MovieManifesto

We’re ranking every TV show of 2022. For prior installments, check out the following links:

#s 110-96
#s 95-81
#s 80-61
#s 60-41

40. The Gilded Age (HBO, Season 1). As befits the work of Julian Fellowes (Downton Abbey, Belgravia), this is a ridiculous show, featuring two-dimensional characters, predictable writing, and painful contrivances. It is also delightful. Part of this lies in its sumptuous trappings; there are opulent mansions, magnificent dresses, splendid hats. But there’s also a sincerity to the storytelling that feels heartwarming rather than cloying. Carrie Coon and Morgan Spector shine as the Big Apple’s ultimate power couple, while Christine Baranski lobs casual insults like she’s tossing grenades. Everything about The Gilded Age is clankingly obvious and shamelessly engineered. But railroads run on power, not subtlety, and this series is a locomotive, steamrolling over all criticism with unstoppable, beautiful force. Read More

Our exhaustive rankings of every TV show of 2022 continue. If you missed prior entries, you can find them at the following links:

#s 110-96
#s 95-81
#s 80-61

60. Tokyo Vice (HBO, Season 1). In the #PeakTV era, one of the most irritating things you can say to someone about a show is, “Make sure you give it a few episodes.” People’s time is limited; they can’t just aimlessly fritter away random hours on series that don’t grab them immediately. And with that in mind: Make sure you give Tokyo Vice a few episodes. It gets off to a bumpy start, delving into obscure yakuza minutiae as Ansel Elgort attempts to keep his head above water as the only white dude at Japan’s biggest newspaper. But over time, the picture sharpens and the characters gain dimension. As an outsider trying to assimilate, Elgort’s natural awkwardness suits him well, but the real stars are the natives: Ken Watanabe as a patient detective, Shô Kasamatsu as an ambitious gangster, and the invaluable Rinko Kikuchi as a weary editor. (Poor Rachel Keller is forced to carry a dreary subplot involving a nightclub.) The plot can still be overwhelming, but Tokyo Vice slowly steeps itself in immersive detail, and its sense of exoticism gradually gives way to real intrigue and suspense. Read More

Per annual tradition, we at MovieManifesto are ranking every TV show we watched in 2022. If you missed prior installments, you can find them at the following links:

#s 110-96
#s 95-81

80. Made for Love (HBO, Season 2; last year: 36 of 108). I’ll never forget the very first shot of Made for Love: a damp and bedraggled Cristin Milioti, clad in an emerald dress, emerging from a portal in the middle of nowhere. It was the kind of image that announced the arrival of a show with its very own, very odd agenda. So it’s a bit disappointing that the second (and final) season of the series is more functional than memorable. Milioti still does strong work, and there are some intriguing ideas about the intersection of technological empires and patriarchal dominance. But the sense of pure discovery has vanished. It isn’t as though the show became timid; hell, there’s a subplot in which an undercover FBI agent falls in love with a genetically enhanced dolphin. It just doesn’t add up to much that’s new. I’m sad Made for Love got cancelled; I’m also sad it didn’t give me more. Read More

We’re ranking every TV show of 2022. If you missed the first episode (har har), you can find it here.

95. Los Espookys (HBO, Season 2; 2019 rank: 72 of 101). I feel bad about not enjoying this show. It’s commendably offbeat, and its premise—four friends run a guerrilla business where they use their amateur talents to manufacture supernatural happenings as suits the bizarre needs of their eclectic clientele—is a triumph of bizarre imagination. But the execution is spotty, and some of the oddities are so random that they verge on perverse. (Also, I know he’s a co-creator, but Fred Armisen is absolutely dreadful.) I admire the concept of Los Espookys, because in an artistic landscape glutted with the same old stuff—true-crime dramas, ensemble sitcoms, world-building fantasies—we need more unclassifiable programs. I just need them to be better. Read More

We all know there’s too much TV. But what if TV is under existential threat? One of the programs you won’t find in the upcoming series of posts—which, per annual tradition, will count down every TV show I watched in the prior calendar year, concluding with the top 10 on Friday—is the second season of Raised by Wolves. It’s not that I didn’t want to watch the series; it’s that I couldn’t. To be more precise, I saw the first six episodes of HBO’s weird off-world thriller last February before losing interest, promising myself I’d finish it when I had more time. But last week, when I resolved to power through the rest of the show at long last, I discovered that HBO Max had removed it from its library entirely.

As first-world problems go, this one would seem to be relatively insignificant. But it’s indicative of the broader, troubling trend in which streaming services banish existing programs—some of which have already been produced yet never actually aired—to avoid paying residuals and other associated, incomprehensible costs. This is new, and it’s bad. The utopian conception of the #PeakTV era was a glutted marketplace where viewers had infinite choices, and their only problem was deciding which shows to pluck from the sprawling meadow of lush entertainment. Now that meadow is morphing into a weedy garden, and providers are less interested in planting new seeds than in pruning moldy shrubs which don’t earn their keep. TV shows used to last forever; now, some of them die before they’re born. Read More