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We’re ranking every TV show we watched in 2017. If you missed Part I, you can find it here. Also, an annual reminder that this list isn’t a bell curve. Just because a show pops up in the mid-70s doesn’t mean it’s a bad show; it just means there’s an outrageous amount of good TV on right now.
80. Room 104 (HBO, Season 1). As with all anthology series, Room 104 is wildly uneven, with some installments working significantly better than others. The show’s premise—every episode takes place within the same nondescript motel room—isn’t exactly fire, but the Duplass brothers do a nice job exploiting its variety; one episode is straight-up horror, another is a slow-burn thriller, a third is a wordless dance sequence, etc. That makes Room 104 inherently challenging—each half-hour has to swiftly establish its own characters and internal logic—and it typically meets that challenge. Still, while the series is generally well-cast—players include Amy Landecker, Philip Baker Hall, and James Van Der Beek—it ultimately amounts to less than the sum of its carefully assembled parts. Any grand statement on human connection is elusive, which means Room 104 is more experiment than TV show.
79. Outlander (Starz, Season 3; last year: 40 of 88). The opening third of Outlander’s newest season feels like a criminal act of self-sabotage, given that it neutralizes the show’s greatest asset—the crackling chemistry between Caitriona Balfe and Sam Heughan—by placing their characters on separate continents (not to mention in separate centuries). Once the fated lovers are reunited, the series finds its rhythm again, though this season’s central story—a perilous maritime voyage to Jamaica to rescue a kidnapped family member—isn’t nearly as exciting as Season 2’s Parisian intrigue. Still, Balfe and Heughan remain great together, and the show’s spirited sense of adventure can be rousing as well as clunky. (Kudos to the showrunners for minimizing Balfe’s horrific explanatory voiceover, though it still seems to pop up in the most cringeworthy of spots.) Near the end of this season, Lotte Verbeek returns in style, rising out of a blood bath like an elegantly wrathful god. More of that, please.
78. Riverdale (The CW, Seasons 1 and 2.0). This is a profoundly silly show, a small-town soap with Twin Peaks vibes, love quadrangles, and multiple murder mysteries. But it can also be giddily entertaining, slyly leveraging its ridiculousness for comic effect. And if the two male leads are total goobers, the strong female characters more than make up for it; Lili Reinhart’s blonde quietly glues everything together, Camila Mendes’ raven brings simmering intelligence, and Madelaine Petsch’s redhead pops off the screen every time she shows up. That those three characters can be identified by their hair color points to Riverdale’s clumsiness, but it often subverts that clumsiness in surprising and appealing ways. Maybe someday, the show will find a serialized storyline worthy of its women.
77. Better Things (FX, Season 2; last year: 77). I understand the massive critical acclaim for this show, which looks at the unglamorous life of single-momdom with honesty and empathy. And to be sure, Better Things improves significantly in its second season, growing a bit more focused and a bit less pointless. Still, the show’s elliptical style just isn’t much fun to watch, and while Pamela Adlon’s performance feels true, that sense of truth rarely translates to compelling drama. And the show’s dialogue tries so hard to avoid the typical rhythms of TV-speak that it ultimately circles back around to feeling false.
76. The Punisher (Netflix, Season 1). I get all the criticisms; this show is too long, too violent, and too broodily masculine. Fair enough. But it’s still quite well-done, with a strong anchoring performance from Jon Bernthal and spiky, robust set pieces. Ben Barnes, who has transformed from Narnia co-star into slab of beefcake, temporarily solves the MCU’s villain problem, while Amber Rose Revah is smartly no-nonsense as a take-no-shit fed. Plus, look True Blood fans: More Deborah Ann Woll!
75. Big Mouth (Netflix, Season 1). The concept of mixing filth and sweetness isn’t anything new, but the animated Big Mouth certainly pushes it to new extremes. The show’s crowning achievement is the Hormone Monster, a rampaging id who looks like a cross between a lion and a unicorn and who gives hilarious voice to a teenager’s most grotesque and shameful adolescent desires. Next to him, the rest of the series feels rather tame, which is a weird thing to say about a show that revels in sexual confusion and bodily-fluids mishaps. Big Mouth’s characters may not be memorable, but it does land an impressive percentage of jokes; you may not remember many of its details, but you’ll laugh in the process of forgetting them.
74. Dark (Netflix, Season 1). Ethnocentrism alert: Dark is a German show that takes place in three different timelines (2019, 1986, and eventually 1953); not only are there a lot of characters, but those characters often appear as differently aged versions of themselves, so we’re seeing them in duplicate or even triplicate. The problem is that, because I didn’t recognize any of the foreign actors, it took me a long time to figure out who the hell was who; after each hour, I had to scroll through that episode’s Wikipedia entry just to fully understand what happened. This is likely my failing more than the show’s, and if you can break past this barrier to entry, Dark is rewarding viewing, a brain-teasing puzzle-box that toys with weighty concepts like good vs. evil and free will vs. predestination. It’s more intriguing than exciting, and the lack of clarity can grow frustrating, but every so often—as in a riveting split-screen sequence at the end of the third episode—things snap perfectly into place. Time travel shows can make my head hurt, and Dark is no exception, but the ache is more pleasant than painful. (Note: Netflix unforgivably defaults to the English dub, so be sure to switch your audio settings to the actual German and turn on English subtitles. Well, unless you speak German.)
73. The Young Pope (HBO, Season 1). Taste is always subjective, but with a show like The Young Pope, traditional critical analysis is basically useless. This show is flagrantly ridiculous, with mannered dialogue, outlandish needle-drops, and needless stylistic flourishes. It’s also highly watchable, Jude Law’s preening performance subtly anchoring all of the absurdity that surrounds him. If you find this show painfully overwrought, I get that. If you find it magnificently heightened, I get that too. For my part, I’m splitting the difference.
72. Broadchurch (ITV, Season 3). As a crime procedural, Broadchurch is solid but unexceptional; it parades the various suspects before you and gradually whittles them down, with the appropriate mix of big twists and false clues. What makes the show interesting is its depiction of how a single crime can upend an entire town, and how suspicion and mistrust can boil over into violence and hatred. (In this regard, the show’s first season remains its best.) Season 3 presents the additional wrinkle of centering on a rape rather than a murder, meaning it addresses the crime’s impact on the victim herself. It handles this material sensitively, but the characters never quite feel fully formed, in part because everyone is a suspect, so we spend more time wondering if they’re guilty than digging into their personalities. The two exceptions, of course, are David Tennant and Olivia Colman’s detectives, who after three full seasons have formed one of the most satisfying oil-and-water buddy-cop teams on TV. The tension of the first season has now given way to mutual respect and even the rare shard of humor. Solving the mystery is fine, but Colman needling Tennant about his surreptitious first date is far more fulfilling.
71. Red Oaks (Amazon, Season 2; last year: 27). Here’s a solid example of why good shows shouldn’t necessarily be rewarded with additional seasons. The second season of Red Oaks was pretty much perfect—a thoughtful, tender coming-of-age story that deftly mixed low-key comedy and gentle drama—and it ended on a note of marvelous promise, looking ahead with wide eyes to the uncertain future. That future has now arrived in Season 3, and it proves to be far less enjoyable than we might have hoped. This new batch of episodes isn’t bad, and it retains the delicate tonal balance that the series refined last season. But there’s still a sense of wheel-spinning, of needlessly continuing a story that has already ended. I’ll always be grateful for this show’s general sweetness, but I doubt I’ll remember anything specific from Season 3.
70. Peaky Blinders (Netflix/BBC, Season 4; last year: 66). Don’t be fooled by the slightly lower ranking; that Peaky Blinders appears slightly lower on my list this year versus last says less about the show and more about how much damn good TV there is out there. Where Season 3 felt like a grave disappointment, Season 4 felt like a gradual return to form for Peaky Blinders, ditching the indecipherable palace intrigue of last year and focusing instead on a good old-fashioned gang war. The new cast additions are top-notch—Adrien Brody has great fun chewing toothpicks and scenery as an Italian thug, while Aidan Gillen is typically delightful as a roguish gypsy—while Cillian Murphy remains magnetic as the wily and ferocious Tommy Shelby. Some of the plotting this year doesn’t quick stick—a late reveal about a master plan plays out with, shall we say, dubious logic—and the build-up is far more satisfying than the finish. All the same, it’s nice to have the Red Right Hand back in style.
69. Happy! (Syfy, Season 1). Before every episode of Happy!, the network flashes the typical warning screen about the upcoming content. Only here, rather than telling viewers whether the show contains sex or violence, Syfy informs us that this program is rated “WTF” and that it contains various inexplicable sights as killer santas, strung-out unicorns, and questionable hygiene. In other words: This show is weird. Like, “Patton Oswalt voicing an imaginary flying blue horse who’s only visible to Chris Meloni” weird. The show’s bonkers attitude camouflages what’s actually a straightforward kidnapping mystery, with Meloni as a disgraced detective on the hunt for his missing daughter as he’s simultaneously pursued by the mob. In terms of plot, it’s fairly rudimentary (the finale airs tomorrow night, so we’ll see if there are any shake-ups in store), but the show’s excessiveness can be deliriously entertaining, with Meloni going absolutely all-out. This is the kind of show that you should watch just to confirm that it in fact exists. Just beware of the strung-out unicorns.
68. Transparent (Amazon, Season 4; last year: 35). The good times have slowed their roll on Transparent, a once-bracing show that now feels stuck in neutral. As a series about a uniquely dysfunctional family, it’s still watchable, and it makes a bold move in shifting the action primarily to Israel for Season 4. But the characters’ various neuroses—rooted in concerns regarding ancestry and religion as well as sexuality—aren’t as illuminating as they once were, and their constant self-reflection is starting to feel repetitive. Transparent is still doing a fine job exploring the institution of marriage, here bringing in the great Alia Shawkat as a polyamorous health guru who allures Amy Landecker’s experimentally inclined housewife. (Season 4 continues the pattern, at least in my view, of allowing a different family member to serve as the most interesting character each season.) And the show’s sense of genuine empathy can’t be faked. But it could use a bit more meat on its narrative bones.
67. Rick and Morty (Adult Swim, Season 3). This show’s fan following is almost Lynchian in its rabidity; apparently, if you don’t watch it, you’re a loser, and (worse) if you do watch it but don’t love it, you’re an idiot. I can understand these fans’ zeal, because Rick and Morty is relentlessly, exhaustingly clever, using animation to provide witty visual gags while also burrowing into the show’s inherent darkness with alarming depth and sincerity. That said, I can’t fully embrace the show’s caustic tone and its non-stop motor; there’s something smug about its boys’-club feel. Rick and Morty may be a work of genius, but it’s the kind of genius that leaves me cold.
66. One Day at a Time (Netflix, Season 1). Setting aside that Seinfeld is one of my favorite TV shows of all time, I really struggle with multi-camera sitcoms. The laugh track, the staginess, the awkward timing—it just feels painfully forced to me. So I was strongly predisposed to dislike One Day at a Time, Netflix’s reboot of an old Norman Lear hit. And I did dislike significant elements of it; its laugh track is a real hindrance to my ability to sink in and enjoy the show. (If I were cynical, I’d wonder if the critics who fawn over the series embrace the laugh track solely because it functions as a winking, nostalgic reminder of the sitcom hits of their youth.) But if you can power through, I urge you to do so, because One Day at a Time is deeply touching once you get to know its characters. Unabashedly political—one episode focuses on immigration, another on gay rights—the series’ messaging is inspiring, but its writing is also deceptively sharp, with strong themes and winning personalities. I’ll never be able to love this show, but I do love what it’s trying to do.
65. Guerrilla (Showtime, Season 1). So many TV shows and movies treat terrorists as anonymous villains motivated purely by bland hatred. Guerrilla, about the British Black Panther movement in the 1970s, explores the internal ugliness of terrorism, suggesting that violence can stem as much from incompetence, fear, and petty squabbling as from militant ideology. It also considers how political activism can curdle into rebellion, and how corrupt institutions can feed that cycle. Its details are a bit blurry, but its evocation of the mechanics of terrorism—envisioned here as a loosely connected network of underground cells, each with its own particular obsessions and credos—rings upsettingly true. Idris Elba and Freida Pinto are the biggest names in the cast, but keep your eye on Nathaniel Martello-White, an effortlessly charismatic actor who may have bigger things in store.
64. The Sinner (USA, Season 1). A closed-end, eight-episode miniseries with a killer hook—seemingly contented housewife suddenly goes apeshit and stabs a guy to death at the beach—The Sinner works reasonably well as a pulp mystery, with Bill Pullman delivering a solid performance as a worn-down detective who can’t stop tugging at loose threads. But the show is also gratifyingly strange, constantly looping back on itself and gradually revealing disturbing truths about its titular murderess. The logistics of the court proceedings don’t quite hold up, and eight hours is probably two too many. But Jessica Biel is impressively haunted and withdrawn in the lead, while Nadia Alexander is queasily compelling as her sickly sister. The Sinner may delay resolution of its central mystery for longer than it needs to, but it still parcels out its reveals with patience and style.
63. This Is Us (NBC, Seasons 1.5 and 2.0; last year: 55). This Is Us burst onto the network scene with two distinguishing traits: a constant parade of twists, and a relentless outpouring of sap. As the show has matured and settled in, the twists have dissipated, but the sentimentality has persisted. That isn’t a bad thing. This show is exceedingly warm-hearted, and if that warmth occasionally spills into mawkishness, that’s a sacrifice I can live with. Indeed, the show is finally poised to eliminate its greatest weakness—the endlessly drawn-out mystery of the death of Milo Ventimiglia’s patriarch (set to finally die this Super Bowl Sunday!)—so it’ll be interesting to see how it proceeds from there. Odds are, it’ll involve a little manipulation and a whole lot of heart.
62. Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO, Season 9). Inside-baseball note: For every show on this list, I’ve watched every single episode not only of the present season, but of every season that came before. (Yes, I really have seen all 123 episodes of Grimm. It was pretty good!) Every show, that is, except this one. I never got into Curb Your Enthusiasm during its heyday, and when I heard that it was making a well-received comeback, I decided to dive into the return without muscling my way through 80 existing episodes. Maybe that lack of historical knowledge prevented me from fully appreciating this new batch, but as a Seinfeld devotee with a working understanding of Larry David’s pervasive misanthropy, I’m pretty sure I got the gist. These new episodes are uneven; some intertwine their seemingly disparate story threads brilliantly, while others just feel lumpy and awkward. The humor is much the same: I laughed a great deal during many of these episodes, but I also sat stone-faced through quite a few others. (The season’s penultimate installment, featuring Lin-Manuel Miranda, is one of the most insufferable hours of “comedy” television I’ve ever endured.) I recognize David’s gifts as a writer—his ability to compose intricately structured stories laced with observational humor—but many of these episodes felt too proud of themselves. Maybe he’ll behave with greater humility in Season 10. OK, maybe not.
61. Catastrophe (Amazon/Channel 4, Season 2; last year: 32). Catastrophe isn’t as funny as it used to be, which is part of the point. As the passions cool between Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney’s fictional couple, their marriage grows a bit more restless, and a bit less exciting. They still make each other laugh, and they still enjoy each other’s company, but the once-brilliant spark that brought them together has dwindled to an ember. And that, of course, can also apply to the experience of watching the show, which is emotionally nuanced, observationally acute, and not nearly as fun to watch as it used to be. Catastrophe is still a good series because it understands and empathizes with its characters, and because Horgan and Delaney’s chemistry remains extraordinarily lived-in. But while I can appreciate the show’s refusal to upset its realism with unrealistic developments, I also wouldn’t mind a bit more drama. To that end, the Season 3 finale leaves some room for hope, with the return of alcoholism promising bad things for the characters and maybe good things for us.
60. Harlots (Hulu, Season 1). A series about rival brothels in 18th-century London, Harlots feels like it should be a sleazy show. But while there is no shortage of sex involved, the series is less interested in titillation than subjugation, examining how society casually commodified women and robbed them of their agency. As the warring madams, Samantha Morton and Lesley Manville are both terrific, while the writing is sharp, well-paced, and unpredictable. The world that Harlots conjures—a ruthless place of limited freedom and perpetual poverty—can feel chilling, all the more so because it seems less like a fictional dystopia than an accurate rendering of history, and maybe modernity.
59. Ozark (Netflix, Season 1). Ozark is about a desperate man who turns to criminality to save his family, so by all means, let the Breaking Bad comparisons flow. But Ozark, which stars Jason Bateman as a money launderer who’s forced to flee from Chicago to a Missouri backwater, is less about its antihero’s business empire than the place where he sets up shop, a rustic realm with its own codes and rituals. Continuing to lean into the darker edges of his persona, Bateman is reliably good, but the real star is Julia Garner as Ruth, a tough-talking local who starts off as Bateman’s adversary before eventually becoming his wary partner. (Elsewhere, Peter Mullan is appropriately menacing as a drawling heavy, even if he’s essentially reprising his role from Quarry.) Despite some intriguing insights into the money laundering industry, Ozark lacks criminal specificity, and many of its characters never feel plausible. But it has the swampy milieu down, and with Bateman and Garner operating at a high level, the show could quickly shift from promising to legit.
58. Brockmire (IFC, Season 1). There’s nothing fancy about Brockmire. It stars Hank Azaria as a washed-up baseball announcer—not player, announcer—who emerges from a drug-fueled hiatus to serve as the play-by-play guy for a hapless minor-league team in middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania. It’s a simple, Bull Durham-esque setup, but it works beautifully, partly because Azaria clicks marvelously with Amanda Peet—playing the team’s business-savvy owner—and partly because Hank Azaria is freaking hilarious. He was born to play this part (he created the character himself as part of a Funny or Die sketch), and he spins his honeyed rumble of a voice into comic gold. This is a low-stakes show, but that feels right for a series about loveable losers. Brockmire himself may be a drunkard and a cad, but Brockmire is a charmer.
57. Preacher (AMC, Season 2; last year: 28). As a piece of long-form storytelling, Preacher is fairly tedious; I don’t expect the characters to complete their search for God any time soon, and I’m not all that interested in whether they do. But on a micro level, Preacher can still be a smash, delivering unforgettable action sequences and wildly irreverent comedy. Dominic Cooper’s soul-searching still isn’t my thing, and the show misstepped when it tamped down Ruth Negga’s fiery persona in favor of a struggle with PTSD. But Negga and Joseph Gilgun have both added new dimensions to their characters, and the show brings in an excellent antagonist in Pip Torrens’ Herr Starr, a murderous emissary who operates with obscene detachment. I don’t know where Preacher’s going; as long as it keeps delivering scenes like a single-take brawl set to “Uptown Girl”, I don’t care if it never gets there.
56. Sherlock (BBC, Season 4; 2014 rank: 18 of 50). The particular mysteries of an individual Sherlock episode are byzantine in their complexity, but they also don’t really matter. The pleasure of this show isn’t watching Sherlock Holmes solve impossible crimes; it’s watching Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman hang out together as they snipe, antagonize, and collaborate. So while I may be frustrated that the cases in the newest season of Sherlock are laughably convoluted, that doesn’t really matter. The knotty friendship between Holmes and Watson is still there, and the show’s intelligence is still bracing without being condescending. In fact, the only truly memorable episode of Season 4 is its finale, “The Final Problem,” which begins with a tantalizing setup, sustains an incredibly high level of tension for the better part of an hour, then goes completely off the rails in its last act. When it ended, I was exasperated. I was also sad that there were no new, unnecessarily complicated mysteries left to solve.
55. The Expanse (Syfy, Season 2). Some TV shows need time to breathe. The first season of The Expanse was murky and muddled, with lots of elaborate mythology and a long-form plot that I struggled to understand. Season 2 is a happy improvement in every way; the characters are stronger, the performances are more natural, and the storytelling is more graceful. The series can still feel a bit unwieldy at times, and Steven Strait’s bullheaded captain isn’t exactly the most interesting protagonist. But there’s a richness to the show’s detail that pays off, resulting in a thrilling sense of adventure with clearly defined conflicts. Two different times this season, I reacted to individual episodes with awe, a sensation I’d never have expected after enduring the inaugural season. There are still some kinks to iron out, but this show is lifting off.
54. Silicon Valley (HBO, Season 4; last year: 26). I like this show. I swear I do. But, hasn’t it become a little bit stale by now? The constant pattern—crushing failure, followed by a sudden breakthrough, then aggressive enthusiasm for the new idea, then unforeseen failure again—isn’t it just a little repetitive? Throw in the series’ increasing immersion into the tech world—a move that adds verisimilitude but minimizes relatability—and Silicon Valley isn’t as easily enjoyable as it used to be. Don’t get me wrong, this is still a very funny show, and as long as the deeply talented cast sticks around, it can remain so forever. (I’m optimistic that T.J. Miller’s departure won’t harm things too severely.) At the same time, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the series is just copying and pasting its classic bits.
53. Taboo (FX, Season 1). People seem to hate this show, and I can understand why. It’s oppressively slow, and some of its storylines are deeply unpleasant. But Taboo can be mesmerizing in its atmosphere, building a smoky world with a pungent aroma of disease, starvation, and rot. If that doesn’t sound like an endorsement, just consider that the show is about descent into darkness, and its sickly ambiance is in perfect keeping with its troubling themes. Besides, no matter how ugly things get, it is always a gift to watch Tom Hardy, who traipses through Taboo’s fetid plains and dank alleyways with cold, calculated intelligence, plus his magnificent diction. (Tip to any viewers who share my difficulty with UK accents: Captions are your friends.) The show’s conspiratorial maneuvering is dense, and it can get lost in a twisted thicket of its own making. But even when it stumbles, Hardy is there with a snarling monologue or a sinister glare, ready to use his brute force of talent to pull you out of the mud.
52. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (ABC, Seasons 4.5 and 5.0; last year: 61). Well this is a surprise. I’d grown accustomed to this show’s serviceable mediocrity, the way it balanced skillful plotting and appealing characters with an irritating lack of tension and risk. But in the back half of its fourth season, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. suddenly got good, delivering a thrilling serialized story that transported our dutiful heroes to an alternate reality called The Framework. Things have stayed strong in Season 5, which took a bold leap yet again and shifted the action to a future set in outer space. That may seem like a bit much, but the issue with this series has always been its hesitation to go big, and it finally seems to have conquered that fear. There are probably still a few too many primary characters, and there’s always the danger that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will revert to its passable status quo. But for the time being, I’m enjoying the zero-gravity ride.
51. Gypsy (Netflix, Season 1). I wrote yesterday that, for most of the shows on this list, their “margin of error” was about 20 slots. For Gypsy, you can go ahead and double that, because I really have no idea what to make of this show. In a number of ways, it is empirically bad. The dialogue is false, the character motivations are unexplained, and the plotting makes questionable sense. And yet, few TV series stuck in my head in 2017 the way Gypsy did. There is something about Naomi Watts’ performance, as a successful therapist who pursues an affair with a young barista who’s dating one of her patients, that’s hypnotic. Why does her character do these things? I don’t know, and I don’t think her character does either, which is part of what makes this series so interesting and confounding. The rest of the cast is also quite good—Billy Crudup is reliably put-upon as a cuckolded husband, while Kingsman’s Sophie Cookson is electric as the barista—but Gypsy’s appeal doesn’t lie in its traditional qualities. It’s more about its narrative strangeness, its sudden turns and double-backs and curlicues. Is this a nervy upsetting of viewers’ expectations, or is it just sloppy writing? I’m not sure, and I’m oddly happy being uncertain. I never really understood Gypsy when it was here. I miss it now it’s gone.
Coming tomorrow: crazy girlfriends, experiential girlfriends, lively girl friends, and other shows about neither girls nor friends.
Link Souce
80. Room 104 (HBO, Season 1). As with all anthology series, Room 104 is wildly uneven, with some installments working significantly better than others. The show’s premise—every episode takes place within the same nondescript motel room—isn’t exactly fire, but the Duplass brothers do a nice job exploiting its variety; one episode is straight-up horror, another is a slow-burn thriller, a third is a wordless dance sequence, etc. That makes Room 104 inherently challenging—each half-hour has to swiftly establish its own characters and internal logic—and it typically meets that challenge. Still, while the series is generally well-cast—players include Amy Landecker, Philip Baker Hall, and James Van Der Beek—it ultimately amounts to less than the sum of its carefully assembled parts. Any grand statement on human connection is elusive, which means Room 104 is more experiment than TV show.
79. Outlander (Starz, Season 3; last year: 40 of 88). The opening third of Outlander’s newest season feels like a criminal act of self-sabotage, given that it neutralizes the show’s greatest asset—the crackling chemistry between Caitriona Balfe and Sam Heughan—by placing their characters on separate continents (not to mention in separate centuries). Once the fated lovers are reunited, the series finds its rhythm again, though this season’s central story—a perilous maritime voyage to Jamaica to rescue a kidnapped family member—isn’t nearly as exciting as Season 2’s Parisian intrigue. Still, Balfe and Heughan remain great together, and the show’s spirited sense of adventure can be rousing as well as clunky. (Kudos to the showrunners for minimizing Balfe’s horrific explanatory voiceover, though it still seems to pop up in the most cringeworthy of spots.) Near the end of this season, Lotte Verbeek returns in style, rising out of a blood bath like an elegantly wrathful god. More of that, please.
78. Riverdale (The CW, Seasons 1 and 2.0). This is a profoundly silly show, a small-town soap with Twin Peaks vibes, love quadrangles, and multiple murder mysteries. But it can also be giddily entertaining, slyly leveraging its ridiculousness for comic effect. And if the two male leads are total goobers, the strong female characters more than make up for it; Lili Reinhart’s blonde quietly glues everything together, Camila Mendes’ raven brings simmering intelligence, and Madelaine Petsch’s redhead pops off the screen every time she shows up. That those three characters can be identified by their hair color points to Riverdale’s clumsiness, but it often subverts that clumsiness in surprising and appealing ways. Maybe someday, the show will find a serialized storyline worthy of its women.
77. Better Things (FX, Season 2; last year: 77). I understand the massive critical acclaim for this show, which looks at the unglamorous life of single-momdom with honesty and empathy. And to be sure, Better Things improves significantly in its second season, growing a bit more focused and a bit less pointless. Still, the show’s elliptical style just isn’t much fun to watch, and while Pamela Adlon’s performance feels true, that sense of truth rarely translates to compelling drama. And the show’s dialogue tries so hard to avoid the typical rhythms of TV-speak that it ultimately circles back around to feeling false.
76. The Punisher (Netflix, Season 1). I get all the criticisms; this show is too long, too violent, and too broodily masculine. Fair enough. But it’s still quite well-done, with a strong anchoring performance from Jon Bernthal and spiky, robust set pieces. Ben Barnes, who has transformed from Narnia co-star into slab of beefcake, temporarily solves the MCU’s villain problem, while Amber Rose Revah is smartly no-nonsense as a take-no-shit fed. Plus, look True Blood fans: More Deborah Ann Woll!
75. Big Mouth (Netflix, Season 1). The concept of mixing filth and sweetness isn’t anything new, but the animated Big Mouth certainly pushes it to new extremes. The show’s crowning achievement is the Hormone Monster, a rampaging id who looks like a cross between a lion and a unicorn and who gives hilarious voice to a teenager’s most grotesque and shameful adolescent desires. Next to him, the rest of the series feels rather tame, which is a weird thing to say about a show that revels in sexual confusion and bodily-fluids mishaps. Big Mouth’s characters may not be memorable, but it does land an impressive percentage of jokes; you may not remember many of its details, but you’ll laugh in the process of forgetting them.
74. Dark (Netflix, Season 1). Ethnocentrism alert: Dark is a German show that takes place in three different timelines (2019, 1986, and eventually 1953); not only are there a lot of characters, but those characters often appear as differently aged versions of themselves, so we’re seeing them in duplicate or even triplicate. The problem is that, because I didn’t recognize any of the foreign actors, it took me a long time to figure out who the hell was who; after each hour, I had to scroll through that episode’s Wikipedia entry just to fully understand what happened. This is likely my failing more than the show’s, and if you can break past this barrier to entry, Dark is rewarding viewing, a brain-teasing puzzle-box that toys with weighty concepts like good vs. evil and free will vs. predestination. It’s more intriguing than exciting, and the lack of clarity can grow frustrating, but every so often—as in a riveting split-screen sequence at the end of the third episode—things snap perfectly into place. Time travel shows can make my head hurt, and Dark is no exception, but the ache is more pleasant than painful. (Note: Netflix unforgivably defaults to the English dub, so be sure to switch your audio settings to the actual German and turn on English subtitles. Well, unless you speak German.)
73. The Young Pope (HBO, Season 1). Taste is always subjective, but with a show like The Young Pope, traditional critical analysis is basically useless. This show is flagrantly ridiculous, with mannered dialogue, outlandish needle-drops, and needless stylistic flourishes. It’s also highly watchable, Jude Law’s preening performance subtly anchoring all of the absurdity that surrounds him. If you find this show painfully overwrought, I get that. If you find it magnificently heightened, I get that too. For my part, I’m splitting the difference.
72. Broadchurch (ITV, Season 3). As a crime procedural, Broadchurch is solid but unexceptional; it parades the various suspects before you and gradually whittles them down, with the appropriate mix of big twists and false clues. What makes the show interesting is its depiction of how a single crime can upend an entire town, and how suspicion and mistrust can boil over into violence and hatred. (In this regard, the show’s first season remains its best.) Season 3 presents the additional wrinkle of centering on a rape rather than a murder, meaning it addresses the crime’s impact on the victim herself. It handles this material sensitively, but the characters never quite feel fully formed, in part because everyone is a suspect, so we spend more time wondering if they’re guilty than digging into their personalities. The two exceptions, of course, are David Tennant and Olivia Colman’s detectives, who after three full seasons have formed one of the most satisfying oil-and-water buddy-cop teams on TV. The tension of the first season has now given way to mutual respect and even the rare shard of humor. Solving the mystery is fine, but Colman needling Tennant about his surreptitious first date is far more fulfilling.
71. Red Oaks (Amazon, Season 2; last year: 27). Here’s a solid example of why good shows shouldn’t necessarily be rewarded with additional seasons. The second season of Red Oaks was pretty much perfect—a thoughtful, tender coming-of-age story that deftly mixed low-key comedy and gentle drama—and it ended on a note of marvelous promise, looking ahead with wide eyes to the uncertain future. That future has now arrived in Season 3, and it proves to be far less enjoyable than we might have hoped. This new batch of episodes isn’t bad, and it retains the delicate tonal balance that the series refined last season. But there’s still a sense of wheel-spinning, of needlessly continuing a story that has already ended. I’ll always be grateful for this show’s general sweetness, but I doubt I’ll remember anything specific from Season 3.
70. Peaky Blinders (Netflix/BBC, Season 4; last year: 66). Don’t be fooled by the slightly lower ranking; that Peaky Blinders appears slightly lower on my list this year versus last says less about the show and more about how much damn good TV there is out there. Where Season 3 felt like a grave disappointment, Season 4 felt like a gradual return to form for Peaky Blinders, ditching the indecipherable palace intrigue of last year and focusing instead on a good old-fashioned gang war. The new cast additions are top-notch—Adrien Brody has great fun chewing toothpicks and scenery as an Italian thug, while Aidan Gillen is typically delightful as a roguish gypsy—while Cillian Murphy remains magnetic as the wily and ferocious Tommy Shelby. Some of the plotting this year doesn’t quick stick—a late reveal about a master plan plays out with, shall we say, dubious logic—and the build-up is far more satisfying than the finish. All the same, it’s nice to have the Red Right Hand back in style.
69. Happy! (Syfy, Season 1). Before every episode of Happy!, the network flashes the typical warning screen about the upcoming content. Only here, rather than telling viewers whether the show contains sex or violence, Syfy informs us that this program is rated “WTF” and that it contains various inexplicable sights as killer santas, strung-out unicorns, and questionable hygiene. In other words: This show is weird. Like, “Patton Oswalt voicing an imaginary flying blue horse who’s only visible to Chris Meloni” weird. The show’s bonkers attitude camouflages what’s actually a straightforward kidnapping mystery, with Meloni as a disgraced detective on the hunt for his missing daughter as he’s simultaneously pursued by the mob. In terms of plot, it’s fairly rudimentary (the finale airs tomorrow night, so we’ll see if there are any shake-ups in store), but the show’s excessiveness can be deliriously entertaining, with Meloni going absolutely all-out. This is the kind of show that you should watch just to confirm that it in fact exists. Just beware of the strung-out unicorns.
68. Transparent (Amazon, Season 4; last year: 35). The good times have slowed their roll on Transparent, a once-bracing show that now feels stuck in neutral. As a series about a uniquely dysfunctional family, it’s still watchable, and it makes a bold move in shifting the action primarily to Israel for Season 4. But the characters’ various neuroses—rooted in concerns regarding ancestry and religion as well as sexuality—aren’t as illuminating as they once were, and their constant self-reflection is starting to feel repetitive. Transparent is still doing a fine job exploring the institution of marriage, here bringing in the great Alia Shawkat as a polyamorous health guru who allures Amy Landecker’s experimentally inclined housewife. (Season 4 continues the pattern, at least in my view, of allowing a different family member to serve as the most interesting character each season.) And the show’s sense of genuine empathy can’t be faked. But it could use a bit more meat on its narrative bones.
67. Rick and Morty (Adult Swim, Season 3). This show’s fan following is almost Lynchian in its rabidity; apparently, if you don’t watch it, you’re a loser, and (worse) if you do watch it but don’t love it, you’re an idiot. I can understand these fans’ zeal, because Rick and Morty is relentlessly, exhaustingly clever, using animation to provide witty visual gags while also burrowing into the show’s inherent darkness with alarming depth and sincerity. That said, I can’t fully embrace the show’s caustic tone and its non-stop motor; there’s something smug about its boys’-club feel. Rick and Morty may be a work of genius, but it’s the kind of genius that leaves me cold.
66. One Day at a Time (Netflix, Season 1). Setting aside that Seinfeld is one of my favorite TV shows of all time, I really struggle with multi-camera sitcoms. The laugh track, the staginess, the awkward timing—it just feels painfully forced to me. So I was strongly predisposed to dislike One Day at a Time, Netflix’s reboot of an old Norman Lear hit. And I did dislike significant elements of it; its laugh track is a real hindrance to my ability to sink in and enjoy the show. (If I were cynical, I’d wonder if the critics who fawn over the series embrace the laugh track solely because it functions as a winking, nostalgic reminder of the sitcom hits of their youth.) But if you can power through, I urge you to do so, because One Day at a Time is deeply touching once you get to know its characters. Unabashedly political—one episode focuses on immigration, another on gay rights—the series’ messaging is inspiring, but its writing is also deceptively sharp, with strong themes and winning personalities. I’ll never be able to love this show, but I do love what it’s trying to do.
65. Guerrilla (Showtime, Season 1). So many TV shows and movies treat terrorists as anonymous villains motivated purely by bland hatred. Guerrilla, about the British Black Panther movement in the 1970s, explores the internal ugliness of terrorism, suggesting that violence can stem as much from incompetence, fear, and petty squabbling as from militant ideology. It also considers how political activism can curdle into rebellion, and how corrupt institutions can feed that cycle. Its details are a bit blurry, but its evocation of the mechanics of terrorism—envisioned here as a loosely connected network of underground cells, each with its own particular obsessions and credos—rings upsettingly true. Idris Elba and Freida Pinto are the biggest names in the cast, but keep your eye on Nathaniel Martello-White, an effortlessly charismatic actor who may have bigger things in store.
64. The Sinner (USA, Season 1). A closed-end, eight-episode miniseries with a killer hook—seemingly contented housewife suddenly goes apeshit and stabs a guy to death at the beach—The Sinner works reasonably well as a pulp mystery, with Bill Pullman delivering a solid performance as a worn-down detective who can’t stop tugging at loose threads. But the show is also gratifyingly strange, constantly looping back on itself and gradually revealing disturbing truths about its titular murderess. The logistics of the court proceedings don’t quite hold up, and eight hours is probably two too many. But Jessica Biel is impressively haunted and withdrawn in the lead, while Nadia Alexander is queasily compelling as her sickly sister. The Sinner may delay resolution of its central mystery for longer than it needs to, but it still parcels out its reveals with patience and style.
63. This Is Us (NBC, Seasons 1.5 and 2.0; last year: 55). This Is Us burst onto the network scene with two distinguishing traits: a constant parade of twists, and a relentless outpouring of sap. As the show has matured and settled in, the twists have dissipated, but the sentimentality has persisted. That isn’t a bad thing. This show is exceedingly warm-hearted, and if that warmth occasionally spills into mawkishness, that’s a sacrifice I can live with. Indeed, the show is finally poised to eliminate its greatest weakness—the endlessly drawn-out mystery of the death of Milo Ventimiglia’s patriarch (set to finally die this Super Bowl Sunday!)—so it’ll be interesting to see how it proceeds from there. Odds are, it’ll involve a little manipulation and a whole lot of heart.
62. Curb Your Enthusiasm (HBO, Season 9). Inside-baseball note: For every show on this list, I’ve watched every single episode not only of the present season, but of every season that came before. (Yes, I really have seen all 123 episodes of Grimm. It was pretty good!) Every show, that is, except this one. I never got into Curb Your Enthusiasm during its heyday, and when I heard that it was making a well-received comeback, I decided to dive into the return without muscling my way through 80 existing episodes. Maybe that lack of historical knowledge prevented me from fully appreciating this new batch, but as a Seinfeld devotee with a working understanding of Larry David’s pervasive misanthropy, I’m pretty sure I got the gist. These new episodes are uneven; some intertwine their seemingly disparate story threads brilliantly, while others just feel lumpy and awkward. The humor is much the same: I laughed a great deal during many of these episodes, but I also sat stone-faced through quite a few others. (The season’s penultimate installment, featuring Lin-Manuel Miranda, is one of the most insufferable hours of “comedy” television I’ve ever endured.) I recognize David’s gifts as a writer—his ability to compose intricately structured stories laced with observational humor—but many of these episodes felt too proud of themselves. Maybe he’ll behave with greater humility in Season 10. OK, maybe not.
61. Catastrophe (Amazon/Channel 4, Season 2; last year: 32). Catastrophe isn’t as funny as it used to be, which is part of the point. As the passions cool between Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney’s fictional couple, their marriage grows a bit more restless, and a bit less exciting. They still make each other laugh, and they still enjoy each other’s company, but the once-brilliant spark that brought them together has dwindled to an ember. And that, of course, can also apply to the experience of watching the show, which is emotionally nuanced, observationally acute, and not nearly as fun to watch as it used to be. Catastrophe is still a good series because it understands and empathizes with its characters, and because Horgan and Delaney’s chemistry remains extraordinarily lived-in. But while I can appreciate the show’s refusal to upset its realism with unrealistic developments, I also wouldn’t mind a bit more drama. To that end, the Season 3 finale leaves some room for hope, with the return of alcoholism promising bad things for the characters and maybe good things for us.
60. Harlots (Hulu, Season 1). A series about rival brothels in 18th-century London, Harlots feels like it should be a sleazy show. But while there is no shortage of sex involved, the series is less interested in titillation than subjugation, examining how society casually commodified women and robbed them of their agency. As the warring madams, Samantha Morton and Lesley Manville are both terrific, while the writing is sharp, well-paced, and unpredictable. The world that Harlots conjures—a ruthless place of limited freedom and perpetual poverty—can feel chilling, all the more so because it seems less like a fictional dystopia than an accurate rendering of history, and maybe modernity.
59. Ozark (Netflix, Season 1). Ozark is about a desperate man who turns to criminality to save his family, so by all means, let the Breaking Bad comparisons flow. But Ozark, which stars Jason Bateman as a money launderer who’s forced to flee from Chicago to a Missouri backwater, is less about its antihero’s business empire than the place where he sets up shop, a rustic realm with its own codes and rituals. Continuing to lean into the darker edges of his persona, Bateman is reliably good, but the real star is Julia Garner as Ruth, a tough-talking local who starts off as Bateman’s adversary before eventually becoming his wary partner. (Elsewhere, Peter Mullan is appropriately menacing as a drawling heavy, even if he’s essentially reprising his role from Quarry.) Despite some intriguing insights into the money laundering industry, Ozark lacks criminal specificity, and many of its characters never feel plausible. But it has the swampy milieu down, and with Bateman and Garner operating at a high level, the show could quickly shift from promising to legit.
58. Brockmire (IFC, Season 1). There’s nothing fancy about Brockmire. It stars Hank Azaria as a washed-up baseball announcer—not player, announcer—who emerges from a drug-fueled hiatus to serve as the play-by-play guy for a hapless minor-league team in middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania. It’s a simple, Bull Durham-esque setup, but it works beautifully, partly because Azaria clicks marvelously with Amanda Peet—playing the team’s business-savvy owner—and partly because Hank Azaria is freaking hilarious. He was born to play this part (he created the character himself as part of a Funny or Die sketch), and he spins his honeyed rumble of a voice into comic gold. This is a low-stakes show, but that feels right for a series about loveable losers. Brockmire himself may be a drunkard and a cad, but Brockmire is a charmer.
57. Preacher (AMC, Season 2; last year: 28). As a piece of long-form storytelling, Preacher is fairly tedious; I don’t expect the characters to complete their search for God any time soon, and I’m not all that interested in whether they do. But on a micro level, Preacher can still be a smash, delivering unforgettable action sequences and wildly irreverent comedy. Dominic Cooper’s soul-searching still isn’t my thing, and the show misstepped when it tamped down Ruth Negga’s fiery persona in favor of a struggle with PTSD. But Negga and Joseph Gilgun have both added new dimensions to their characters, and the show brings in an excellent antagonist in Pip Torrens’ Herr Starr, a murderous emissary who operates with obscene detachment. I don’t know where Preacher’s going; as long as it keeps delivering scenes like a single-take brawl set to “Uptown Girl”, I don’t care if it never gets there.
56. Sherlock (BBC, Season 4; 2014 rank: 18 of 50). The particular mysteries of an individual Sherlock episode are byzantine in their complexity, but they also don’t really matter. The pleasure of this show isn’t watching Sherlock Holmes solve impossible crimes; it’s watching Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman hang out together as they snipe, antagonize, and collaborate. So while I may be frustrated that the cases in the newest season of Sherlock are laughably convoluted, that doesn’t really matter. The knotty friendship between Holmes and Watson is still there, and the show’s intelligence is still bracing without being condescending. In fact, the only truly memorable episode of Season 4 is its finale, “The Final Problem,” which begins with a tantalizing setup, sustains an incredibly high level of tension for the better part of an hour, then goes completely off the rails in its last act. When it ended, I was exasperated. I was also sad that there were no new, unnecessarily complicated mysteries left to solve.
55. The Expanse (Syfy, Season 2). Some TV shows need time to breathe. The first season of The Expanse was murky and muddled, with lots of elaborate mythology and a long-form plot that I struggled to understand. Season 2 is a happy improvement in every way; the characters are stronger, the performances are more natural, and the storytelling is more graceful. The series can still feel a bit unwieldy at times, and Steven Strait’s bullheaded captain isn’t exactly the most interesting protagonist. But there’s a richness to the show’s detail that pays off, resulting in a thrilling sense of adventure with clearly defined conflicts. Two different times this season, I reacted to individual episodes with awe, a sensation I’d never have expected after enduring the inaugural season. There are still some kinks to iron out, but this show is lifting off.
54. Silicon Valley (HBO, Season 4; last year: 26). I like this show. I swear I do. But, hasn’t it become a little bit stale by now? The constant pattern—crushing failure, followed by a sudden breakthrough, then aggressive enthusiasm for the new idea, then unforeseen failure again—isn’t it just a little repetitive? Throw in the series’ increasing immersion into the tech world—a move that adds verisimilitude but minimizes relatability—and Silicon Valley isn’t as easily enjoyable as it used to be. Don’t get me wrong, this is still a very funny show, and as long as the deeply talented cast sticks around, it can remain so forever. (I’m optimistic that T.J. Miller’s departure won’t harm things too severely.) At the same time, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the series is just copying and pasting its classic bits.
53. Taboo (FX, Season 1). People seem to hate this show, and I can understand why. It’s oppressively slow, and some of its storylines are deeply unpleasant. But Taboo can be mesmerizing in its atmosphere, building a smoky world with a pungent aroma of disease, starvation, and rot. If that doesn’t sound like an endorsement, just consider that the show is about descent into darkness, and its sickly ambiance is in perfect keeping with its troubling themes. Besides, no matter how ugly things get, it is always a gift to watch Tom Hardy, who traipses through Taboo’s fetid plains and dank alleyways with cold, calculated intelligence, plus his magnificent diction. (Tip to any viewers who share my difficulty with UK accents: Captions are your friends.) The show’s conspiratorial maneuvering is dense, and it can get lost in a twisted thicket of its own making. But even when it stumbles, Hardy is there with a snarling monologue or a sinister glare, ready to use his brute force of talent to pull you out of the mud.
52. Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (ABC, Seasons 4.5 and 5.0; last year: 61). Well this is a surprise. I’d grown accustomed to this show’s serviceable mediocrity, the way it balanced skillful plotting and appealing characters with an irritating lack of tension and risk. But in the back half of its fourth season, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. suddenly got good, delivering a thrilling serialized story that transported our dutiful heroes to an alternate reality called The Framework. Things have stayed strong in Season 5, which took a bold leap yet again and shifted the action to a future set in outer space. That may seem like a bit much, but the issue with this series has always been its hesitation to go big, and it finally seems to have conquered that fear. There are probably still a few too many primary characters, and there’s always the danger that Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. will revert to its passable status quo. But for the time being, I’m enjoying the zero-gravity ride.
51. Gypsy (Netflix, Season 1). I wrote yesterday that, for most of the shows on this list, their “margin of error” was about 20 slots. For Gypsy, you can go ahead and double that, because I really have no idea what to make of this show. In a number of ways, it is empirically bad. The dialogue is false, the character motivations are unexplained, and the plotting makes questionable sense. And yet, few TV series stuck in my head in 2017 the way Gypsy did. There is something about Naomi Watts’ performance, as a successful therapist who pursues an affair with a young barista who’s dating one of her patients, that’s hypnotic. Why does her character do these things? I don’t know, and I don’t think her character does either, which is part of what makes this series so interesting and confounding. The rest of the cast is also quite good—Billy Crudup is reliably put-upon as a cuckolded husband, while Kingsman’s Sophie Cookson is electric as the barista—but Gypsy’s appeal doesn’t lie in its traditional qualities. It’s more about its narrative strangeness, its sudden turns and double-backs and curlicues. Is this a nervy upsetting of viewers’ expectations, or is it just sloppy writing? I’m not sure, and I’m oddly happy being uncertain. I never really understood Gypsy when it was here. I miss it now it’s gone.
Coming tomorrow: crazy girlfriends, experiential girlfriends, lively girl friends, and other shows about neither girls nor friends.
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