The 10 Best TV Shows of 2019

And here we are. After a week of ranking every single TV show from 2019, we finally come to the end. In case you missed it, here are links to the prior posts:

#s 101-76
#s 75-51
#s 50-31
#s 30-11

10. Watchmen (HBO, Season 1). I don’t think this is a perfect show. It’s sprawling, and tracking its complicated mythology can be a little exhausting. But in raw mathematical terms, I’m not sure any TV series in 2019 delivered more moments of flat-out greatness than Watchmen. This is a massively impressive show, full of gorgeous imagery and exhilarating technique. It’s also a work of monumental ambition, seeking to reframe a traditional comic-book narrative as a commentary on the contemporary evil of white supremacy. Whether it’s especially meaningful as a political document is an open question, but what’s undeniable is how self-assured Watchmen is, how effortlessly it develops its own cinematic language. Plus, it’s funny; this is a show that features a powerful flashback episode investigating the rise of an anti-Ku Klux Klan vigilante, yet it also makes room for Jean Smart lovingly caressing a giant blue dildo. Nothing else on television in 2019 had more to say, and nothing else said it so boldly.

9. Euphoria (HBO, Season 1). I don’t know that it’s especially realistic. I realize that I led a very sheltered and privileged childhood, but I’m not convinced that the Youth of Today spend every waking hour getting high, getting laid, and getting into trouble with the law. But realism isn’t the goal of this series, which artfully conjures a world of blissed-out teenagers whose every emotion is heightened; every setback is shattering, every victory is, well, euphoric. The whole cast is strong, with Zendaya obviously leading the way as an oddly taciturn protagonist; her junkie is our wise navigator as well as our heartbroken heroine. She also serves as a ballast for some of the more searing arcs, such as the trauma of Hunter Schafer’s flailing rebel or the sadness of Sydney Sweeney’s putative sexpot. Plus, Euphoria is beautifully made, with sequences of startling sweep—a circling shot around a bed at the end of the fourth episode that toys with perspective and reality, a stunning musical number in the finale—and it features a strong episodic structure to boot, with each hour homing in on the distinctive-yet-universal struggles of a different character. The stories may be implausible, but the emotions are all too real.

8. The Deuce (HBO, Season 3; last year: 22 of 93). The Deuce was always a quality show, filled with David Simon’s characteristic rigor and painstaking attention to social and geographic detail. But in its last and best season, it makes a major leap; what was once interesting becomes riveting. Acridly funny and resolutely honest, it still has a digressive nature that can be frustrating, but most of its interconnected subplots now feel urgent. The two high points, of course, remain Maggie Gyllenhaal, as a former prostitute now seeking to establish independence as a director in a male-dominated industry, and Emily Meade, as a former prostitute who can’t shake the feeling that she’ll never be anything more than a former prostitute. “This is all I am,” Meade’s character says at one point, a shattering confession that crystallizes the series’ themes of predation and commodification. And while The Deuce never relinquished its gritty, nose-to-the-ground authenticity, it grew a bit more artistically ambitious toward its end, culminating in an astonishing final scene that’s unlike anything Simon has ever done. “That’s a wrap,” Gyllenhaal’s character glumly says at the end of the show’s best-ever episode. As The Deuce reached its conclusion, those words felt less like a surrender than an elegy.

7. Fosse/Verdon (FX, Season 1). Great, just what we need, another show about a despicable male antihero wielding his power and making people miserable. But while Fosse/Verdon hardly reinvents the TV wheel, its narrative of cruelty and comeuppance progresses with such energy and flair, any concerns about its familiarity evaporate. As hinted at by the time-hopping of its premiere, the series’ scope is broad, but it never feels unwieldy; each episode possesses a distinct focus, even as each continues to drill down on its characters’ hopes and shames. Sam Rockwell discovers new shades of monstrous nuance in his portrayal of a gifted narcissist, while Michelle Williams gives the performance of her life as a fading star enraged by a limelight that no longer shines on her. (Also, Margaret Qualley is great in this, because Margaret Qualley is great in everything; someone, somewhere, please cast Margaret Qualley as the lead in something.) And the show’s execution is thrilling, from its glitzy musical numbers to its inventive structure to its bold experimentation (hey look, Rockwell can do stand-up too!). Fosse/Verdon isn’t a revolutionary show, but it’s still a remarkable one—full of heartache, humor, surprise, catharsis, and all that jazz.

6. GLOW (Netflix, Season 3; last year: 2). The second season of GLOW was a piece of such absolute perfection, it was fair to wonder how the show could possibly deliver a worthy encore. Naturally, it responded with bravura and nonchalance, effortlessly reinventing itself—transporting the action to Las Vegas, and following the tribulations of its lady wrestlers as they grudgingly performed the same show night after night—while still retaining the qualities that made it so great: droll humor, wistful nostalgia, and an extraordinary depth of character. Season 3 is a bit more scattered, and a bit more democratic; different players venture off on their own, resulting in a number of distinct subplots rather than a continuous throughline centered on Alison Brie’s striving actor. And that’s fine, because the various arcs of GLOW all proceed with a marvelous warmth, revealing new facets of the characters and uncovering new fault lines of conflict and desire. Everyone is plagued by confusion and disappointment, which only makes the series’ moments of triumph feel all that richer. That’s never more true than in the season finale, a Christmas Carol-inspired celebration that’s an absolute joy to behold. God bless these characters, every one.

5. Billions (Showtime, Season 4; last year: 16).
4. Succession (HBO, Season 2; last year: 17).
I grouped these shows together last year as well, because they’re both bristling entertainments about morally debauched people with gobs of money. I’m analyzing them jointly again this year, but for a different reason: Both made a startling artistic leap forward in 2019. I have Billions in the lower spot, but its jump is arguably more impressive, given that it seemed to have plateaued following its solid third season. Yet the series reached back and rediscovered its past mojo for Season 4, which found it leveraging its usual strengths—top-notch acting, hysterical dialogue, loads of just-right pop-culture references—in exciting new ways. It also developed a brittle poignancy that seems impossible for a show about such narcissists. Yet while Paul Giamatti and Damian Lewis continue to gnash scenery, they also locate new levels of self-loathing, illustrating the devastating personal costs of win-at-any-price obsession. (Maggie Siff, of course, breaks hearts with every scene.)

Succession, meanwhile, is a show that’s simply firing on all cylinders. Its characters are despicable, but they’re also human, and the series allows you to sympathize with them without ever letting them off the hook. It’s perfectly cast—I’ll highlight the multi-faceted performances from Brian Cox, Kieran Culkin, and especially Jeremy Strong—and it features whip-smart writing and elegant plotting. And it’s beautifully structured; each episode tends to center on a different crisis, but the season nevertheless builds to a powerhouse finale. That much of that finale takes place on a garish yacht, where the characters squabble pettily and hilariously, only underlines the improbable achievement of this show, which takes the pathetic struggles of a fading dynasty and turns it into something funny, entertaining, and tragic.

3. Unbelievable (Netflix, Season 1). Yikes. Unbelievable is a punishingly excellent show, even if it’s really two shows in one. Half of it is a gripping fact-based procedural in which two detectives, played by Toni Collette and Merritt Wever, collaborate in their hunt for a serial rapist. It’s exciting, disturbing, and uncommonly rigorous. With meticulous detail, the series chronicles the drudgery of investigative work: the arduous process of interviewing witnesses, chasing down leads, and constantly smashing your head against the wall. On its own, this material would still be plenty compelling. But it’s the other based-in-truth half of Unbelievable—the one that follows a teenager named Marie, played by Kaitlyn Dever, who’s accused of making a false report of rape—that sets it apart. It’s difficult to convey the sheer agony of this storyline, which the show chronicles with a matter-of-fact, observational style that only intensifies its force. The mistrust of Marie’s account multiplies like a virus, infecting everything in her life, poisoning her job and her relationships and her own sense of worth. That’s why, as great as Collette and Wever are, the heart of the show belongs to Dever. As she showed in Booksmart (and Justified before that), the young actor has a gift for digging under her characters’ skins, but here she burrows even deeper, combining a wrenching uncertainty with a veteran poise that is, all things considered, hard to believe.

2. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon, Season 3; last year: 4). In empirical terms, the third season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel isn’t quite as stupendous as its first two; some of the secondary characters are handled awkwardly, and a handful of jokes border on silly. But I can’t really judge this show in empirical terms. It just sort of infuses itself into my bloodstream; I don’t watch it critically so much as absorb it. The series features such lapidary craft—the silky long takes, the vibrant colors, the splendorous wardrobe and production design—that it’s less a television show than a work of art. Sometimes I just want to behold it, like a masterful painting. Except that The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is too energetic, too insistently alive, to be a flat canvas. The humor, once the show’s urgent raison d’être, now just flows effortlessly, the punchy jokes and snappy banter billowing out of its characters’ mouths like intoxicating steam. Every scene between Rachel Brosnahan and Alex Borstein is like a symphony, a medley of sharp words and grimacing faces and rolling eyes. Perhaps I’m being hyperbolic, but this series inspires that level of passion. Outside of The Americans, I can’t remember a show where I was so invested in the main characters’ welfare. Their happiness is mine, too.

1. Orange Is the New Black (Netflix, Season 7; last year: 5). What else is there to say? This show has been in my top 10 for five straight years, and now it’s over, and that makes me sad. But sadness was just one of many emotions that Orange Is the New Black expertly elicited over the course of seven seasons and 91 episodes. There was also horror, at the cruelty of a penal system that treated people like chattel; that horror became even more grotesque in the final season, which brilliantly folded in the Kafkaesque struggles of immigrants, and the casual savagery of ICE. But there was love, too, and not just the romantic kind; in chronicling the inmates of Litchfield as they forged friendships and grew as women, the series activated a wellspring of affection. And there was intellectual admiration, as I marveled at how the show fearlessly mingled tones and experimented with structure, such as in the penultimate episode, which took its typical flashback device and rejiggered it to bracing effect. And there was agony in that same episode, which brutally dispatched one of the show’s longest-serving characters just as she’d finally turned a corner, a stinging commentary on the vagaries of a bureaucracy that can never be fully trusted. But most of all, there was joy: for the well-developed characters, for the warm atmosphere, for the spiky writing, for the weighty sense of internal history, for the #MeToo reckoning that somehow felt organic. Among the many lovely flourishes of Season 7 was a touch of magical realism; after characters died, their ghosts would briefly reappear, then walk away with an air of newfound peace. It’s a beautiful statement on the lasting impact of people, and of art. Orange Is the New Black is no more. It’s also very much still with us.