Over the past five days, we’ve ranked and written about all 101 TV shows that we watched in 2019. For your convenience, we’ve assembled those rankings into this single post. If you want to access the write-up for any particular show, just click on the header link above that set. Here are the rankings in full: Read More
And here we are. After a week of ranking every single TV show from 2019, we finally come to the end. In case you missed it, here are links to the prior posts:
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101-76
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75-51
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50-31
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30-11
10. Watchmen (HBO, Season 1). I don’t
think this is a perfect show. It’s sprawling, and tracking its complicated
mythology can be a little exhausting. But in raw mathematical terms, I’m not
sure any TV series in 2019 delivered more moments of flat-out greatness than Watchmen. This is a massively impressive
show, full of gorgeous imagery and exhilarating technique. It’s also a work of monumental
ambition, seeking to reframe a traditional comic-book narrative as a commentary
on the contemporary evil of white supremacy. Whether it’s especially meaningful
as a political document is an open question, but what’s undeniable is how
self-assured Watchmen is, how
effortlessly it develops its own cinematic language. Plus, it’s funny; this is
a show that features a powerful flashback episode investigating the rise of an
anti-Ku Klux Klan vigilante, yet it also makes room for Jean Smart lovingly
caressing a giant blue dildo. Nothing else on television in 2019 had more to
say, and nothing else said it so boldly. Read More
There may not have been a ton of great movies released in 2018, but 2018 was still a great year for movies. It was one of the most fertile cinematic years that I can remember, full of challenging, fascinating films that were far from perfect but were resolutely good and—more important—interesting. Even as the industry continues to undergo seismic change, the movies themselves remain a vibrant cultural center, a thriving bazaar where viewers can converse, promote, argue, and discover.
It was also a year full of exciting and diverse voices, varied not only in terms of race and gender, but also with respect to age, style, and even mode of distribution. Black directors made themselves heard, and loudly, from the stirring adventure of Ryan Coogler’s Black Panther to the fiery agitprop of Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman to the scalding satire of Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You to the youthful anger of George Tillman Jr.’s The Hate U Give to the piercing melancholy of Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk. Women, too, continued to assert themselves as equals in a marketplace that has treated them as inferiors for far too long; Kay Cannon’s Blockers made us laugh, Chloé Zhao’s The Rider made us cry, and Marielle Heller’s Can You Ever Forgive Me? made us do both, while Karyn Kusama’s Destroyer and Lynne Ramsay’s You Were Never Really Here made us tremble in fear and awe. Read More
The Manifesto watched 93 different TV shows in 2018, and over the past five days, we’ve ranked and written about them all. For your convenience, we’ve assembled those rankings into this single post. If you want to access the write-up for any particular show, just click on the header link above that set. Here are the rankings in full: Read More
Beginning this past Monday, the Manifesto started ranking every TV show that we watched in 2018. We’re wrapping things up today with our top 10. If you missed the prior posts, you can access them here:
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93-71
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70-51
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50-31
#s
30-11
10. Better Call Saul (AMC, Season 4; last year: 8 of 108). As Better Call Saul inches closer and closer to the events of Breaking Bad, it becomes increasingly endangered of being swallowed by its predecessor’s shadow. So it’s kind of amazing that the show remains as consistently good as it is. Or maybe it’s “shows”; this has really become two series in one, with one following Mike Ehrmantraut as he solidifies his fateful partnership in crime with Gus Fring, and the other tracking Jimmy McGill’s long slow slide into legally sanctioned amorality. The Mike material is stuff that we’ve seen before, and while it’s executed with patience and panache, it can’t help feeling like a perfectly constructed echo. Jimmy’s descent, on the other hand, is the heart of the show; even though we know the sad destination, the journey remains fascinating, as Better Call Saul continues to pave his road to the dark side with thrilling complexity and ambiguity. Bob Odenkirk continues to do great work, and he’s matched in Season 4 by Rhea Seehorn, who’s turned Kim Wexler from a one-note love interest into a quietly tragic figure of misguided optimism. Eventually, Better Call Saul will have no choice but to finally rip off the band-aid and abandon Jimmy McGill for good. But for the time being, his fall keeps reaching new heights. Read More