TV Rankings

In the year of Our Lord, two thousand eighteen, I stopped watching The Walking Dead.

Now, as sinful confessions go, that may not seem all that damning. But as someone who’s spent the past five years of his life watching an inordinate amount of television, it seems significant that I at long last bailed on a program where I’d invested so much time (107 episodes!). And looking back on my TV viewing of 2018, I’m not sure what’s more disturbing: that I watched 93 different series in their entirety, or that this figure represented a 14% decrease from the 108 shows that I watched in 2017. It seems absurd that I can feel apologetic for failing to hit triple digits for the second straight year, but in the era of #PeakTV, too much is never enough.

The Walking Dead wasn’t the only casualty of my newfound choosiness. Typically, once I start a series, I stick with it until it dies, but this year I failed to make time for new seasons of a handful of floundering shows, including Hap and Leonard, House of Cards, Iron Fist, The Man in the High Castle, Outcast (ugh, Cinemax), The Path, and (most regrettably) Harlots. I also started watching a handful of new series—The Alienist, Black Lightning, Electric Dreams—only to stall out after 3–4 episodes. I wish I could have seen all of these, but #PeakTV has a cruel way of making time speed up; there are so many shows, and so few hours in which to watch them. Read More

We’re ranking every show we watched in 2017. You can find the prior installments in our rankings at the following links:
#s 108-81
#s 80-51
#s 50-31

Note that, because #PeakTV is so insanely glutted with good shows, every series listed from here on out is excellent, and you should watch them all.

30. The Magicians (Syfy, Season 2). Good lord is this show fun. Season 1 of The Magicians was enjoyable, but it had to do so much heavy lifting in terms of world-building that it could sometimes feel laborious. Now, with the rules and characters firmly established, the series can relax and ease into its Buffy-inspired brand of storytelling, a blend of irreverent humor, big feelings, and intricate mythology. Despite being a show about a bunch of college students who cast spells, The Magicians isn’t childish, but it isn’t overly glum either, instead delving into its calamitous storylines—everyone always seem to be on the verge of death or disaster—with a delightfully impish sense of mischief. (It helps that two of the show’s formerly buttoned-up female characters literally lose their souls this year, allowing Stella Maeve and Olivia Taylor Dudley to really let loose.) Certain sequences—a bank heist, a negotiation with a dragon, an impromptu performance of a Les Miserables song—are downright delirious, a reminder that unbridled joy can be its own form of magic. Read More

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