TIME - Best of Culture: TV Shows

 

 

By Judy Berman

1. SUCCESSION and RESERVATION DOGS (tie)

 
This was the rare year when two series brilliantly, in their own ways, fulfilled the potential of television. HBO’s Succession, an Emmy-winning drama that drove watercooler conversation, was the obvious choice. Creator Jesse Armstrong and his virtuosic cast didn’t waste a second of the show’s final arc, which unfolded largely in the aftermath of media mogul Logan Roy’s (Brian Cox) ingeniously executed midair death. Every episode earned the fanfare that greeted it: Swedish tech edgelord Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgard) waging psychological warfare on the Roy kids in Norway! That white-knuckle election episode! That tour de force funeral episode! The bangers just kept coming. And the finale made the biggest bang of all, ending a race to the bottom that everyone, especially the broken Roy siblings, won.

FX’s Reservation Dogs, by contrast, never chased the zeitgeist. Sterlin Harjo’s dramedy chronicled the hijinks of outsiders: Native American teens on a reservation mourning a friend whodied by suicide. Profane, poignant, at times psychedelic, the series moved fluidly between adolescent awkwardness, small-town character comedy, Indigenous spirituality, and the righteous anger of the disenfranchised. While the teenage Rez Dogs remained at the show’s center, its circle kept expanding until it encompassed the entire community—young and old, living and spectral.
Yet the shows had plenty in common. Both were irreverent. Both mixed poetically foulmouthed comedy and tragedy. Both had profound things to say about the sociopolitical realities of our time, insights they accessed through finely wrought characters unique to their worlds—lonely masters of the universe in one case, members of a disadvantaged but fiercely loving community in the other. Together, they capture the polarized extremes of American life in the yearthat was.

3. I’M A VIRGO

The streaming arm of a megacorp led by one of the world’s richest people kicked off 2023’s “hot labor summer” with this flagrantly anticapitalist comedy from radical rapper and Sorry to Bother You filmmaker Boots Riley. His surreal allegory cast Jharrel Jerome as Cootie, a 13-ft.-tall teen folk hero for our times—and a gentle giant who must learn that powerful forces within American society will always see a strong Black man as a thug and a threat. Riley’s secret weapons are humor and humanism. His message may be militant, but he delivers it in a package cushioned by laughs, love, and a lively vision of liberation. (Amazon)

4. RAIN DOGS

 
An intimate portrait of a fascinatingly unconventional family, Rain Dogs follows a peep-show dancer and aspiring writer (Daisy May Cooper) struggling to support her tween daughter (Fleur Tashjian) with dubious help from her recently incarcerated gay best friend (Jack Farthing). He comes from a posh family; she can rarely make rent. He’s a sadist; she has masochistic tendencies. They’re toxic together, and they know it, but they can’t stand to be apart. Creator Cash Carraway strikes the perfect balance of grit, warmth, and scathing British humor, ensuring that this dramedy neither trivializes its characters’ pain nor devolves into a pity party. (HBO)

5. BEEF

 
What could be more timely than a show about anger? Creator Lee Sung Jin casts Ali Wong and Steven Yeun (above) as L.A. drivers whose road-rage encounter escalates into a prank war that threatens to ruin both of their lives. Each party’s fury is rooted in a lifetime of repression. While the show isn’t about Asian American identities per se, it’s grounded in the ethnic communities to which the characters belong and specific to protagonists grappling with inequality, stereotyping, and the expectations of immigrant parents. Darkly hilarious but also profoundly observant, Beef pairs the racially tinged negative emotions that the poet Cathy Park Hong famously named “minor feelings” with major stakes. (Netflix) 

6. THE CURSE

Nathan Fielder follows last year’s brain-breaking The Rehearsal by teaming up with Benny Safdie and Emma Stone for a scripted series that burrows even deeper into the fraught relationships between reality TV and reality. In dissecting the interactions of a couple shooting an eco-conscious real estate series for HGTV, Fielder and co-creator Safdie touch third-rail issues like gentrification, cultural appropriation, and colonialism. The precision with which each episode provokes and unsettles echoes such masters of productive discomfort as Hitchcock and Kafka. (Showtime)

7. TELEMARKETERS

 
True-crime docuseries are more numerous—but also more formulaic—than ever. Telemarketers is different. Drawing on wild footage he shot of fellow employees cutting up at the anything-goes offices of a notorious telemarketing company, co-director Sam Lipman-Stern embarks on a quest to expose an industry that’s even shadier than it seems. While the series’ mood is light, the investigation couldn’t be more serious. With former co-worker Patrick J. Pespas as citizen journalist and moral beacon, Lipman-Stern unravels a web of amoral entrepreneurs, corrupt police organizations, and government cowardice. (HBO)

8. DEAD RINGERS

The year’s most unlikely reboot was also its most inspired. In repurposing David Cronenberg’s 1988 horror movie about twin ob-gyns torn asunder when one falls for a glamorous patient, creator Alice Birch entrusted the brilliant Rachel Weisz with the dual role originated by Jeremy Irons. No shallow gender flip, the adjustment endowed the allegory with new layers of meaning. This Dead Ringers meets a moment when women’s bodies are a battleground, a humane birth experience has become a luxury item, and the ghosts of brutal reproductive research past cast dark shadows over the high-tech obstetrics of the present. (Amazon)

9. THE OTHER TWO

 
The Other Two premiered with a narrow premise: a teen finds overnight fame as a Justin Bieber clone, and his underachieving adult siblings ride his coattails. But it evolved into a sharp, consistently hilarious satire of the entertainment industry at large. Matriarch Pat (Molly Shannon) became a window into the cult of the daytime talk-show queen. Eldest son Cary (Drew Tarver) exemplified the humiliations of the D-list actor and would-be gay icon. And sister Brooke (Heléne Yorke) learned to swim in shark-infested boardrooms. The show’s third and final season was the biggest and smartest of all, capturing the demented ambition, streaming fatigue, and fickle politics that define contemporary Hollywood. (Max)

10. POKER FACE

 
Natasha Lyonne stars as a rumpled citizen detective in a Columbo homage created by Rian Johnson. The show could’ve been made on autopilot and still charmed viewers. Instead, we got 10 episodes of case-of-the-week magic that sent Lyonne’s human polygraph on a cross-country road trip, pausing to solve murders at barbecue joints, retirement communities, and more. Each stop was its own social world, populated by delightful guest stars (Chloë Sevigny! Nick Nolte! Hong Chau!). And before the mysteries could get too cozy, Johnson upped the stakes and challenged Lyonne’s wabi-sabi sage persona, setting up a second season that’s bound to surprise. (Peacock)