5.) The New Pope (HBO)
I don't think I was looking forward to any show this year more than The New Pope. It's predecessor as a show, The Young Pope, was my #1 show in 2017 - a perfect mix of an auteur behind the camera, and brilliance in front of it. The New Pope was definitely not as good as The Young Pope, but even the pale imitation was such a brilliant piece of art - one that asked more questions, explored more angles, and deftly concluded (one would think) this amazing story. The one undeniable success of The New Pope was its brilliant uniqueness. No show looked better, looked more like high cinema, than this - be it the image of the crippled child being lifted to heaven, or various images in and around Brannix's compound. I do wish Jude Law was awake for more of it - but what they held back in screentime they more than made up for it in bombast.
When Law wakes up, the show did kick into hyperdrive and did so in such an interesting way - pulling Pope Pius and Voiello - sworn enemies in The Young Pope - together. The scene with Voiello scheming how to reintroduce Lenny to the public, you get this small smile by Law, with the EDM theme from Season 1 playing in the background, and right there in that moment, it was pure magic. As was the ending with Lenny getting crowd-waved in death inside St. Peter's, or the reveal that Esther was behind the terrorism after being ruined to a life of debasement. The show will always remain one of the most thought provoking, unique and beautiful pieces of television made, even if the plot was only half pace for much of this instances run.
4.) The Last Dance (ESPN)
It's been a while since I had a true documentary on the list, and while there is one still to come on this list, The Last Dance to me was the successor, in terms of ESPN's documentary-making largesse, to OJ: Made in America (my #3 back in 2016). This show was brought early due to a lack of live sports, and while it was showcasing a story so well known (the brilliance of the Jordan Bulls) it did so in an unendingly, and ultimately successful way. Yes, there were some criticisms, be it Jordan's involvement in the doc, and the hyperactive storytelling that bounced all across teh Bulls in Jordan's era with a loose connection to the 1997-98 season. On the first point, without Jordan this doc doesn't get made, and without his production team having great access in that season we miss a lot of brilliance. For the second, ultimately I thought it was a fine way to structure teh documentary.
Anyway, for the documentary itself, while it didn't uncover any new ground, it highlighted just how larger than life Jordan and the Bulls were. It settled old scores like with Isaiah and others. It gave us moments to last a lifetime on tue internet. It gave us so many great Pippen, Rodman and Jackson stories. It didn't leave anything uncovered in that run. It helps when you have a cavalcade of interesting, entertaining stars at its center, but overall it gave it a narrative throughline that worked so well. I do hope this isn't the last time ESPN tries something like this with a deserving story - even if so few stories and ultimately so few personalities will match the Jordan Bulls and his airness.
3.) The Good Lord Bird (Showtime)
Man, what a show. Ethan Hawke's brilliant portrayal of the abolitionist John Brown was so electric, so dynamic. You can say he was overacting, but I have no time for that - he lived that role, embodying the electricifying, unending bundle of energy that was John Brown. Of course, what made the show really work was all the secondary characters, from Onion, the young freed slave, who acts as the narrator, to Frederick Douglass, brilliantly 'portrayed' by Daveed Diggs, to everyone else. The show didn't showcase slavery so much as it spotlighted the abolitionist movement, the somehwat curious reasons that drove a lot of white abolotionists to take on arms, and the incredible struggles that faced them.
It was a small story but one with such resonant impact, both spotlighting the immediate run-up to the Civil War, and the struggle people like Brown faced to gaining trust, gaining time with leading luminaries - even on the pro-Abolition side (see: any interaction with Frederick Douglass). The show ended not holding back at all, showing the path that drove John Brown to organizing the raid on Harper's Ferry, and how John Brown ultimately died in what seemed like short term for naught. Hawke's involvement was crucial into making this a series and I hope this is the start of other actors taking it into their own hands to tell stories like these.
2.) The Great, S1 (Hulu)
The writing is so sharp, but more than that the acting is so brilliant. Hoult is so damn good as Peter, mixing arrogance, comedy and aloofness at a level I haven't seen since Jude Law in The Young Pope. Elle Fanning is even better in her first adult role, so greatly playing both doting wife and empress with a cunning, smart, sharp wit and brain. The various maidens and court hands and doctors and the rest are all just, well, great. To me, this was the funniest show of the year, and the best outright new comedy series in quite some time. I can't wait to see what they have in store for a second season as we get closer and closer to Catherine pulling off her coup.
1.) Tiger King
Yes, its a bit passe. Sure, maybe if it came out in a normal year at a normal time, maybe it doesn't get the attachment it now has. But man I can't lie that Tiger King was the most enteratining, most interseting, and ultimately for me, most captivating piece of television I saw this year. 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.
Over the years, this list has focused on entertainment over everything - from putting Fargo at #1 in 2014, to People v. OJ in 2016 and Succession in 2018. Those may not have been the 'best' showcases for the medium (though I would argue they all were), they were just incredibly entertaining and invigorating to watch. Tiger King was right in that lane. 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"
