Shows of the Year

Best new show:

 

The Pitt

 

I was a bit hesitant about starting The Pitt and waited a few weeks before catching up. I must have watched ER daily for years - the way that Austrian TV worked, new episodes of US TV shows would air every weekday, so this was my post-school ritual. Noah Wyle - here a veteran doctor leading the ER - is at the centre of the ensemble cast whose 15-hour-shift we are following, hour by hour. The format is interesting, because it limits our POV, with the only escape being PTSD flashbacks to COVID times (that also don't leave the ER). And the show originally airs week-by-week, meaning that it requires the viewers to remind themselves that only an hour has passed (and at the same time, the sheer pace and propulsion of the show makes it difficult to binge without feeling overwhelmed). The doctors treat case after case, many hang around, many things go deeply, emotionally horrifyingly, wrong. It's like watching human beings accrue psychic damage while still trying to do their jobs in the best and most humane way possible. At the same time, it's clear that this is also a furious indictment of mixing healthcare with a profit motive, of the ill-suited and dangerous managerial language used by hospital leadership with little care for employees and patients. 

 

Pluribus 

 

Hal and Harper 

This is a showcase of Lili Reinhart and Cooper Raiff's acting - they play the children of a deeply damaged father (Mark Ruffalo) who were forced to grow up too quickly after a traumatic event in their childhood. Reinhart (a revelation here) is stoic, carrying everyone's grief on her shoulder, Raiff is arrested in his development, and they are dangerously co-dependent on one another. Some of the most moving scenes of the series place the adult actors in the past, acting out the childhood of their characters (Raiff does brilliant work as the overenthusiastic and exuberant child version of Hal), always awkwardly standing out against the backdrop of the children surrounding them. A beautiful show. 

 

Long Story Short 

A Thousand Blows

 

It's such an astonishing coincidence, or perhaps just the outcome of great artists supporting each other into new projects, that Erin Doherty delivers one of the best performances of the year in A Thousand Blows only to then follow it up with another one in her singular outstanding episode of Adolescence, written by her co-star Stephen Graham and Jack Thorne (whose work I've been following since he wrote Naomi's episode of Skins). This is also an interesting companion piece to Dope Girls, which is more experimental in its approach - set in Victorian London, two newly arrived Jamaican friends (played by Malachy Kirby and Francis Lovehall, both great) navigate their way through the East End Underworld, and intersect with an all-women gang of thieves (the Forty Elephants) led by Doherty's Mary Carr, who has a great coup in the works. They also butt up against the Goodson boxing brothers (James Nelson-Joyce and Stephen Graham) - and this is very much not the "gentleman" version of boxing, but bare-knuckled struggle, sometimes to death.

 

Dope Girls

 

After WW1, with soldiers returning from the front, the women who have stepped up in their absence are relegated back to being wives and mothers, but the world has changed radically, and nothing is as it was. The first season of Dope Girls documents the dual rise of two women in spheres previously closed to them. Julianne Nicholson's Kate Galloway, left to raise her daughter (Eilidh Fisher) on her own after the suicide of her husband, ends up entangled in the Soho nightlife. A series of unfortunate events brings her on a collision course with an Italian gang and into possession of a different kind of nightclub, in which dancer Billie Cassidy (Umi Myers) wants to perform her transgressive art free from outside control. At the same time, Eliza Scanlen's Violet Davis is trying to become one of the first ten women police officers and doesn't hesitate to snitch on anyone to get what she wants. She's sent undercover by her boss. Dope Girls has been compared to Peaky Blinders, but I was much more reminded of Babylon Berlin, which takes place a bit later in history (but also in a melting pot of conservatism and transgression) but has a similarly visually stunning style, and uses music to propel the story forward.

 

Best one-season show:

 

Dying for Sex

 

I don't even have words for this show. Michelle Williams shines in every way, which is not surprising (she's been killing it in Kelly Reichardt movies for years, and she was so beautifully drily funny in Showing Up), but it's literally every one in this show: Jenny Slate, devastating as the best friend who takes care of her dying life partner (she fucking floored me). Esco Jouley, who is such a discovery, as the care counselor who is with her the whole way. Rob Delaney, Kelvin Yu, Sissy Spacek, Paula Pell in a small but impactful role (Girls5Eva will be so missed). The non-judgemental approach to sex, the meaning-making about death (and the direct approach to both), this will stay with me for a very long time.

 

Apple Cider Vinegar 

 

I had a genuinely difficult time to get through Apple Cider Vinegar, which is in no way a reflection on how good the show was: the fantastic cast, for one, with Kaitlyn Dever's rare accomplishment of pulling off a fake Australian accent that lets you forget she's not Australian, at the head of a cast of up- and coming and well-established Australian actors (Aisha Dee and Alycia Debnam-Carey returned from their beginnings in US television, Tilda Cobham-Hervey in a heartbreaking role, the great Susie Porter and Mark Coles Smith). While this was probably originally produced because it fits into the recent trend of bringing well-known female con women to the screen (The Dropout, Inventing Anna), Dever's performance is a step above, and the tone is very much removed from the satire of its predecessors. Debnam-Carey and Porter, as a mother and daughter who are dying of cancer and yet have bought into the ideology of self-healing so much that they do not seek adequate medical help, are the emotionally devastating core of the story (especially Porter, who refuses medical help out of love and support for her daughter's ideology). 

Adolescence

 

Just four episodes, all filmed in one continuous shot, to follow the arrest of a thirteen-year old boy (played by newcomer Owen Cooper in his first ever performance, to start off what is certain to be a great career) for a horrific crime against a female classmate. There are no answers here about what to do about the radicalisation of young men and boys, only the grief and horror of the fall-out. The show itself acknowledges what its one shortcoming is - centering the story of Owen and his family, rather than the girl he killed, who never appears on screen alive and who is grieved by a best friend who rages against what happened. The second episode captures the unbridgeable generational gap that makes the actions so difficult to decipher - a whole new language of symbols, closed off to parents and the investigating detectives. The third episode is the stand-out: Erin Doherty plays a psychologist tasked with assessing Jamie, trying to "understand his understanding" through a precarious series of questions that elicit his attempts at humour, charm, but also outbursts of rage and violence, where he oscillates between childishness and threatening adolescence, from making himself as small as possible to looming over her and enjoying her attempts to control her fear.  

 

Death By Lightning 

 

Best show:

 

Severance

 

The Newsreader

 

Yellowjackets

The Last of Us

 

Slow Horses 

 

Saddest Goodbyes:

Andor

 

The Wheel of Time 

 

There were moments during The Wheel of Time's third season where I couldn't believe the collection of fantastic actors that the show had managed to assemble: at one point, political arguments unfolded between characters played by Olivia Williams, Shohreh Aghdashloo, and Sophie Okonedo (all supporting actors - it's hard to believe how enormous this ensemble cast is, led by Rosamund Pike). This season also fully embraced the idea that going all in on beautiful visuals is back: The Road to the Spear is a whole episode of stunning beauty. It's incredibly sad that this third season will be the last, that the show will not be given the opportunity to end on its own terms - but much in line with the worrying trend of queer and female-led shows ending prematurely. 

Poker Face

 

I've been looking forward to this second season of Poker Face with the same delight in which I greet each new season of Only Murders in the Building: I know it's going to be a joy to check in each week, and with Poker Face in particular, one of the greatest assets is Rian Johnson's ability to have a roster of excellent guest stars. The specific joy of this season has been seeing how a high concept show finds way to be creative without abandoning its roots completely, and I almost like this version of the story, where Charlie Cale is unbound from the through-line of running from the Mafia, better. The best two episodes of the season are twists: one has no human victim (but instead a gerbil, a friend, that is more grieve-able than some of the previous victims), but a horrifyingly scary bad seed child at the helm, the other changes around the timeline, with Charlie entering the story months after the crime has occurred instead the days before. 

 

The Handmaid's Tale

 

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Shows of the Year

Best new show:

Shōgun

Shōgun sends British navigator John Blackthorne (a great Cosmo Jarvis) to "The Japans", a country closed for trade to anyone but the Portuguese, who have been busy converting the local population to Catholicism. As soon as he arrives, the complexities of power and culture perplex him, but his abilities put him right at the centre of a power struggle between the five regents who are leading the country after the death of the Taikō, since his son is still too young to rule. Shōgun 's writing is staggering, especially when it portrays women who are struggling to carve out a little power for themselves in a world that affords them little. Anna Sawai, Blackthorne's assigned translator, is fantastic (she has the greatest arc of the show), as are Moeka Hoshi as Usami, grieving the death of her child but assigned to Blackthorne as a companion, and Fumi Nikaido as Ochiba no Kata, the consort of the late Taikō and mother of his son, who is scheming to control the regents for her own causes. 

X-Men '97 

I didn't grow up watching the original run of the animated X-Men show, so I went into this without any expectations: and then, like maybe a lot of other viewers, was deeply surprised by how ambitious and sad this first season was, how serious in tackling the traumatic destruction of a whole community, and the different reactions to it (how midway through, the show reaches the verdict that "Magneto was right"). Of all the Marvel offerings I've watched over the last few years (and I didn't even dislike The Marvels, which was sheer absurdism), this feels like the best and most mature. 

Blue Eye Samurai

What a great year for animated shows this has been. Blue Eye Samurai is a tale about revenge, and about what it costs, in terms of humanity, to be so determined to avenge a past wrong. Blue Eye Samurai's protagonist is hunting three white men who have circumvented Japan's Shogunate era ban on their presence - one of them raped her mother. The animation is beautiful - this is the same Japan shown in Shogun, a few years in the future - and it is the rich cast of characters that makes the story so compelling, from courageous and true companion Ringo to the complex Akemi and Taigen, drawn into Mizu's quest. This is also a compelling tale about what heroism means and how shame limits and torments. I hope we'll get more seasons. 

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters 

I hadn't seen a single of the new Monsterverse films before starting Monarch, a show that follows the history of the secretive organisation tracing Godzilla, Kong and others, but fell in love with it quickly. The vibes remind me of the unfortunately cancelled Gotham Knights, a show that was great because of its focus on the dynamics between the core group and less so for its place in a wider mythology (maybe there is a soft spot in my heart for shows that have holes, that you can't probe too deeply with logic, but that are filled with newer variations of the Scooby Gang). Monarch is set in two different timelines - the 1950s, at the advent of Monarch, and in 2015, a year after what happens in the 2014 Godzilla that wreaked havoc on US soil. Both timelines have triangles - in the 50s, two scientists work together with an army officer and become the foundation of Monarch, in 2015, two half-siblings (who didn't know about each other) team up with a genius hacker (Kiersey Clemons, very good in Hearts Beat Loud) and uncover well-kept secrets. Both timelines are queer in their own way (dads! so much subtext!). I did catch up with the films and was surprised by how little they resemble the action fare that I was used to from watching in the late 90s/early 2000, how much these films are about perpetually missing or dead parents, structures confronted with something greater than them that they cannot fathom and inevitably meet with brute force, scientists deeply fascinated by what they find but thwarted by the military (if your only tool is a hammer, etc). I even felt a subtle connection between this and Scavengers Reign, another show about a group of people confronted with an overwhelming situation that reveals how individual people cope with a non-conquerable (and deeply unfamiliar) nature differently (awe/violence/pragmatism). The final episode of the first season is also one of the most moving episodes of television this year, carried profoundly by the performance of Mari Yamamoto, whose Keiko is the emotional centre of the show.

Fallout

Best one-season show:

Scavengers Reign

This animated show is some of the best science fiction storytelling that I've watched maybe since The Expanse. The Demeter, a cargo ship, gets into trouble in orbit and some people evacuate in escape pods to a planet with a thriving and profoundly different ecosystem. The show tracks the progress of different groups who all have a diverging approach to the fauna and flora they encounter. The greatest thing about the show is how detailled its depiction of this weird world is, how it pictures animals and plants existing in an occasionally horrifying balance that creates a kind of otherworldly bodyhorror (especially Kamen's fate). This world is decisively not built for humans, and whether characters decide to make the best of it or fail in trying to conquer it decides their fate (again, not too unlike the polar regions!). The voice actors, from Wunmi Mosaku, Bob Stephenson, Sunita Mani to Alia Shawkat voicing a robot who begins to synthesise with the environment in interesting ways (my first good cry about television in 2024) are fantastic, as is the completely surprising appearance by Sepideh Moafi's (who has been great in everything she's ever been in) as Mia.

True Detective: Night Country

Agatha All Along 

There have been a few moments in the last few years where Marvel films and television shows have surprised me. I'm a proponent of the earlier TV shows that didn't have to tie in with the films (Jessica Jones, Runaways, Cloak & Dagger) and that went to darker and weirder places than you'd maybe expect (especially Cloak & Dagger's final season was a trip and a half, in a good way). More recently, my enjoyment of Marvel stuff has entirely depended on how I felt about the main characters: I liked the Hawkeye TV show, Echo, and have a soft spot for She-Hulk because of how great Tatiana Maslany is. What I didn't expect was that a Marvel TV show that is meant to tie into the films could stray so far from what I had thought the conventions were post one big universe: Agatha All Along is a perfect, self-contained nine episodes of television, it's queer (and not in a subtextual way, for a change), it embraces the complexities of a villain (hard to call someone running a murder con anything else). Kathryn Hahn has been great for a long time (I think I first saw her in Crossing Jordan but the first time she really got stuck in my brain for how great an actress she is was in Transparent, in a small role that she made incredibly emotionally impactful with her talent), and she's the reason why Agatha All Along works (and was made in the first place), but the incredible thing about the show is how Joe Locke keeps pace with her perfectly without being overshadows by her or Aubrey Plaza (who is doing the most in a role that allows her to do so). The supporting performances by Sasheer Zamata, Ali Ahn, Debra Jo Rupp and Patti LuPone (!) are oustanding. Surprised and delighted by how much care Jac Schaeffer has put into this, but also cautious about what anyone else would do with these characters once they have to fit into the wider universe.

Under the Bridge

I have a very low tolerance for true crime shows, but this one is a stand-out, maybe because it isn't that far off from the great Sharp Objects. Based on a book by Rebecca Godfrey, played by Riley Keogh in the show, it focuses on a group of mostly girls in 1997 Victoria who severely bullied and killed a teenager, starting a panic about mean girl violence. The stand-out is Lily Gladstone (fresh off of some kind of year), playing the acerbic cop on the case who cares more than her police department (made up of adoptive family members) - and the complex history she has with Godfrey and the history of her adoption as an indigenous child into a white cop family. Later episodes also feature stand-out performances by young Javon Walton as Warren, who forms a bond with Rebecca as she writes about the crime, and the always great Archie Panjabi, who plays Reena's grieving mum. I'm a bit on the fence on whether it is fair to use a real tragedy and shape it into something else for a TV show that takes a lot of licence with the original story, but it's hard to resent the chemistry between Gladstone and Keogh. 

Death and Other Details

I'm not sure if it is aging or just the specific pop-cultural conditions of Covid-times that make gentle mystery/detective shows so appealing. It feels like a 2020s version of Columbo or Murder She Wrote - between Rian Johnson's Poker Face and Knives Out/Glass Onion, Only Murders in the Building and Kenneth Branagh's Hercule Poirot adaptations (which do sometimes veer delightfully weirder and darker), there's plenty to choose from. Death and Other Details is a locked room mystery set on a cruise ship filled with rich people and those who make their lives easier (the upstairs-downstairs aspect of guest vs crew is interesting to consider, maybe even a little bit of an homage to Agatha Christie, the queen of exactly that kind of mystery). The ship itself is a marvelous setting - it the lovingly restored obsession of owner Sunil (Rahul Kohli - forever Owen from Bly Manor to me, even after playing a diametrically opposed character in House of Usher, and therefore difficult to consider as a suspect). Washed up private detective Rufus Cotesworth (Mandy Patinkin, always great) is trying to make up for the greatest error of his life, letting down young Imogene (played by Violett Beane as an adult), whose mother's murder he could not solve. There' something about the diverse cast that seems to be having a great time, and the emergence of a Scooby club (Angela Zhou and Pardis Saremi are delightful) of amateur detectives once some of them successfully manage to prove their innocence in a new murder on board. I was hooked when the show used a Poliça song, which felt like a wink that we are among friends here.

The Brothers Sun

Goodbye, Sweet Prince.

Best show:

We Are Lady Parts

Interview with the Vampire 

I'm not entirely happy with how the show ended, how it revealed a greater betrayal and attempted to redeem a character, but Interview with the Vampire remains a fascinating, queer reclaiming of Anne Rice's original text, delivering on the potential that never quite came to fruition in the original. I loved Claudia's arc this season (Delainey Hayles takes on the mantle perfectly), who is desperately looking for community but is deeply disappointed (and constrained) once she finds it. There is also an interesting undercurrent here about complicity in violence in the aftermath of WW2 and the holocaust.

Industry

Pretty Little Liars: Original Sin

Babylon Berlin

I've only managed to watch the fourth season of the show this year because it has been difficult to track down from abroad, and what a season it is! Somehow, Babylon Berlin always has so many balls in the air that it's impossible to see how it will all fit together in the end, like a storytelling version of the dance-athon that begins the season, or the grizzly methamphetamine experiments (reference: Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich) that Gedeon's brother is running. The underlying horror is always the fact that it is difficult to see how most of the characters will still be alive in ten years - what is coming is becoming more and more obvious, the mask is coming off, and it is becoming more and more obvious how undermined the institutions of the shaky German democracy truly are. War-hungry German nationalists cooperate with the rising national socialist movement, there is a fight within the movement between the bullies of the SA and the SS, there is rising outright antisemitism and racism (I dare anyone not to be deeply moved by one of the final scenes of the season - when Charlotte's half-brother, in the boxing ring, covers himself in chalk to respond to the racist bullying of the Nazis who are ringside, and KOs his opponent). It's an utterly breathless season yet again. 

Also: Abbott Elementary, Only Murders in the Building, Hacks, The Bear, Pachinko

Saddest Goodbyes:

 

Somebody Somewhere 

 

The existence of this show is a marvel. A beautiful, low-key comedy drama set in Kansas, starring a fantastic Bridget Everett, who by all rights should be in many more things - a show that centres trauma and community, and never shies away from the awkwardness of life, finding meaning in friendship.

 

Evil

 

I'm late to the show, having watched some of season one and then never returned, but this is a companion piece to the also great Servant, both shows who seem unconstrained in terms of how weird they can get, and how much they are allowed to embrace unlimited creative freedom, which is such a rarity in the contemporary TV landscape. The main team of three is the driving force behind everything (a dynamic that reminds me of the lovely Leverage).I wish Andrea Martin, playing Sister Andrea, was more recognised for what can only be described as a stand-out performance in a show filled with them.

 

Arcane

 

It's sad that Arcane was cut short, as the second and final season likely arrived at the same finishing point as a much longer run would have, which results in many storylines being rushed or cut for length - but this is still one of the most beautifully animated show I have ever watched, and a harrowing tale about the cost of a world divided by class. I wish that we had gotten more time to see the struggle between Zaun and Piltover (but what a time to show what an occupying force does to a terrorised population). Hailee Steinfeld, Ella Purnell (whose rise to stardom is obvious this year) and Katie Leung are fantastic as always.

 
And: 

 

Alia Shawkat is so good in The Old Man! It's maybe a truism that great actors who started off in comedies are likely to succeed in dramatic roles more than when the shift happens the other way (and Search Party was such an interesting showcase of her acting with how many different genres the show straddled across its seasons). She has a much more central role in the second season, where she has to make difficult choices after finding out her true identity. I'm also kind of amused by the fact that the dynamics of this show weirdly mirror Only Murders in the Building (which is also a riff on Grumpy Old Men).

 

American Rust is a very solid thriller/crime show, situated somewhere between The Sinner, Hightown and Ozark. I didn't really expect it to have a second season, and the stand-outs in terms of performance are David Alvarez and Julia Mayorga, playing siblings coping with the death of their father and their community as it deals with the arrival of a fracking company eager to make profits. I've loved Maura Tierney since ER, and Grace Poe is one of those characters for the ages, always caught between doing the right thing for everyone and caring for herself, a decision the show argues inevitably leads to moral greyness. 

Beacon 23, a show that seems to have artistic freedom beyond what should be possible in 2024, makes full use of it in the second episode of the second season: like a futuristic, AI-version of Severance, Harmony (a fantastic Natasha Mumba) gets stuck in in an increasingly horrifying office environment after the death of her human (who might just be the ghost in the machine back in the Beacon, or one of several). Always on board with fax-based horror. 

You can feel about Ryan Murphy's expansive work since leaving high school one way or another (I've seen very little of his since Popular), but the acting in the second season of Monster is astonishing. Cooper Koch's tour de force in the fifth episode - an almost single-shot take that recounts the abuse his character suffered at the hands of his parents - is the kind of harrowing experience that transcends television. I would like to read a piece on how Murphy's gone from writing about the hellmouth of high school to the worst real and imagined horrors of the world.

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Shows of the Year

Best new show:

Deadloch

The Last of Us

As someone who watches a lot of television, my favourite moments are always the ones where connections seem to unfold between unconnected stories. The Last of Us (based on the game) feels like a companion piece to last year's Station Eleven (based on the novel), both when they're at their best investigating the old Voyager adage that survival is insufficient. Ellie and Joe are both deeply damaged, especially Joe, who has tragically lost his own daughter and is all the more reluctant at the beginning to make himself vulnerable to Ellie (who is very hard not to love). The third episode departs from our regular cast to create a love story from beginning to end, in which Murray Bartlett and Nick Offerman (a man who will never play a character that is not competent, what an achievement) build a nest together in the ruins of society and find meaning in their curated, beautiful life. Long Long Time is perhaps one of the best episodes of television (not just this year). 

Poker Face

At some point after the first season of Russian Doll came out, some people on twitter commented that Natasha Lyonne could be the spiritual successor to Peter Falk's Detective Columbo - and then, somehow, through serendipity, Rian Johnson (now providing us with annual counterpoint whodunnits to Kenneth Branagh's revival of Hercule Poirot) must have come to the same conclusion. Poker Face, like Columbo, is not a whodunnit - each episode begins with the crime, so that the audience is well aware of who has committed it. Following Lyonne's Charlie Cale and her indefeatable instinct for telling lies is where the charm of this show lies. Each episode is full of stars who act like they're having the time of their life (and what other television show can boast to have John Darnielle's acting debut as well as songs written by him specifically for an episode). 

Orphan Black: Echoes

Beacon 23

It took me a few episodes to get into this show, even though it should have been the easiest sell ever (Lena Headey) - this is a science fiction show about a galactic lighthouse, outfitted with a (very emotional) AI. The show mainly focuses on Headey's Aster and Stephan James' Halan unravelling a mystery about space rocks, but there is also a deeply philosophical approach where individual episodes go back in time to show the fates of previous beacon keepers (it seems that like olden days lighthouses, beacon keeping attracts eccentrics who translate into fascinating characters on-screen), and characters discuss the fate of humanity (expansion into the stars vs focusing on community, transcending death). The result is something quite unlike anything else I've seen.

The Horror of Dolores Roach

Justina Machado, great since Six Feet Under, stars in an inspired adaptation of Sweeney Todd set in Washington Heights. The story brilliantly weaves together the effects of incarceration and gentrification with the morbid twist of the original story, with Dolores' (frequently deserving) victims ending up in empanadas instead of meat pies. 

Best one-season show:

Dead Ringers

Bad Behaviour

 

Carol and the End of the World  

 

I think this may be a show that is best consumed without knowing much about it beforehand, and it is one of the few ones that I've taken a lot of time to watch slowly this year, to really let the episodes marinate before moving on to the next one. Of all things, it reminds me most of Somebody Somewhere - the idea of discovering meaning and connection as an outsider.  

The Fall of the House of Usher

Jury Duty

A deeply high-concept show that pays off amazingly, in part because somehow, this show found the perfect mark for its long con. Without Ronald's empathy and loveliness, this could have gone awfully wrong, but somehow, the experiment works out. 

The Changeling

This magnificent, beautiful adaptation of the Victor LaValle novel of the same name (LaValle taking the role of the narrator) is stunning. It's a complex tale about motherhood and fairies who steal children, the ravages of post-partum depression and the troubles of not being believed, of being unsure about reality. It contains some of the best performances of the year - and it finally, finally allows the great Adina Porter to fully shine (in episode seven, she basically performs a one-character play, holding attention for every second - until Alexis Louder joins her in a devastating performance as another lost son). LaKeith Stanfield is amazing as the father and husband, searching for an explanation, Clack Becko as mother and wife, being asked to do horrible things to get her son back.  

While the Men Are Away

This was such a surprise! Like Bomb Girls if written as a poignant comedy rather than a drama, this show focuses on the Land Army, women who help out in regional areas with male farm workers going overseas to fight in WW2. Delightfully queer, but also very much about what happens when female aspirations meet an inherently patriarchal society. One of the most moving performances is by Phoebe Grainer, who plays an Aboriginal woman who is trying to protect her brothers from the profound racism and constant threat of living in a mission - and the stakes are constantly higher for her than for her white co-workers, a fact the show never shies away from. 

Willow

I hadn't watched the 1988 film until the first few episodes of this aired, and as much as it doesn't exactly look great - the effects are awkward, Sorsha's character development from daughter of an evil woman to supporting the heroes happens through a kiss and no reasoning (and she has barely any lines), the fact that the television show managed to cast two people who capture the spirit of being Madmartigan's (it's sad Val Kilmer couldn't be in the first season for health reasons) twins so perfectly is pretty stunning. I'd say that 85% of this show thrives on the ensemble cast and how they come together, how each of them on their own is loveable but they also take the idea of a quest to heart, and change throughout it. It's a manifold heroes' journey, with a lot of heart. 

Full Circle

Best show:

Yellowjackets

The Bear

What a great second season for The Bear! The kids are trying to revamp The Beef into The Bear, including dealing with all the bureaucratic red tape that entails and the utter catastrophe that is both the building itself and Carmy's family. The most impressive thing about the show is how it oscillated between the beauty of creation and the genuine moments of caring between characters (when they bring out the best in each other) and the almost Better Call Saul like tension when things go awry, which happens often (when they bring out the worst in each other). Some favourite moments this season: Marcus being sent to Copenhagen to train with Will Poulter, Richie sent to an excellent restaurant to polish forks and learn about the meaning of service, including a magical moment with Olivia Colman (!!!) in which she provides guidance so he doesn't keep fucking up his life (very fitting full-circle moment for me since first seeing Olivia Colman dispensing useful if chaotic advice as Naomi's mum on Skins), a Christmas episode so emotionally fraught and tense that it made me want to take a nap, that also features: Sarah Paulson, John Mulaney, Bob Odenkrik, Gillian Jacobs, Jamie Lee Curtis!

Only Murders in the Building

After a slightly less successful second season, the third season of Only Murders in the Building is a revelation - Oliver's return to Broadway is marred by his Hollywood-turned-stage-actor star (played with appetite by Ryan Reynolds) being murdered on opening day. After some hesitancy (Mabel suffering the effects of an early midlife crisis and the unaffordability of living in New York without access to the free apartment at the Arconia), the three besties return to try and solve the murder. One of the greatest things about OMITB is that it always attracts great guest stars (I hope because everyone is having a ton of fun, at least that's what it looks like), and this season features Meryl Streep (what can't she do)... performing in the musical version of Oliver's musical, after he thinks his way through his dilemma. There is so much to love here, like the running joke of Steve Martin's Charles failing to get through a a patter song without going to a dark place.

The Newsreader

Somehow the second season of the ABC's show about a commercial news programme in 1980s Australia is even better than the first - Anna Torv (a joy! We are going through a Torv-eissance!) and Sam Reid (fresh off of playing Lestat in Interview with the Vampire, a character that could not be any more different from Dale) return to cover 1987, from election day to the obsession with the preparations for the 1988 bicentennial to the ravages of the heroin and AIDS crisis. The show's incredibly tense fifth episode is its best so far, in which Helen makes a career-changing decision (in a season that seems to be all about ethics in news, and about the ascent and failure of a Lachlan Murdoch stand-in, perfectly timed with the real-life retirement of his inspiration's dad - and for additional entertainment I suggest looking up who Anna Torv is related to) and Dale chooses the worst decade to wake up next to a stranger after getting black-out drunk. My only criticism is that the episode-by-episode themes don't carry through more - with the incidental timing of the show airing just as the referendum on the Voice is coming up, the coverage of the Aboriginal protests against the blind celebration of colonisation should have carried through the entire season, instead of relying on just one impactful appearance by Hunter Page-Lochard.

Foundation

The second season of the century-spanning Foundation, which feels like an improvisational jam on the source material, adds great new characters, and showcases how the hubris of Empire will bring the downfall that Sheldon predicted. There is also a freedom to the season that is incredibly enjoyable to watch, as is the fact that the second season embraces humour a lot more than the first one did, with Lee Pace embracing the over-the-topness of his character in a highly entertaining way. 

The Lazarus Project

I only watched the first season, which originally came out in 2022, this year, and was glad not to have to wait too long for the second season. It was an interesting season to watch alongside Orphan Black: Echoes, as both shows are about the consequences of characters not processing their grief and exploiting a loophole to avoid the process. In the case of The Lazarus Project, the loophole has greater, world-encompassing consequences, and one of my favourite parts of the second season was that Sarah became central to the plot in her own right, as she came to entirely different conclusions than George about what needed to be done. 

For All Mankind

Abbott Elementary

 

Somebody Somewhere 

I somehow missed this show when it originally came out last year but caught up with its two seasons in 2023. This is about a woman who returned to her hometown to care for her sister, now stuck after the death of her sister in her grief and loneliness. She accidentally stumbles into a vibrant, queer community where she least expects it (choir practice) and finds a new best friend and people to help her navigate her feelings. The second seasons has many moments of deeply frustrating self-sabotage, but ends fittingly with both a funeral and a wedding.

Saddest Goodbyes:

I have previously expressed how much I love the Australian version of Masterchef, and how I feel that it all came together when the old judges left and were replaced with Andy Allen, Melissa Leong and Jock Zonfrillo. It's a magical thing when the chemistry of three people perfectly aligns, especially in a genre that can be wrought with conflict and mean-spiritedness. The loss of Jock Zonfrillo - a man who also seemed to be endlessly excited by good food, and generous in his celebration of it - feels immense. 

Star Trek: Picard

I've been on the books for a long time to want, desperately, for the stepchild of Star Trek, Deep Space Nine (a show that I feel was years ahead of its time, and broke ground for the gritty BSG remake and The Expanse), to eventually get the same nostalgia-tinged treatment that has been afforded to TNG and Voyager. It's what's kept me at a bit of a distance from Picard over its three seasons, each of which has been different. The third is exactly that: a loving tribute to a long-running show and its cast, with the addition of Seven of Nine, who has finally gotten what she always deserved (it sure wasn't the skinsuit of the late 90s/early 2000 hellyears - let's hope Jeri Ryan gets many more great gigs after this). It is hard to accept that this final season features shapeshifters but not those who originally fought the Dominion wars, that Benjamin Sisko is still off in the wormhole with no reference to his fate. That doesn't detract from the joy of seeing Deanna Troi, Geordi LaForge, Data, Beverly Crusher, William Riker and Worf (who is very much there for honour and comic relief) reunited with Picard on the original Enterprise D, even if a reference to Word never weeping hits hard at those of us still grieving Jadzia Dax 25 years later. It's a beautiful send-off.

 

Reservation Dogs

And:

I wanted to get excited about the science fiction show Silo, but it never really got back to the greatness of its pilot episode, in which Rashida Jones gives the performance of a lifetime. I really loved Aotearoa show Sik Fan Lah, which combines food and history. Kristen Kish travelled to Restaurants at the End of the World for the National Geographic. Survivor Australia had one of the greatest seasons the show's ever had anywhere in the world (tragic that one of the best players once again lost out on the win), sometimes more perfectly scripted than actual scripted shows (Simon's arc! Shonee!). And talking about reality television, the first iteration of Alone Australia surprised me - the winner embraced the idea that nature shouldn't be conquered but embraced. 

My favourite episode of the sixth season of Charlie Brooker's Black Mirror is the final one, Demon 79. The draw that I feel for Black Mirror has always been about something different than it's speculation about what happens at the intersection between technological advances and the dark side of humanity: it's a series written by a man who clearly watches as much television and film as I do. There's a meta- kind of draw to that pop cultural self-referentiality (it's why I enjoyed the first episode more than most reviewers, even though it was objectively not that great). But Black Mirror, at its best, creates perfect short stories. It will likely never be as good as San Junipero again, but Demon 79, and the performances by Anjana Vasan (We Are Lady Parts!) and Paapa Essiedu. 

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Shows of the Year

Best new show:

A League of Their Own

This show is so joyful, so clearly a work of love by everyone involved - how amazing is it to see Abbi Jacobson go from Broad City to this! I love everything here, from the way it builds on the film in a way that acknowledges the shortcomings but retains the glee, the fleshed out minor characters (Roberta Colindrez from Vida! Kelly McCormack from Killjoys and many other Canadian delights!) that grow on you so much as the show progresses, the friendship between Max and Carson, the friendship between Max and Clance - and I'm quietly convinced Jacobson watched her partner Jodi Balfour in Bomb Girls and Had An Idea, and it comes together so well. 

Severance

Pachinko

This adaptation of Min Jin Lee's novel spans several generations of a Korean family but centres on Sunja (played by Minha Kim at a younger age and Youn Yuh-jung later), who migrates from Japanese occupied Korea to Japan. It is a history of a violent occupation and racism that still exists in the late 1980s, when Sunja's grandson Solomon returns to Japan from the United States to convince an old woman to sell her valuable land to his company. Pachinko is immersive, sometimes overwhelming in its sadness - the sadness of people craving what they left behind, but can never truly return to, the everyday violence of a country that does not welcome them, even when it is happy to exploit their labour, but also the underlying impossibility to truly convey personal history to the next generation, especially when that generation is so eager to get on with their own lives, with little space to contemplate the sacrifices of their parents and grandparents. In an episode that is not based on the novel, we get the backstory of Sunja's first lover (a man who wanted to make her his concubine, but found her unwilling to live in shame - he guards the life of her and her son secretly from then on, uses his influence to award them a measure of protection), who lived through the devastating Great Kantō earthquake in 1923. 

The Bear

Abbott Elementary

Watching the first season of this show, I was reminded of everything that went wrong in beloved Parks and Recreation's first season: how Parks didn't yet know what perspective to take, how it mocked Leslie Knope, how it started off as a whole lot more cynical and cold. Parks found its feet after that short first season, but Abbott Elementary doesn't need any idle time to get there: it's perfect from the beginning, warm and un-cynical, relentlessly funny, perfectly cast. 

Interview with the Vampire

An explicitly queer sequel to the 1990s film, that feels like it is taking the Anne Rice novel and exploiting its full potential without the burden of having to hold back, or hide in subtext. Interview with the Vampire is about a self-destructive love, deals with racism, and the nature of memory and recollection, and how those things become warped when they are turned into a story told to someone else. 

The Peripheral

It's incredible that this is the first adaptation of one of William Gibson's novels (Johnny Mnemonic and Abel Ferrara's New Rose Hotel are based on his short stories). It is an interpretation of sorts, deviating from the story it is based on, and very much influenced by the visual language creators Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan developed in Westworld. Chloë Grace Moretz is a perfect Flynne Fisher, who gets caught in a complex thriller plot when she tests out what she believes to be new gaming technology for her veteran brother Burton (Midsommar's Jack Reynor). I still dream of what Olivier Assayas could make with Pattern Recognition, but this is an almost perfect first season. 

Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

I think that some of the draw of this show for me was how much it reminded me of watching the three Peter Jackson films when they came out. The Rings of Power is beautiful - many of its dialogue scenes feel like they are staged like they would be in a play, the scenery of New Zealand is captured gorgeously, the night scenes are - blissfully - visible, all of which creates an expansiveness that I think has been missing from other recent fantasy series. 

The Serpent Queen

Samantha Morton is Catherine de' Medici, who survives intrigues at the French court through brilliant plotting (her handling of the politically hapless Mary Stuart is mouthwatering, especially when you've been raised with the historical perspective of Schiller's play), in a series that takes many historical liberties but is endlessly entertaining to watch. 

Best one-season show:

Station Eleven

Life After Life

Archive 81

The Midnight Club

Mike Flanagan's newest story is about a group of teenagers who spend their last days together in a hospice, meeting each night to tell stories to each other. There is another story in the background about the history of the house (it resembles Archive 81, sometimes), but I think The Midnight Club could have gotten away with having no dramatic foil at all and merely focusing on the power of storytelling as these kids deal with their illness and the prospect of death. 

Giri/Haji

I know this show set in Tokyo and London is from 2019, but for some reason, it slipped through the net and I only managed to finish it in 2022: and it's not the story itself that lands its here, which is a convoluted tale of two Japanese brothers, one a cop, the other a Yakuza, who chase or maybe save each other. This isn't even really a police show - when police work appears, things go wrong, and the cops that are the main characters barely behave like police at all. What makes this show work is the relationships between the characters, which emerge unexpectedly, especially the one between Sarah (Kelly Macdonald) and Kenzo (Takehiro Hira) and Kenzo's daughter Taki and male sex worker Rodney. Kelly Macdonald has never not been great but I think this might just be her best performance, from the absurdity of celebrating Yom Kippur with three strangers who become friends to the sharp but caring way she looks after Rodney. This is full of little surprises. It made me think about how Collateral kind of shaped my perception of what Carey Mulligan could do beyond the films she was in around the same time - I think this is an example of a show that proves how the long-term format can give so much more room for performance and brilliance. 

Irma Vep

Shining Girls

Outstanding performances especially by Elisabeth Moss and Phillipa So in this serialised adaptation of Lauren Beukes' time travelling thriller, and Jamie Bell makes for a compelling creepy, stalking killer. 

Chloe

The Dropout

It's fitting to commend Julia Garner for Ozark and then to go on and commend Amanda Seyfried for what she accomplishes in The Dropout, with the very difficult performance as Elizabeth Holmes - she plays her from high school senior to current times, capturing the transformation somewhere in the middle into a construct (the accent! the tone!). Julia Garner as Anna Delvey is as good as it could have been, but something about that character in Inventing Anna is too far removed, the whole thing too much of a satire to ever reach a moment of truthfulness (and I think that's entirely intentional - but also means that the entirety of the show can be summed up in an SNL sketch). The exception is when Anna is on the phone with her lawyer's son and there's a glimpse of something, for a second, but I think for the most part the show misses the mark, in part because the perspective is wrong. The Dropout, on the other hand, makes a point about hustle culture, about entrepreneurialism - where the cult becomes so overwhelming that the product it is centred around could be anything, even a technology that will never work, as long as the other markings are there - that I think makes a lot of sense about the economy we've lived in for a while now. Holmes is obsessed with it, and once she realises that it all a scam, she takes the eloquent step and turns her own hustle into a scam as well. 

Astrid and Lilly Save the World

During the first two years of the virus, there was a wealth of small, quirky shows with a lot of heart that seemed a bit too strange to ever make it to a second season - Vagrant Queen, Warrior Nuns (which has been renewed, but hasn't been back so far...). Astrid and Lilly is another example - it is delightful, weird, queer. It stars two best friends (played brilliantly by Jana Morrison and Samantha Aucoin), teenage outcasts, who accidentally open a portal that lets in demons into their world - and a "Giles" (Oliver Renaud's unselfconsciously Earth-curious Brutus is one of my favourite things about the show) to guide them how to fight them. The shows makes many overt references to Buffy, which it is obviously deeply inspired by - high school is hell, especially the pecking order and the useless to dangerous teachers and parents. But week by week, as they slay the demons, this show grows its monster heart along with the bravery and self-respect of its two heroines. I wish we had seen the entirety of the William Shakespeare Michelle collab "Romeo and Juliet Down Unda", I wish we could have four seasons of the demons always, without fail, getting aspiring teen actress Val. 

Best show:

For All Mankind

Russian Doll

Season two - what a concept! Nadia, instead of reliving the day of her birthday again and again, now travels back in time, through the life history of her mother and grandmother - a journey that takes her back to Hungary during the WW2, in an attempt to undo mistakes that changed the course of everyone's life (but in the end, is it possible to unravel the past, or is it just about coming to terms with it?). There is a breathtaking ambition in this second season, Natasha Lyonne is once again outstanding in this role of a lifetime. 

Only Murders in the Building

Who would have thought that the combination of the Martins and Selena Gomez in an apartment building teeming with eccentrics (almost of of them broadway stars) would provide the kind of escapism essential to surviving 2022? 

Hacks

Deborah and Ava take the show on the road - it's a whole season about how these two women are eerily similar, and profoundly need each other because of it as they discover more about themselves (some of the things they discover are profoundly unlikable, and Hacks has always drawn from that). 

Reservation Dogs

Four kids who live on a reservation in Oklahoma are trying to pretty-crime their way out towards California, or maybe to find a way to live there and look after each other as best as they can, after the loss of their friend Daniel to suicide. Outstanding acting, funny, heart-felt. 

Borgen. Power and Glory

My favourite political intrigue show is back after a long wait! I think the interesting thing here has always been the fact that Denmark is small - that this is a show about how a small country acts internationally (since Birgitte is now foreign minister) - but the focus in this season on Greenland and the complex ties of a rich country to its struggling territory that strives for independence and dignity is pretty fascinating (especially because we've moved way, way on from the idea that Birgitte is the good cop here).

The Handmaid's Tale

One of Us Is Lying

I am not saying that I didn't like the Pretty Little Liars remake/spin-off that came out this year - it is gritty (as expected from something set in the Riverdale universe). But I also rewatched all of the original series this year, and I did miss the certain spark, the wild campy ride, the million-twists-an-hour pacing. And somehow, One of Us is Lying tickles that spot better, and comes with the added bonus of an established cast that just seems to get so perfectly, and hits all the emotional marks as well. 

Saddest Goodbyes:

The Expanse

Warrior Nun

In My Skin

The second and last season of Welsh In My Skin made me speechless: this is a quietly powerful gem of a show that accomplishes more in five thirty minute episodes than other shows do in years. Gabrielle Creevy's Bethan faces incredible challenges - an abusive father, a mother who is in and out of hospital with bipolar disorder, the economic challenges of poverty. She tells lies to everyone - her friends, her teachers, her girlfriend - about her life to try and pretend normalcy, and because she struggles with shame and asking for help, but the second season unravels her. These are some of the best performances of the year - nuanced, complex (a special shout-out to what Jo Hartley achieves as her mum, and James Wilbraham as her best friend). 

The Good Fight

I think if we ever have to recapture the emotional horrors of Trump and post-Trump America, The Good Fight will be a good reference point. The show continues to be almost over-the-top topical, with fictional representations of historic and pop cultural events, but it also increasingly shows the incredibly emotionally destabilising impact of living through political radicalisation during a global pandemic. Here, even the most even-keeled characters begin going off the rails, because it seems like the only possible way to deal with the world going insane.

Westworld

Search Party

Somewhere between a satire about taking cliches and insults of gen-y literally and a riff on Patricia Highsmith's protagonists, Search Party radically transformed itself in each and every of its five seasons, refusing to ever be predictable. The final season, fittingly ends with Dory Sief, post-revelation, convinced both of the coming apocalypse and the ability to save humanity. What ensues is, unsurprisingly, a twist peppered with pop culture references. Alia Shawkat has been outstanding throughout, and the supporting performances really shine this season as well (Chantal Witherbottom's sidequest intersects at the end). 

The Wilds

I did not think that I would be into the control group story line at all, but I loved season two of this show, which switches back and forth between the boys and the girls. It's only been about two years, but it feels like much more than that because of how the world changed in between seasons, and still, these characters resonate so much with me - if anything, they feel more inhabited , like they've grown with the actresses over the intervening years. Dot owns my heart (I wish I could be this useful and levelheaded in a crisis) but every single one of them goes on a journey (Leah with Adelaide's own Ben Folds!), and even the boys sometimes got to me. Rachel Griffith remains delightfully unhinged. 

Derry Girls

Better Call Saul

I think one of the most amazing things about Better Call Saul is how it outgrew the show it was based on - at no stage did I even want to go back to Breaking Bad, watching it, as if somehow, the missing heart at the centre of BB was something that kept me away, knowing that after Better Call Saul, it would feel like it lacked something essential. Rhea Seehorn's accomplishment here cannot be overstated, or the deep and profound tragedy of a man like Mike coming to the end he did. The sheer suspense, the weekly shocks, the way all of that was always founded in caring for the characters, in the substantial question of Jimmy's soul. The final scene - in black and white, like most of this season - which has Kim visiting Saul, sharing a cigarette with him - is one of those moments that will last forever. 

Motherland: Fort Salem

Tally Craven!

Batwoman

And...

I've spent a lot of time thinking about Ozark, which ended in two installations this year. It's always been a show that is great at building suspense, a show of cliff-hangers, of pulling out the rug under the viewer - and still, I don't think that it's ever been truly good, at worst a pastiche of other shows (the best moments of the show are probably around Ben, Wendy's brother, but to me the resonance happened because it reminded me of Brenda's brother Billy in Six Feet Under). At its best, it's been a platform for Julia Garner (an amazing discovery, not unlike that of Kaitlyn Dever in Justified), who plays Ozark's most compelling character. At its heart, Ozark feels cynical - highly privileged white people from Chicago enter the community they find like locusts and leave nothing but grief and devastation behind, and like a secular prosperity gospel, they feel entitled not just to money but also a great legacy, and of course Ruth Langmore will have to pay the price, and of course Marty and Wendy will once again get away. It is a bitter, unforgiving ending, one that befits a show that has always refused its other characters the hope of an escape. 

High School, an adaptation of Tegan and Sarah's memoir, is a great Canadian show (and it is always fantastic to see Clea DuVall excel in her new career!), set in the 90s (unclear if so much flannel because of time period, or Canada, or both). It shows how the twins pick up music accidentally after drifting apart, in the midst of a lot of emotional turmoil. But the stand-out in this very well-cast show is Cobie Smulders, who plays a mother who struggles severely with being trapped in a life that doesn't have anything specific wrong with it, but is far removed from what she imagined for herself. Everyone here is trying their best, but sometimes the suburbs and motherhood and being in a relationship that is maybe only continuing because of inertia can be absolutely just as smothering as something going horribly wrong. Smulders is so good here - in a dramatic role that is often comedic, after so many years of being in a sitcom and existing within the limits that Marvel imposes on character development. I hope her career truly takes off from here (also, kind of an entertaining parallel to Carly Pope popping up as a mum in the new Pretty Little Liars). 

Siobhán McSweeney is magnificent in Derry Girls - Sister Michael's suffering through questions of faith and the reality of attempting to get these girls through a difficult political always shines through the sheer humour of her character - but she is outstanding in the crime-comedy Holding. This show hits so surprisingly when it does - I'd say nothing beats the emotional journey of hearing Brenda Fricker's Mrs Meaney (nobody knows her first name) recount the tale of her suffering - but there's something about Brid Riordan that is an utter, complete surprise. 

Sepideh Moafi (who is also one of the best parts of the frequently not-so-great Generation Q) in Black Bird - a show with many great performance, including Ray Liotta's last. A stand-out, as tough FBI agent Lauren McCauley. An absolutely memorable take on someone who seems so excellent at getting exactly what she needs, by reading her opponents well and playing into their weaknesses. 

I've been pretty lukewarm on Wednesday, maybe because after watching the second season of Warrior Nun, nothing came close to the amount of emotions I felt - everything, short of a reread of Lauren Groff's Matrix, felt muted and flat after. But Jenna Ortega (who is also very good in The Fallout) is so good, an amount of dedication to the role that is visible in every scene. 

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Shows of the Year

 Best new show:

Yellowjackets

A successful high school soccer team gets stranded in the wilderness after a plane crash - and the story of survival is told in conjunction with the unravelling of a mystery 25 years later. This cast is astounding - not just the older counterparts (would I have ever thought to see Christina Ricci, Juliette Lewis and Melanie Lynskey share a screen?), but the young girls discovering what it takes to survive, and veering off into something dangerous, are captivating. There are obvious references here, but all I could think of was last year's The Wilds (which was gorgeous too), and I think the two exist in conversation with each other. 

We Are Lady Parts

Saira, Bisma and Ayesha (and Momtaz, their band manager) are a three-piece Muslim punk band (inspired by riot grrrl with a repertoire that includes "Voldemort Under My Headscarf" and "Honour kill my sister") that is seeking in audience. Amina is a very talented guitarist (more into folk though) and PhD student who is seeking a husband, but accidentally, instead, finds herself as their lead guitarist. This show is EVERYTHING. It's about mutual support, insecurity, anxiety and grief, and it's about the shared joy of creating something together in spite of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. I wish this had 10 seasons. 

Only Murders in the Building

Comfort food in 2021 - Steve Martin, Martin Short and a very good Selena Gomez (what a find!) investigate a murder in their New York apartment building, trying to use a podcast to make money and gain fame. It's about the twists of the investigation, the relationship (and secrets) of the three self-made detectives, and at its best, it's a perfect show (in one episode, we follow a hearing impaired man who turns out to be a suspect, and until the last minute, no words are spoken, somehow without feeling too gimmicky). 

Y: The Last Man

Arcane

Not sure how to sell this except to say that this is so unexpectedly queer, and so very unexpectedly and devastatingly sad, and very beautiful, even though it is important to remember what the production conditions were. 

The Girl in the Woods

Hacks

A whole show! About the wonders of artistic collaboration! Funny, crude, but at its best, emotionally honest about love and mentorship, but also betrayal and facing up to the past. The two leads, Jean Smart (who is also great in Mare of Easttown) and Hannah Einbinder, are outstanding. 

WandaVision

I have an ambiguous relationship with the Marvel film universe, where I feel tender feelings for certain aspects of it, but most of them have been severely disappointed over the years. For one, if you care 100% more about Peggy Carter and Captain America than about the vain tin man, it's hard to feel catered to. WandaVision is ambitious - an experiment, akin to the unconnected shows that Marvel put out alongside its films (the best among them probably the sadly short-lived Cloak and Dagger). It travels the time eras of classic American sitcom while slowly revealing the dark undercurrent beneath it - that like populaces in general, the harmlessness of the shows hides a darker intention beneath it. Elizabeth Olsen is marvellous, and so is Teyonah Parris as Maria Rambeau's daughter Monica (who gets her powers here) - but the break-out star is Kathryn Hahn, predictably great in every era. 

Foundation

When this came out initially I read some reviews that made me think this wouldn't be for me: I read some Arthur C. Clarke as a child and that's as far as I ever got with "hard science fiction", and since then, I've only really been into The Expanse's approach to it, which is basically class struggle in space. But then I began watching, and could not stop. Foundation spans decades, its vision, centuries, and yet the interplay between societal change (as predicted by mathematical models that honestly, to me, sound more like statistics applied to political science?) and the inherent unpredictability of messy humans worked. The characters are compelling, especially Gaal and Salvor, and whatever Lee Pace does with the different iterations of Brother Day is something else. The cloned empire (it's empire, not emperor, three people who are one person are empire) reminds me a little bit of Arkady Martine's A Memory Called Empire (I guess it's what Six Direction is trying to achieve, via Mahit's technology?). 

Best one-season shows: 

Exterminate All the Brutes

Raoul Peck's furious documentary isn't just about the violence of colonialism, it investigates how Europe and the United States construct themselves from colonialism, white supremacy and racism, and leave devastation in their wake. 

Station Eleven

The Investigation

Like Unbelievable, this should be the benchmark for how shows about investigations of violent crimes against women should be told. We never see any of the violence, but the horror of what happened is palpable in every scene. 

Mare of Easttown

A difficult-to-miss police show in which Kate Winslet convincingly plays a rugged small-town American cop struggling to solve the disappearance of a young woman. Kate Winslet is outstanding, even though the show never hits quite as hard as the first season of Broadchurch (which feels like the obvious reference here) does. 

Midnight Mass

The Newsreader

New Gold Mountain

Dopesick

American Rust

Squid Game

The Bite

Best shows:

Feel Good

Feel Good's second season is a complete surprise - both in terms of existing (I didn't realise it was going to have a second season!) and in terms of how it becomes a captivating and sad story about Mae's teenage years, and the complex trauma she is facing after being abused by someone she thought a friend. At the margins, it, like Hacks, investigates how prevalent sexism still is in stand-up, but the moments that hit the hardest are when Mae deals with what is inside her own head, and how it affects the people she loves. 

The Expanse

For All Mankind

This was a tense season that focused more on the politics of a re-written space race, in which the USSR and the US vie for moon resources and come close to a non-cold war after the Reagan regime decides to send armed troops, and things predictably get out of control in a horrifying way. I'd like to believe that For All Mankind has its own alternative history version of The Americans written into its fabrics, and some of the events at the end of the season hint that this might be the case. Otherwise, there's the outstanding Ellen Waverly, the loneliest woman on the moon, who returns to make a choice between love and happiness and her dream of landing on Mars. One of my favourite things about this show is how it subtly investigates how the progress in the space race may impact technology, and bring forward things earlier, but maybe we also got some traces here of the same creator who mirrored Bush's "war on terror" via Laura Roslin and Admiral Adama (the show's version of Reagan is certainly a trip). Vale Astronauts Stevens.

Motherland Fort Salem

The politics of the this show are still all over the place, but for something that often feels like it was written partly by LSD (or, fittingly, mushrooms), Motherland continues its great character work into a second season, a second season that deepens the feeling that there is a whole lot of grey here and not a lot of black and white. 

Rojst

This Polish crime show set in a small city began in the 1980s, during Soviet rule, and then followed up with a second season set in the 1990s, revealing the dark second world war secrets that still reverberate through the town. It's a triumph of Netflix' new strategy of creating shows in countries that would normally not reach a wider audience. Moody, dark, but then lightened by unexpected humour. Plus, the second season features an investigator that will be hard to forget, and to measure other police detectives against. 

Dickinson

This second season of Dickinson is all about the cost of fame, and the question of its value - who does Emily write for? Her beloved Sue crumbles under the pressure of her sole readership, but the main she defers these beautiful poems to is not reliable, and has interests of his own. Emily is haunted by fame, or by being forgotten by history (since she does not have the luxury of knowing who she will be, centuries later). Meanwhile, the world she lives in is teetering towards a great war, something that she barely engages in. Surprisingly, one of the most heartfelt storylines this season is about her brother Austin's attempts to find meaning in a loveless marriage, with a partner who does not trust him to know her feelings, or to regard his. Dickinson is just always, somehow, a little more than what you'd expect. 

Line of Duty

Line of Duty has consistently been about the impossibility of a corrupt organisation investigating itself. It has shown, over six seasons now, that the moral and ethical aspirations of its three main characters - Steve, Kate and Hastings - fail in the face of a deeply undermined and incredibly powerful police force with a long history of connections to organised crime. The world Line of Duty shows is one where everyone, regardless of who they are, is susceptible to be blackmailed into immorality. After the genius seasonal appearances of Tandiwe Newton and Stephen Graham, the sixth season has Kelly MacDonald as a police detective in the crosshairs of AC-12, and she gives an understated performance that escalates over time (also, we are constantly on the cusp of something with her attempts to connect with Kate). 

Batwoman

Also: 

Kontrol/Kontrola TRUST ME ON THIS. 

Life is Strange: True Colors. 

Sophie Thatcher this year, not just in Yellowjackets, but also in When the Streetlights Go On, a ten-parter consisting of less than 10 minute long episodes about a small-town murder set in 1995 (along with Cruel Summer, a lot of things appear to cycle back to the 90s this year, and thrive on the pop culture). The thing about Yellowjackets isn't just that its young main cast so perfectly mirrors the older counterparts, its that it is conceivable, from their sheer amount of talent, that they could eventually become equally as iconic as Juliette Lewis (and Christina Ricci, and Melanie Lynskey - and Jasmine Savoy Brown is just as great as a young version of Tawny Cypress' Taissa). Sophie Thatcher is a stand-out in both, like maybe she's already there. 

Jordan Hull's performance in the disaster that was the second season of The L Word: Generation Q.

One of Us is Lying: This is everything I wanted from what it proclaimed to be. Great, self-contained eight episodes of sheer entertainment, and a breakthrough performance from Jessica McLeod as Janae. What if Pretty Little Liars but without the long, sad, slow descent into badness? Although wasting Ali Liebert on a bit part is a bit of a crime, but forgiven for the rest of it. 

Olivia Colman in Landscapers, which is an artistic masterpiece in and of itself, experimental and a new take on an increasingly more popular (and tired) genre - her performance is utterly emotionally devastating, Naomi's mum's done it again.