Top 10 Lists

Over the past week, MovieManifesto has ranked every single TV show we watched in 2022—that’s right, all 110 of them. At long last, we’ve arrived at the finish line. But if you want to check out prior batches in the rankings, you can find them at the following links:

#s 110-96
#s 95-81
#s 80-61
#s 60-41
#s 40-31
#s 30-21
#s 20-11

10. Euphoria (HBO, Season 2; 2019 rank: 9 of 101). I know it’s ridiculous. The whole point is that it’s ridiculous. The chaotic, outlandish happenings on Euphoria—the blackmails and beatings, the kidnappings and shootouts, the elaborate student play whose production budget surely exceeded Harvard’s endowment—aren’t meant to be plausible. They’re designed to tap into the series’ melodramatic conception of teen angst—the idea that when you’re in high school, every kiss and every spat feel like seismic, life-altering events. Naturally, Season 2 expands the show’s already-sizable scope and ambition (no, I wasn’t previously familiar with Chloe Cherry’s work, why do you ask?), but the twin hearts of Euphoria remain a kind of heightened double helix: the soaring, doomed romance between Zendaya and Hunter Schafer, and the cyclonic energy of Sydney Sweeney, who plays every scene as if she’s either the neediest girl in the world or the fucking Terminator. And while Sam Levinson is far from the most subtle artist around, there’s real craft underlying his sledgehammer style, with rich colors and striking camera moves. In literal terms, Euphoria is nothing like high school. But given how boldly it evokes the swirling emotions of your past, it may as well be a documentary. Read More

And here we are. We’ve spent the week ranking all 108 TV shows that we watched in 2021. At long last, we’ve arrived at the top 10. If you missed the previous pieces, you can find them at the following links:

#s 108-95 (tiers 11 and 10)
#s 94-84 (tier 9)
#s 83-61 (tiers 8 and 7)
#s 60-41 (tiers 6 and 5)
#s 40-31 (tier 4)
#s 30-21 (tier 3)
#s 20-11 (tier 2)

Tier 1: The top 10
10. Midnight Mass (Netflix, Season 1). A literalistic description of Midnight Mass might make it sound silly. Here is a series about a small, quiet island town whose peaceful tranquility is severely interrupted when it suddenly becomes a haven for—spoiler alert!—vampires. It’s a faintly absurd show that risks growing even more absurd because it takes itself absolutely seriously. Yet it’s that sincerity—the willingness to contemplate themes of faith, forgiveness, and salvation with frankness and without irony—which makes it so powerful. As is ever the case with the work of Mike Flanagan (both of whose prior Netflix series also made their respective year’s top 10 on this site), it’s superlatively crafted, with fluid camerawork and unnerving patience. But despite delivering some startling jolts, Midnight Mass isn’t as pound-for-pound scary as either of his Haunting shows, because cultivating fear isn’t its primary goal. It’s more interested in fusing familiar horror tropes with genuine theological examination, and it explores the inherent paradoxes of religion with uncommon candor, and without corresponding judgment. It also features gratifyingly complex characters, most notably Hamish Linklater’s morally conflicted priest. Samantha Sloyan, meanwhile, is unforgettable as one of the most deliciously vile villains ever created. Midnight Mass has the decency to imagine a dark world that’s nonetheless lit by hope. But when Sloyan is on screen, it recognizes that evil is very real, and all too human. Read More

And here we are. Having spent the past week counting down every TV that show we watched in 2020—all 124 of them—we now arrive at the top 10. If you missed any of the prior installments, you can find them 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)
#s 60-41 (tiers 6 and 5)
#s 40-31 (tier 4)
#s 30-21 (tier 3)
#s 20-11 (tier 2)

Tier 1: The top 10
10. Teenage Bounty Hunters (Netflix, Season 1). In empirical terms, there may have been 10 TV shows in 2020 that were better than Teenage Bounty Hunters. But in raw emotional terms—in metrics like “number of times a series made me squeal with glee” or “most scenes that made me leap off of my couch”—this show simply needed to be in my top 10. Sorrowful and joyous, predictable and adventurous, it soars with a combination of traditionalism and modernity, mingling old-fashioned conventionality with new-age vigor. Conceptually, it’s a simple but fun premise: twin sisters (Maddie Phillips and Anjelica Bette Fellini) team up with a grizzled veteran skip tracer (Kadeem Hardison) to track down bail-jumpers—a task they’re bizarrely well-suited for, thanks to their powers of deductive reasoning, technological knowhow, and rich-white-girl access—while also balancing academic duties at their tony prep school. If that sounds ridiculous, it is, but it works, thanks to the actors’ charm and the series’ incandescent joie de vivre. There’s a wonderful warmth to the show, and its relationships—between sisters, between lovers (straight and gay), between confused kids and their helpless parents—brim with deep feeling. Teenage Bounty Hunters may be silly at heart, but its heart is far from silly. Read More