MovieManifesto

We’re ranking every TV show that we watched in 2018. For prior installments, check out the following links:

#s 93-71
#s 70-51
#s 50-31

30. Forever (Amazon, Season 1). What if you ascended to Heaven, only to discover that Heaven is boring? That’s essentially the premise of Forever, a strange, unpredictable, occasionally frustrating, often wonderful show starring Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen as a married couple slated to spend eternity living in the same comfortably boring house; they’re supposed to be content, but they gradually realize that contentment is the opposite of fulfillment. Running a tidy eight half-hour episodes, Forever can nevertheless be listless in its storytelling, and its conclusion lacks the personal and thematic clarity that it clearly desired. But the show is still powerful and surprising, exploring human connection in ways both intimate and sweeping. The obvious high point is the sixth episode, a bottle installment starring Hong Chau and Jason Mitchell that exists entirely on its own yet boldly advances the series’ textured portrait of relationships and regrets. It may not last forever, but you’ll be thinking about it for a long, long time. Read More

Our rankings of every 2018 TV show continue below. For prior installments, check out the following links:

#s 93-71
#s 70-51

50. Legion (FX, Season 2; last year: 29 of 108). Following a fascinating first season that attempted to turn standard superhero entertainments inside out, Legion feels a bit too self-important in its second go-round, too focused on touting its originality without actually advancing a compelling story. It also marginalizes its greatest asset—Aubrey Plaza’s magnificently off-kilter performance—while simultaneously padding out the season with a number of episodes that never really go anywhere. Still, this remains a staggeringly impressive show, with bracing technique and a bold command of lighting, framing, and music. The storyline doesn’t always work, and as gifted an artist as Noah Hawley is, he’d be well-served to tighten things up going forward. But even when it’s nonsensical, Legion always offers something to see. Read More

We’re ranking every TV show that we watched in 2018. If you missed Part I, you can find it here. And remember: Despite their relatively low appearance on the year-end rankings, these shows are still pretty good.

70. Jack Ryan (Amazon, Season 1). There’s nothing fancy about Jack Ryan, a hunter-killer thriller starring John Krasinski as Tom Clancy’s heroic CIA “analyst”—previously played on the big screen by Alec Baldwin, Ben Affleck, and of course Harrison Ford—and Wendell Pierce as his no-nonsense boss. It’s a taut, plotty procedural about smart good guys trying to catch smart bad guys. In 2018, there’s something a little icky about yet another story of dastardly Islamic terrorists scheming to cripple the United States, and despite a nuanced portrayal from Ali Suliman as the big bad, Jack Ryan often feels like a coarse campaign ad for foreign-policy hawks. But the show is best viewed through an apolitical lens, and as a suspense piece, it mostly works, with well-choreographed action scenes and a smartly paced story. Unlike its protagonist, Jack Ryan isn’t going to save the world, but it can provide an enjoyable distraction from it. Read More

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