After assembling the lists you’ll see shortly, I realised just how expected they are. Which is not to say that I wish I’d pushed myself to be more esoteric with them, more so that I think I’ve hit the point where my likes and dislikes are clear enough that what features could be predicted. It would have been nice if some of the buzzier shows of the year, say Hacks and The White Lotus, would’ve provoked as big a response as they did for others, but then again, it would be boring if we were all the same. No doubt there’s stuff I missed this year, didn’t get to Station Eleven until the week it ended, decided to save Yellowjackets until we’re closer to its second season and considering more TV is produced than any person can actually keep up with, there’s sure to be shows I’ve never even heard of that you could recommend. Anyways, if this is my brand, so be it and let’s get on with it:
Best TV
Honourable Mentions: I Think You Should Leave, Mr. Mayor, The Beatles: Get Back, The Nevers, The North Water, What We Do in the Shadows
10. Mare of Easttown
Has that lived-in texture we always want these type of things to have. Gives us a sense the place and its people existed before its airing, and will continue to do so, using the central investigation as the means of examining what happens when the safety of that communal fabric becomes more frayed. As a result this doesn’t just play home to a great Kate Winslet performance, as there’s stellar work from Julianne Nicholson, Jean Smart, Angourie Rice, Evan Peters & Guy Pearce, the latter of whom stepped in as a favour to his former Mildred Pierce co-star, turning what could’ve been a perfunctory role to fill out the list of potential killers into tactile proof of that richness.
9. Search Party
Ever the restless show, it once again shakes itself up in order to allow Dory the possibility of self-reflection while confined to imprisonment in a simulacrum of her apartment by a psychotic Cole Escola. Alia Shawkat’s performance as the primary member of the show’s ensemble is bold and willing to go whether the wild change-ups of the writing team take her, in this case from the promise of freedom to even more trappings of existentialism that previously thought possible. It’s the darkest that the show got — I say this having written this after S5 concluded the run — in pushing the character to see if she’d actually confront herself, culminating in a finale that up until its very last moment, seemed like it could be the show’s final statement on her narcissism, yet the season never got bogged down and sunk by this introspectiveness, as evidenced by its inclusion of a knee-slapping comic set piece on a roundabout as well as allowing new cast members Susan Sarandon and Ann Down to let loose. I know that some have looked at the show with diminishing returns after its lengthy hiatus, but I continue to admire how well it navigates the tightropes of its own making in Seasons 3 and 4 (and I’ll guess we’ll see this time next year if I managed to reach that point with Season 5).
8. Dorktown: The History of the Atlanta Falcons
The farce to Seattle Mariners‘ tragedy. A big ol’ bird god is looking down and laughing, might as well laugh back.
7. Dickinson
Perhaps the only show that isn’t a Netflix animation to release two seasons in the same calendar year, but nevertheless one that honed its voice across them. The first season understood what it wanted to be, a fanciful mix of poetry and magical realism just as much as a bridge between the 19th and 21st centuries, though the ambition was clearer than the execution at points. There’s no Jason Manztoukas-voiced talking bee to be found come season two, in its place, there is instead a greater clarity in how to express Emily’s journey of how to express herself. Meanwhile, the third season — produced in the time of the ‘rona — draws connections between this current period to the Civil War with a delicate touch that prevents both rendering the series into blunt allegory nor trivialising either through ironic detachment. If the show took a while to find itself, what it did have from the outset is Hailee Steinfeld’s sheer magnetism as a performer and seeing her play this character through to the show’s conclusion cements it as her greatest performance. It’s been just as much of a joy to watch her as it is to have seen the show fine-tune itself and ultimately get to tell its whole story, a combination of factors that seems increasingly rare in the streaming era.
6. How To With John Wilson
Continues to translate B-roll into a majestic assembly that you can never predict where it’ll take you. Could listen to Wilson talk about anything.
5. The Other Two
On one level, a stomach-churning examination of how fame in modern times requires turning yourself into a recognisable brand and how to navigate the subsequent depersonalisation. On another, a truly riotous comedy that comes out swinging with every scene. A network change coupled with a pandemic meant a lengthy period between its initial season and this sophomore one, but it reminds you instantly of what you’ve been missing and makes sure you get repeated doses of this until the concluding punchline. So happy to have it had back and hopefully it won’t be too long until it is again.
4. The Underground Railroad
Amazon did Barry Jenkins no favours by dumping this all in one go with little to no promotion. Like with Beale Street, it is wild just how little attention his projects have received post-Moonlight‘s Best Picture win. (Thinking about it that way, you can’t really blame him for helming a Lion King sequel). What’s lingered longest about this miniseries is the sheer level of confidence with which he and the rest of the production team unveiled this alternate-history world. Piece by piece, we come to understand a greater amount about the various states and how they’re operating just like we do with the characters themselves. Episodes use location changes to mark themselves as distinct units rather than attempting to blend flashbacks and the present storyline in a more free-flowing fashion. Its technical craft is as inversely beautiful to the horror of some events depicted, but that sheer ambition is exactly what major filmmakers should be taking streamer’s money for while they’ve got access to it.
3. Can’t Get You Out of My Head
Comes at a time with the potential for great change in the world. For much of this, Adam Curtis tells similar types of stories to the ones he’s always been telling — doing the Leo pointing meme when Nixon and his shadow pops up for a cameo — in a similar fashion, yet he ultimately circles back to the David Graeber quote “The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make and could just as easily make differently” which he opened with. The first half of the sentence seemed most pertinent at the beginning, with the second half being so at the end. Just we’ve got to make a choice soon. If we end up returning to normalcy, we can’t just go on telling the same old stories.
2. Succession
This year the London Film Festival decided to include a dedicated series strand in its programming, the first two episodes where its centerpiece inclusion. It says a lot about how the show’s meteoric rise from a small, dedicated fanbase extolling its virtues in the first season to how it can now fill the Royal Festival Hall with enough people cheering at every opportunity that it took an extra fifteen minutes to get through the introductions. Heck, you can even go viral just tweeting half a line reading. Of course they were all excited (myself included) because that mic-drop at the end of the second season promised major fallout from what Kendall intended to bring to light and the first couple episodes picked up in the immediate aftermath of that as battle lines were drawn and then immediately teased with the possibility of the conscripted changing sides. As such, it took a little bit more time to remember that this is a show about how much things threaten to change rather than actually happening. The FBI coming into search the Waystar Royco offices is a big cliffhanger for a thread of storyline that gets resolved off-screen and relayed to us via phonecalls that we only bear witness to one end of. That the show can repeatedly illustrate this to us while still suggesting major shifts are imminent — see: the end to the ninth episode and basically the entirety of the tenth — and letting us get rapped up in the possibility of such is the cornerstone of its tragedies, its abuses. The saddest thing about these cycles is thinking another go around will be any different.
1. It’s a Sin
Has stood firm at the top of this list since the night I realised that the entire miniseries had dropped. Russell T Davies just has this way of introducing you to characters that feel alive and human the second you meet them, a skill that goes a long way within a period piece about gay men dying while being met with silence outside of their community. It also makes those twists of the knife that much sharper, even when you expect ramifications to that effect. Just like he made each and every finale of his Doctor Who run feel massive, this is just as great a fight into the face of Armageddon.
Best Episodes
Honourable Mentions: Can’t Get You Out of My Head — 1×05 — “The Lordly Ones”, Dorktown: The History of the Atlanta Falcons — 1×07 — “It’s a Funny Story”, I Think You Should Leave — 2×05 — “Didn’t you say there was gonna be five people at this table?”, Mare of Eastown — 1×05 — “Illusions”, The Goes Wrong Show — 2×01 — “Summer Once Again”, The Great — 2×09 — “Walnut Season”
10. WandaVision — 1×01 — “Filmed Before a Live Studio Audience”
Gave me such hope for the series — which I ultimately took great issue with — in how well it recreates the 50s style as well as showing how well Elisabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany can adjust to that manner of acting.
9. The Nevers — 1×06 — “True”
Like half of this episode is absolute nonsene sci-fi lingo and I couldn’t love it more. The other episodes of the show entertained me insomuch as the Whedonian patter is still enjoyable to my ears even as the show had clear growing pains of him adjusting how to make TV without network constraints around runtime and content, but this is both a Dollhouse Epitaph redux and repositioning of the X-Men riff to a more specific Days of Future Past one. I absolutely understand if you’re not interested in it (and would even if it were just a matter of writerly traits and not monstrous behaviour) but I would like to see where it goes from here.
8. The Beatles: Get Back — 1×03 — Part 3: Days 17-22
It’s the one with the concert footage. What else do you expect?
7. Search Party — 4×08 — “The Imposter”
Manages to return the show to where it began and advance it all the same via a fascinating shift in perspective. How far we’ve come, yet how little some have grown.
6. How To With John Wilson — 2×05 — “How To Remember Your Dreams”
Few would stumble across this group of people and manage to depict them with such a honest sense of understanding, if not necessarily for their obsession, but at least for their kinship.
5. Dickinson — 2×08 — “I’m Nobody! Who are You?”
In the From Dickinson, With Love featurette which dropped earlier this month, showrunner Alena Smith considers the question of who gets seen and who doesn’t. If there’s a moment of the show that best exemplifies that, it’s this; its finest (half)-hour.
4. The Other Two — 2×09 — “Chase and Pat Are Killing It”
“Are you taking a hole pic too?”
3. Succession — 3×07 — “Too Much Birthday”
To be honest, any of the episodes save for the opener could be on this list. Raises spirits up with Tom’s incredible response to not going to prison — Emmy for Matthew Macfadyen or we riot — just so the party of the title can provide a greater come down. “You’re not a real person.” But are any of them at this point? Kendall might be able to spend month replicating Marcia’s birth canal, but true rebirth for him and the rest of the Roys will always be out of reach.
2. The Underground Railroad — 1×07 — “Chapter 7: Fanny Briggs”
The shortest episode by far, which is just as unexpected as what it actually does; turning the clock back narratively, pick up a thread assumed to be concluded and write a warmer alternate history for the titular character. The miniseries in microcosm.
1. It’s a Sin — 1×04 — “Part Four”
“I’m never going to do those things.”
A matter of life and death.
Streamed Consciousness 