For some background, years ago I used to have a top-30/40/XX favorite TV shows. That used to be something of a fairly easy list to write - or at least come up with the ranking. This was largely before the influx of (1) miniseries (inherently hard to compare to a show with multiple seasons) and (2) the peak TV expansion. I don't think I've written such a list in at least five years, and probably closer to ten at this point. It was replaced, to some degree, by my annual ranking of Favorite TV shows - far easier to compare single seasons against each other. Well, I've finally decided to refresh this off with a twist - breaking the list into genres. Basically it will be this ranking of favorite miniseries (or single seasons of Anthology shows), followed by my favorite comedy programs (sitcoms and sketch) and then drama. Easy? Let's go.
15.) Maid (2021, NETFLIX)
Maid takes the cake for depressing storyline, with a woman with child navigating the awful social safety net in America while fighting for custody against her emotionally abusive partner, and doing a lot of cleaning of houses. I mean a lot. But behind this veneer of depressing tapestry is a truly beautiful show. Margaret Qualley is brilliant as the titular character, bringing so much to every scene. The baby is one of the best baby actors I've ever seen - unendingly cute. Even if the secondary characters are done well - including Andie McDowell as the mom. The show is unendingly real, about the difficulties of women in distress, of trying to make it on your own. The one gimmick they had of the running bank balance was both on the nose but a really stark visualization of just how tough this is. Like a few shows in this group of five, realness is beautiful too.
14.) The Night Of (2016, HBO)
I still find it to have been a very good show and worthwhile investment of my time, but I think there were serious issues with the latter half of the season. They almost always came in plot and characterization issues - most notably Chandra's lovelorn turn in the season's latter half. No lawyer would ever fall for a guy who may have easily committed a brutal murder and was starting to get into the drug world. Beyond the plot elements (John Stone running down alleys to chase potential suspects?) the show had a lot of great elements. The acting was almost always great, particularly Turturro's weird portroyal of Box, and Bill Camp as Detective Box and Jeannie Berlin as DA Weiss. The parts of the show I wish they went into more was the racial strife and how Naz's trail was impacting his family (who were wonderfully played as well), or more about his life in jail. For a show tangentially connected to The Wire, the show seemed to tip to more plot-driven elements than story for my liking.
13.) Mare of Easttown (2021, HBO)
It had been a while since HBO did a nice old who-dun-it miniseries that has, I'm hoping, no real chance of coming back. In past year's we had The Night Of and further back True Detective, but Mare of Easttown might have been the best because I never really cared who killed and/or kidnapped girls (funnily I had a friend who called the final killer like a quarter way through the season...). No, I just wanted to live withi the world of Easttown. Kate Winslet was great, Jean Smart even better but even the kids, the bit characters, the series of random perfectly cast northeastern Pennsylvanians with such great accent. The show so well peeled back the layers on Mare's upbringing and how it effects everything she does. She was a great character in a show of them, never open or closed enough to fail. The show was fantastic as a miniseries, the type of show HBO is just so good at pulling off.
12.) We Own This City (2022, HBO)
I'm a sucker for anything David Simon, it is fair to say. Add in a return to the Baltimore Police Department, and a show that featured a whole lot of people that were on The Wire (including some hilarious casting, like Marlo as a cop), and I was fully bought in. My only true quibble was the time jumping was very hard to follow, but admittedly that's a small price to pay for what was an incredible series. One of the few criticisms often levied at The Wire was it portrayed an idealized version of cops. I never fully bought this but for whatever truth there was in that, We Own This City broke that down squarely. This was all about crooked cops, about a task force let to do whatever it pleased and run havoc on a city, and how everyone enabled it in the name of stats. There were a lot of similarities to The Wire in the way it was crafted - the way it was shot, the realness of the scenes and the dialogue, but this had a hyperfocus to tell one story (granted a few threads, like a less effective one about government employees trying to monitor a consent decree) and do it with aplomb. Two things about the show, first it made me immediately start rewatching The Wire (in Season 4 right now, and man is it heavy with those damn kids), and second, it shows that as good as David Simon is at telling very different stories (Treme, The Deuce), Baltimore is his main muse.
11.) Tiger King (2020, NETFLIX)
I obliquely knew the story based on a New Yorker article a few years back, but even then this went above and beyond the basic story of Joe Exotic's feud with Carole Baskin, to simultaneously shining a light on the Big Cat industry, to uncovering layer after layer after layer of intrigue. I don't know what the moment was when I realized this is something special - but it was either the episode centered aroudn the murder of Don (I'm fully on #CarolDidIt), or the introduction of real-life ex-mob boss Mario Tabraue as an amateur Big Cat hunter. But it all crested on the episode that dove headfirst into the feud, highlighted with Joe's song 'Here Kitty, Kity' which was the single best two minutes of comedy I've seen in years. It was all perfect.
I wrote a post at the time of the 10 most incredible moments in Tiger King, and just looking at that list (Joe having a fake EMT jacket when tending to his worker who was attacked, the crazy room the leg-less park manager was being interviewed from, Doc Antle having an open harem, the fact the campaign manager was oddly sedate) and all of it just puts a smile on my face. In many ways, it was the story of American capitalism taken to the extreme, but to me, it was just a beautiful portrayal of a weird underbelly in our country.
Tiger King was so omnipresent I think the world lost sense of just how well made it was, how each episode presented one layer after another - them waiting on introducing certain characters and certain storypoints until later in the show's run. It was all so well put together, openly there were no 'good' main characters, but that's true of a lot of great shows, from The Wire to even say Succession. There were no good characters from a moral or ethical sense, but there were great ones from an entertainment sense. I'll never forget watching Tiger King - again it being the first thing I binged post-lockdown will cement its place - and I will never not be wondering who it was singing "Here Kitty, Kitty"
10.) Bodies (2023, NETFLIX)
For a while NETFLIX seemed a bit out of ideas. Well, at the tail end of 2023, they released this beauty (co-produced with BBC, admittedly) and my show to come at #5 and restored my faith in full. My word was Bodies excellently crafted. Unpeeling layer after layer just expertly over its episodes. Starting out so spookily, so greatly showing the different periods. We could tell early on it was all time travel related, but unsure how. I love that they kept so much of the reasoning for those last two episodes, be it who the person was that arrives nude, to waht the deal with teh kid is, and so much else. Yes, there was some messiness early on that never got adequately explained - like the Muslim kid in teh first two episodes, or how exaclty Elias's foster parents in 2023 were involved, but who cares because from Stephen Graham, to all the various detectives, were so excellent. That moment when the loop is finally broken with Hollingshead telling Mannix in 1883 that he knows who he is, and it unraveling everything, was one of the great moments of television in the year. I honestly don't know why I don't have this higher other than to say my Top-5 is super strong this year. In the end, this show, with its mythology, its reasoning, its performances, its perfect mystery was so good it outweighed the simple fact that there;'s no logical explanation of how the loop got started in the first place.
11.) Ripley (2024, NETFLIX)
many people were horrified that some TV person would think to take a movie masterpiece and recreate it with Fargo, so too were people here. But if anything, I think you can make very good arguments that the Ripley show was better than the movie, or at least a better adaptation of the book. The problem with the movie? Everything's too pretty, bright, beautiful and alluring. This is a dark story and both putting it in pristine black and white, and getting a truly devious performance from Andrew Scott as the notorious Ripley. Dakota Fanning was also incredible. Honestly, the casting and acting was note perfect to the darkness of the actual story.
I thought I would find the black and white thing a bit annoying but honestly, it worked perfectly. It made this feel like a play, like a story out of time. If anything, the show looked sharper and more captivating in the black and white. It was on the characters to give the story color and they did it brilliantly. What's also great was the angles it was shot at, the cinematography was perfect. And man the way it peeled back to every corner of the story. The advantage of TV is having eight hours vs. two for a movie - this had Breaking Bad type moments of showing the step by step of each part of his ruse, how he deliberated and executed against a few tough spots. It went into detail around how menacing and intelligently conniving Ripley really was. If anything, the lasting part of this show is me hoping other Steve Zaillian type auters try this with other old movies.
8.) The White Lotus, Season 1 (2021, HBO)
Every now and then, I'll just hum that hauntingly rhapsodie theme song and just have a great smile on my face. White Lotus, and the one show to come, just checked every damn box for me. Well acted, well plotted, and more than anything just a brillaintly captivating tone from the jump. The show so well started out with the idea that someone died and the went so far the other direction with a brilliant treatise on classicism, patriarchy, white privelage, and so much more that by the team Armand was getting stabbed in teh finale you barely remembered that someone died in teh first place. This was one of those shows that every character, every moment was just so well written and paced. The slow breakdown of the 'perfect marriage', the even more dramatic breakdown of the reverse 'perfect marriage (powerful wife, emasculated husband). The final douse of racism that tore the two friends apart. Every damn minute of Jennifer Coolidge doing whatever the hell she was doing. It was all immaculately done.
Apparently the show will return on a different resoirt with a different set of people. I'm hopeful there is enough to mine here that this becomes the 2020s answer to Fargo, the anthology series that worked. I do wonder though if this was just hitting the jackpot. Sydney Sweeney is just a great comedic actress as of course is Jennifer Coolidge. And Alexandra Daddario and Connie Britton are just great actresses period (yes, Daddario shined here). But I don't know if they'll find as easily anoher Murray Bartlett who was just so good as Arnaud, easily my single favorite TV character of the year, if not a long time. He himeslf should be in a Fargo season, and that might be the highest praise of all. The White Lotus was the true personification of an Ensemble Cast show, and this one was note perfect.
7.) The Dropout (2022, Hulu)
I'm a sucker for a well told story of failure, of hubris, of all the stuff we want to wish would be bestowed upon the thousands that have thought of, led and profited off of get rich quick schemes, and while some may have prefered the shows this year about Uber or WeWork, for me, the one on Theranos was perfect, mostly because of how good a show it was. It told the stoy fairly, it told the story honestly. It casted excellently, with Amanda Seyfried doing an amazing job protraying Elizabeth Holmes, and the actor who played Sunny being every bit as frenzied and conniving as you would want. More than anything though, the show explained so well how so many people can be led astray beleiveing what they wanted to hope was true.
It was such a frustrating watch, in a good way. How many times did I just yell at the screen "Make her test the damn thing for you". The fact that this show came out the same year that she was convicted to 10+ years in jail made it even more poignant. It may seem a bit trite to hyper-focus on one person's fall from grace, but as the show so beautifully exposed, she knowingly built a house of cards and never could find a way to pull the plug. I hope we get more of these types of shows in the year to come. And I hope if and when we do, they are made as emotionally-charged and nauseatingly true as The Dropout.
6.) The Loudest Voice (2019, Showtime)
The best horror series of the decade, The Loudest Voice was so good in showing just how horrifying the rise and terroristic reign of Roger Ailes was. All in the name of strong numbers, he forever ruined American news, while also being a horrible monster. While the story was true horror, the performacnes and craft behind it were brilliant. Russell Crowe was amazing as Roger Ailes throughout his life from powerful, power-hungry junior executive, to head honcho, to aging monolith. The character actors playing the Murdoch's, Roger's various right-hand-men, and especially Gretchen Carlson were all strong, as the show pivoted well into #METOO discussion. It was written and performed well enough you still exhibited a strong smile of glee when the Murdoch's finally canned Roger Ailes for sexual abuse even though we know it had no real impact on FOX News and its ability to tear this nation apart. There's a movie more or less based on the same source material coming out, but I highly doubt it will be as engrossing as the show.
5.) Fargo, Season 2 (2015, FX)
Many people thought Fargo's second season was better than it first, a bit more tightly packed with a few more interesting characters that played central to the main story (unlike teh scores of side-plots in the first season). I disagree, but only because I have unnatural fondness or Fargo's first season. Anyway, this second season was pure magic again, a thrilling period piece with as many strange characters, as many brilliantly drawn archetypes, and once again just amazing acting and writing. The whole Gerhardt family was masterfully cast, including an amazing performance by Jean Smart as the matriarch. Bookem Woodbine was a revelation as Mike Milligan. Patrick Wilson was maybe better than he has ever been, which isn't saying all that much, but you can make the argument the same applies to Ted Danson, which is saying a whole hell of a lot. The story was a bit more intricate than in its first season, with the trade-off being fewer sideplots. I was fine with that trade-off as it left a truly brilliant plot behind, with again the central story of why Fight or Flight should rarely ever fall in the 'Fight' camp.
4.) Chernobyl (2019, HBO)
Here's a weird take on Chernobyl - it actually is a damn uplifting show. In the face of such fascist, totalitarian rule (e.g. all the 'Soviets couldn't have built a bad reactor' stuff) a group of scientists, career politicians, and hundreds of poor volunteers worked together to save permanent global catastrophe. If anything, it showed the power of humanity if they can work together and sacrifice for the greater good.
The amazing characters the show painted was staggering, be it the spectacular casting, writing and performances of our three 'leads' in Valery Legasov, Boris Scherbina and Ulana Khomyuk (the only one not based on an historical figure). The career beaurocrats were swimmingly toxic. The workers who messed up to lead to the catastrophe were painted so unrelentingly beaten by the Soviet mindset. The whole show was so well constructed.
Ou of all the shows I';ve ranked #1 over the years (Fargo S1, Veep S4, People v. OJ, The Young Pope, Succession S1), this is probably the hardest one to rewatch, and the least 'entertaining' in teh traditional sense, but there is an argument that it is the best. It is a historical drama, but takes all the small moments - be it the people who didn't want to leave Chernobyl, the human trauma of using coal workers to pick up pieces of graphite one-by-one, to the mercy killing of dogs, to so much more. So much of TV in 2019 was negative and pessimistic - which led to a lot of great shows - and nothing came close to Chernobyl in its effectiveness.
3.) The People v OJ Simpson (2016, FX)
The first time I did a list like this was in 2014, when I put Fargo at #1. To me, that was an easy call. It was the show that best defined television in 2014, that best showcased the medium - and ultimately it was a wholly surprising given how hard it was going to be to pull off, to create a TV show in the same universe with the same tone as a beloved cult film. In many ways, The People vs. OJ Simpson was so similar. Nothing was more memorable about TV in 2016 than this, and nothing was more surprising. Unlike the other OJ piece, this was not a documentary, this was scripted, original material. This was a show with actors playing the part of real people - people that themselves became celebrities during the OJ ordeal. This was such a daunting task, I was skeptical from the start. The skepticism went away quickly, and was replaced by sheer joy.
One of the links between Fargo and The People vs. OJ Simpson (and so many other great shows including my #2 this year), was just how much fun they were to watch. I don't know if any show was as good as this in that regard. Like all shows it starts with the acting. Everyone was great. Few shows have such a star-studded cast, and, putting aside Travolta's Shapiro for a minute, while most of the big names got smaller parts they were all amazing, like Nathan Lane's F. Lee Bailey. Of course, the stars were Courtney B. Vance's amazing portrayal of Johnny Cochrane, and Sarah Paulson's great, complicated view of Marcia Clark. While the documentary focused on the larger picture, The People vs. OJ Simpson focused in on the trail and the main players, and did an incredible job. The courtroom scenes were great. The emotional arcs of Chris Darden and Clark were great. The infighting in OJ's circle was so well scripted and played. The largest flaw people seemed to have was Travolta's portrayal, but even that I thought hit the spot given how larger than life Bob Shapiro considered himself. My main takeaway from the show ended up being just how incredibly entertaining it was. The hours flew by, and after each one I left my chair with a large smile on my face. Nothing was better, few were even close, to The People vs. OJ Simpson in 2016.
2.) The Young Pope (2017, HBO)
There are three distinct aspects to The Young Pope that I think they did better than any show I have ever seen. First is cinematography (or maybe lighting, not sure what the right term is). The airy way the show was shot fit so well into the almost heaven-like nature of the show. Some of those scenes were so airy, so dream-like, which fit so well with the show as a whole. Second, the music. Man that score, such a perfect mix of EDM to House to Folk. The star was probably 'Recondite' the synth-heavy track that was used so well, but all the music was perfect. Best example actually is the theme, with All Along the Watchtower setting the scene so damn well.
Finally, and it must be said, was Jude Law's performance. The smarm, the delivery, the charm, all of it was so damn on point from episode 1. Seeing him interact with various people was always such a brilliant experience. Most memorably was every interaction with bespectacled Cardinal Vieollo, but so good also were his interactions with the other Cardinals, the Prime Minister of Italy and the President of Greenland. Every moment was so good in that large, empty hall he sat in.
The plot also should be mentioned. While the marketing leaned heavy into the 'Hey, its a Pope, but he's young and HOT!' angle, teh show itself turned that around 180 degrees, with the genius idea to make Pope Lenny a staunch conservative Pontiff wanting to take the Vatican back centuries, a brilliant spin that gave the show life. It was a joy to watch the inner workings (however distorted they may be) of the Vatican, the politics, the intrigue, and, of course, the kanagaroo of it all.
1.) Fargo, Season 1 (2014, FX)
I also do want to mention I think Fargo is underrated in its overall impact. Before Fargo, the idea of a few 'film' stars coming together to film a limited series seemed ludicrous aside from a HBO prestige project every few years. Fargo re-invented that fully with its show prescribing Martin Freeman and Billy Bob Thornton into lead roles. Fargo was such a monstrous hit it swept the 'miniseries' awards in the Emmys, something that quickly became the most hotly contested category year after year (e.g. People v. OJ or Big Little Lies). Fargo set a tone that so many others would try to copy for the rest of the decade: trying to find a perfect balance of follow-able plot, and so much verve and magic.
Fargo's first season was perfect storytelling, really. The world it built almost immediately, through the eyes of the monster of Lorne Malvo, the middling husband of Lester Nygaard, and of course the eyes of the viewer, the daring Molly Solverson (played brilliantly by Allison Tolman). The mythology and nuance they added was so special. The side-plots were perfectly Cohen-esque without ever seeming to outright copy what they did - no better example than the endlessly fun sideplot of the 'King of Supermarkets' and Glenn Howerton's dumb-putz gym trainer Don.
Fargo was probably simultaneously the most influential show of the decade, the most impactful, and when viewed in isolation, the best as well. It changed tones enough for its second season, and dropped enough in quality in its third, that it probably won't get the legacy it deserved. That said, for a show that most people thought never should have been made, there is a reason it got universal critical aplomb, set the stage for a solid half-decade of mini-series being pushed down our throats, and to showcase that a big-stage cast in a small-screen world can work magic.-
