MovieManifesto

We’re nearly finished with our countdown of every TV show we watched in 2016. For prior installments, use the following links:
#s 88-71
#s 70-51
#s 50-31 Read More

Before continuing with our rankings, a quick reminder that this list isn’t a bell curve—the majority of the shows on this 88-item list are above-average. It’s a little nuts that I can comfortably recommend 50-plus television series from a single year, but welcome to #PeakTV.

If you missed the prior installments of the Manifesto’s 2016 rankings, you can find them at the following links:
#s 88-71
#s 70-51 Read More

We’re counting down every TV show we watched in 2016. There were 88 of them. If you missed Part I, you can find it here. Read More

I have a confession to make. I should probably tell this to someone more qualified to process my shame—a friend, a rabbi, a shrink—but instead, I’m going to tell you. In the year 2016, I watched 88 different TV shows.

That’s right. Eighty-eight.

This is, of course, far too many television shows for any functional adult to watch in a given year. Yet it is also somehow not enough. When I started this project in 2014, I’d seen 50 shows that year; last year, I upped that total to 62. Now I’m at 88, and that gargantuan figure still constitutes a measly 19% of the year’s scripted shows. #PeakTV isn’t just a glorious era for the medium of television—it’s also inhumane.

But this is the world we live in, and I’ve made my peace with it. Each of the past two years, I’ve included a brief laundry-list of shows that I regretted not watching. This year, I’m done apologizing. If the forthcoming series of posts fails to include your favorite show, by all means yell at me about it; I’ll then politely remind you that I watched 88 freaking TV shows last year (for the record, I watched every episode of each show on this list—no pop-ins here), so I’m sorry that I couldn’t make room for your precious little SyFy drama or Adult Swim comedy. (Also, I’ll try to watch it next year, promise.)

Per usual, we’ll be releasing our rankings over five separate posts, with a new post dropping each day this week, concluding with the top 10 on Friday. As always, if you find yourself flabbergasted that I could somehow rank Show X above/below Show Y, please bear in mind that (1) ranking works of art is a fruitless and arbitrary exercise, and (2) my taste is better than yours.

Without further ado, here begins the Manifesto’s ranked list of every TV show we watched in 2016:
Read More