Ranking Every TV Show of 2023, Part I: #s 94-81

Is TV getting worse, or am I just getting grouchier? This is my tenth straight year conducting this exercise, which has typically functioned as an opportunity for me to flaunt my indecent enthusiasm for television. Movies and TV aren’t a zero-sum game—it’s possible to admire both forms of storytelling without denigrating one in favor of the other—and while I spend the vast majority of my time writing about cinema, this is the one week where I can pay proper homage to the small screen.

So why, in assessing the TV of 2023, am I gripped by a powerful sense of malaise? It hasn’t been for lack of viewing options. True, from a certain self-loathing perspective, the amount of television I consumed this past year was substandard: a mere 94 shows—my lowest figure since 2018 and down dramatically from my pandemic peak of 124 in 2020. That said, watching every episode of nearly 100 different TV shows in a single year probably seems outrageous to your average, healthy, not-completely-obsessed-with-art individual. What’s relatively meager for me is surely obscene for most.

And look, it isn’t as though this past year was devoid of splendid programming. Finalizing my top 10 list (to be unveiled on Friday) was customarily torturous given the number of high-quality contenders, and the following slate of 10 (the de facto honorable mentions) are similarly terrific. But that still leaves 70-odd shows where my level of enthusiasm ranged from “Sure I guess I’m glad I watched that” to “Whatever it was fine” to “Well that was a waste of 8-12 hours” to “Wait that aired this year?” It’s not that TV has gotten bad; it just seems to be becoming less memorable.

Whether this represents the start of a downward trend or a random blip remains to be seen. The good news is that there were still plenty of diverting series to watch in 2023, and that these rankings can still be used against me in the future to prove I’m out of touch. About which, remember the rules: The list isn’t a qualitative bell curve; for every series mentioned, I watched the entire season (along with all prior seasons where applicable); you could swap the placement of shows ranked within 10-15 spots of each other and I likely wouldn’t care or even notice; the reason I either underrated or ignored your precious favorite show is that I wanted to attack you personally.

With that out of the way, let’s get to the list. Here begin the rankings of every TV show I watched in 2023:

94. Copenhagen Cowboy (Netflix, Season 1). Nicolas Winding Refn is the kind of auteur I’m supposed to like: He produces original material, he makes great use of synth music and neon colors, and his vision is decidedly personal. The only problem is that, with the notable exception of Drive, everything he does is awful, exhibiting a glaring disregard for basic storytelling that feels like trolling in its willful stupidity. I recognize that style can be its own reward, but Copenhagen Cowboy—a Twin Peaks knockoff about a mystical alien who can see the future (or something) and also punches people—is so indifferent to plot and character that its collages of glittering images and garish violence are drained of their beauty. Refn fancies himself a provocateur, but at this point in his career he’s more of an obnoxious jester, and the joke has gotten old.

93. The Crowded Room (Apple, Season 1). One of the consequences of the #PeakTV boom was that streamers started attracting A-list talent, increasing the medium’s level of prestige. I don’t know that it’s fair to call Tom Holland a movie star, but two decades ago you sure didn’t see Tobey Maguire follow up his Spider-Man trilogy with an obscure miniseries about a socially awkward teenager who may or may not be a murderer. Holland isn’t bad in The Crowded Room, but the series around him is terrible—spending seven interminable episodes building to an extremely obvious (and logistically dubious) twist, then inexplicably taking three additional installments to wrap up its cockamamie, hokum-filled story. (If Holland is watchable in a role meant to test his range, poor Amanda Seyfried is wasted as a sympathetic shrink.) The show is meant to build suspense over the slippery identity of its central character, but some mysteries aren’t worth solving.

92. Fatal Attraction (Paramount, Season 1). One of the more pernicious canards about modern storytelling is that what used to be made into movies is now grist for TV. It’s a clumsy oversimplification—if you haven’t noticed, there are lots of good movies still being made every year—but television does appear to now serve as the primary destination for adaptations of existing material, whether it’s a popular novel, a true-crime incident, or even a preexisting feature. In a sense, Adrian Lyne’s 1987 thriller is a plausible candidate for a reimagining that delves deeper into its sexual mores and gender politics. But if you’re going to turn a two-hour potboiler into an eight-episode series, you need to do… something. Does this show flip the genders of the original? (No.) Does it center on the woman’s perspective? (Also no.) Does it create dramatic tension or explore the complexity of marriage or interrogate the judicial system? (Very much no.) The only thing that this Fatal Attraction promises, besides the obvious allure of a smoldering Lizzy Caplan, is to take its source and make it four times longer, tacking on a pointless dual-timeline structure that never coalesces into anything meaningful. All it does is add needless padding, which makes it the opposite of a seduction.

91. History of the World: Part II (Hulu, Season 1). As a child, I quite enjoyed Mel Brooks’ History of the World: Part I, and I doubt that I can chalk up my distaste for this follow-up to my maturity, given that Brooks’ humor has long combined winking adult references with durably satisfying fart jokes. And yet: This thing is mostly brutal. Perhaps I am simply allergic to sketch comedy—you’ll note that this list no longer includes the much-beloved, utterly terrible I Think You Should Leave, as I finally stopped punishing myself after Season 2—but the vast majority of the bits in Part II are painfully drawn out, languishing with no sense of discipline or shape. The extended runway afforded by TV works against Brooks; supplied with the flexibility not to sharpen his comedy into a feature-length text, he responds by ambling and wavering, repeating himself without adding any flavor or punch. Clearly, the 97-year-old has reached a point in his life where he’s entitled to make whatever he wants. But sometimes, it’s bad to be the king.

90. The Idol (HBO, Season 1). Squint hard enough, and this show is almost clever for the way it shamelessly courts controversy and stokes outrage. If you find its notions contemptible—all great art stems from abuse! violence is kinky! intimacy coordinators are prudes!—then, well, you’re just echoing the blinkered orthodoxy of the liberal establishment. But whereas Sam Levinson’s Euphoria tethered its confrontational excess to three-dimensional characters, The Idol has no ballast, no human counterweight to lend texture to its ostentatious obscenity. Lily-Rose Depp flashes screen presence (and that’s not all, har har), and there are isolated musical sequences that temporarily distract from the series’ relentless preening. But Levinson can’t sit still; he needs to shock you with a barrage of offensive incidents and ghastly revelations. The result is a putatively mature show that is deeply, fundamentally childish.

89. Cruel Summer (Freeform, Season 2; 2021 rank: 54 of 108). The first season of Cruel Summer was most notable for its structural gimmickry: a triptych of overlapping sequences that took place on the same day of a different year. Naturally, this follow-up repeats the stratagem, though the gaps have been compressed to six months, introducing some wintry chill into the titular swelter. Unfortunately, despite a game young cast (including Lexi Underwood, from Little Fires Everywhere), the series is wildly unpersuasive as both a seedy thriller and a coming-of-age story. It’s unfair to expect David Simon levels of verisimilitude for the investigative components of a young-adult production, but the teen melodrama material is equally unconvincing, with the characters never even approaching realism. The point of Cruel Summer is to draw you inside its soapy world of backstabbing and intrigue, but it’s too juvenile to generate any real heat.

88. The Wheel of Time (Amazon, Season 2; 2021 rank: 86). Sigh. This show is too expensive-looking to be atrocious; the production design is impressive, and the special effects are convincing in their own weightless way. But man is its story a snooze. There are only two things in this season that are remotely memorable, and one is the villainess’ boots. (The other is a subplot in which a hostage attempts to outfox her abusive captor; it makes little corporeal sense, but it’s at least interesting.) Beyond that, The Wheel of Time is a warning beacon for serialized storytelling that prioritizes the destination over the journey; perhaps loyal book readers will take pleasure in the plot’s relentless progression to The Next Thing, but I find myself longing for sharper character dynamics and better writing. The premise of the saga is that the wheel turns constantly and inexorably, which is another way of saying it never goes anywhere at all.

87. Carnival Row (Amazon, Season 2; 2019 rank: 68 of 101). Oh look, more desultory world-building. There are elements of Carnival Row that come close to working, most notably the story of a mixed-race couple struggling to find their equilibrium in a dystopian land. But for the most part, the series indulges in dreary mythology and conspiratorial nonsense. It doesn’t help that it’s so damn dark, literally as well as metaphorically; many set pieces take place under cover of night, shrouding the action and diminishing the value of the elegant sets. Ultimately, Carnival Row is too in thrall to its own fanciful universe to embellish it with the necessary human detail. It’s a circus where all of the attractions are rendered in two dimensions.

86. Good Omens (Amazon, Season 2; 2019 rank: 82). One is an accident, two is a trend… maybe Amazon should chill with the lackluster fantasy adaptations? There is at least a tendril of genuine affection here in the friendship between Michael Sheen’s angel and David Tennant’s demon, though that sweetness is largely overwhelmed by Good Omens’ onslaught of Stuff Happening. The second season takes a peculiar structural approach, combining the broader narrative with flashbacks to unrelated events involving the pair’s historic mishaps. It’s a clever enough idea that adds episodic integrity to what’s otherwise a dull story, but the individual detours lack the requisite oomph to stand out, and the main plot—which involves the territorial defense of a magical bookstore, and which does its best to waste Jon Hamm—is a total drag. Good Omens is designed to merge the supernatural with the earthbound, but it ends up existing in a dusky netherworld, one where no single component of its ungainly mélange can shine.

85. All the Light We Cannot See (Netflix, Season 1). At least it’s short. Sure, maybe Steven Knight’s adaptation of the popular novel could have been a movie instead, but it doesn’t prolong its material too severely, instead wrapping up neatly in four tidy episodes. The problem here is one of quality, not quantity. All the Light We Cannot See strives to be a soaring historical epic, but its execution can’t match its ambition; scenes of war-torn Paris are rendered with unconvincing CGI, and the story’s supernatural element clanks against its simplistic view of noble resistance. (Also, Mark Ruffalo is involved, and good lord is he miscast.) The series tries very hard to yank at your heartstrings, and you can feel the tug with each new, overwrought scene.

84. Loki (Disney, Season 2; 2021 rank: 35). It’s foolish to complain that time-travel fiction doesn’t make sense, because that’s the whole point; it’s supposed to break your brain when you try to think about it. (Cue Bruce Willis in Looper, complaining that once you start talking about time travel, “We’re gonna be here all day talking about it, making diagrams with straws.”) The problem with Loki’s second season, unlike its first, is that it prioritizes its byzantine plotting at the expense of virtually everything else. There are some neat effects and niftily designed interiors, but the show is too busy bouncing from one incomprehensible development to the next to make time for character or humor. The MCU has grown so powerful, it’s neutered the god of mischief, turning him into just another forgettable hero. Time to travel to a different universe.

83. Percy Jackson and the Olympians (Disney, Season 1). Remember what I was saying about movies turning into TV? Having no loyalty to either Rick Riordan’s book series or Chris Columbus’ 2010 feature adaptation (which I actually watched, unlike its 2013 follow-up), I was open to the possibility of a Percy Jackson show being good. It isn’t, but it isn’t really bad either. It’s just aggressively fine, and its adequacy is somehow even more dispiriting. There are some decent adult actors on hand (the kids are, well, fine), and the CGI isn’t dreadful, and I laughed two or three times. But the series feels like pure corporate merchandising: a dutiful effort to translate a well-liked YA property to a streamer in the hope of driving up subscriptions. There’s no artistry or personality on display, just passable competence. The theoretical appeal of the Percy Jackson series is its integration of mythological lore into the modern world. But there’s a reason the ancient Greeks had no God of Mediocrity.

82. The Crown (Netflix, Season 6; last year: 97 of 110). In its final season, The Crown was always going to need to grapple with Princess Diana’s death. It does so in a way that’s weirdly ghoulish, like a passerby ogling a car crash. Still, at least Elizabeth Debicki provides a jolt of glamour; once she departs, the remainder of the series (which Netflix curiously split into two parts; they’re so close to getting it!) grows tedious and glum. I will always admire this show for its episodic focus—the one about Tony Blair, the one where Princess Margaret dies, etc.—but with the exception of two installments centering on Prince William, The Crown’s stretch run never acquires any intrigue or insight. That it culminates with a royalist defense of Queen Elizabeth’s interminable reign is hardly a surprise—a reminder that the primary function of this once-entertaining, now-moribund hagiographic series was always to bend the knee.

81. Secret Invasion (Disney, Season 1). Remember when Samuel L. Jackson gave a shit? I suppose the last time was in 2015, when he reunited with Quentin Tarantino for The Hateful Eight. The prospect of Marvel giving Nick Fury his own spy show isn’t unappealing, and Jackson’s lead performance isn’t bad. But the actor has no real opportunity to imprint Secret Invasion with his inimitable energy. As with Loki, the only signature on display here is Marvel’s—a merciless brand extension designed to continually perpetuate its endless churn of new product offerings. The strange part is that the show isn’t awful; there are some decent set pieces and sturdy performances, along with what I suppose you could call twists. But none of it means anything. You aren’t supposed to watch Secret Invasion to enjoy Secret Invasion; you’re supposed to watch it to get up to speed for the latest developments in The Marvels (which, whoops). Human or Skrull, it makes no difference. We’re all just consumers.

Coming later today: bounty hunters, news anchors, drug pushers, and consultants.