Even after Tom Cruise single-handedly saved the institution of cinema or whatever, it continues to become more disappointing every year as the list of blockbusters Hollywood churns out is increasingly made up of sequels, reboots, and remakes. TV, on the other hand, continues to prove how successful the “sequels, reboots, and remakes” formula can be when those sequels are gripping conclusions to the latest entrants in the must-watch canon, the reboots maintain the magic of their original iterations, and the remakes are liberally restructured adaptations of cult films with uniquely tough selling points.
With just enough of cinema’s current era of gonzo original ideas, the 10 series listed below make up yet another compelling argument that this year—unlike last year, or the year before, which we also said this about—was the best year for TV so far.
10. Dead Ringers
Within the last 18 months, new eyes with fresh vision have appropriated two of the most imaginative and sad science fiction films of the late 20th century—mad movies I never imagined could be deconstructed in the first place—for television: Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth and David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers. Both re-made with the intelligence that I loved about each of the original films, the latter’s gender-switcheroo, gynecological twin drama (with Rachel Weisz in Jeremy Irons’ role(s)) is less black and bleakly comic than Cronenberg’s icy vision of birth, death, and aestheticism.
Instead, showrunner Alice Birch (Succession) and Weisz’s Beverly and Elliot Mantle eke their way into the very nature of maternalism and what it means to give life and hold it sacred with a thrilling psycho-dramatical and politically relevant edge. The new, serial production does borrow Cronenberg’s subtle colorization with loud bursts of holy reds (most notably both Dead Ringers’s scrub costuming). From there, however, Weisz morphs the source material’s questions of ethics and motherhood into a worthy feminist debate—and one not without its own spookily weird chuckles. Kudos, too, must go to film composer Murray Gold. Known for his surround-sound vision for the new Doctor Who, his grand musicality for Dead Ringers is as phosphorus and haunting as the series itself. — A.D. Amorosi
9. Party Down
It certainly isn’t an irrational fear to have in 2023 that your favorite bygone work of comedic visual media will suddenly be resurrected less as a desired continuation of its narrative and more as a recycling of its tiredest jokes mixed with weirdly out-of-touch missive on, like, the metaverse or TikTok or cancel culture or whatever. The Dumb and Dumber To effect, if you will—if anyone even remembers that vehicle for forced callbacks and Honey Boo Boo punchlines.
This year, late-’00s cult comedy Party Down returned (and I’m not saying we have yours truly to thank) with the bad news being that, yeah, the new season is little more than the flimsy premise it was originally built upon (“What if caterers accidentally got extremely high on the job?”) while very much succumbing to the siren’s call of writing in a youthful new character as a horseman of the impending TikTok-alypse and recognizing that one of the core characters is very much primed for the moralist culturati’s firing squad. The good news is that this premise remains so endlessly entertaining, and the ensemble cast so chemically balanced, that these purported faults manage to work to the new season’s advantage as it also continues its tradition of channeling The Office by brainstorming new ways of writing back in since-departed cast members to make them suffer new foodborne illnesses.
While the new season’s audience reception seemed a bit underwhelming (possibly due to its cumulative runtime barely surpassing those of most of the year’s biggest blockbusters), here’s hoping an open-ended finale suggests a gap shorter than 13 years between it and season four. — Mike LeSuer
8. Cunk on Earth
Netflix gave a British character comedian a chunk of money to make something brilliantly stupid, which they should do way more often. Diane Morgan is Philomena Cunk, host of a history program dedicated to teaching you nothing. She interrupts her show to retrieve a misplaced Bible, questions the source of medieval music in movies, and cries over the continued existence of nuclear weapons. The audio clip from the series that went viral was her explanation of where the oldest city in the world is (“Iraq, which is miles away, and fucking dangerous”), but my favorite moment was her discussion of ABBA. Much like with I Think You Should Leave, each segment can be boiled down to more or less the same comedic principles—and much like with I Think You Should Leave, who cares? It’s good.
Viewers may question how “in on it” the experts and professors interviewed are, but that’s far from the point, which is silliness. I prefer to pretend they’re not, as Morgan carefully threads the needle of throwing them off their game without making them uncomfortable. There’s no cringe factor here. The show is an extension of what Morgan was already doing with her Cunk specials on Shakespeare, Britain, and Christmas. There’s a lot to be said for watching someone inhabit a character she’s been honing for years, a performance so lived-in you might not realize she’s delivering pitch-perfect one-liners like they’re obvious observations. Until they cause you to look up from your phone, rewind, turn the captions on, and laugh out loud. — Lizzie Logan
7. Jury Duty
Most reality TV shows expose the most deplorable aspects of humanity—unthinkable luxuries, blowout fights, thrown drinks—and it’s precisely what makes them so voyeuristically appealing. Then there are the hidden-camera shows that prompt out-of-pocket responses, improvising others into shocked (and shocking) reactions; behind-the-scenes puppeteers exploiting people’s most innate, unexpected responses that may reveal a possible dark truth about them.
But this year, there was one particular show that proved far from any reality TV experience in recent memory. Instead of capitalizing on people’s grossest behaviors, Jury Duty exposed pure human goodness in a setting that most people dread: jury duty. Creators Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky mastered turning mundane environments into comic gold with The Office. It’s no surprise that their foray into actual semi-non-fictional documentary filmmaking within a drab work setting is a pleasantly humorous endeavor. Put 11 actors in a room (10 anonymous character actors and James Marsden playing himself with an inflamed ego) acting as jurors beside one non-actor who believes he’s actually a juror taking part in a documentary about jury duty and the result is a huge heart-warming prank.
Its biggest surprise—beyond launching Marsden into cultural relevance again—is the non-drama of it all. Ronald Gladden’s willingness to help out every bizzaro character turns a mandatory obligation of citizenship into an unexpected adventure filled with lots of good karma. — Margaret Farrell
6. Barry
For a show that always aimed to interrogate the differences between good and evil, the fourth and final season of Barry did a great job of making this philosophical resolution as ambiguous as great thinkers across the generations have made it out to be. Essentially, good and evil, as Yoni Wolf would say, is neither strength nor flaw, but sod in a seed of what you are. We’re all fucking awful and pretty OK, too, and the conclusion of Barry confirms all of this.
Regardless of where you are in the Barry saga, the fourth season tries to flip expectations on their head, to interrogate our leanings in certain directions and focus on the knotty world this entire show occupies. One of the series’ greatest successes is in turning Bill Hader from an SNL actor who can’t stop laughing at his co-workers’ line reads into a capital-A actor who can wear trauma, intrigue, triumph, and heartbreak on his face. It’s a phenomenal feat, and Hader saves his best work for the final season as he moves from his life as a prisoner to safehouse resident to fugitive. It’s a story of tragedy and triumph, of good people doing bad things and bad people doing good things, a way to muddle the decks and assert that most of us are just OK. — Will Schube
Read our recap of the full series here.
5. I Think You Should Leave
I Think You Should Leave has become a clip machine, a product within the social media era of watching shows on YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. It’s endlessly quotable and rewatchable, gaining popularity through absurdity. The shortness of each skit allows viewers to only watch what they like, to skip parts of the show that don’t work—of which there certainly are some. But creator Tim Robinson moves with such quickness and lightness that an unfunny bit immediately gets lost in the shuffle, overpowered by more-hilarious moments. And then that’s all that audiences remember: singular lines spoken across a swath of silliness.
The memeification of the Netflix sketch show continues to boost its cultural imprint as the alt comedian finds his once-niche audience growing. Robinson himself brings the goods in this latest season, willing to do anything necessary to get a laugh. He dons wigs and costumes, weeps and cackles, and still yells better than any comedian on streaming. All of that yelling, along with a general off-hand vibe, might grate some, but for others, it constitutes a rallying cry, a reason to further type his name into search bars.
The guest stars don’t stop for season three, with SNL cast members and alumni showing up in droves alongside a host of recognizable actors and comedians. I Think You Should Leave remains funny because it’s fully committed to each and every bit. There’s a method to the madness, a wavelength to the insanity. If one can find that wavelength, then they’ll spend the next 18 minutes—a short, sweet reprieve—laughing with ease, finding the show funnier than most others could ever dream to be. — Michael Frank
4. Succession
The final season of HBO’s darling Succession needed to have gravitas. For the last five years, audiences have watched the Roy family duel with flashy insults, endless F-bombs, and constant backchanneling. With season four, creator Jesse Armstrong decided to further up the ante, to give the characters added responsibility, to push the show into shakier territory with the quicker-than-expected absence of Logan Roy. The characters spiral downward as usual, but there’s always money to be made, and so, capitalism wins out.
Succession further cements itself as an acting masterclass, as Jeremy Strong, Sarah Snook, and Kieran Culkin soften and harden within each episode as the Roy siblings—three sides of the same coin that their father never polished. The season gives each of these actors, along with Matthew Macfadyen as the married-in sibling Tom Wambsgans, ample opportunities for emotional capacity, irreversible moments, whether that be prolonged fights between a married couple, eulogies at a packed-church funeral, or just complete boardroom meltdowns. The thrills in Succession come from the sharpest dialogue on television, from an innate desire to root for certain characters, even though none of these very-rich, very-powerful people contain moral fibers.
And that’s still the show’s greatest accomplishment: that any of us cared about the wellness or status of the Roy family, a group of businessmen and -women who certainly wouldn’t care about us. Armstrong didn’t just answer the ultimate question of who would succeed Logan Roy, of who would take over as CEO of Waystar Royco, but the British writer gave audiences satisfaction. He landed the plane—or, in this case, the PJ—squarely on the runway. — Michael Frank
3. The Curse
Nathan Fielder’s first two series, Nathan for You and The Rehearsal, operated around a similar question: What happens if we put people into wildly uncomfortable situations where the only person who can rescue them is someone incredibly gifted at acting more awkwardly than seemingly anyone else on Earth? It worked. Both shows were wildly successful, spawning viral marketing campaigns for companies like the parodic Dumb Starbucks and an outdoor clothing brand called Summit Ice, taking the stripper with a heart of gold trope to its most unbelievably insane extreme, and turning a guy named Kor into indie television’s biggest star. It left fans wondering what he could possibly do next—how could he expand this fucked-up funhouse experiment further than he already has?
The answer is The Curse, which essentially takes the concept of a shitty person (or, in this instance, three shitty people) trying to better a situation and a bunch of people trying to tell him—them—why they suck so much. It’s equal parts cringe-worthy and hysterical, the sort of show you watch from behind your pillow, occasionally peeking to see Fielder’s face while knowing his reaction will only make things worse.
Fielder’s genius here is his decision to make his co-conspirators—Emma Stone and Benny Safdie, both brilliant—as awful as he is, each taking turns as the show’s most contemptible character. Ostensibly, it’s a show about a couple filming a television show about gentrifying a rural, poor community while telling themselves what they’re doing is not gentrification; but as with everything Nathan Fielder does, it’s the staggeringly miserable moments in between that makes the show so much less and, at the same time, so much more. — Will Schube
2. Reservation Dogs
There was recently a lot of lofty, high-minded talk around the idea of the “peak TV” era and the wild expansion of resources being poured into series all over the streaming landscape. This was going to be what the 1970s was for film, a time when creatives would be given free rein and boundaries would be pushed. Now, instead, we have approximately 265 shows based on forgotten ’80s movies, the incessant Marvel Television Universe, and a Frasier reboot.
That said, if one series truly delivered on the promise of what television could be in its most ideal form, it’s FX’s Reservation Dogs—the ambling, heartfelt, and, at times, psychedelic look at life on the fictional Oklahoma reservation of Okern. Created by Sterlin Harjo with the help of Taika Waititi, the series wrapped up its all-too-brief three-season run back in September with a characteristically nuanced, grounded, and hilarious finale, bringing together nearly every character the show ever introduced for one final goodbye. The series, and especially its final season, will be remembered for the way Harjo and the rest of the Rez Dogs (which includes exciting new performers like Devery Jacobs, Lane Factor, D'Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai, and Paulina Alexis) were able to constantly expand the idea of what a Reservation Dogs episode could be, traveling through time and space in a way that would totally derail a lesser show.
It will, of course, also go down as one of the most important pieces of Indigenous storytelling of the 21st century—no small feat, to be sure. — Sean Fennell
1. The Bear
Christopher Storer’s The Bear keeps getting better. The second season delves further into the culinary world with an extensive look at the local food ecosystem in Chicago—and abroad, as it takes wunderkind pastry chef Marcus to Denmark to hone his talents. The Bear’s first season established the immense emotional stress of working in the industry and the central trauma that brings this crew of exquisite characters together. This time around, the focus isn’t exclusively on Jeremy Allen White’s Carmy Berzatto. Instead, each character gets their fair share of depth in these increasingly tense 30-minute episodes.
The most notable transformation comes when Carmy’s insufferably stubborn cousin Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) gets sent to a three-Michelin-star restaurant to shine forks for seven days straight. His initial cold resentment toward what seems like a childish punishment soon melts away into respect for the establishment's strenuous attention to detail and determination to affect people’s day with a single meal. Soon after, Richie has become a person indebted to routine, his transformation summed up well in one line: “I wear suits now.”
This season’s peak is the agonizing episode “Fishes” that explicates the aforementioned trauma. The star-studded cast (Sarah Paulson, John Mulaney, Bob Odenkirk, Gillian Jacobs, and, most notably, newly minted Oscar-winner Jamie Lee Curtis) unites for the most shocking TV episode of the year. There’s a lot of love in this dysfunctional family, but also, of course, a lot of dysfunction—hints at alcoholism, undiagnosed mental illness, cousins eager to rope each other into financial schemes, and plenty of lies to protect loved ones from the hard truths during a gathering over the holidays (who can’t relate!).
Within this hour-long episode, we get the perfect vignette for why Carmy is an emotionally unavailable, clenched-fisted ball of stress constantly catering to other people’s needs instead of his own. The episode does well to sprinkle some stress-alleviating humor with Odenkirk, Mulaney, and Paulson doing their part to make everyone feel comfortable while walking on eggshells around Curtis’ Donna Berzatto. Despite their efforts, the episode ends explosively—it’s fucking exhausting, but also an incredibly honest and tender look into why some consider the holidays the worst time of the year.
Thankfully, after “Fishes,” we’re not done with Donna just yet. She makes another appearance in the season’s final episode for the most truly heartbreaking scene, which also redeems Carmy’s sister Natalie’s partner Pete in the most unforeseen way. Even though the tension of The Bear never subsides—it gets worse, in fact—its mastering of succinct character evolution is the main reason to keep coming back to its madness. It’s the show’s ability to capture the reality of working in one of the most stressful, unrewarding industries amidst grief and personal trauma that makes it an incredible success. — Margaret Farrell
