MovieManifesto

Our countdown of every 2019 TV show continues! For prior installments, check out the links below. And honestly, you can pretty much rearrange all of the shows in this post in any order you want, because they’re all kind of great:

#s 101-76
#s 75-51
#s 50-31

30. Game of Thrones (HBO, Season 8; 2017 rank: 13 of 108). Gulp. OK, let’s get this out of the way: The last episode of Game of Thrones was bad. Or, rather, the last half-hour of the last episode was bad; the much-maligned finale concluded with an appalling whimper that arguably betrayed the uncompromising ferocity that was the series’ signature. Here’s the thing, though: The first half-hour of the finale featured some pretty terrific stuff, including perhaps the most stunning image the series has ever produced. And leading up to that finale, Season 8 as a whole, while uneven, was filled with killer material. Its second episode, which found its characters grimly preparing for the deadly battle to come, is one of the finest hours the show has ever produced, full of humor and tenderness and hard-won camaraderie. And even if Game of Thrones’ ultimate destination was disappointing, its journey was always full of marvelous sights and sounds: an armada of fires blinking out one by one; a deadly game of hide-and-seek in a dusty library; a giant dragon mournfully cradling a fallen rider; Carice Van Houten’s eyes; Maisie Williams’ face. It’s undeniable that the conclusion of this show left a bitter aftertaste. There’s also no denying that, along the way, it routinely delivered images and scenes we’d never before seen on television. Read More

We’re counting down every show we watched in 2019. For prior installments, check out the following links:

#s 101-76
#s 75-51

50. Modern Love (Amazon, Season 1). Like with any anthology, Modern Love is less a cohesive series than a collection of hits and misses. Sure, there’s a vague thematic throughline about the complexities of contemporary romance—whether between tech-savvy millennials, weary gen-Xers, or dogged boomers—but it doesn’t add up to much beyond, “Love is complicated.” Still, the series’ economy is impressive; each episode clocks in at roughly 30 minutes, and each manages to tell a complete story. It’s also beautifully cast, and when it hits—such as when it tracks the separate relationships of Catherine Keener and Dev Patel, or when it spends a wonderful evening in the hospital with Sofia Boutella and John Gallagher Jr., or when it follows the ups and downs of a bipolar Anne Hathaway—it plays like gangbusters. That other episodes are less successful feels appropriate; after all, who gets love right on the first try? Read More

We’re counting down every TV show that we watched in 2019. If you missed Part I, you can find it here. Also, a gentle reminder that this list isn’t a bell curve; going forward, I mostly liked pretty much every show that appears.

75. His Dark Materials (HBO, Season 1). I get why HBO wants to repeat its Game of Thrones magic, and I get why they chose to adapt Philip Pullman’s trilogy, a fantasy series that’s loaded with intrigue and imagination. The resulting series, at least one season in, is perfectly cast, visually impressive, and maybe just a little bit workmanlike. Some of that may be a function of Pullman’s first novel, which spends a lot of time on world-building before really getting to the good stuff in book two. Still, thus far, His Dark Materials is missing that spark of creativity, that joie de vivre. To be clear, there’s plenty of good stuff: Dafne Keen (from Logan) is terrific as the spunky and inquisitive lead, sparring beautifully with Ruth Wilson’s conflicted zealot; Lin-Manuel Miranda is aces as a gunslinger; there are armored bears. But there’s a disappointing caution to the show that’s restricting its potential. Here’s hoping it takes more chances in Season 2. Read More

Thirty-three different TV shows made my top 10 list this year.

I mean, not really. Math doesn’t work like that. But if placement on a top 10 list is a signifier of excellence, then 2019 offered far too much stellar small-screen programming to be reduced to a mere decade. There was so much greatness, on so many platforms: great Netflix comedies, great HBO thrillers, great Hulu dramas, great Amazon whatsits, great FX miniseries. It was enough to make you both delight and despair—to revel in the extraordinary vastness of modern television, and also to lament all the shows you couldn’t find time to watch.

Speaking of which, here’s a partial list of shows I’d previously consumed but stalled out on this year: The Affair, American Gods, Arrested Development (good riddance), Dark, Happy!, Preacher, Riverdale (doh!), A Series of Unfortunate Events, and The Terror. In a less cruel, more generous world, I might have found time to continue watching all of these series—along with intriguing new shows like The Boys, David Makes Man, and Too Old to Die Young—but today’s jam-packed TV landscape forces you to make tough choices.

As for what I did watch: Today’s list is the opening salvo in our annual weeklong exercise ranking every TV show from the past year that I watched in its entirety; it’ll wrap up with the top 10 on Friday. There are, to put it mildly, a lot of shows on this list. There also isn’t everything; I’ve probably neglected one of your most treasured sitcoms or beloved procedurals. Sue me. When you watch more than a hundred TV shows in a single year, then maybe I’ll grant you the right to complain about the programs that I so grievously ignored. Until then, pipe down.

Or maybe I’ve just ranked your favorite series far too low. Feel free to take that personally. All I’ll say is that, setting aside the arbitrary nature of ranking works of art—an admittedly foolish endeavor which suggests objective rigidity when the realities of preference and quality are far more fluid—the problem with TV’s glut of greatness is that it creates a false impression of relative mediocrity. By which I mean: If I ranked a series as the 53rd best show of the year, how good could it possibly be?

Pretty damn good. I won’t bother trying to encourage you to watch most of the shows on this list, because I’m confident you have neither the time nor the discipline to do so. What I will do is stress that the list isn’t a bell curve; half of the shows included are not below average. The vast majority are worth watching. The challenge—the existential dilemma that plagues viewers of our time—is to decide which shows are worthy of your limited time.

I’ll leave that impossible choice to you. For my part, here’s every show I watched this year, in reverse order of preference: Read More