MovieManifesto

We’re counting down every TV show of 2020. You can find the earlier entries at the following links:

#s 124-110 (tiers 12 and 11)
#s 109-85 (tiers 10 and 9)
#s 84-61 (tiers 8 and 7)

Tier 6: We have officially reached “good” territory
60. Defending Jacob (Apple, Season 1). The reason that Defending Jacob mostly works is the same reason that The Undoing mostly doesn’t: It’s a whodunit whose success doesn’t entirely hinge on the resolution of its central mystery. Sure, there’s a lot of hemming and hawing and accusing and second-guessing about Who Killed the Kid, but the series is less interested in solving the crime than in exploring the agonies of its aftermath—not just the procedural quirks of the juvenile justice system, but the more existential dilemma of parents questioning whether they really know their own child. Defending Jacob is occasionally (ahem) guilty of wallowing in its own solemnity, and of needlessly stretching things out with a stream of potential suspects and red herrings. But it features a welcome, somewhat unusual focus on character, and the lead performances—from Chris Evans, Michelle Dockery, and Jaeden Martell (who, between this, Knives Out, and The Lodge is either a very gifted actor or a truly disturbed boy)—add texture and nuance to the potboiler setup. Did Jacob do it? The most shocking reveal of this series is that the answer doesn’t really matter, and that it’s an immersive experience regardless. Read More

We’re counting down every TV show of 2020. You can find earlier entries at the following links:

#s 124-110 (tiers 12 and 11)
#s 109-85 (tiers 10 and 9)

Tier 8: Approaching “good” territory
84. Babylon Berlin (Netflix, Season 3; 2018 rank: 55). I never know what the hell is happening in this show. This isn’t unusual for me: Maintaining the thread of complex series with large casts of unknown actors is not one of my strengths as a viewer. Still, it’s difficult for me to fully engage with a series when I spend half the time wondering who’s who. That said, there are still pleasures aplenty in the latest season of this German import, which acquires operatic overtones when it investigates a murder that takes place on a movie set; a scene that transpires on a catwalk is one of the most thrilling things I watched on screen all year. I suspect that, if I made a superior effort, I would appreciate Babylon Berlin far more. As is, I’m often left floundering, but I can still admire its scope and sweep, along with the charming performance of Liv Lisa Fries, who lends this sprawling, brutal, somewhat nonsensical series its fragile soul. Read More

We’re ranking every TV show we watched in 2020. If you missed the first two tiers, you can check them out here.

Tier 10: Tolerable, but forgettable
109. Monsterland (Hulu, Season 1). The idea behind Monsterland—a horror anthology whose disparate episodes are all designed to tap into similar feelings of resentment, isolation, and dread—is solid enough. It’s the execution that’s lacking. Most anthologies imitate a qualitative bell curve: one or two stunners, one or two clunkers, and a handful of passable installments in between. But with Monsterland, it’s hard to pick a highlight. I reasonably enjoyed both the opener—with Kaitlyn Dever (who also shows up in several other episodes) as a young single mom at the end of her rope—and the closer—with Mike Colter as a bereaved father whose floundering marriage suddenly receives some extraterrestrial Viagra. But most of what’s in between is a muddle, hinting at intriguing premises without exploring them with any urgency. A show called Monsterland shouldn’t be so unmemorable. Read More

2020 was a terrible year for the world. It was also a spectacular year for TV.

These two truths are complementary, not contradictory. To begin with, many of the TV shows that aired in 2020 were filmed pre-pandemic, so the continued flow of high-quality comedies and intense dramas from sets to homes was simply a function of the pipeline’s normal operations. But beyond that, once COVID-19 upended our daily lives and thwarted even the most basic aspects of communal experience—the play dates and restaurant outings, the long trips to see relatives and the short visits to the theater, the subway commutes and water-cooler conversations—the normally private world of television became a shared haven. Powered by our natural craving for interaction, it morphed from a naturally recessive space into a digital cooperative; it was where we went to find each other, to eagerly debate the best premieres and the worst finales, to collectively laugh and cry and cheer and bicker and maybe just distract ourselves from the all-too-real horrors of the world raging beyond our screens. Forget about cancel culture being a phony grievance; in 2020, TV culture was virtually the only thing that wasn’t cancelled.

Of course, some of us participated more than others. I myself watched 124 different TV shows in 2020, a truly absurd number (and a personal record, up from 108 in 2017) that also seems weirdly low, given how COVID amplified my already-hermitic tendencies. This means that I definitely watched more than you did, but given the sheer volume of #content available over the airwaves (or through the interwebs), it also means that I didn’t watch everything you watched. As ever, I do not care; I am constitutionally incapable of being shamed for not watching a particular series because, in case you hadn’t noticed, I already watched 124 fucking shows in a single year. Match that number, then maybe we can talk. Read More