Here is my annual Top 12 in TV (for past editions, see here and here). My list of honorable mentions is here:
1. Party Down (Starz)
When it debuted in 2009, Party Down was one of the early runners of TV’s Golden Age with its strong ensemble, dripping ennui, and envelope-pushing humor. The show centers around six creative has-beens and not-quite-there-yet characters in Hollywood during their downtime at various catering gigs. In the original run, a status-quo-favoring Murphy’s Law kept the characters from getting too successful. To counter this depressing set-up, the characters fully embrace their purgatory with a sense of hedonism that rubs against the subculture of the week in hilarious ways.
To see Party Down return without a single change is worth celebrating, but the show opted for the more challenging route and allowed them to exit and find success. Or at least the possibility of it, however fleeting. The show’s hiatus lasted 14 years and a decade has passed in-universe. To keep the truth and fun in these characters amid such changing conditions is no easy accomplishment.
Stories are made and broken based on how they resolve. At the end of the day, Party Down resolved on the most pitch-perfect note for me.
2. Futurama (FOX)
Good news, everyone! Like Party Down, Futurama came back from the dead. For the third time, no less! The show continued to provide sharp evergreen humor balanced with seasonings of topicality: The show approached anti-vaxers, Amazon warehouse conditions, cancel culture, binge-watching, and a particularly clever cross-genre episode set in the old West amidst a Bitcoin mining rush. The show also continued to navigate the aftermath of the Leela-Fry relationship while keeping things fresh.
3. Killing It (Peacock)
Peacock’s ode to the bizarre scheme, Floridians is so popular that it grows in its sophomore season to cover more challenging moral implications while maintaining the sense of free-for-all fun. As the second season opens, the two protagonists (Claudia O’Doherty and Craig Robinson) are enjoying a brief respite of success as proprietors of a palmetto berry farm before getting entangled with a truant inspector (Beck Bennett); a white trash family (led by Dot Marie Jones) who are not above coercing our heroes for free health care); a mob boss (Tim Heidecker) and his adorably vicious daughter (Anna Mae Quinn); and the FBI because that’s where all these stories tend to end. The now well-established chemistry between Robinson and O’Doherty grows into the rare opposite-sex platonic relationship on TV that grounds the show with warmth. This is a season that establishes itself as next-level TV, however, by adding another layer to show their subtle moral differences and how unadulterated kindness can only take you so far in the business world.
4. Pain Killer (Netflix)
Limited series docudramas have made quite the dent in the TV landscape as of late with Inventing Anna, Drop Out, and the like. None have had the bite and emotional truth of Pain Killer. The show presents a tapestry of people involved in the opioid crisis. Matthew Broderick epitomizes the modern-day corporate oligarch who’s completely detached from the deathly consequences of his profit motive. He’s so slimy and aloof in this role, that he washes away any goodwill that used to come with his boyish features since the days of Ferris Bueller. Facing off against him and his corporation is a federal prosecutor in rural Virginia on the side of the righteous (Uzo Adoba). While the series is set with the proper gravity of the opioid crisis (AKA it can be a downer), there are glimmers of hope and pathos. It’s a thoughtful series, but also a kinetic one like a police procedural.
5. American Auto (NBC)
Justin Spitzer’s follow-up to NBC hit Superstore aims for a target in the upper-income bracket. Starring SNL alum Ana Gasteyer, the show takes place in the executive suites of a Detroit motor corporation. Our audience surrogates are put-upon communications officer Sadie (Harriet Dyer) and the blue-collar worker Jack (Tye White), who got promoted upwards through sheer dumb luck. As the series progresses, however, Jack and Sadie show signs of being more comfortable in their first-class digs than they do being among the common people. Rather than poke fun at rich and powerful people for simply being rich and powerful (the method of present-day satire like The Menu or Glass Onion), American Auto presents rich people as both being victims of their detachment but also a product of an ecosystem of enhanced scrutiny and increasing demands on the shareholders. Most of the time, however, it’s just a damn funny workplace sitcom.
6. Rough Diamonds (Netflix)
The issues of insularity, abuse, and lack of free will in ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities, have made a rife breeding ground for great drama in film and television. Rough Diamonds adds a European flavor to the mix as it is set in the shady world of the diamond trade in Antwerp, Belgium. The story centers around family pariah Noah who went straight from an insular, religious life into the criminal underworld of London. A dozen years later, he returns when one of his three siblings commits suicide. He soon learns that despite their holier-than-thou attitude (quite literally), his family isn’t much better at keeping their professional aims above criminal activity. The parallel compromises in morality that Noah and his brother must make, are a theme here. It is a tense pressure cooker of the show that provides a relatively even-keeled look at the issues surrounding the community.
7. The Class of 07 (Amazon)
The 10-year reunion at an all-girls Australian school turns into a semi-apocalypse whereby all the participants’ old grudges resurface. If Crayola’s top engineers ever arrived at a color blacker than black, that would be the best description for this show’s brand of comedy. Few shows so tonally bleak have ever been played out for comedy like this — at various points, the characters resort to eating shoes, hold a town hall over which survivor they’ll be eating, and make their peace with intended murder. Yet, it’s all juxtaposed against the kinds of delights of long-lost friends reconnecting and working out their struggles. To the degree that the Bechdel Test still is a thing, this show deserves credit for adding so much weight to each of its female friendships and treating them as a means to their end.
8. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon)
In its fifth and final season, the show boldly incorporates several time jumps to show that there’s light at the end of the tunnel for our struggling Borscht Belt comedian and her cantankerous agent. Managing parental expectations, commercial success and lasting love will never be easy for someone who ventures so far outside of the bounds of her era’s norms, but that’s what makes Midge a character to root for. That, and she can work a room with such charm. In its final season, Marvelous Mrs. Maisel was as sharp, funny, and warm as ever. In other words, it left us wanting more and that’s what any good performer would hope for.
Check out my interview with Caroline Aaron ahead of the final season
9. Schmicago AKA Shmigadoon Season 2 (Apple)
What do Sweeney Todd, Hair, Pippen, Annie, Godspell, Chicago, and Cabaret have in common? If you’re thinking “Virtually nothing”, you’re not wrong. This is why Schmicago (AKA Schmigadoon) deserves much credit for integrating such a tonally wide range of musicals and weaving them into a coherent story in just episodes. As with the best parodies, the production values and quality of the songs veer razor-thin to the source material while making notable departures when there’s an opportunity for a good joke. Cecily Strong and Keegan Michael Key play the audience surrogate and Strong in particular has to be given credit for her deadpan reactions. Several heavy hitters on Broadway (Aaron Tevit, Dove Cameron, Kristin Chenoweth, Jane Krakowski, etc.) set the bar even higher, and now how to add a winking dose of humor to an authentic show-stopping number.
10. Tiny Tunes Looniversity (HBO Now)
Another reboot that hit some chords with me. The show re-imagines some of the beloved figures of our childhood (I’m assuming that everyone is a child of the 90s. If not, I apologize for your imperfections) as existing within a more coherent universe. In contrast to the original which struggled to maintain any geographical continuity in sketches that took place outside of the shared high school that the characters shared, this show takes place entirely within the confines of a university for toons, allowing for a lot more world-building. The five main characters (Babs, Buster, Daffy, Hampton, and an ascended extra in Sweetie Bird) all are dorm mates coping with the rigors of college. The strength of the show is how well they tweak the characters where needed: Characters like Bugs and Babs are the same, but Sweetie (who was only featured in one episode in the original) is maniacally bipolar; Shirley the Loon is more modern-day hipster than a clairvoyant Shirley MacLaine expy; and Dizzy Devil is a needy manchild with a kind heart.
11. Ghosts (CBS)
Eight ghosts from different eras (the 60s hippie movement, the Guided Age, Wall Street excess, the Revolutionary War, etc) inhabit an upstate New York mansion with the ability to talk to just one of the home’s two owners. But as anyone can tell you, it’s the delivery that makes the difference. The eight actors (largely unknowns outside of Rebecca Wiscocky) create comically rich characters with rife potential for great comic dynamics (imagine a Victorian-Age snoot interacting with a free-wheeling Prohibition-Era jazz singer: You get the idea), and the dialogue never fails to exploit these possibilities. The eight ghosts provide the laughs while the couple at the center (Rose McIver and Utkarsh Ambudkar) provide the TGIF-ish heart.
12. Jury Duty (Amazon)
This one’s gonna take some explanation, so bear with me. This show is a reality/comedy hybrid in which everyone in a Los Angeles court trial is an actor except one unsuspecting sweetheart named Ron. The goal of the actors is to A) Convince Ron that they are real at whatever they’re supposed to be (judges, lawyers, fellow jury members, etc.), B) Create comedy by adding bizarreness through the proceedings, and C) Give opportunities to show Ron as a good guy. Also, mid-level actor James Marsden is here and he plays himself. Only a little more conceited. Again, it’s one of those things It’s nowhere near the first reality show in the medium’s history to give its contestants or contestants a skewed version of the truth, but few have engineered the story arc in such a heart-warming, funny, and clever way. Credit where credit is due: Showrunners Gene Stupinsky and Lee Eisenberg were big forces behind The Office, and their next project looks to be equally promising.
For video reviews, check out my YouTube channel.
Honorable Mentions (covered in a separate article):
The Afterparty (Apple), Captain Fall (Netflix), Florida Man (Netflix), Hello Tomorrow (Apple), History of the World Part II (Hulu), Krapopolis (Fox), Mulligan (Netflix), Night Agent (Netflix), Poker Face (Netflix),
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