A television wrap-up like any other. Television is, as Denis Villeneuve would say, the home of dialogue. Of characters with lived-in lives. Of shows that we grow with and grow accustomed to having in our lives. Some obvious winners just aren’t on this list. You do not need me to tell you how great Succession, The Bear, and The Last of Us are. Someone has already told you or you already know. But, do watch those shows, and other great shows like Abbott Elementary and Res Dogs, that are not blurbed here, but that bring new verve to the medium. As for what has made the list, I want to write about five shows that stand out as the most interesting new contributions to television last year.
I’m a Virgo
Boots Riley is leading the charge for a New Socialist Cinema. You’ve listened to his rap group The Coup. If you haven’t, go do that. The first line of their first album goes, “Presto, read the Communist Manifesto,” and then everything else he’s ever done has backed that up. Here we have a superhero movie, a story about Working Class Heroes, and it has bigger, more literary ideas than most shows fit into their entire run. It’s also like a graphic novel come to life, in a way so many things like it only wish they were. It works because the stylization is aesthetically and thematically realized in the same way. The form suits the motif and vice versa — this is television in communication with itself, the format, and the controlled means of distribution. This is speaking to power from within the system, utilizing a major streamer to spread a necessary message, an outwardly-seeking examination of a creator-studio-audience relationship that realizes we must still use the tools around us to begin to dismantle a system.
Poker Face
2023 was My Year of Columbo. That is, I’ve watched the whole series. There’s a lot of Columbo. But each episode is so finely self-contained, each a small movie with the same basic premise: this shaggy dog detective will outwit the culprit by being sagacious and not letting on how much he knows until he cracks the whole thing open. Timeless formula and absolutely primed for further investigation. So, here comes Rian Johnson’s Poker Face, made in the same mold as Knives Out but consciously televisual, understanding both the structure of television and how to create wrap-around stories, that in this case do interconnect, but can each joyously still be watched alone. It’s stylized like Columbo, presented in the same font, but the font of the humor is a little different, modernized. One more thing: Natasha Lyyone is just one of my favorite people to watch. When she showed up in a cameo for Glass Onion, we were just hoping they would pair up. And so they have, and Johnson has another detective of renown to add to his filmography. We’ve come a long way from Brick, but you can see the building blocks have always been there.
Barry
Let’s call Barry’s placement indicative of the entire run. It was not a top-five show for me this season, but I watched the whole fairly compact series all at once, and feel they are enough of a piece with each other not to widdle down my quibbles with just this one stretch of episodes. Because what has always worked is still what works. That is, Bill Hader has this sensibility for comedy. His jokes land. You can operate an entire series moving around him. He’s dependable for both comedy and drama and provides just enough room for his scene partners to really emerge around him. Now, this season goes sideways in several ways. As I move further from that direct experience though, the idea of Barry has coalesced better and now I just see one thing: that was a pretty good show and we’re not going to get exactly that thing again.
Hijack
Allow for a moment of clichéd Dad behavior. Idris Elba’s character is aboard a plane that’s been hijacked and he’s a skilled negotiator who is going to help bring the plane and the short run of the show into safety. Brilliant! Television is usually doing too much — there is a minimum amount that it would need to do to replicate something like the energy of 24 and Hijack captures it like lightning in a bottle. It’s not a great show as an expression of art; it’s just one of the most fun shows you can watch from the last year.
The Curse
The Nathan Fielder television enterprise will be studied for generations. Of course, we had that brilliant stretch of Nathan for You before, and that was a great show, but what made it one of the best shows is the final episode, a formal examination of making the show, the process of creating this droll satirical business help show, and then the result of trying to find some humanity after all the cards are down. It was a small miracle. And then his production work continues to do similair things. He produced the incredible How to with John Wilson, which once again would’ve retained this spot, if this didn’t get it, and then made the wonderfully deconstructive The Rehersal. Fielder continues to press the boundaries of television, this time partnering with Benny Safdie to create something so abnormal, there’s no clear pitch to a general audience. This isn’t how television usually works and it’s not what television usually does. Meanwhile, they’ve brought in Emma Stone, who is having the most interesting career arc of anyone right now, with this and Poor Things, and Fielder’s done it again. An astonishing thing, in that it exists and is on television.