Ranking Every TV Show of 2018: Part I

In the year of Our Lord, two thousand eighteen, I stopped watching The Walking Dead.

Now, as sinful confessions go, that may not seem all that damning. But as someone who’s spent the past five years of his life watching an inordinate amount of television, it seems significant that I at long last bailed on a program where I’d invested so much time (107 episodes!). And looking back on my TV viewing of 2018, I’m not sure what’s more disturbing: that I watched 93 different series in their entirety, or that this figure represented a 14% decrease from the 108 shows that I watched in 2017. It seems absurd that I can feel apologetic for failing to hit triple digits for the second straight year, but in the era of #PeakTV, too much is never enough.

The Walking Dead wasn’t the only casualty of my newfound choosiness. Typically, once I start a series, I stick with it until it dies, but this year I failed to make time for new seasons of a handful of floundering shows, including Hap and Leonard, House of Cards, Iron Fist, The Man in the High Castle, Outcast (ugh, Cinemax), The Path, and (most regrettably) Harlots. I also started watching a handful of new series—The Alienist, Black Lightning, Electric Dreams—only to stall out after 3–4 episodes. I wish I could have seen all of these, but #PeakTV has a cruel way of making time speed up; there are so many shows, and so few hours in which to watch them.

As a result, the list that follows—to be presented in installments over the next five days, concluding with the top 10 on Friday—is both exhaustingly comprehensive and vexingly incomplete. I watched as much as I could, even if it wasn’t nearly enough.

As a result, your favorite show might not be on here. And you know what? Too bad. Maybe once you spend a year of your life watching 100 different television programs, then you’ll have some currency to complain about my viewing choices. Failing that, you’ll just have to accept that I couldn’t make time for your precious little indie comedy or Scandinavian thriller or Netflix mockumentary or whatever. And remember: If I didn’t watch something that you liked, it wasn’t due to the saturation of the television market; it was because I wanted to aggrieve you personally.

One last thing (and I say this every year, but every year people seem to willfully ignore it): This list is not a bell curve. TV remains, as a general matter of quality, obscenely good, and I liked the vast majority of the 93 shows that I watched in 2018. Once again: I liked most of these shows. So when something you treasure ends up appearing at #65, please hold your self-righteous “How dare you sir??” indignation, at least until you watch the 64 different shows ranked ahead of it.

OK, enough disclaimers. Here lies the ranked list of every TV show that I watched in 2018:

93. Arrested Development (Netflix, Season 5). I was a defiant defender of Arrested Development’s divisive, format-breaking fourth season, which premiered an eternity ago (i.e., in 2013). So it’s with a heavy heart that I must report that the latest batch of episodes wasn’t just underwhelming; it was flat-out bad. One thing people disliked about Season 4 was that it separated the principals for entire episodes, but while Season 5 returns to the wonky character-collision dynamics of the show’s heyday, it does so with an alarming lack of purpose or wit. Jokes die early and often, stretched out far past their breaking point, until the show seems to be engaging in some sort of experimental self-parody. I’m generally of the opinion that showrunners should receive latitude to continue their series if they honestly believe that they have more stories to tell, but in reuniting the imbecilic Bluth family for another strained go-round of misunderstandings and pratfalls, Mitchell Hurwitz has made a huge mistake.

92. Luke Cage (Netflix, Season 2; 2016 rank: 60 of 88). The first season of Luke Cage was imperfect, but it at least carried some interesting themes, framing its invulnerable hero in the context of Black Lives Matter, Eric Garner et al., and an America on fire. Outside of a single scene at the end of the third episode—a knockdown argument between Mike Colter’s Luke and Rosario Dawson’s Claire—Season 2 fails to advance those themes with any real meaning. And that’s a big problem, because as a superhero show, Luke Cage remains suffocatingly stiff, with little variety or energy in its fight scenes. Throw in Marvel’s problematic pacing—as with its other, suddenly imperiled series, this season runs a paralyzing 13 episodes—and the show is a disappointing slog, neither entertaining nor illuminating.

91. Last Week Tonight (HBO, Season 5; last year: 99 of 108). I’m not in the fucking mood.

90. Patrick Melrose (Showtime, Season 1). This show should have been so much better. The key elements are in place: Benedict Cumberbatch delivers a characteristically compelling lead performance, and the show’s decision to present its five episodes as largely distinct stories within its troubled hero’s life is a smart one. But those stories are so unpleasant as to be unbearable, and Patrick’s suffering is too conventional to work as anything other than miserabilism. Throw in some choppy editing, and what’s meant to be depressing becomes desultory.

89. Trust (FX, Season 1). Trust seems like it should be a good show. It tells an interesting, fact-based story (the Getty kidnapping), it’s made by professionals (Danny Boyle directed a few episodes, while the impressive cast includes Donald Sutherland and Hilary Swank), and the production values are first-rate. So why did I fall asleep during pretty much every episode? It wasn’t necessarily fatal for Trust to extend its true-crime tale—which was told in two-plus hours in 2017 in Ridley Scott’s similarly enervating All the Money in the World—to 10 saggy episodes, because in theory there’s plenty of fascinating material to go around. But aside from a playful second episode centered on Brendan Fraser’s bag man, Trust is frustratingly listless in its storytelling, failing to convey its account of amoral greed and criminal stupidity with any momentum. I’m sure that being kidnapped is a terrifying experience, but Trust somehow makes a life-threatening ordeal feel lifeless.

88. Riverdale (The CW, Seasons 2.5 and 3.0; last year: 78). I don’t hate this show. The concept—Twin Peaks-style soapy noir in a high school setting—is appealing, and there are a number of strong female characters, in particular Madelaine Petsch as a snooty rich girl who also happens to be an expert archer(?!), to counterbalance the pervasive aroma of testosterone. But let’s be clear: Riverdale is very, very stupid. Sure, sometimes it’s ironically stupid, but sometimes it’s legitimately stupid, in the sense that the dialogue and the plotting are profoundly moronic. Every now and then, the show supplies a high-concept treat—a musical episode, an ’80s flashback where the kids play their parents—that makes its silliness charming rather than stupefying. But while those are winkingly fun, Riverdale far too often strains for seriousness; speaking of irony, these are the only times when the show reliably delivers laughs.

87. A Series of Unfortunate Events (Netflix, Season 2; last year: 48). I found Season 1 of this Lemony Snicket adaptation to be an unexpected delight, with bouts of clever wordplay and some impressively bizarre production design. Maybe it’s just that the element of surprise has vanished, but Season 2 struck me as a stilted retread, repeating the same tics and patterns of Season 1 but without the same sense of whimsy. (Season 3 premiered on January 1, 2019; it will be considered for next year’s edition of this list.) It’s hardly a bad show, but in rehashing its themes and scenarios, it no longer inspires the same sense of wonder.

86. Preacher (AMC, Season 3; last year: 57). Speaking of patterns, Preacher seems to have settled into a predictable rhythm of alighting on a new location each year, then seeing what outlandish supernatural hijinks ensue. That proves problematic in Season 3, which shunts Jesse Custer (Dominic Cooper) into an icky old-South plantation, where he’s forced to grapple with his demonic grandmother (Betty Buckley) and her twisted lieutenants. It’s an unappetizing setting, but the real issue with Season 3 is that it separates Jesse from the two strongest characters on the show: his sort-of girlfriend (Ruth Negga) and his vampiric bestie (Joseph Gilgun); instead, they’re sent off on their own misadventures involving a bus ride to literal Hell and a cult of Louisiana bloodsuckers. These characters are stronger together than apart, and their individual arcs here are disappointingly inert. In terms of execution, Preacher still has enough visual pizzazz to make it worth watching, and that level of style gives me hope that the show will recover its mojo next year. But Season 3 was damned from the start.

85. The Sinner (USA, Season 2; last year: 64). How do you add Carrie Coon to your show and somehow make it worse? Coon is a better actor than Jessica Biel, but that may be part of the problem. The first season of The Sinner was a real piece of schlock, a tale of a murderous mommy tormented by hazy memories of an abduction that she could barely glimpse. It was silly, excessive, and deliciously entertaining. The logline for Season 2—how did a backwoods cult turn this quiet boy into a killer?—is similarly pulpy, but this season feels more like A Real TV Show, which means it’s serious, sensitive, and kind of dull. Bill Pullman still does good work as a weary detective, and Coon is of course aces as a ferociously protective mother. But the mystery lacks snap, and the cautiously parceled reveals carry little impact. Bring back the creepy music and the incestuous sisters plz.

84. Marcella (Netflix, Season 2; 2016 rank: 56). There’s nothing distinctive about this gritty crime procedural, whose second season involves a string of murdered children and the frantic chase to uncover their killer. Nothing, that is, except the performance of Anna Friel (The Girlfriend Experience), who remains riveting as a detective with a twisted past and a pesky problem with blackouts. Friel’s off-kilter performance makes Marcella’s otherwise rote cops-and-killers story interesting, lending the show a welcome jolt of unpredictability. When the series is doing the dirty work of tracking its quarry, it feels perfunctory and familiar, but when it turns to its heroine’s fear and volatility, it becomes compelling. Should this twisty show return, the dark, oddly hilarious closing scene of Season 2 promises more of the latter.

83. Ordeal by Innocence (Amazon, Season 1). Hey, it’s an Agatha Christie mystery! Even if you aren’t familiar with the particulars of the story (and I wasn’t), you still know what you’re getting: a bloody dead body; a host of equally suspicious characters; a single location that’s seemingly inviting, which only makes it more creepy; and a barrel of secrets and intrigue. The success is dependent on the execution and the casting. Here, both of those are decidedly not bad. Bill Nighy and Anna Chancellor are wonderfully haughty, while Christian Cooke and Ella Purnell are appropriately enigmatic. And the editing bounces around in time, hinting at ripples of trauma deep in the family’s past. There’s limited catharsis to the resolution of the whodunit, but the ultimate answer at the end of the road is always less important than the treacherous turns and melodramatic swerves leading up to it.

82. Outlander (Starz, Season 4; last year: 79). This show is such a mess, it’s easy to overlook some of its strengths: Caitriona Balfe’s nimble performance; a fun, time-hopping structure; a gratifying willingness to tell giant chunks of story in a single episode. Beyond bringing back some old favorites (hi Laoghaire!), Season 4 also carves out more room for Sophie Skelton, an appealing actress who plays Balfe’s now-grown daughter. At the same time, in addition to the usual flaws—shaky dialogue, variable acting, extreme self-seriousness—this new season of Outlander is weirdly scattered in its storytelling, splitting itself across multiple times and locations before gracelessly lumping everything together. (It also, almost impressively, manages to rip off Last of the Mohicans in back-to-back episodes.) Throw in some atrocious contrivances, and the show’s generally high pitch becomes earsplitting. There are still enough pretty pictures and stirring reunion scenes to sate the appetites of prestige melodrama fans, not to mention some strong messaging regarding trauma and recovery. But going forward, Outlander is advised to focus more on its central relationships and less on evil tax collectors.

81. Lodge 49 (AMC, Season 1). On an intellectual level, I get why so many critics love this show. It is entirely its own thing, with a shaggy-dog style and an oddly hopeful view of human nature. And while it traffics in some outlandish topics—knights and squires! alchemy! secret rooms with mummies!—it’s more centered on character than plot. That said: YAWN. Lodge 49 moves so slowly, and with so little urgency, that it seems to have absorbed its lead character’s laissez-faire approach to life a bit too literally. Its eccentricity lends it legitimate flavor, but it fails to attach its oddball tone to an interesting story. As a lifestyle, lazing out by the pool may be refreshing, but it doesn’t make for good TV.

80. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (ABC, Season 5.5; last year: 52). Oh well. In 2017, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. went on the strongest run of its existence, at long last twinning its enjoyably quirky character dynamics with some bold, high-concept storytelling. Unfortunately (if not surprisingly), things reverted to the mediocre mold in 2018. This show has never been bad—the cast is just too appealing, and the writing staff knows its way around a meta quip—but the back half of Season 5 is dispiritingly unmemorable, and I mean that literally: I barely remember what happened. I think there was something about an evil periodic element that turned people power-hungry and insane, and maybe there were invading aliens. If that sounds ridiculous, that isn’t the problem; shows based on comics should be absurd and over-the-top on occasion. The issue here is that everything feels samey on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., resulting in reduced stakes and a been-there, seen-that sensation. With some extra time off to rejigger things, perhaps the show will rediscover itself in 2019. In the meantime, we’ll always have FitzSimmons.

79. Collateral (Netflix, Season 1). Speaking of unmemorable: This four-episode procedural starring Carey Mulligan is perfectly fine. It has a suitably tantalizing mystery (why did she kill him?), solid performances from Mulligan and an underused Hayley Squires, and an intriguing subtext regarding immigration and the biases of law enforcement. That said, there isn’t much meat on the bone here. It’s the rare miniseries that might have benefitted from being longer, with more room to tease out some of the complexities regarding its central conspiracy. As is, the characters are fairly flat, and the execution, while sturdy, doesn’t do much to enliven the humdrum story. Collateral is perfectly adequate, and 15 years ago, it probably would have been appointment viewing. Now, it’s disposable.

78. Snowfall (FX, Season 2; last year: 83). Snowfall makes some incremental improvements in its second season, most notably pulling its three main characters into the same orbit rather than having them interact only glancingly. That’s a crucial adjustment, but despite strong work from Damson Idris and Emily Rios, the series still seems to be idling in low gear. Sure, there are murders and double crosses and sexy undercovers and deranged cartel heads and even Jonathan Tucker as a wisecracking pilot (“Do you ever crash?” “All the time.”). So why does the whole thing feel boring? I suppose it’s that we’ve seen this empire-building story before, and while Snowfall hits all of the requisite beats with competence, it has little distinguishing flavor to separate it from all the other Breaking Bad clones. Maybe it’ll finally get us high in Season 3.

77. Castle Rock (Hulu, Season 1). There are two terrific episodes of Castle Rock: the one where Sissy Spacek keeps involuntarily jumping back and forth in time, and the one that imagines an alternate universe that’s completely inverted from everything we’ve seen for the prior eight hours. (That second one also gives Bill Skarsgård something to do beyond just look creepy and stare glumly at the camera.) But the brilliance of those two episodes reveals just how frustrating, how inert, the rest of the show is. Castle Rock has a fun premise—corral all things Stephen King into a single universe—and a quality performance from Melanie Lynskey (André Holland is defeated by his character’s passivity), but it’s too proud of its easter egg-filled concept to bother telling a decent story. It’s too moody to be scary, and it’s too deliberate to be exciting. Nightmares shouldn’t be this effective at putting you to sleep.

76. Silicon Valley (HBO, Season 5; last year: 54). When I was accused of underrating this show in the past, my response was always, “It’s really good, there are just lots of other shows!” Now? I think it might just be bad. The central joke of Silicon Valley is that no matter how hard its ingenious characters work to fix a problem, a new one will instantly pop up, like a game of technological whack-a-mole. That’s a cute idea, but it has diminishing returns, and as the show stretches near the 50-episode mark, it’s becoming clear that it’s just repeating the same shtick over and over. That doesn’t automatically make it bad, and to be clear, parts of Season 5 remain very funny. But parts are also increasingly esoteric and bizarre, and the more Silicon Valley keeps humiliating its characters, the more tiresome it becomes. Someone needs to debug the code and get these guys out of their loop.

75. Narcos (Netflix, Season 4; last year: 20). After Season 3 of Narcos made a stunning, Escobar-free leap, it was inevitable that Season 4 would regress to the mean. (Technically, Netflix captioned this as Season 1 of the newly christened Narcos: Mexico, but the showrunners are the same, and so is the series’ both-sides approach to storytelling, showing the dueling points of view of the investigators and the traffickers.) This new season has flashes of excitement and intrigue, but it fails to really make an impact, instead skating along the surface. Part of the problem may be that Diego Luna lacks the necessary gravitas to play a cold-blooded crime lord, but the real issue is that the characters just aren’t that interesting. There are plenty of dastardly killings and close calls, but rather than infecting your bloodstream, these incidents play out innocuously, pale recreations of a more expressive, stimulating cocktail.

74. Waco (Paramount, Season 1). If you aren’t interested in a show where Tim Riggins plays David Koresh, why are you even here? That said, despite its stellar cast—in addition to Taylor Kitsch, Michael Shannon is solid as an unusually decent lawman, while the Branch Davidians are played by a murderer’s row of character actors, including Melissa Benoist, Andrea Riseborough, Julia Garner, Paul Sparks, and Rory Culkin—Waco isn’t an especially insightful or impressive show; it doesn’t really dig into Koresh’s belief system with any force, and its depiction of the dunderheaded ATF is surface-level. Still, the source material is so monstrously compelling, it’d be hard to fuck up, and Waco’s straightforward, docudrama approach manages to be both informative and entertaining. In other words, they didn’t fuck it up. The same cannot be said for the ATF.

73. The Innocents (Netflix, Season 1). Shape-shifting! Secret Scandinavian bunkers! Guy Pearce! There’s lots to like in The Innocents, a quicksilver sci-fi tale that’s by turns earnest, dopey, enigmatic, and half-baked. The story of a teenage girl grappling with her newfound power (or is it a curse?), the mythology here isn’t as taut as it needs to be, and the scenes set in a gorgeous faraway island lack the required mystery. But Sorcha Groundsell is excellent as the lead, while The Missing’s Abigail Hardingham brings a sense of mischief that prevents the show from feeling too lugubrious. Like many coming-of-age allegories (and like coming of age itself), The Innocents is bumpy and lacking in self-control, but there’s more than enough promise here to make me crave a second season.

72. Mozart in the Jungle (Amazon, Season 4; 2016 rank: 52). I get why Amazon canceled this show. It had pretty much run its course. But I’m still going to miss it. The longer Mozart in the Jungle went on, the more it started veering away from its ham-fisted premise (rebellious conductor takes over the New York Symphony, egads!) and turning into an actual TV show with flesh-and-blood characters. In the process, it developed a genuine sweetness that’s tough to fake. That’s most evident in Season 4 in the tender romance between Lola Kirke’s ambitious oboist and Gael García Bernal’s eccentric conductor, a pairing that seemed destined for comic mishaps but was instead explored with seriousness and sensitivity. And there’s a stunning scene at the end of the fifth episode—a celebration of music and creativity and art—that made me cry, a reaction I’d never have thought possible from a series that marketed itself as a comedy about a flamboyant genius with crazy hair. This was never a great show, and to the end it remained prone to colossal errors in judgment (did Rodrigo really just get into a fight with a robot conductor?). But it eventually found itself, and in so doing it composed its own form of quirky, beautiful music.

71. The Looming Tower (Hulu, Season 1). Is The Looming Tower a tasteless commercial recreation of a national tragedy or a noble tribute to America’s fallen? I’m not really qualified to answer such questions, but there’s definitely some dissonance in the way this series attempts to turn the build-up to the September 11 attacks into popular art. Still, it’s a decidedly well-executed build-up, with rigorous storytelling and strong performances from the entire cast, which includes Jeff Daniels, Tahar Rahim, Wrenn Schmidt, and Peter Sarsgaard. It is of course impossible to compress several years’ worth of intelligence gathering (or lack thereof) into 10 episodes, and I’m sure that many would take issue with The Looming Tower’s layout of the key facts. (Suffice it to say that this series looks more favorably on the FBI than the CIA.) But as a pure procedural, it’s quality work, and if it doesn’t develop its characters quite as well as it wants to, it at least recognizes that these data-crunchers were people. Whether it truly honors their legacy isn’t for me to say; what I can say is that this show is sober, angry, and above all, sad.

Coming tomorrow: Vampires, spies, Russians, headmistresses, lawyers, comedians, and other untrustworthy sorts.