It’s strange to think the best year for TV in a damn while could have been even better. The WGA and SAG/AFTRA strikes halted production for much of the year, but somehow we still had a completely unbelievable crop of shows.
In turn, I watched an ungodly amount of television in 2023, and I don’t feel all that silly about it! What I will say is that if I turn you onto something through this list, please tell me and let me know what you think. That’s a great reward to me for putting in as much time as I have.
This is it for the 2023 lists. I’ll see you all next year.
20. Silo
season 1
10 episodes
stream: Apple TV
In what sounds like it might almost be a parody of LOST-likes, 10,000 people live in a silo and no one really knows why. All institutional memory was wiped out over a century prior, and while it’s accepted that the silo protects the population from the deadly air of the outside world (after all, a common execution method is sending people outside with everyone watching), the veracity thereof has come into question. Each two years apart, IT worker Allison Becker (Rashida Jones), Sheriff Holston Becker (David Oyelowo), and engineer Juliette Nichols (Rebecca Ferguson) try to solve the mysteries of the Silo, but its authorities are committed to putting an end to such questions. Silo doesn’t exactly break new ground, but its mysteries are engrossing and it steadily rewards your attention. I promise the season pays off.
19. Adventure Time: Fionna and Cake
season 1
10 episodes
stream: Max
It’s funny to see a show that got the ending so right the first time continue to tempt fate. When the Distant Lands series was announced, I bristled a little because I thought Adventure Time‘s finale, “Come Along With Me,” was pretty entirely perfect, and thought it would feel weird to spend more time with these characters after their arcs had been completed. But Adventure Time has navigated this problem well by making all of its epilogues so thoroughly cut off in time from the original series. The glory days are all long gone.
Twelve years after the events of the show proper, Simon Petrikov has accepted a life as a living science exhibit of humans from the distant past. He’s not exactly fulfilled by it, and spends his time trying to figure out a way to reunite with his lost-to-magic love Betty. Finn, now pushing thirty-years-old, recognizes that Simon needs an adventure, but Finn’s whole shtick seems too crazy now that he’s not a teenager.
Fionna and Cake, who have until this point just been fanfiction by the Ice King, become real due to some cosmic accident, and it’s their fresh eyes that end up taking Simon on the journey he needs. The multiverse media market is a little oversaturated at this point, but Adventure Time has often worked at a scale that deals with that sort of mess, and it makes the most of the detours it sends our new heroes on. The ending is a bit messy, but Simon in particular is given exactly the final note his character really needed.
18. Yellowjackets
season 2
9 episodes (19 total)
stream: Showtime
Yellowjackets‘ first season – about a high school soccer team lost in the Canadian wilderness and the survivors dealing with the fallout decades later – was positively thrilling, and I called it my second favorite show of 2021. Season two loses a bit of luster. The present day storyline feels a bit less rewarding this time around, and the whole deal feels a bit less exhilarating. But the nineties storyline really keeps it up, richly paying off two moments we knew would have to come.
17. Oshi no Ko
season 1
11 episodes
stream: HIDIVE
Oshi no Ko, based on a manga written by the author of the also-great Kaguya-sama: Love Is War, is about the main character trying to solve a mystery (the nature of which would be a spoiler to my #3 episode of 2023). However, the mystery progresses at a glacial pace in this first season, instead serving as an excuse to tour us through the nooks and crannies of the Japanese entertainment industry. An entire arc revolves around a not-well-received streaming-only romcom series. Another is about a dating show, although think one with far less structure than the ones we watch. We see the dark underbelly of social media’s relationship with microcelebrities. We…meet a muscular physical fitness YouTuber who conceals his identity with a very strange bird mask. Even when it seems like it’s meandering away from the promise of that unbelievable first episode, Oshi no Ko‘s energy and production make it demand your attention, and the promise of more is tantalizing.
16. BEEF
limited series
10 episodes
stream: Netflix
Sometimes people just hate each other. Danny Cho (Steven Yeun) and Amy Lau (Ali Wong) start out with a near-accident in a parking lot, and they immediately chase each other around town in their cars. Somehow, things escalate from there throughout the series. They’re both from separate worlds: Danny is a working class contractor who is struggling to keep his customers so he can move his parents there from South Korea, while Amy is already somewhat wealthy and looking to cash out of her business.
BEEF surprises you every time the conflict escalates to the next level, and it’s especially interesting the way Danny and Amy worm their way into the others’ life, whether it’s a strategic choice in their war or it’s a complete accident.
15. Vinland Saga
season 2
24 episodes (48 total)
stream: Netflix
Vinland Saga‘s first season was stupendous, and there have been few seasons of anime as good since. Season two mostly falters because its first half features a lot of tablesetting. Season one’s story of a young viking kidnapped into war and nursing a revenge fantasy has fallen entirely away (not to mention arguably its best character is gone), and after a large timeskip between seasons, we find Thorfinn as a slave. It takes much of the season for him to regain agency in the story, but fortunately King Canute, another highlight of the first season, plans an attack on the farm as a solution to his political problems. While this season is less flashy, it’s still a very serious meditation on season one’s kinetic mess, with a satisfying resolution to Thorfinn’s revenge arc.
14. How To With John Wilson
season 3
6 episodes (18 total)
stream: Max
How To With John Wilson ends its glorious run of three seasons (only eighteen episodes!) with its approach essentially unchanged. How To mostly features Wilson wandering around New York City and lucking into interviews that are either beautifully mundane, painfully awkward, or, everyone’s favorite, memorably odd.
Wilson takes us to a wireless-less town filled with electromagnetic hypersensitivity sufferers. He goes to a vacuum convention. He finds an organization obsessed with freezing themselves so that they might live forever. And the series ends with the most personal and intense anecdote anyone has ever given him. I do implore you to make your way through this show if you still haven’t. It really emphasizes that even the oddest folks are hauntingly ordinary.
13. Poker Face
season 1
10 episodes
stream: Peacock
Natasha Lyonne’s Charlie Cale doesn’t have any history as a mystery-solver. But she does have a history as a gambler, and it’s her power to flawlessly notice when someone is lying that gets the attention of the manager of the casino where she works. But when she solves the mystery of the murder of her friend and coworker, she makes too powerful an enemy and has to go on the lam.
So Cale travels across the country and keeps running into mysteries to unravel. That seems simple enough, but creator Rian Johnson gives Poker Face a strong sense of style, and each mystery Cale comes across is structurally distinct. Poker Face is one of the most charming shows of the year, and while it’s never really entirely stunning, it’s extremely reliable and likely will remain so when the next season rolls around.
12. Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End
season 1
28 episodes (16 in 2023)
stream: Crunchyroll
Elven mage Frieren returns with her party from the land’s definitive adventure. Having defeated the demon king following a ten year journey, Frieren celebrates but then quickly wanders off and travels the land. When she returns sixty years later (not much time at all for an elf with a lifespan of thousands of years), she’s shocked to find her companion Himmel the hero (who she has always been fascinated by) has aged. The typically emotionless Frieren breaks down in tears when he dies soon after: “Why didn’t I try to get to know him better?” And while Frieren initially waved off implications that her journey with Himmel and company had a great effect on her by shrugging, “My adventure with you wasn’t even one one-hundredth of my life,” another previous party member later retorts, “It’s funny, isn’t it? That one one-hundredth changed you.”
Frieren is changed by these realizations and attempts to change her attitude towards time, life, and how she relates to others. She sets out on a new journey with a young human mage under her wing.
Frieren is a quiet show about learning to value the moment you’re in, but so far it’s luckily already treated us to a big climax. But more importantly, it shows us a changing land, beautifully showing Frieren‘s natural world and, given that nearly 80 in-universe years have already passed since the show’s start, how things change and how we process that.
11. Scott Pilgrim Takes Off
limited series
8 episodes
stream: Netflix
Given the cult film was written only halfway into its run, it’s fantastic to finally see the original Scott Pilgrim comic properly adapted to the screen, and by anime industry wonder studio Science Saru, no less. The animation of this show is off the charts wonderful.
The entire cast of the film returns for the English dub, and it’s consistently disarming how a stacked-at-the-time cast has gotten immeasurably more famous. Michael Cera is still the same Michael Cera, but Chris Evans, Brie Larson, Kieran Culkin, Anna Kendrick, and Aubrey Plaza are just a few names that have sprung much further into the public eye. So it’s great that everyone made time to revisit this 2010 moment. Further, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game composers Anamanaguchi take on the scoring duty, creating great original music alongside great licensed moments.
Just as an aside, this might have been a great opportunity to, I don’t know, disabuse certain fans of the comic and film of its regard for the main character and his love interest by instead sending Ramona through the tour of her own evil exes. After all, she might stand to grow more as a person by revisiting those people than Scott ever could, yeah?
But as it’s a direct adaptation of the comic, nothing of the sort happens. But still, you should go check. Just in case.
10. Reservation Dogs
season 3
10 episodes (28 total)
stream: Hulu
I’m a little alarmed that Reservation Dogs has been called off after three seasons, but its final season is a lovely sendoff to the most reliable show of the young decade.
Season two’s resolution to the Daniel story felt a bit final, but Reservation Dogs still has to deal with its central characters. Elora considers leaving again, but this time to college instead of California. Bear is finally sent on the journey his character needed. Willie Jack starts becoming an anchor in the community. Cheese, uh, doesn’t need glasses anymore.
Reservation Dogs still has plenty of good stuff saved for its final act. There’s a flashback episode, Bear’s run-in with Deer Lady brings an unexpected dive into the horrid legacy of Native American boarding schools, the gang initiates a heist, and finally Reservation Dogs throws a funeral for itself. Its offbeat sense of humor, its gentle but inspired departures from reality, and its unprecedented success as a show made for, by, and about Native people will all be sorely missed.
9. Barry
season 4
8 episodes (32 total)
stream: Max
Barry has somehow been one of the funniest shows on TV while taking a hard nosedive towards the sunken place. This has created an irresistible bit of tonal dissonance. Barry‘s fourth season is its strangest yet, with Sally processing the truth about Barry, Gene putting on a one man show about what he’s been through, and NoHo Hank going straight and building a sand empire. We have come a long way from the assassin who took an acting class.
The best part of the season, presumably necessary to execute the finale of a series like this, is its hard turn halfway through, further shaking its core characters up and filling the series with an unimaginable amount of dread. Barry eventually reaches the final outcome of its chaos, and while many of the facts of the finale have felt destined for a long time, ultimately the note it leaves on is about how these characters are remembered. To the very end, it’s tragic in a hilarious way.
8. The Last of Us
season 1
9 episodes
stream: Max
To be clear, it’s not exactly a shocker that this is one of the video game adaptations that has people saying that the practice is finally acceptable. The Last of Us (the game) was practically a movie anyway, so the adaptation is really a matter of not fucking it up. Sure enough, Chernobyl‘s Craig Mazin and original game co-director Neil Druckmann (very annoying man, by the way, I just had to say) don’t let us down, thanks in part to casting Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey as Joel and Ellie. The two knock their performances completely out of the park in a way that should have won them awards were this a non-Succession year.
What keeps me from putting this higher is that you do get hip to the rhythm after a while. Too many episodes end in gut-punches that it somewhat dulls the finale. The finale also is easily the shortest episode, and I think it could have had more room to breathe.
Still, The Last of Us not only successfully brings video game adaptations into the realm of prestige drama, it does so in a way that will be very, very hard to beat (sorry, Fallout).
7. Heavenly Delusion
season 1
13 episodes
stream: Hulu
It’s hard not to see a bit of The Last of Us in Heavenly Delusion. Both adaptations came out this year. Both feature duos traversing a post-apocalyptic land, and in each instance the younger one has something that makes them special and important. And though hopelessness does rear its head time and again, unlike with The Last of Us, Heavenly Delusion has a bit more variety to the stories told at each locale Kiruko and Maru visit. In one, they stumble on a woman convinced that a monster is actually her son. In another, they happen upon a cult-like activist group seeking to end human experiments at the local makeshift hospital. They’re also attacked by a bear.
There’s also a lot more to it. The urban landscapes of Heavenly Delusion are still filled with people, the threats of the monsters not quite dominating every waking moment. Meanwhile, there’s an entirely separate storyline about a small academy of children, including one who looks exactly like Maru. It’s fascinating to watch the two stories slowly have more to do with each other, and the slow drip of information keeps things interesting.
Heavenly Delusion is just about the finest new anime in years, sporting an intriguing storyline, an engaging central dynamic, a pleasing style of animation, and a surprising number of novel gender explorations.
Just a note, there is an instance of sexual assault later on in season one. It’s no small thing, so just a heads up in case you require that information.
6. The Curse
limited series
10 episodes (8 in 2023)
stream: Showtime
Whitney (Emma Stone) and Asher (Nathan Fielder) are a couple making green-friendly homes in the small predominantly Mexican-American town of Española, New Mexico, and they set out with director Dougie (Benny Safdie) to create an HGTV show called Fliplanthropy. Whitney is obsessed with obscuring and undoing the gentrification her project creates for this small community, and Asher is basically her heartless henchman with an inadequacy complex, with Whitney slowly coming to resent Asher throughout the series. Whitney’s desires to be loved by all and her increasing desire to get this HGTV show on the air increasingly steer her moral compass towards chaos.
There is simply not a lot out there like The Curse. The editing and cinematography feel strikingly casual, the score by Oneohtrix Point Never makes it sound like Whitney and Asher are trapped inside of a dream, and Whitney and Asher’s penchant for behaving in just the wrong way will make your skin crawl. It’s also easily one of the funniest shows of the year. The Curse is well worth shelling out for Showtime, and in fact Benny Safdie tweeted out a code to get a free month trial. Use it by January 14 to watch The Curse, and maybe stick around to watch Yellowjackets. And hell, Twin Peaks: The Return while you’re at it.
5. The Other Two
season 3
10 episodes (30 total)
stream: Max
I’ve only gotten around to The Other Two as it reached its unfortunately justified end, but while this show was great the whole time – for my money, the funniest show since…30 Rock, maybe? – its third season is built from a certain mania that’s perhaps only possible from a show not long for this world. Cary’s method actor boyfriend keeps taking on roles that, in a new and unexpected way each time, entail not sleeping with him. Chase, fresh off turning eighteen, follows entertainment industry law and sports a “shitty little rat” look. Brooke leaves the entertainment industry and becomes literally invisible to her old colleagues. Brooke, in an episode titled “Brooke, and We Are Not Joking, Goes To Space,” goes to space.
As Cary’s career takes off, The Other Two leaves behind any semblance of realism, and the show goes down swinging. Don’t be too sad, the finale still works plenty.
4. Scavengers Reign
season 1
12 episodes
stream: Max
At this point it’s probably tedious to hear the visual influences, but here it is one last time: Scavengers Reign is the best looking show of the year thanks to its gorgeous, inventive environments with an easy-to-spot Moebius (think comics great Jean Giraud, not Green Hill Zone) influence. The wonder and variety of the flora and fauna, meanwhile, bring to mind Hayao Miyazaki (but with more of a wants-to-kill-you edge). There’s plenty more influence, but Scavengers Reign is much more than a demonstration of great taste.
An escaping crew is tossed across a seemingly livable moon, but as each team tries to make their way back to the wreckage of the mothership, natural horrors beyond comprehension throw our heroes into life and death duels that are not for the faint of heart. It frequently ventures into the creepy, disgusting, and just downright awful traits a mysterious animal might unfortunately have. Scavengers Reign also frequently plays with lack of dialogue or outright silence, further carving out a vibe entirely its own.
3. Pluto
limited series
8 episodes
stream: Netflix
In a future where robots are in the process of being assimilated into society (although no robot has yet to be perfectly human), someone has begun killing both the world’s most powerful robots and many humans leading in robotic thought. We follow Europol’s Detective Gesicht, himself a robot. But Gesicht has been having strange dreams that he has to grapple with while trying to save the world by stopping the mysterious killer.
In 2020, I watched Monster, the anime adaptation of Naoki Urasawa’s manga of the same name (you can also watch this on Netflix). I was shocked at Urasawa’s knack for writing a story, but even more importantly he was incredible at writing engaging dialogue – often just characters wondering or explaining what’s going on – that moves the ball forward.
Pluto, adapted from Urasawa’s manga of the same name (in turn based on Osamu Tezuka’s “The Greatest Robot on Earth” Astro Boy story), cranks that strength up even higher. There’s a bit of mystery to Monster, but it’s the whole ballgame in Pluto. And it’s rich with themes, leading to conversations about consciousness, robot rights, and the story’s stand-in for the Iraq War (Pluto began serialization in 2003).
2. Succession
season 4
10 episodes (39 total)
stream: Max
Somehow Succession has topped itself yet again. Perhaps this is because while earlier seasons were really just jostling for the kiss from daddy, this season has so many events approaching – Connor’s wedding, the presidential election, a major Church service, and finally the GoJo merger – that it’s so easy to appreciate the weight the palace intrigue actually has. The season has a bit of a weak opener – perhaps thanks to this season having rather different ideas for the Roys than “All The Bells Say” might have implied – but after that it is nine straight stunners.
Succession is also a contender for the most well-acted show. Ever. Period. Kieran Culkin and Sarah Snook are finally winning awards instead of just Jeremy Strong, and the entire supporting cast is dynamite.
Somehow, Succession has reached its peak for its grand finale. Thanks to that, it’s the best show of 2023.
Wait,
1. The Bear
season 2
10 episodes (18 total)
stream: Hulu
I thought well of The Bear‘s first season. In particular, I thought its final two episodes were incredibly strong, but I actually didn’t quite understand why so many had it as their show of the year.
The Bear‘s second season begins with the characters setting out to challenge the odds and make something of their own. They want to remake the The Original Beef of Chicagoland as The Bear, a high-end restaurant that can properly showcase the talents of Carmy Berzatto and Sydney Adamu. They barely have enough money, and they need to open unreasonably quickly. Marcus is sent to Copenhagen to study under a gifted pastry chef. Richie is sent to a fine-dining restaurant to learn how to host (and also how to stop being an asshole that ruins everything). Tina and Ebra even get to go to culinary school. Rather than keeping alive a dead man’s restaurant, we are watching our lead characters actually chase their dreams, and everyone else also gets to go on their little journeys of self-discovery. I was so much more invested this season, and, in turn, I was a whole lot more nervous. And season one is already famously nerve-wracking.
“Fishes” and “Forks” are already classic episodes of television, and “Honeydew” and the season finale are way up there, too. It’s purely academic whether The Bear or Succession was actually better this year. I think I’m a bit more wonderstruck by Succession, with the writing and acting being completely untouchable. But The Bear was what I found myself truly invested in because it just had that bit of magic this year. I will never forget the way I reacted to “Fishes” and “Forks,” or my stunned reaction after experiencing that season finale. The Bear had my heart, and I consider this the best season of television since at least Fleabag season two.
Honorable Mentions
Abbott Elementary, season 2
Blue Eye Samurai, season 1
BLUELOCK, season 1
Craig of the Creek, seasons 4 & 5
Dead Ringers, limited series
For All Mankind, season 4
Happy Valley, season 3
Heartstopper, season 2
Hilda, season 3
I’m A Virgo, limited series
Invincible, season 2
I Think You Should Leave, season 3
Mrs. Davis, limited series
Never Have I Ever, season 4
ONE PIECE (2023), season 1
Party Down, season 3
Somebody Somewhere, season 2
Telemarketers, limited series
Ten-Year-Old Tom, season 2
The Fall of the House of Usher, limited series
The Righteous Gemstones, season 3
Unicorn Warriors Eternal, season 1
What We Do In The Shadows, season 5
Joey Daniewicz 