5.) Narcos: Mexico (Season 3, NETFLIX)
If this is how Narcos ends - and seemingly it is - it will leave being a show that probably is very different than how people perceive it. What's remembered is the bombast of the Escobar seasons, but behind that was a brilliantly shot, well acted story across two countries. What I loved about the final season here was how realistically it showed the factures of Mexico and how pointless trying to control the drug trade was. The season does chronicle the downfall of Amado Carillo Fuentes (probably right there with Escobar and Gallardo in the time of this show) but ends with El Chapo taking his stake, the 'good cop' getting gunned down for asking one too many questions, and the DEA agent doing another buy-bust in a random town. Narcos left some of the flair but brought the heart and the passion. The show never looked better, and in my estimation was never better acted, than it was in this last season. What made it better was the time overlap with the Cali season with some great allusions if not outright references to events from that season. Narcos for me is right there behind Bojack as the best single piece of art that NETFLIX has put out.
4.) The Great (Season 2, Hulu)
At this point I'm half certain the show has very much strayed away from history in a pretty big way, but honeslty the fun is not even knowing. It took me a while to pinpoint this show but now I think I have it: The Great is what you get when you mix Veep with the King's Landing portion of Game of Thrones. The backstabbing (literally), the infighting, the random political alliances, the resounding brilliance that was everything to do with the crocodile. The Great was able to pout some drama in the comedy, really nicely playing out Peter getting back in Catherine's good graces, even through his affair with Catherine's mother. What the show really did well this year is rip through the class warfare but shie a light on just how tough breaking down those institutions would be, from the farcical to the real. I'm so happy this bizarre satire exists and can't wait to see where it goes in Season 3 leading to at some point Peter's death. It will be a hilarious, wild, captivating ride.
3.) Succession (Season 3, HBO)
If this was based purely on the finale, with Tom turning heel with a season long arc of him getting one over and aligning wth Logan, at the same time Kendall finally comes clean and his siblings take him in, well then Succession would be #1. At its peak it was the best show on television, and honeslty even at its weakest it didn't string too far away from it. It remains a largely plot-driven show, which is ironic given how much of the plot is various incarnations of young Roys take on Logan and lose, but this was the most innovative yet. The season on the whole was still fantastic television, where episodes like Logan barely winning the shareholder vote, or either of the last two in Italy, and everything that was Kendall's depressing Birthday, were just incredibly dynamic, from the dialogue as biting as ever, to the setting and the wildness of the Roy's opulence. Succession finds itself still surging forward even if we ask ourselves more so than in past if we've seen this story before. I still don't think either Season 2 or Season 3 matched the excellence that was Season 1, especially its back half, but man is the consistency of the show three seasons in just remarkable.
2.) White Lotus (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.
1.) Only Murders in the Building (Season 1, Hulu)
Look, I would watch Steve Martin and Martin Short do just about anything. So I was a perfect mark for this show. But once we got to the episode told from the perspective of deaf Teddy, I realized that you know what: this is just a damn fantastic show. It was funny, it was charming, it was meta, it was satirical, it was well acted, but it was also an incredible plot - a great whodunit told about as well as any I've seen. I honeslty never would've predicted ol' Amy Ryan's character to be the killer, and in such a dramatic way. But the show was best when it just explored these three characters and their disparate lives, Martin's old celebrity, Short trying to reconnect with his son, everything to do with whatever Gomez's character was doing. The cast of characters in the building up to and very much including Sting himself were so well written and portrayed. For so much of the show it was just incredible fun, never wanting the episode to end, with the snappy writing and great pacing. Most of all, it was just fun.
I feel like a broken record, almost every year extolling the 'entertaining' aspect of my #1 show, from Fargo way back in 2014 to Tiger King last year (Chernobyl a notable exception). Veep in 2015 was the only out and out comedy I put at #1 - and while this is I guess a comedy, what really drew me in was the story. Everything with Teddy, everything with Nathan Lane, everything with Tina Fey as the famous podcaster. To be honest the meta podcast aspect became fully secondary midway through and for good reason - this show was great because we wanted to see these three navitage that weird apartment building and find a killer. That the killer happened to be so unexpected and it leading to one of the great comedic moments form a comedic genius in Steve Martin playing an incapicitated man rolling around elevators, made it all the better. There will be a season two, with the series ending with Mabel standing over a dead body. There are a lot of murders in that buildng, and a lot of great moments to come in the best show of 2021.
