missing out is overwhelming. After all, I just got finished cramming Sweet/Vicious and Crazyhead into the last week of the year because people I trust said they were good and I wanted determine if they were eligible for my list.  Watching less TV is just going to lead to more potential instances of me passing up a show and then hearing it gets great, or quitting a show right before it turns things around.  That terrifies me!

All of this is a way to say that TV is in a wonderful place right now, and trying to manage your intake and still devote enough time to movies, music, and living life is a good problem to have.

The rules: Shows are considered for this list based on the episodes they aired in 2016.  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, Black-ish would be judged based on the second half of its second season (which aired at the beginning of the year) and the first half of its third 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.  The line is getting more blurry every day, but I'm still counting out independent YouTube webseries (though I recommend the excellent Pantheon University anyway).  Okay, everything clear now?  Good, let's get this list started...