Nearly there now. Our rankings of every TV show of 2023 have reached their penultimate episode, with what you might classify as the honorable mentions. For prior installments, featuring series that are rather less excellent than the ensuing 10, check out the following links:
#s 94-81
#s 80-66
#s 65-51
#s 50-41
#s 40-31
#s 30-21
20. Love & Death (Max, Season 1). As a piece of ghastly, ripped-from-the-headlines true-crime fiction, Love & Death is solid but unremarkable. Yet it’s the typicality of the whole thing that makes it so unsettling. The story, about a happy but restless Texas housewife (Elizabeth Olsen) who embarks on a lengthy affair with a friend’s husband (Jesse Plemons), is sad and pitiful, featuring people who scan as ordinary not because of their demographics (white, middle class) but because their lives seem so limited in scope or possibility. Ironically, that sense of bland familiarity lends Love & Death a disturbing resonance; if these folks’ lives can be turned into tabloid mayhem, why can’t yours? Beyond that, the series works because—as was true with A Murder at the End of the World (discussed yesterday)—it doesn’t pin everything on its ultimate verdict, which proves to be weirdly beside the point. Instead, Love & Death operates primarily as a gripping study of marriage and infidelity, exploring—with clarity but without judgment—the ebb and flow of burning desires and cooling passions. Olsen and Plemons are both excellent for how they burrow inside their characters rather than sensationalizing them; Plemons’ performance in the finale is astonishing for how it chokes off any sense of catharsis. This may be a show about an axe murderer, but it’s the dullness that really leaves a mark.
19. Justified: City Primeval (FX, Season 1). The automatic thrill upon hearing news of a Justified revival was naturally accompanied by a shiver of hesitation: Shouldn’t we just leave it alone? Setting aside my dogmatic attitude on whether legacy updates can tarnish their forebears (short answer: they can’t), it’s undeniably satisfying to once again see Tim Olyphant in a 10-gallon hat. But while City Primeval capably fulfills its genre imperatives—the quick draws, the dastardly villains, the escalating tension—it also tweaks its formula just enough without minimizing what made its predecessor so appealing. This Raylan Givens is still a strutting, no-nonsense hotshot, but he’s, well, older, exhibiting a weariness that affects his enthusiasm, if not his marksmanship. Olyphant slips back into the character’s skin effortlessly while tamping down the bravado, and City Primeval surrounds him with a killer supporting cast, including Boyd Holbrook as an indecently entertaining scumbag and Vondie Curtis-Hall as a slippery bartender. (Also, yay Marin Ireland!) The result is a show that might not be as great as Justified was at its peak, but which also recognizes that such greatness is no longer in the cards for its hero—an epic gunslinger who no longer relishes the fight.
18. Slow Horses (Apple, Season 3; last year: 25 of 110). Slow Horses is a series about a band of disreputable MI-5 agents scrambling to defeat merciless terrorists while also evading the wrath of their sneering superiors. It is quite possibly the funniest show on TV. That might suggest cognitive dissonance, but what’s impressive about Slow Horses is that it manages to be a bona fide spy show—complete with false identities, stealthy surveillance, and labyrinthine conspiracies—while also functioning as a workplace comedy. As the group’s rumpled and condescending leader, Gary Oldman is delivering perhaps the performance of his career, a master class in arch arrogance and supreme nonchalance. (Opposite him, or really beneath him, Jack Lowden is to be commended for wielding his matinee-idol looks in service of a flunky who is constantly dominated and outmaneuvered.) The majority of this season is so terrific—such a perfectly paced medley of intrigue, humor, and suspense—that the brute-force finale feels like something of a betrayal, replacing the show’s signature intelligence and playfulness with a bunch of banal shootouts. Still, Slow Horses on the whole is a fizzy delight—a thriller where the latest threat to national security matters far less than the next withering punch line.
17. Perry Mason (HBO, Season 2; 2020 rank: 49 of 124). I know that I’m supposed to tell you about how dramatically this show improved from a writing perspective: how the central mystery is more involving, how the character dynamics are sharper, how its story of wealthy magnates casually ruining the lives of immigrant laborers just to secure their profit margins is unnervingly resonant. And yeah sure that’s all true, but also whatever because have you seen the images?? The lighting, the shadows, the suits, THE HATS. As a legal procedural, Perry Mason is engrossing, with strong performances and complex characters. As a piece of aesthetic craftsmanship, it’s riveting, and its loveliness enhances its intensity rather than distracting from it. I don’t watch this show; I bask in its beauty. Its cancellation is the ultimate crime.
16. Mrs. Davis (Peacock, Season 1). “What the hell is going on?” is generally a complaint when watching a TV show—a sign of frustration that you’re struggling to follow the on-screen events. I confess that I asked that question repeatedly while watching Mrs. Davis, but not from a place of aggravation or malice; I was simply, happily baffled by the exuberance of its constant invention. This is a crazy show, but its strangeness stems from genuine creativity, and its relentless oddity—the electronic deities, the exploding heads, the medieval nuns cosplaying in sneaker commercials—is absorbing rather than off-putting. Don’t ask me to explain the plot, because it isn’t meant to be deciphered; it’s meant to be experienced, with wide-eyed amazement and childish jubilation. It may not make sense, but what’s going on is awfully exciting.
15. The Diplomat (Netflix, Season 1). Truth in advertising: The Diplomat is basically a show about people talking. But wordplay is its own form of warfare, and the dialogue in this series sings with rhythm and wit. It is also spoken by a very talented cast; Keri Russell is a force of brain-whirring intelligence, and she’s surrounded by energetic men—Rufus Sewell’s charm and smarm, David Gyasi’s smooth beauty, Rory Kinnear’s bulldog belligerence—who serve as wonderful sparring partners. As a study of global affairs, The Diplomat isn’t especially persuasive, but it at least engages with the concept of geopolitics, and it attacks its subject matter with a combination of earnestness and camp. For what’s basically a series of verbal exchanges, this is a blisteringly entertaining show—one that makes you feel like the fate of the world is hanging on the next bellicose speech or impromptu comeback. For writers, in other words, it’s the ultimate fantasy.
14. The Makanai (Netflix, Season 1). I hesitate to use the term “underrated,” because it implies a consensus level of acclaim when really the world is full of millions of individual voices screaming to make themselves heard above the din. So maybe “underdiscussed” (which isn’t technically a word) is more appropriate, because despite being fairly plugged in to the pop-culture ecosystem, I barely heard anyone even mention this small, magnificent series. That’s curious in light of its pedigree, given that it was directed in part by the great Hirokazu Kore-eda. But the lack of recognition is also fitting for The Makanai, given its unassuming stature and its resistance to splashy incident. Yet while its story—about two teenagers who aspire to become geishas—is rigorously small-scale, the show acquires considerable power through its careful observations and its nuanced depiction of female camaraderie. There’s an episode near the end that pays tribute to Night of the Living Dead, and it’s one of the most heartwarming things I’ve ever seen, full of humor and sweetness and joy. Such strong feelings are generally anathema to The Makanai, which favors gentle relationships and subtle emotional shifts. But in its intimately detailed universe, the small clasp of hands between lifelong friends can feel like the biggest thing in the world.
13. Blue Eye Samurai (Netflix, Season 1). Another series set in Japan, though this one is rather different from The Makanai in terms of scale. A bold and sweeping fairy tale, Blue Eye Samurai is a robust homage to classic Westerns and other myths. It also happens to be animated, with a gorgeous palette that only heightens its already-grand atmosphere. Animated action can feel like cheating—when the combatants can do anything, the laws of physics are rendered meaningless—but the technique here combines excess with restraint, delivering eye-popping imagery that is nonetheless thoughtful and legible. As if to defy any stigma of childishness, the series is aggressively mature, with lots of sex and violence and gore. That may make it sound silly, but the exaggerated quality of the show’s content is in keeping with its epic sensibility. A veritable pop stew of old-fashioned swashbuckling—emperors and princesses, warriors and courtesans, castles and huts—Blue Eye Samurai nonetheless feels fresh in both story and style. It’s a literary tribute that stakes its own claim on enduring lore.
12. The Other Two (Max, Season 3; 2021 rank: 5 of 108). The Other Two was always resistant to crowd-pleasing; as its title implies, it’s focused on the also-rans—the hard-striving losers who are inherently incapable of success and are destined for a lifetime of anonymity. Still, even by its own standards, the third and final season of this strange, hysterical show plunges to some disturbing depths, with its central pair (Heléne Yorke and Drew Tarver, both horrifyingly perfect) completing their transformation from adorable sad-sacks into egotistical monsters. This isn’t a matter of the series coyly exploring the knock-on effects of fame; this is straight-up dark. Yet because it’s The Other Two, it’s also indecently funny, with a demented imagination and gleeful skewering of Hollywood convention. It pulls off the magic act of heightening by tunneling; the deeper it probes its characters’ all-consuming selfishness, the more hilarious it becomes.
11. Fellow Travelers (Showtime, Season 1). Good grief, this show is sad. You can argue about its topical relevance—whether its depiction of the intersection between the Red Scare and the demonization of gay Americans has allegorical links to the ongoing spate of transphobic legislation, for instance. What seems beyond dispute is the specificity of its characters and the sincerity of its emotions. Matt Bomer has been good before, but he’s downright revelatory here as a closeted diplomat with a voracious sexual appetite. It’s easy to deem his role two-faced, but the strength of Fellow Travelers lies in how it captures the moral and existential toll that society levies when it shoves entire classes of people to the margins; in response to such sanctioned hatred, duplicity isn’t a choice but a survival instinct. The series’ decade-hopping structure can feel overly ambitious, but it speaks to the enormity of the suffering on display—a wound that can’t be healed with time. Yet this is no piece of miserabilism. It’s a sharp and vibrant story of heartache and endurance, and it complements its chilling verisimilitude with aching tenderness. With vitality and grace, it returns you to a deplorable time in American history. Good thing that’s all over with.
Coming tomorrow: the top 10.
Jeremy Beck is the editor-in-chief of MovieManifesto. He watches more movies and television than he probably should.