Ranking Every TV Show of 2020: #s 84-61

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

#s 124-110 (tiers 12 and 11)
#s 109-85 (tiers 10 and 9)

Tier 8: Approaching “good” territory
84. Babylon Berlin (Netflix, Season 3; 2018 rank: 55). I never know what the hell is happening in this show. This isn’t unusual for me: Maintaining the thread of complex series with large casts of unknown actors is not one of my strengths as a viewer. Still, it’s difficult for me to fully engage with a series when I spend half the time wondering who’s who. That said, there are still pleasures aplenty in the latest season of this German import, which acquires operatic overtones when it investigates a murder that takes place on a movie set; a scene that transpires on a catwalk is one of the most thrilling things I watched on screen all year. I suspect that, if I made a superior effort, I would appreciate Babylon Berlin far more. As is, I’m often left floundering, but I can still admire its scope and sweep, along with the charming performance of Liv Lisa Fries, who lends this sprawling, brutal, somewhat nonsensical series its fragile soul.

83. Upload (Amazon, Season 1). The premise of Upload—that a corporation has invented a method of transferring a person’s digital consciousness into an eternal paradise (for a price, of course)—isn’t especially novel. And the main character, played by Robbie Amell, is a bit of a drip. What works about the show are its little details: the caste system that shunts poorer clients into drab underground quarters, where they temporarily turn into zombies if they run out of data; the tedious customer-service work of maintaining an ostensibly utopian computerized facility; the awkwardness of attempting inter-realm sex. Upload isn’t quite as smart or clever a series as it thinks it is, but it’s still an enjoyable one, and it features sufficient ingenuity to convince you to stick around. Just maybe not forever.

82. Dracula (Netflix, Season 1). There’s nothing especially fancy about this three-episode take (from the dudes behind Sherlock) on Bram Stoker’s famous count, with Claes Bang in the title role and Dolly Wells as a distaff Van Helsing. But its modesty is part of its charm. The first two episodes are gratifyingly narrow in scope; the second in particular, set on a ship that quickly becomes a maritime house of horrors, is a delicious exercise in suspense. (It also features a great line reading: “Who is in cabin number 9?”) The final installment is a more ambitious affair, transplanting the action to the present day and adding a technological component to the usual lust and obsession. It’s smartly paced and sharply acted, but unlike Sherlock, it never quite justifies its existence. There’s so much talent behind and in front of the camera; it’s time for these artists to channel their energy into some new blood.

81. The Eddy (Netflix, Season 1). Directed in part by Damien Chazelle (he made a couple of movies that I kinda like), The Eddy starts out very slowly, centering on a profoundly unlikable protagonist (André Holland). It rewards patience, though, eventually building to a celebration of art that’s quite stirring. I’m still not sure that it ever earns its leisurely pace, or that it can justify some of the contrivances that attempt to inject crime-thriller elements into an otherwise observant study of music as both a passion and a business. But the strong performances—particularly from Joanna Kulig (Cold War), Tahar Rahim (A Prophet), and Amandla Stenberg (The Hate U Give)—help give the series shape. Jazz isn’t for everybody (least of all me), and The Eddy can be prickly and unpleasant. But at its best, it hits some awfully high notes.

80. Bridgerton (Netflix, Season 1). The first few episodes of Bridgerton are positively delightful, hinting at a Jane Austen-inspired universe that crackles with intelligence and desire. As it unfolds, it becomes clear that there’s little beneath the surface (beyond a racial commentary that goes mostly unexplored), and the predictability of the plot shifts from pleasing to irritating. I’m generally not a fan of the critique that a TV series should have been a movie, but Bridgerton is so repetitive—the same characters constantly separate and then reunite, often for the same damn reason—it’s hard to justify stretching it over eight episodes. Still, this is a gorgeous show, and I’ll always be amenable to high-society players baring their claws. The bark is alluring, even if the bite rarely stings.

79. Everything’s Gonna Be Okay (Freeform, Season 1). In its early going, this series—about a gay Australian twentysomething who moves to Los Angeles to care for his two teenage half-sisters (one autistic, one neurotic) following their father’s death—threatens to overwhelm you with its precious quirkiness. But it soon settles down and becomes a quietly moving portrait of a family that may be dysfunctional but is also affectionate. The comedy works in fits and starts, but there’s real insight here, into both the fear of adult responsibility and the horror of adolescent confusion. The most surprising thing about the show is that its title isn’t a joke; sure, there are plenty of mortifying embarrassments, but there’s also a welcome sense of safety. Everything’s Gonna Be Okay doesn’t do anything special, but it does make you care about its characters, meaning there’s more than one surrogate parent in the picture.

78. Dispatches from Elsewhere (AMC, Season 1). Speaking of precious. Dispatches from Elsewhere is so aggressively twee, it lampshades its own winsomeness, constantly pointing out that it’s a work of heightened, idealized art. Still, the notion that there’s a whole secret world out there for you to find, if only you uncover the clues and partner with the right people, is an awfully appealing vision. And the series executes its premise reasonably well, with solid performances (Jason Segel is the lead, though Eve Lindley is the standout) and imaginative design. It doesn’t always work—the finale, in particular, is annoyingly meta—but it consistently exhibits its own personality. That alone makes it worth watching.

77. This Is Us (NBC, Seasons 4.5 and 5.0; last year 79). This fucking show. There’s no point in expecting This Is Us to change—it will never waver from its formula of weepy melodrama, cheap twists, and cello-scored heart-to-hearts—even though its quality can vary from one episode to the next, and even from scene to scene. More than half the time, the series is clunky and manipulative, setting phony emotional fires just to douse them with dollops of syrup. Yet with some regularity, This Is Us delivers earnest moments of considerable potency, sloughing off its gimmicky structure and zeroing in on its flawed but lovable characters. The show gives me whiplash—not because I’m hooked on its contrived plotting, but because I can never decide whether it’s terrible or amazing. Often, it’s both at once. I suppose there are worse formulas to adhere to.

76. Never Have I Ever (Netflix, Season 1). Look, I want to like this show as much as you do. It’s very cute, and I admire how it fuses standard teen-sitcom tropes with a gratifyingly specific cultural focus (in this case, the Indian-American experience). And yet, some of those tropes are awfully hard to swallow. Characters constantly make terrible decisions and create awkward situations for themselves, and sure, that’s partly because teenagers are stupid, but it also strikes me as lazy writing. That said, Never Have I Ever is so warmly toned, it’s impossible to begrudge its existence, and the season’s second half develops a momentum that becomes difficult to resist. I just wish it were more consistent. But maybe I’m just acting like a selfish teenager—always wanting more, and failing to appreciate the low-key charms of what’s right in front of me.

75. Your Honor (Showtime, Season 1). It’s unfair to weigh any TV show against Breaking Bad, but Your Honor practically demands the comparison, given that it stars Bryan Cranston as a father who sinks deeper into criminality in order to protect his family. The two series are very different, of course; for one thing, Your Honor isn’t as darkly souled, and for another, it isn’t remotely as good. But while it lacks its predecessor’s fascinating ferocity and riveting execution—along with any real sense of detail that might otherwise accentuate its New Orleans setting—it’s plenty watchable on its own terms. Cranston is a great Desperate Dad, and his intelligently sweaty performance brings texture to a show whose other players are poorly rounded. (Hunter Doohan’s guilt-ridden teenager is on the short list of most dubiously conceived characters in recent memory, made even worse by a misbegotten subplot involving a student-teacher affair.) Your Honor isn’t especially persuasive as either a crime thriller or a rebuke of the inequities of the justice system, but it’s still oddly gripping, if only in a “what on earth will happen next?” sort of way. As of this writing, the series still has two episodes left to air, but unless its conclusion is truly disastrous, I don’t expect to judge it too harshly.

74. Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (Netflix, Seasons 3 and 4; last year: 85). One of the challenges with this annual exercise is the strain it puts on my memory; I’m often trying to remember the events of shows that I watched 10-12 months ago, and to compare them against series that I just finished. This year, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina occupies both sides of that coin; its third season was released more a year ago, but Netflix decided to dump out its final eight episodes on New Year’s Eve. If it had waited an extra day, then Season 3 would have ranked quite poorly—not because it was bad, but because I barely remember it. Season 4, which I just finished last week, strikes me as a significant improvement, and I suspect I’d still feel that way a year from now; it incorporates a welcome horror-of-the-week structure, and it’s more lively and ambitious in its writing and plotting. (There’s even an alternate-universe episode that’s pure Twilight Zone. Also: two Kiernan Shipkas!) This was never a great show—like its heroine, it struggled to balance the fantastical with the prosaic—but in its best moments, it flashed just the right combination of impishness and dread to be legitimately memorable, even a year after its airdate.

73. Vida (Starz, Season 3; last year: 41). Vida’s final season returned to a six-episode run, which made a certain sense—its scope was always small—but it also prevented the series from being able to breathe down the stretch. That said, this remained an incredibly well-observed show, boldly tackling issues of identity, gentrification, sexuality, family, and legacy. All of that makes it sound weighty, but Vida generally showcased a light touch, packing considerable warmth and color into its tightly focused episodes. I never fully connected with it, but I’m sad to see it go.

72. The Boys (Amazon, Season 2). Oh boy. (Oh, boys!) People seem to get awfully fired up about this show, which I sort of get; it’s a big-ticket production, imagining a superhero-dominated world where the caped crusaders are far less heroic than they appear, and where the vigilantism leaves behind a trail of blood. Certain elements of the second season are flat-out great: Antony Starr remains terrific as an invulnerable Captain America clone with serious issues, while Aya Cash is a tremendous addition as a wielder of lightning with a killer secret. Still, the series’ plotting can be weirdly patchy, with dreadful subplots and sequences that just get ignored. I appreciate the ambition of the premise, but the writing rarely pops the way it should; certain concepts, like the superheroes answering to a board of directors or appearing in a glitzy blockbuster as a PR move, are thinly sketched and lack the necessary follow-through. The Boys is certainly an interesting show, but is it a good one? Not even Haley Joel Osment’s omniscient diviner can figure that out.

Tier 7: Unquestionably watchable
71. Little America (Apple, Season 1). This is pretty much what I anticipate from anthology series. There’s one standout episode (featuring John Ortiz as a squash coach) and one outright dud (starring Mélanie Laurent as, I dunno, someone boring). The rest range from pretty good to fairly forgettable. Linking everything together, of course, is the emphasis on the immigrant experience, with the bonus that they’re all based on true stories. It’s a noble exercise that, frankly, doesn’t feature a whole lot of excitement. That’s a churlish complaint; the whole point here is that mere assimilation into American life can be drudging and challenging, and a series underlining that notion shouldn’t be expected to be especially entertaining. Still, for future installments, I wouldn’t mind the writers eschewing some facts in order to deliver better stories.

70. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (ABC, Season 7; last year: 58 of 101). There’s a time-loop episode. I don’t remember much else about the final season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., beyond that it mostly functioned as a fitting capper to the series’ overall legacy: solid character dynamics, decent acting, so-so set pieces, uneven writing. But I remember the time-loop episode, which was glorious. This show always felt more like an accessory than a primary source, but every so often it distinguished itself as its own thing, transforming its pleasant hangout vibe into something new and exciting. It was rarely anything special, but for a series that purported to be about the ground-floor grunts doing the legwork, it consistently got the job done.

69. The Outsider (HBO, Season 1). It’s unfair to call Stephen King a one-note writer, but for the most part, you know what you’re going to get: kids in peril, rational adults struggling to make sense of the supernatural, and an encroaching specter of unquenchable evil. What’s interesting about The Outsider is that it was adapted by Richard Price, the crime writer who’s best known for his grittily detailed procedurals. This unlikely partnership results in some productive tension; yes, the show features a ghastly malicious presence called El Coco, but it’s also uncommonly attuned to the particulars of law enforcement and investigative work. It never fully reconciles the two into a cohesive whole, but the clash is intriguing, and it’s amplified by the lead performances; Ben Mendelsohn is reliably good as the rumpled detective who can’t believe what he’s seeing, while Cynthia Erivo is excellent as intuitive sleuth with social issues. As with many horror-adjacent shows, the finale of The Outsider disappoints, but the journey is more important than the destination, and it’s a long, strange, highly watchable trip.

68. We Are Who We Are (HBO, Season 1). Luca Guadagnino’s movies—which include Call Me by Your Name, Suspiria, and I Am Love—tend to seem more interesting than they are. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Either way, there’s a strangeness to We Are Who We Are; it’s an ambitious series that’s intimate in scope, a heaving epic where not all that much happens. This sense of contradiction makes the show kind of fascinating, even if it doesn’t make it especially good. There are a lot of characters with very little depth, and the series’ explorations of gender and sexuality feel strangely forced. Still, there’s a lushness to the show, a sense of sweep and grandeur, that’s inherently compelling, regardless of the scene-to-scene material. Its apex comes in the fourth episode, which features a Fellini-inspired bacchanal that brims with desire, confusion, and sadness. All told, We Are Who We Are is of a piece with Guadagnino’s feature career—rousing, silly, messy, and heartfelt. It is what it is.

67. Dare Me (USA, Season 1). Hey, cheerleaders! The logline for Dare Me—cheer squad dabbles in sex, drugs, and murrrderrr—suggests a profoundly stupid show. But while it’s undeniably campy and soapy, this series is smarter and sharper than it lets on. The ominous, noir-style shading can be a little much, but the show’s depiction of female teendom—the competition, the cliquey backbiting, the obsession—feels astute. And while some of the characters are thinly sketched, Marlo Kelly delivers a stinging performance as a queen bee who’s spiteful, vulnerable, and scary. Dare Me piles on so much melodrama, it often threatens to topple over, but for the most part—like a surely constructed pyramid—it keeps things in delicious, unpredictable balance.

66. The Last Dance (ESPN, Season 1). Look, this show is thoroughly entertaining. The highlights of one of the most awesome teams ever are catnip to basketball fans, and the breadth of the interviews grants you an unprecedented level of access, like you’ve finagled your way past security and found yourself chilling in the locker room. And yet, there’s a hagiographic quality to The Last Dance that I found highly disappointing. The series is by and large a valentine to Michael Jordan’s incomparable greatness, and that’s fine, because Michael Jordan’s greatness is incomparable. But on the level of actual analysis, the show is weirdly lacking. It’s repeatedly guilty of post hoc ergo propter hoc, positing that Jordan routinely willed his team to victory solely because of some perceived slight, while ignoring the countless other variables inherent in professional sports. It’s not as though I was demanding 10 hours of ruthless Xs and Os, but the structure of The Last Dance feels predetermined, as though Jordan is steering the narrative as an uncredited writer. The 1998 Chicago Bulls were a great team, and Michael Jordan was an amazing basketball player, and I knew both of those things before I watched this enjoyable, unilluminating show.

65. Stateless (Netflix, Season 1). Turns out, the United States isn’t the only country with deplorable immigration practices. Stateless, which originally aired on Australian broadcast TV before getting a Netflix release in America, is a taut and pungent miniseries, a cri de coeur about the horrors of refugee detention Down Under. As a piece of storytelling, it’s far from perfect; several of the characters lack definition, and the bouncy structure is more sloppy than invigorating. But as a polemic, it’s a powerful work, featuring a strong lead performance from Yvonne Strahovski and a number of gut-wrenching scenes. Whether it opens your eyes likely depends on the depth of your prior knowledge of global immigration issues, but regardless, it’s always gratifying to watch a TV series with something serious to say.

64. Big Mouth (Netflix, Season 4; last year: 61). At this point, you know what you’re going to get from Big Mouth: extreme scatological humor; inventive animation; dialogue that is by turns clever and just plain filthy; and laudable themes smuggled inside increasingly gross packaging. It’s funny, insightful, ambitious, and maybe just a little bit stale. It’s hard for me to begrudge a series that’s so eagerly educational about pubescent sexuality (even if it’s unlikely to be watched by actual middle school students), and the laugh quotient is high enough to keep me engaged. But aside from astutely incorporating a trans character (which arguably functioned as a correction from a prior stumble), I’m not sure that this new season delivered anything memorable or new.

63. Saved by the Bell (Peacock, Season 1). Obviously, we didn’t need this. But if you’re going to reboot a piece of beloved, chintzy pop culture from the ’90s, this is how you do it: self-aware, progressive, and simultaneously nostalgic and revisionist. The new Saved by the Bell isn’t all that funny, and some of its messaging can border on preachy. But it’s a wonderfully warm and sincere show, with a star-making performance from Josie Totah. And as someone who spent countless hours watching TBS reruns, I couldn’t help but enjoy how the series reimagines Mario Lopez and Elizabeth Berkley Lauren’s toxic relationship into a partnership of mutual respect and simmering chemistry. There were few creative properties in 2020 with less reason to exist, but Saved by the Bell is so cheerfully entertaining and dopily sincere, it justifies the cynical endeavor. There’s no need to call timeout.

62. The Third Day (HBO, Season 1). There’s something thrilling about watching a show and having no idea where it’s going. The Third Day, a brisk and spooky miniseries about, er, some stuff, is ultimately a ludicrous experience, devolving into outrageous histrionics. But in its early episodes—which feature Jude Law traveling across an ominous causeway to a remote island where everyone (including Emily Watson and a splendid Paddy Considine) is just a bit too nice—it’s furiously suspenseful, keeping you off balance with sharp twists and sinister warnings. It never really makes sense, but it nevertheless feels in control of itself, conjuring an otherworldly realm where things just aren’t right. The pleasure of the series lies not in figuring out what’s happening, but in realizing that you have absolutely no clue.

61. Dave (FXX, Season 1). One of the most irritating clichés of the #PeakTV era is the idea that “you just need to give it some time” and commit to watching a series’ first four episodes (or eight, or 12, or 26). I try never to make that argument to people, because time is short, and there are too many watchable shows to force yourself to wade through something you aren’t enjoying. That said, some series do reward patience. In its early going, Dave—a true-ish story about a white rapper trying to leverage his inexplicable YouTube popularity into a career in a predominantly Black industry—is rough sledding; there’s a lot of cringe comedy, and it’s less hilariously awkward than just awkwardly painful. Still, even from its inception, there’s a clear originality to the presentation, along with a willingness to go to some pretty dark and bizarre places. And yes, eventually, the show gets pretty good, finally fusing its uncomfortable weirdness with an actual focus on its characters. Should you force yourself to suffer through its ungainly opening stretch? Only you can make that call, but for my part, I wound up succumbing to Dave’s unique combination of hustle and flow.

Coming later today: Subtle knives, super girls, protective parents, and wayward teenagers.