10. “The End Of The F***ing World”
We’ve said this before, but it’s intriguing the way that Netflix’s most popular shows often are the ones that few, including Netflix themselves, were expecting. The word-of-mouth success of “Stranger Things” and “Orange Is The New Black” ultimately came to overshadow their bigger-budget brethren like “House Of Cards,” “The Get Down” and the Netflix/Marvel shows. And so it was with “The End Of The F***ing World,” which aired in the UK to not all that much attention late last year, before hitting Netflix in January and becoming a full-on phenomenon. Adapted from an underground comic by Charles Forsman by writer Charlie Covell and directors Jonathan Entwhistle and Lucy Tcherniak, it’s a sort of British spin on “Badlands,” as aspiring psychopath James (Alex Lawther) goes on the run with schoolmate Alyssa (Jessica Barden) with the intention to kill her. Murder does eventually happen, but not the one they were expecting, and the two fall in love as the law closes in. Told at blinding pace (you can get through the whole thing in about two and a half hours), with an absolute ton of style and even more heart, it proved to be THE most memorable TV love story of the year, and looks to be a launching pad for some massive careers to come.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbiiik_T3Bo
9. “The Good Fight”
We’ve maybe, finally, learned not to worry when it comes to showrunners Robert and Michelle King and their Chicago law firm-based serials. After the end of “The Good Wife,” we wondered how a spin-off could function without the wife, and they answered us triumphantly with season 1 of the “The Good Fight.” But when that season ended, we wondered how the show would move forward, with the major arc about Maia (Rose Leslie) and her father’s hedge fund scandal all but wrapped. More fool us: The second season was if anything stronger than the first, and less soapy, for not having such a focus on one primary storyline. Instead, while there was the hovering threat of the lawyer-murderer, and Diane Lockhart’s (the irreplaceable Christine Baranski) ongoing struggle for alpha-dog status as the only white partner at a majority black law firm, Season 2 mostly just got on with what the Kings positively reign at, which is delivering quippy, characterful, insightful takes on news stories so fresh one eternally suspects them of doing a “Wag the Dog” and creating the news out of scripts they’ve already written. Unapologetically left-leaning, overtly political, and often fuelled by righteous anger, “The Good Fight” also displays a sneaky wit and a deep affection for its characters that make it one of the most purely, addictively entertaining shows on television. And seeing as the tougher the political going has gotten, the better the writing has been, we are not going to sweat Season 3 even a little bit except to will it here asap and to hope, as ever, for a teensy bit more Elsbeth Tascioni (Carrie Preston) and whole lot more Robert Boseman (Delroy Lindo) – Jessica Kiang
8. “Killing Eve”
We’d already declared Phoebe Waller-Bridge as a startling, risk-taking emerging talent following the debut of her series “Fleabag.” However, with “Killing Eve” she cemented herself as not only one of the freshest and funniest new voices in comedy but a creative mind built to explore genres with gusto. “Killing Eve,” based on the novels “Codename Villanelle” by Luke Jennings, the series with its psycho-sexual tension and spy thriller roots needed a female point of view to take center stage. Bridge, along with the genius casting of Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer as the leads, created a series that at times felt miraculous in its ability to bridge genres; to make violence playful, Oh’s Eve a clever disaster whose beauty is apparent but never sexualized and Comers never weaponized. The tension between Oh and Comer is taut and thick, making any scene they share highlights of the first season and both actresses deliver evocative, hilarious, and moving performances. Luckily, it isn’t just a series meant to showcase two undeniable talents but cohesively built from the ground up from the pitch-perfect music choices to wardrobe that informs the plot and realities of globe-trotting that dull the glitz and glamor that’s promoted. It is never the thrills that make “Killing Eve” so engrossing (though the execution of the action-packed moments is excellent) but the very real humans at the core. – Ally Johnson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kk0PyD-XNZA
7. “Dear White People”
After Season 1, “Dear White People” had already staked a serious claim to be one of Netflix’s best comedies, and certainly their most urgent and timely, and its second season only improved on things: it’s the definitive college comedy for the era of no-platforming, the alt-right, and Black Lives Matter. Picking up more or less immediately from the aftermath of the protest that Season 1 focused on, this benefited from moving further away from Justin Simien’s movie of the same name, and following a more multi-stranded storyline, that took in a missing support dog, white liberal guilt, and Tessa Thompson as a Milo-ish provocateur. But it also worked better because it was more focused on the impact of individual episodes, and in “Chapter IV” (the Coco-centric one, directed by Kimberly Peirce) and “Chapter VIII” (the Gabe/Sam bottle episode, directed by Simien himself), it had two of the best half-hours of TV anywhere. And the cast is, across the board, superb — you suspect that we’ll look back years from now when Logan Browning, Brandon P. Bell, Marque Richardson, and Antoinette Robertson are all huge stars and see this as a killer collection of talent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbCQsA1g3K0
6. “The Little Drummer Girl”
We came out of a screening of the first two episodes of “The Little Drummer Girl” thinking that we might have seen the best TV show of the year. It didn’t quite claim that crown — the pacing and focus lapsed a little over a slightly over-extended six-episode run. But Park Chan-Wook’s spy thriller remained an absolute TV highlight of the year, and certainly the best John Le Carré adaptation since “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.” The show focused on Charlie (an astonishing Florence Pugh), an actor with radical politics who is recruited by Israeli agents (led by a pleasingly scenery-chewing Michael Shannon) to bring down a Palestinian terror cell in the 1970s. But this wasn’t a straightforward tale at all — Park was as concerned with the performative nature of spy work as with the story, and the politics and morality get increasingly murky and blurred over time. It’s a rare fictional story about Israel/Palestine that neither condemns nor condones either side unequivocally. And it was all delivered with sharp, wry writing from Michael Lesslie and Claire Wilson, and the kind of pervy, stylish, immaculate direction that Park has made his name on.
https://twitter.com/ThePlaylist/status/1051543430197784576
