Ranking Every TV Show of 2020: #s 60-41

We’re counting down every TV show of 2020. You can find the earlier entries at the following links:

#s 124-110 (tiers 12 and 11)
#s 109-85 (tiers 10 and 9)
#s 84-61 (tiers 8 and 7)

Tier 6: We have officially reached “good” territory
60. Defending Jacob (Apple, Season 1). The reason that Defending Jacob mostly works is the same reason that The Undoing mostly doesn’t: It’s a whodunit whose success doesn’t entirely hinge on the resolution of its central mystery. Sure, there’s a lot of hemming and hawing and accusing and second-guessing about Who Killed the Kid, but the series is less interested in solving the crime than in exploring the agonies of its aftermath—not just the procedural quirks of the juvenile justice system, but the more existential dilemma of parents questioning whether they really know their own child. Defending Jacob is occasionally (ahem) guilty of wallowing in its own solemnity, and of needlessly stretching things out with a stream of potential suspects and red herrings. But it features a welcome, somewhat unusual focus on character, and the lead performances—from Chris Evans, Michelle Dockery, and Jaeden Martell (who, between this, Knives Out, and The Lodge is either a very gifted actor or a truly disturbed boy)—add texture and nuance to the potboiler setup. Did Jacob do it? The most shocking reveal of this series is that the answer doesn’t really matter, and that it’s an immersive experience regardless.

59. The Umbrella Academy (Netflix, Season 2; last year: 70 of 101). “Let’s travel back in time and stop the Kennedy assassination” isn’t exactly a new concept; Stephen King already wrote a whole damn book about it. The good news about the second season of The Umbrella Academy is that, while it’s still larded up with timey-wimey nonsense, its pleasures are more conceptual and visual. Several of the installments home in on a particular character, and the clarity of focus lends the series an episodic charge that’s rare for such a heavily serialized production. And the show still has a way with big set pieces: slow-motion action, musical interludes, zippy camera moves. I still never really understand what’s going on, but the plot is secondary to the execution, and in that regard, Season 2 of The Umbrella Academy lets the sunshine in.

58. Homeland (Showtime, Season 8; 2018 rank: 36 of 93). Hey, remember Homeland? It finally ended in 2020, wrapping up an eight-season run that was arguably seven seasons too long. Still, this final batch of episodes largely excelled at what the spy series always did well, leveraging Claire Danes’ intensity and loading up the contrived suspense while occasionally holding up a mirror to our nation’s imperialistic impulses. Danes’ high-wire edginess clashes nicely with Mandy Patinkin’s rugged steadiness, Costa Ronin gets more to do, and Hugh Dancy shows up as a mustache-twirling demagogue whose bloodlust would make conquistadors blanch. To the end, Homeland remained an overheated and profoundly silly show, but in its final two seasons it compensated for its own absurdity through pure entertainment. In other words, it was a distinctly American show to the last.

57. His Dark Materials (HBO, Season 2; last year: 75). The first season of His Dark Materials efficiently conjured Philip Pullman’s majestic world without imbuing it with any real personality. Season 2 is a happy improvement, with action sequences that feel more visually vital, as opposed to dutifully filmed recreations of events that took place on the page. Dafne Keen and Amir Wilson have a gentle, winning chemistry, and in a pair of midseason episodes (including a heist sequence!), they engage in some derring-do that’s practically exhilarating in its ingenuity. The series’ plotting is still mostly muddled, and the sense of reverence for Pullman’s novels can be limiting. (One of the countless casualties of COVID-19 was a planned episode focusing on James McAvoy’s explorer; there are, to be sure, worse consequences of the pandemic, but it’s still a pity.) But Ruth Wilson remains a terrifying antagonist, and on the whole, His Dark Materials now feels like a flesh-and-blood TV show: dynamic, suspenseful, and—in its best moments—magical.

56. The Expanse (Amazon, Season 5; last year: 73). This show has legions of admirers, and while I get it, I can’t quite join in their blanket adoration. The sci-fi elements of The Expanse are too complicated for me to find them exciting, and it remains hamstrung by its drip of a nominal lead (Steven Strait’s glowering commander). Still, the highs of this elaborate, admirably detailed series are awfully high, most notably Shohreh Aghdashloo’s blunt minister and Wes Chatham’s rugged soldier. (The finale airs tomorrow, and I reserve the right to move the show up a tier if it truly sticks the landing.) Hell, last week’s episode featured a gripping shootout, complete with a tracking shot that felt lifted straight out of 1917. With craft like that, it’s easy to forgive The Expanse its diffuse plotting and thinly sketched villains. I wouldn’t mind it culling half its cast and just centering on my favorite characters (give Frankie Adams more to do, please!), but that wouldn’t be in keeping with the title, would it?

55. Avenue 5 (HBO, Season 1). It’s funny. I suppose I could have asked for more from Armando Iannucci’s Avenue 5—for it to more incisively skewer the concept of corporate space travel, the same way that his Veep so sharply satirized the greed and stupidity of American politics. Thematically speaking, I’m not sure it has much of a point, beyond the idea that there’s little correlation between wealth and intelligence. But on a scene-to-scene and even line-to-line basis, this show sings with caustic wit and consummate cleverness. The entire cast (headlined by Hugh Laurie and Josh Gad) is so good that it’s impossible to pick one highlight, so instead I’ll choose two: Suzy Nakamura’s pitiless assistant and Lenora Crichlow’s exasperated engineer, both of whom are burdened by their own competence. Avenue 5 may be a meaningless series, but any show that makes me laugh so often has to mean something.

54. I May Destroy You (HBO, Season 1). Gulp. The title warns you: This show is intense. It traffics in severe trauma, but with an underlying humanity that prevents it from approaching miserabilism. And it’s unapologetic in the way it aggressively tackles serious issues—not just sexual assault, but also racism and other forms of bigotry, along with the prosaic horrors of criminal justice. It’s a major work, with its own forceful personality. And yet, something about this series didn’t quite click for me. Perhaps it’s my issue—my inability, as a straight white American dude, to relate to the challenges of Black women (and gay men) living in Europe. But I suspect it’s more a matter of focus. I May Destroy You is impressive in its structural ambition, but it also struggles with a certain muchness, a difficulty in telling a coherent story when it’s writhing in so many different directions at once. This is a powerful and provocative show, but for all of the punches that it throws, many of them are glancing, even as it desperately tries to knock you out.

53. Supergirl (The CW, Season 5.5; last year: 46). Supergirl used to be on my short list of the most underrated shows on TV, but over its past few seasons, its limitations have grown more pronounced. It’s cheap, it’s preachy, and its serialized plotting is a mess. Fine. I still take great pleasure in watching this show, not so much for its unabashed liberalism (which is often clunky) as for its winning character dynamics, most notably between Melissa Benoist’s indefatigable heroine and Katie McGrath’s conflicted mastermind. And while some of the storylines are frustratingly muddled, it can still deliver the occasional triumph, as in a time-hopping episode that doesn’t flash back into history so much as rewrite it altogether. This series isn’t quite super anymore, but when it clicks all of its disparate elements into place, it can still soar.

52. Raised by Wolves (HBO, Season 1). What on earth is going on in this show? Who cares? Raised by Wolves is a deliriously enjoyable piece of dystopian sci-fi pulp, incorporating strains of classic fiction (including Alien—Ridley Scott directed multiple episodes) and twisting them into something wonderfully weird. The acting is, to put it mildly, uneven, and much of the writing is stiff. But the series routinely delivers eye-popping images, usually involving Amanda Collin, who gives a standout performance as a flying android with Medusa-like eyes. The characters are often confused, and that sensation tends to bleed through to both the writers and the audience. But this is an insistently watchable show, one whose bravura style happily overwhelms its nonsensical substance.

51. The Good Lord Bird (Showtime, Season 1). Man, Ethan Hawke is great. In The Good Lord Bird, he portrays John Brown as a fire-breathing preacher who is also a wonderfully attentive parent and is also something of a clueless boob. It’s a magnificent performance, full of blunt charm but also layered with tenderness and regret. Hawke is so good, the rest of the series struggles to evade his shadow; scenes tend to feel listless when he isn’t around, despite appealing work from the rest of the cast. (Daveed Diggs is a terrific Frederick Douglass, a part that utilizes his talents far better than his glum turn in Snowpiercer.) Still, The Good Lord Bird is an impressive achievement, chronicling a tumultuous time in American history with a canny combination of playfulness and sobriety. It’s both funny and sad, and in not letting the latter quality overwhelm the former, it manages to be entertaining, even if it’s really a lament.

Tier 5: Now we’re talking
50. Little Fires Everywhere (Hulu, Season 1). I liked Big Little Lies well enough, but it’s a little dispiriting that it instantly launched a cottage industry whose creative mandate appears to be, “We need to replicate Big Little Lies!” Still, there’s plenty of room for further exploration of the power dynamics among women in closely knit communities, and Little Fires Everywhere introduces a more explicit racial dimension, casting Reese Witherspoon as a meddlesome housewife who develops a fraught frenemyship with Kerry Washington’s striving artist. It’s an intensely soapy and melodramatic series, and eventually, some of the heated confrontations and screaming fits start to feel engineered. Still, it’s exceptionally well cast, with particular attention paid to the various teenagers; all of them feel like actual kids rather than plot devices, and the relationship between two daughters (Lexi Underwood and Jade Pettyjohn)—which functions as a sort of mirror image of their mothers’ own wary antagonism—is especially complex. And while Witherspoon is too gifted an actor to ever be typecast, she is really good in this kind of role, bringing a maddening mixture of genuine sweetness and insufferable entitlement. She makes you feel a lot of things—sympathy, anger, exasperation, pain—and so does this pungent, agitated, intensely watchable show.

49. Perry Mason (HBO, Season 1). I’ve never seen an episode of the original Perry Mason; prior to watching this series, my entire knowledge of the famous defense attorney derived from secondhand references in other pieces of pop culture, like Saved by the Bell and Catch Me If You Can. From what I gather, this Matthew Rhys vehicle bears little resemblance to the Raymond Burr procedural, and I am absolutely fine with that. Rhys is too subtle and shifty an actor to play a paragon of virtue, which is why his Mason is soulful and heavy; he acquires a layer of existential weight while still remaining nimble enough to sneak in some sly humor. As a crime thriller, this Perry Mason is only fitfully suspenseful; there’s a terrible conspiracy afoot, and some big bad men are wielding the power of the State for their own nefarious ends, and blah blah whatever. The real pleasures of this reboot lie in its supple execution (Sopranos and Boardwalk Empire vet Tim Van Patten directed five episodes) and its deceptively tender relationships; Rhys banters with a number of talented sparring partners (Juliet Rylance, Shea Whigham, John Lithgow), and the writing hums with wit and compassion. Throw in the innately magnetic Tatiana Maslany as a charismatic preacher, and you’ve got a winning case, regardless of the ultimate verdict.

48. Grand Army (Netflix, Season 1). I led a very privileged and boring life as a teenager, but I’m still susceptible to series about the tribulations of agonized youths. And the students of Grand Army are very, very troubled; this series rivals Little Fires Everywhere in terms of pure anguish. What makes the show interesting is its diversity and scope, locking on to five different individuals who all feel similarly tormented, but whose respective miseries dot different points on the spectrum of teen torture. To be frank, only two of these five are especially persuasive; the other three are marginally compelling—they involve a gay Indian swimmer struggling with his sexuality, a Black musician wrestling with his talent and guilt, and an adopted Chinese freshman who’s desperate for popularity—but they verge on overwritten. The big two, however, are strong stuff; Odessa A’zion is wrenching as an outgoing party girl traumatized by a disturbingly casual assault, while Odley Jean is equally good as a brilliant basketball player who’s beset by financial and familial woes. These two vibrant young women face very different challenges, but their fight for agency is the same, and Grand Army examines their plight with clarity and empathy. It’s a good show, even if it might lead you to home-school your kids.

47. The Twilight Zone (CBS, Season 2). The first season of the rebooted Twilight Zone was almost impressively lousy, delivering a handful of passably entertaining episodes alongside a slate of outright duds. Season 2 is a happy reversal, supplying an array of heady, propulsive hours that are so memorably imaginative, it’s impossible to pick a favorite. The one with Morena Baccarin where everyone keeps falling asleep? The one with Ethan Embry where a criminal’s consciousness keeps passing from one person to the next? The one where Jimmi Simpson and Gillian Jacobs share an explicable telepathic connection? And how could I resist the time-loop episode with Topher Grace as a seemingly nice guy with a sinister secret? Whether these episodes possess any sort of unifying principle beyond mere coolness is debatable, but what matters is that they are cool. And while there are a couple of flops in the mix, that’s inevitable in an anthology; on the whole, the quality here is solid enough to make me crave another season. After the cruddy first go-round, not even Rod Serling could have imagined that.

46. My Brilliant Friend (HBO, Season 2; 2018 rank: 13 of 93). The second season of My Brilliant Friend isn’t quite as devastating as its first. Maybe it’s that the two leads spend most of the eight episodes apart, or maybe it’s just that I was no longer stunned by its waves of rapture and melancholy. Still, even if Season 2 isn’t quite overpowering, it remains very powerful, with lush technique and extraordinary depth of feeling. Margherita Mazzucco and Gaia Girace deliver such rich and fully realized performances, they make everyone around them seem small, which is of course in keeping for a series about beautiful and talented women whose dreams are constantly checked by petty and jealous men. My Brilliant Friend may have its slow patches here and there, but on the whole it remains a grand and sweeping achievement.

45. Love Life (HBO, Season 1). A half-hour dramedy about a middle-class white girl’s romantic troubles doesn’t exactly sound like the stuff of high art, much less a series to headline the launch of your rebranded streaming network. But Love Life, starring a wonderful Anna Kendrick, is more substantial than it first appears. It tackles issues of relationships and loneliness seriously, but with enough grace and lightness to avoid becoming a downer. More importantly, it deploys a refreshingly episodic focus, with each chapter initially examining a new love interest before eventually veering into more thorny territory. That sense of structural integrity can make Love Life feel like more than the sum of its parts, given that it’s occasionally hampered by awkward writing and clunky narration. But Kendrick makes the whole enterprise sing; as she showcased in A Simple Favor, she has the ability to make her characters largely sympathetic but also deceptively edgy. And if the finale of Love Life is a bit too neat, that’s a necessary consequence of its plan to reboot itself with each new season, True Detective-style. This introduction, with its insight and warmth, gives you more than enough evidence to swipe right.

44. Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO, Season 10; 2017 rank: 62 of 108). Season 9 was my first experience with Curb Your Enthusiasm (breaking my rule of never jumping into a new season without first watching all of the existing episodes), and I found it underwhelming: clever, sure, but weirdly patchy and self-satisfied. The new season represents a considerable improvement. The writing is sharper, the everyday observations are more astute, the everything-is-connected structure is more satisfying, and the misanthropy is more tolerable. I’m not sure that the world needed Larry David’s take on #MeToo, and some of his set pieces are still more painful than funny. But when a series gives you Jon Hamm quibbling over whether a breakfast treat is a muffin or a scone, it’s best not to pick nits.

43. The Flight Attendant (HBO, Season 1).
42. Harley Quinn (HBO, Season 2).
It honestly wasn’t my intention to place these two series starring Kaley Cuoco next to one another, but sometimes, the ranking gods smile upon you. For the most part, they’re wildly different shows; The Flight Attendant is a fast-paced caper, whereas Harley Quinn is an arch superhero satire. Cuoco is great in both, but she’s flat-out essential to the former, which casts her as a globe-trotting alcoholic who stumbles into a criminal network of corporate malfeasance and deadly violence. The plotting can get a little bonkers, and some of the secondary characters are poorly served (though Zosia Mamet is excellent as a no-nonsense defense attorney), but Cuoco holds everything together. She needs to be both heroic and pathetic, and she deftly elicits both our concern and our disgust.

She’s even more toxic in Harley Quinn, but that series is more democratic and discursive than the go-go Flight Attendant. Its title character is still its center, though, and while Margot Robbie essayed a sweet-but-savage Harley in Birds of Prey, Cuoco’s take on the violent femme dips even darker, her voice flecking the animated pigtailed supervillain with sweaty desperation. This doesn’t mean that Harley Quinn is dour; to the contrary, it’s a freewheeling and inspired show, with bolts of madcap energy punctuating its consistent intelligence. Some of its shenanigans can be a little silly, but its second season acquires a beating heart in the relationship between Harley and Lake Bell’s Poison Ivy. Their not-quite-friendship is easygoing but complex, with a slightly poisonous (sorry) asymmetry that masks fledgling desires. This is a gleefully ridiculous show, full of bizarre images, but its greatest shock is that it’s genuinely, wonderfully sweet.

41. Run (HBO, Season 1). The finale of Run (not to be confused with the Hulu movie of the same title) left a bitter aftertaste, one made even more sour by the series’ subsequent cancellation. That’s a shame, because for its first six episodes, Run is a corker of a show, a fascinating hybrid of love story, domestic drama, and itinerant thriller. It sizzles with an exciting unpredictability, not just in terms of its plot but its tone, shifting from slapstick comedy at one moment to earnest romance the next. That might suggest inconsistency, but the show is anchored by its two leads, most notably Merritt Wever, who delivers the kind of star turn that’s long been promised whenever she’s shown up as a character actor in shows like Godless and Unbelievable. (Domhnall Gleeson is nicely (mis)matched as her scene partner.) By the time Phoebe Waller-Bridge shows up as a deadpan taxidermist making eyes at an incompetent local sheriff, Run threatens to slice you with its whipsawing, but it mostly holds together thanks to Wever’s flinty intelligence and emotional dexterity. HBO should have let this train keep going.

Coming tomorrow: Killer robots, gentle assassins, desperate launderers, and loyal bounty hunters.