TV Rankings

We’re ranking every show we watched in 2017. There were a lot. You can find the prior installments at the following links:
#s 108-81
#s 80-51

50. Girls (HBO, Season 6; last year: 34 of 88). And at long last—after alienating countless viewers, prompting innumerable hot takes, and possibly ravaging relationships the world over—Girls has come to its end. This was always a more delicate and less abrasive show than it appeared, and it continued that work in its final season, dismantling the characters’ bratty armor to reveal the pain and love underneath. It wasn’t as bracing as prior seasons; there wasn’t a “Panic in Central Park” this year, and my favorite character, Zosia Mamet’s Shoshanna, basically disappeared for the entire stretch run. (This season’s most memorable episode, the Matthew Rhys-starring “American Bitch”, was stimulating, but it was ultimately too didactic for me to fully embrace.) But Girls remained steadfastly true to its characters to the end, and certain moments—such as a heartbreaking meal that Lena Dunham and Adam Driver shared at a diner, following a day of ephemeral happiness—illustrated just how well Dunham understood her subjects, which is to say, herself. Read More

We’re ranking every TV show we watched in 2017. If you missed Part I, you can find it here. Also, an annual reminder that this list isn’t a bell curve. Just because a show pops up in the mid-70s doesn’t mean it’s a bad show; it just means there’s an outrageous amount of good TV on right now.

80. Room 104 (HBO, Season 1). As with all anthology series, Room 104 is wildly uneven, with some installments working significantly better than others. The show’s premise—every episode takes place within the same nondescript motel room—isn’t exactly fire, but the Duplass brothers do a nice job exploiting its variety; one episode is straight-up horror, another is a slow-burn thriller, a third is a wordless dance sequence, etc. That makes Room 104 inherently challenging—each half-hour has to swiftly establish its own characters and internal logic—and it typically meets that challenge. Still, while the series is generally well-cast—players include Amy Landecker, Philip Baker Hall, and James Van Der Beek—it ultimately amounts to less than the sum of its carefully assembled parts. Any grand statement on human connection is elusive, which means Room 104 is more experiment than TV show. Read More

#PeakTV is a blessing and a curse, a paradise of exceptional artistry and a wormhole of endless mediocrity, a blissful escape from reality and a nauseating reminder of it. Watching television used to be a frivolous activity; now, it’s a blood sport, a ruthless competition, a point of pride and a mark of shame. The sheer muchness of it is just so daunting, and it triggers debate, exasperation, and hostility. Everyone’s favorite show lies at the bottom of someone else’s DVR discard pile; everyone’s shrugged-off curiosity (“I gave up after the first two eps, pretty boring”) is someone else’s precious treasure.

The countdown that follows—to be broken out over the next five days—ranks every single TV show I watched in 2017. There were, to put it mildly, a lot. There were also not enough; every year brings with it new buzz, new whispers about a niche program that I just wasn’t able to make time for.

I could pretend that these rankings are a matter of subjective taste—that people respond differently to various genres, styles, and modes of storytelling. I could also acknowledge that rankings are ludicrous, and that every rigid numerical slotting here carries with it what you might call a dramatic margin of error. (Seriously, if you reshuffled a bunch of shows on this list up or down by 20 slots, I doubt I’d even notice.)

But who am I kidding? Let’s be honest: If I ranked something higher than you would have, it’s because I, an inveterate watcher of television, grasped hidden meaning from the show that you, a pitiful casual viewer, failed to comprehend. If I ranked something lower, it’s because I wisely located the tiresome formula and dullness that eluded you. And if this list doesn’t even include one of your favorite shows—if I just didn’t watch your beloved cartoon comedy or your thought-provoking historical drama or your under-the-radar Danish thriller—it isn’t because I simply couldn’t make room in my preposterously crowded viewing calendar; it’s because I wanted to affront you personally. I hope it hurts.

And with that point of politeness out of the way, here begins the Manifesto’s ranked list of every TV show we watched in 2017: Read More

In 2016, we at the Manifesto watched 88 different TV shows. Now, we have ranked and written about them all. Here are those complete rankings—click on the header links to be transported to the particular page with detailed analysis of that group’s individual shows: Read More