The 10 Best TV Shows of 2018

Beginning this past Monday, the Manifesto started ranking every TV show that we watched in 2018. We’re wrapping things up today with our top 10. If you missed the prior posts, you can access them here:

#s 93-71
#s 70-51
#s 50-31
#s 30-11

10. Better Call Saul (AMC, Season 4; last year: 8 of 108). As Better Call Saul inches closer and closer to the events of Breaking Bad, it becomes increasingly endangered of being swallowed by its predecessor’s shadow. So it’s kind of amazing that the show remains as consistently good as it is. Or maybe it’s “shows”; this has really become two series in one, with one following Mike Ehrmantraut as he solidifies his fateful partnership in crime with Gus Fring, and the other tracking Jimmy McGill’s long slow slide into legally sanctioned amorality. The Mike material is stuff that we’ve seen before, and while it’s executed with patience and panache, it can’t help feeling like a perfectly constructed echo. Jimmy’s descent, on the other hand, is the heart of the show; even though we know the sad destination, the journey remains fascinating, as Better Call Saul continues to pave his road to the dark side with thrilling complexity and ambiguity. Bob Odenkirk continues to do great work, and he’s matched in Season 4 by Rhea Seehorn, who’s turned Kim Wexler from a one-note love interest into a quietly tragic figure of misguided optimism. Eventually, Better Call Saul will have no choice but to finally rip off the band-aid and abandon Jimmy McGill for good. But for the time being, his fall keeps reaching new heights.

9. Casual (Hulu, Season 4; last year: 14). This was never supposed to happen. When Casual started, it was cute and funny, a quirky show about two exceedingly close siblings and their alarmingly precocious daughter/niece, all struggling to find intimacy in an increasingly regimented modern world. It always had an undercurrent of sadness, but it still played like a witty comedy, mining its characters’ failures for mordant laughs. But as Casual progressed, it started getting rawer; the wounds became open, and the laughs turned into tears. In Season 4, the series tethers its emotional transformation to a bold structural gambit, setting itself a rough decade into the future, where advances in technology have continued to quietly throttle human connection. If that sounds dystopian, don’t worry; the time-jump really functions as an ingenious piece of window dressing, as the show remains intently focused on its relationships, which are now depicted with extraordinary care and feeling. As the hot-and-cold siblings, Michaela Watkins and Tommy Dewey have never been more poignant and vulnerable, while as the impassioned youth who constantly trips over her own yearning, Tara Lynne Barr remains the series’ brittle soul. “I don’t want to be somewhere you’re not,” Dewey’s character confesses to his sister on the eve of a life-changing move. With the recognition that this show is now off the air for good, I know just how he feels.

8. The Haunting of Hill House (Netflix, Season 1). Gulp. Look, I scare quite easily with horror movies and shows, so when I tell you that The Haunting of Hill House is absolutely terrifying, it might not mean all that much. But it’s the method of terror here that really astounds, the exemplary discipline and patience that director Mike Flanagan brings to his set pieces. Dread pervades every frame of this show, the sense that death and danger lurk around every corner and under every bed. But Flanagan isn’t a sadist; he genuinely cares about his characters. And as impressive as The Haunting of Hill House is as a scare machine, what makes it special is its sincerity, the way it clamps its nightmarish technique onto the story of a bereaved family that can’t outrun its tragic past. The large cast—which includes a number of exceptionally poised child actors—is steady, though I’ll highlight Kate Siegel as an empath who wards herself off from human contact as a form of self-preservation, as well as Victoria Pedretti as the youngest and most disturbed of the grown-up children. Their quiet grief makes Flanagan’s formal audacity all the more powerful. His skill with the camera is really something to see, even if you’ll end up watching large chunks of this show with your eyes squeezed shut.

7. The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu, Season 2; last year: 2). The first season of The Handmaid’s Tale was so staggeringly, upsettingly good, pulling off a satisfying encore was always going to be an uphill battle. But we should probably stop underestimating showrunner Bruce Miller and his creative team, because Season 2 somehow ups the ante, diving deeper into the show’s pitch-black, alarmingly plausible mythology while still making room for the agonizing human moments that make visiting this universe so painful and worthwhile. Elisabeth Moss’ wrenching performance continues to boggle the mind in its intelligence and nuance; she astutely brings gradations to her suffering, so that when she really lets it rip—as in a tour-de-force solo hour in episode 11—you feel every excruciating stab of hurt. But this isn’t a one-woman band, and Season 2 gently broadens its scope, most notably in the emergence of Yvonne Strahovski’s matriarch who endures an entirely different set of indignities. You can quibble, if you choose, with the season’s stunning final scene, which is clearly motivated in part by the commercial need to keep perpetuating this profitable series. But more of The Handmaid’s Tale can hardly be a bad thing, and besides, my eyes were too busy locking onto Moss’ face, an ever-changing landscape with its own peculiar contours of trauma, terror, and resolve.

6. Killing Eve (BBC America, Season 1). An exhilarating chase of cat and mouse that continually challenges the notion of who’s the cat and who’s the mouse—hell, one chase scene literally reverses itself halfway through, as confident predator becomes terrified prey—Killing Eve was the most purely enjoyable program to air in 2018. It is unadulterated pleasure, an injection of charm straight into your central nervous system. If it isn’t entirely realistic, that’s because realism would dilute the intensity, the relentlessness, the speed. At the same time, Sandra Oh’s committed performance helps ground the series, giving its exceptional cool a whiff of emotional truth. Oh’s frazzled dignity also contrasts beautifully against the show’s greatest triumph: the playful, unpredictable, deliriously enjoyable star turn of Jodie Comer, playing one of TV history’s most enigmatic and alluring assassins. The handful of scenes where Oh and Comer share the screen are electrifying in their suspense and anticipation, but the show doesn’t need to pair its central characters to be entertaining. It has style to burn, and whenever Comer stalks through the frame—whether she’s terrorizing victims, taunting children, or just trying on clothes—Killing Eve blazes with excitement. Perhaps future seasons will explore her character’s back story more intently. For now, there’s no need to dig deep, not with surface pleasures that gleam so bright.

5. Orange Is the New Black (Netflix, Season 6; last year: 9). Is this the most underrated TV show of all time? That’s obviously a subjective question that can’t really be answered, but it seems to me that the cultural conversation unduly neglects Orange Is the New Black, which remains in its sixth season a scalding indictment of the American justice system that also happens to be blisteringly entertaining. Shifting the setting to a maximum-security facility proves to be a creative boon, heightening the stakes while also affording the opportunity to introduce a number of new characters of varying sliminess. The show’s balance between comedy and drama remains as nimble as ever, routinely finding room for bitter laughs even as it explores issues of terrible gravity. The flashback structure offers an expansiveness that feels right, pushing beyond stereotypes and recognizing that these color-coded inmates are people—messy, flawed, human. Season 6 crests in its finale, which traffics in both joy and loss, cross-cutting with vigor between a remarkably suspenseful kickball game and a court case whose outcome is sadly predetermined. The world can be an ugly place on Orange Is the New Black, but while the show refuses to flinch from that reality, it nevertheless depicts it with humor, generosity, and grace.

4. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon, Season 2; last year: 1). This show is about a comedienne, so perhaps the craziest thing about it is that it doesn’t need to be funny to be good. It is so gorgeous, so lively and full of color, that it’s rewarding just to spend time in its universe, to revel in its bright costumes and elegant camerawork. But of course, it doesn’t need to worry about not being funny, because The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is hilarious. The writing still sings in Season 2, which finds Rachel Brosnahan’s aspiring comic, Midge, continuing to hone her craft while bumping up against the glass ceiling. The series still features a handful of Midge’s sets, which remain versatile and hysterical, but because it no longer needs to convince us of her comic chops, it’s gained the confidence to push outward and consider the male-dominated industry at large, as well as to gently explore the lives of its supporting characters. This embracing warmth peaks with a spectacular midseason sojourn at the Catskills, where the show’s many strengths—effortless writing, effervescent direction, immaculate production design—cohere into a magnificent medley of wistfulness and joy. Brosnahan’s performance continues to glow, while the supporting cast—particularly Alex Borstein, Tony Shalhoub, and Kevin Pollak—complement her with polish and verve. (Keep your eye on Justine Lupe, who also guested in Succession and whose glorious cluelessness here inspires perhaps the season’s best sight gag.) The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel has so much of value to say; with luck, you’ll even be able to hear it over the sound of your own laughter.

3. The Little Drummer Girl (AMC, Season 1). This is almost unfair. I’m compiling a list of TV shows, and while The Little Drummer Girl technically aired its six episodes on an American network, it hardly seems to qualify as television. That’s because this breathtaking miniseries, directed by The Handmaiden’s Park Chan-wook, unfolds with a gripping flair and momentum that could only be called cinematic. Yet another adaptation of a John le Carré novel, it moves with an energy that instantly elevates it above the spy-fiction pack, and that renders the usual byzantine logistics—the coded language, the double agents, the nefarious schemes—almost irrelevant. Of course, it helps that the convoluted nature of the plot is actually baked into the story, which focuses on an actress who’s plucked from the London stage and thrust into an elaborate ploy to… well, see for yourself. As your brain strains to puzzle out the twists and turns, your eye will feast on the bold colors and sweeping cinematography, which look as accomplished as most Oscar winners. The beauty extends to the actors, most obviously to Alexander Skarsgård, who seems to be cut from the same statuesque cloth as the Greek gods whose temples the characters stroll through. (Yes, there’s a scene shot on location at the fucking Acropolis; I told you this show had flair.) But while Skarsgård certainly looks the part, the real stars are Michael Shannon as an obsessively committed Mossad operative and, most strikingly, Florence Pugh as that aforementioned actress. The Little Drummer Girl is sleek and sexy and suspenseful, but Pugh brings it something else, a heartbreaking vulnerability that slices through the show’s sumptuous trappings. In perhaps the year’s most devastating line reading, she confesses, “I’m an actress.” Is she ever.

2. GLOW (Netflix, Season 2; last year: 11). Oh come on. You’re telling me that a series about lady wrestlers somehow became one of the best shows on TV? But television is a big place these days, with all sorts of room for surprising stories that can sneak up on you in their power and complexity. And GLOW, a series about women who toil in a makeshift ring for a handful of bucks, proves to be far more than it appears. Briskly paced and creatively staged—the format-breaking eighth episode is a delight all on its own—the show features a large cast that should be unwieldy, yet it somehow finds room to add shading to each of its characters without sacrificing energy. But what really lingers here is the empathy, the sense of real feeling. Every contestant who clambers into the ring has her own problems, and GLOW articulates those issues with specificity while also recognizing that these women have formed a de-facto union, a sisterhood that grants them strength. Alison Brie commands your sympathy precisely by refusing to ask for it, while Betty Gilpin and Marc Maron both quietly reveal the pain beneath their steely exteriors; the rest of the supporting cast is so collaboratively good that singling them out feels improper. This show is fun and snazzy and dynamic and powerful and surprising. But most of all, it’s pure.

1. The Americans (FX, Season 6; last year: 5). For the past six years, I turned on my TV and sat on my couch and watched The Americans like it was any other show. Only it wasn’t, because at some point in the series’ run—probably midway through Season 3—it became something different to me, something transcendent. The Americans was just so outrageously good—so propulsive, so suspenseful, so attuned to its characters’ desires—that it seeped into my identity, operating less like entertainment than religion. It’s more than a TV show. And yet: What a fucking show this is! The music, the action, the secrets, the loss, the desire, the fear—it’s all there, pulsing with energy and excitement and danger. The Americans is a spy show that also delves into the complexities of marriage. Or maybe it’s a marital drama that also traffics in thrilling spycraft. Or maybe it’s a coming-of-age story about the dawning, universal recognition that your parents are more than just your parents, that they’re people with their own flaws and dreams and nightmares.

It’s all of these things, of course, and much more beyond. Only the passage of time will allow me to satisfactorily grapple with the show’s themes and ideas, its rich characterizations and exhilarating set pieces and crushing deaths and swooning loves. For now, I’m still too close to it. So for now, I’ll just say this: I’ve been watching television for a long time, and only once before have I experienced the stab of sheer anguish that I felt when Keri Russell saw [redacted] standing on that train platform, as “With or Without You” blared on the soundtrack. (If you’re curious: Yes, it was during an episode of Buffy; no, I won’t tell you which one.) That kind of reaction doesn’t come about randomly; it’s cultivated through hard work, through polished writing and immersive acting and rigorous craft. The Americans put in the work, and we reaped the rewards. As the years pass, television will keep churning out entertaining new series, and our lives will march on, with or without this historically great show. But make no mistake: We were richer with it, and we will be poorer without it.