Top 10 Lists

And at long last, here we are. 2023 may have been a down year for TV overall, but its relative blahness shouldn’t influence perceptions of the year’s best shows, which were uniformly exceptional. Our countdown of every series of the year concludes below, but if you missed the prior episodes, consult the following links:

#s 94-81
#s 80-66
#s 65-51
#s 50-41
#s 40-31
#s 30-21
#s 20-11

10. Barry (HBO, Season 4; last year: 12 of 110). Barry was always enjoyable in part for how deftly it blended its madcap comedy with the emptiness eating away at its titular assassin’s soul. So as the show continued to lean harder into its darker impulses, it was fair to question if it was losing that delicate balance. But Bill Hader’s vision for this entrancing, disturbing show has always been personal—with little interest in appealing to fans or playing it safe. The final season hardly skimps on quirky entertainment; there are shootouts and prison breaks and Sian Heder cameos and organized-crime meetings at Dave & Buster’s. But its portrait of all-consuming selfishness—personified not just by Hader but by a wonderful Sarah Goldberg—is awfully bleak, and Barry commits to it with unapologetic zeal as well as formal audacity. Remember, this started out as a one-joke show about a hit man trying to become an actor. By the time it ended, no one was laughing. Read More

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