Ten Honorable Mentions in Television for the best of 2019

Every year I do a top 12 list (check the label) for the best of the year in television and add an extra top 10 honorable mentions. Through thick and thin, I've done this list for 12 straight years and treated it with the gravity as if I'm announcing the Nobel Prizes. This year, I thought I'd separate the honorable mentions and give them their own entry for space reasons. Perhaps, also the readers can best absorb ten entries at one time.

Source: Den of Geek

American Horror Story: 1984 (FX)-As if the homage to the horror films of the 1980s wasn’t enough, the deluge of aerobics, side pony tails, synthesizer music and whatever else to set the place and time with the delicacy of a sledgehammer. But, hey, I dug the series’ cheekily self-referential tone and strong sense of place. Like other versions of AHS, the series is guilty of overpopulating its villains but there was a surprisingly strong thru-line to keep the narrative engaging and a couple genuinely bitching heroines worth rooting for.

Black Mirror (Netflix) -Charlie Brooker's prescient sci-fi anthology set in some unspecified near future continues to stay fresh and kinetic in its 5th season. That there were only three episodes is a source of complaint but each episode is relevant in multiple ways to our technoscape (isn't talking to the bastards who made your technology when it blows up on you the ultimate vicarious fantasy?) and meticulously crafted (all the little foreshadowings show up on rewatch).

Bless the Harts (Fox)- The first animated Sunday night entry in Fox to earn a second season renewal since "Bob's Burgers", this take on red state lower class working families would be in danger of being seen as a condescending parody of it weren't so sweet. The characters (a single mother, daughter, serious boyfriend and live-in mother) are all fully-formed comic creations and they bounce off each other well. The show also gets extra mileage out of a most amusing passive-aggressive rivalry between two grandmas (one played by guest star Mary Steenburgen showing off a previously unseen vicious side)

Source: Variety

Derry Girls (Channel 4/Netflix)-Of the many shows featuring teenagers I saw this year, few were as funny and fewer captured both the gut-wrenching awkwardness and carefree joy as this entry. The show is also a wayward family sitcom as the bickering family members of three generations keep the show lively.  Set in Northern Ireland at the heat of the IRA’s disruption in the 1990s, the show is rooted in a strong set of place and time. The season finale in which James traded an unstable mother for the continued awkwardness of being a boy in an all-girls school made no sense (nothing ever does with James' situation) but it was an earned emotional coda.

Disenchantment (Netflix)-This appeared in my top 12 last year based on potential and while it needs to round it still needs to round its lead characters, it has the visual richness and blink-and-you’ll-miss-it humor that made “Futurama” so rewatchable. Additionally, it’s a positive sign for the show’s world-building that Luci, Derek, and Oona got appropriately TGIF-ish (but not too cheesy) special episodes of the week.

Source: The Verge

Good Omens (Amazon)-The juxtaposition of minute details and unaware characters with unimaginable cataclysms was something I’d missed since…well..a few months earlier when “Miracle Workers” was on the air. That’s ok, we can never get enough apocalyptic comedy and the British whimsy (mostly in the tradition of Douglas Adams) approach is always welcome. The series is adapted from a Neil Gaiman book about a lowly angel and demon who violate their bosses’ orders to prolong the end of days. Because the book is so dense, the miniseries has the deck stacked against it in terms of delivering digestible entertainment because of all the exposition-oriented hurdles. Still, the series does an admirable job and the sweet odd couple of David Tenant and Michael Sheen is quite sweet. 

The Other Two (Comedy Central)-A wayward exploration of the effects of sudden viral fame, “The Other Two” has the sharpness in dialogue that is reminiscent of “30 Rock” with a tinge of family sitcom sweetness. The show is about a YouTube sensation modelled after Justin Bieber but it wisely focuses on the lives of the four cogs in his support system: The overly eager manager (Ken Marino), the menopausal mom seeking her positivity (Molly Shannon), and the two flailing adult siblings who had performance aspirations (Helene Yorke and Drew Tarver). The fact that the two adult siblings are supportive and not bitter of their brother gives the show a requisite gooeyness that places it on the list.

Source: Hollywood Reporter

The Orville (Fox)-When this show premiered, there was a very understandable chorus of bafflement by critics. Copying the Star Trek universe so closely that it bordered on copyright infringement, spending a lavish budget without any pay off on special effects, and straddling the most awkward line between comedy and drama screamed like a Seth McFarlane vanity project. But towards the back half of its second season, the show cemented itself as a show that offered something the Star Trek universe was lacking: A remedy to the stuffy atmosphere that permeated Starfleet (particularly in TNG).  It seems much more natural that the crew members would drink alcohol and play pranks on each other, doesn’t it? So think of Orville as a version of TNG with characters who are a little looser. The drama is still there. The science is really there. And occasionally there’s a belching contest. No biggie.

Source: Den of Geek

Russian Doll (Netflix)-Natasha Lyonne's protagonist here is such a sweetheart, her id-driven M.O. doesn't come off rude but more exposing the superfluous of polite banality. The show could have done more to get viewers invested in the actual logistics of the Groundhog-Day-like time loop or eliminated all the technobabble about it altogether. However, on the level of a woman (and later, a stranger/friend) seeking growth and being forced into it, the show was genuinely moving.

Source: Den of Geek

What We Do in the Shadows (FX)-I was going to go with “Baroness von Sketch show" in this slot until I saw this on another end of the year list and saw the name Jermaine Clement as one of the creators (Jojo Rabbit’s Taiki Waititi is also on the creative side). While not up there with “Flight of the Conchords” in relatability, it’s a bizarre trip about four vampires clashing with modern-day Staten Island that has a surreal brand of humor that occasionally knocked me straight over.

And for reference, here's all the shows I watched at least one episode of in 2019. If they have an asterisk, that means exactly one episode (minus the top 12):

Abby’s (NBC), Adam Ruins Everything (TruTV), Almost Famous (ABC), Archer (FX), Baroness von Sketch Show (IFC), Big Mouth (Netflix), Card Sharks (ABC), Castle Rock (Hulu), Carmen Sandiego (Netflix), Carnival Row (Amazon)* Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (CBSAA), Corporate (Comedy Central), Crashing (HBO)*, Chernobyl (AMC)*, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (CW), Dollface (Hulu), Documentary Now (IFC), Final Space (TBS/Netflix)*, Fresh off the Boat (ABC), Futureman (Hulu), God Friended Me (CBS), Good Girls (NBC), Grand Hotel (ABC), Hot Date (Pop TV), I-Land (Netflix), I Think You Should Lave (Netflix), Perfect Harmony (NBC), Politician (Netflix), Sex Education (Netflix), Schitt’s Creek (PopTV), Shrill (Hulu), Society (Netflix), Superstore (NBC), Sunnyside (NBC), Those Who Can’t (TruTV), Thirteen Reasons Why (Netflix), Undone (Amazon Prime), Umbrella Academy (Netflix), Will and Grace (NBC), Yellowstone (Paramount Network)