20. “Little America” (AppleTV+)
Based on a series from Epic magazine, this beautiful, poignant anthology dramedy remains the best reason to get an Apple TV+ subscription. While A-list vehicles like “The Morning Show” and “Defending Jacob” got most of the press, “Little America” was the real star of Apple’s new offering, the kind of heartfelt storytelling more common to short story writing or feature filmmaking than television. Highlights include the poignant tale of a mother who wins a luxury cruise trip, the saga of a patriarch who buys a piece of property with a giant rock on it, and the story of a spelling prodigy who ends up running his family’s motel. In a year in which empathy seemed in short supply, and it was difficult for people to actually hear true stories like these in person, “Little America” offered windows into different lives around the country. – BT
19. “PEN15” (Hulu)
Hulu’s “Pen15” (“Penis”) is un-f*cking-bearable; literally one of the most painful and excruciating things to watch on television right now. And boy, is it hysterically good. Created by its stars, comedians Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle (executive produced by The Lonely Island guys, Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone), “Pen15” is agonizing cringe comedy at its finest and in the vein of say, Todd Solondz’s “Welcome To The Dollhouse.” But with apologies to Mr. Solondz, we’ve never seen the teenage female experience so paralytically awkward. Adding to the show’s impossibly disturbing discomfort, Erskine and Konkle, both in their early 30s, actually play the teenagers on the show next to real teens (cringe). Season 2 got real, Anna’s parent’s divorce, Maya’s period, and a jealous feud between the two best friends that threatened to upend the entire show. “PEN15” is honestly hard to watch; it so captures teen embarrassment, but it is glorious, and the kind of show you want to call your therapist after it, evokes so much uncomfortable shit. – RP
18. “Devs” (FX)
A theological beast of a miniseries sporting one of the most impressive TV sets ever erected – wherein luminous bubbles of symmetrical precision flicker and glow with the spark of a new world being born – Alex Garland’s “Devs” could be described as a Tarkovsky-lite Greek tragedy on the Sisyphean futility of Silicon Valley suits, men who pluck kale salad bits out of their beards while acting as a messenger gods for the information age. After a software engineer named Lily’s (Sonoya Mizuno) boyfriend, Sergei (Karl Glusman), receives an invite to their quantum computer company’s elite “Devs” department, he is mysteriously killed, opening a whole can of corporate conspiracy worms and infinite possibilities of deterministic chaos. Lily’s investigation into Sergei’s death illuminates something sinister and strange at the company, run by the enigmatic CEO, Forest (Nick Offerman, branching out from his usual type). As she falls further down the rabbit hole of his glass mansion, more questions about what Forest’s ultimate goals are, and what it all possibly means, continue to arise. A heady watch and narrative gut punch, “Devs” isn’t designed for the impatient or faint of heart but is an intimately thought-provoking genre trip on the science(s) of fate and faith. – Andrew Bundy
17. “Tales from the Loop” (Amazon Prime)
A poetic answer to sci-fi shows like “Black Mirror,” and “The Twilight Zone,” “Tales from the Loop” feels like a carefully curated short story collection, ingenuity and sorrow gliding between the wayward souls of a small industry town engineering impossible innovations, often only leading to collective grief. Based on Simon Stålenhag’s art book of the same name, the series puts atmosphere and milieu before plotty exposition, playing something like a mesh of wide-eyed Spielberg and John Steinbeck. An architectural, urban quilt musing on mortality and invention, little is explained unless characters (usually youthful) are learning something about how we, and the choices we make, affect those around us. The episodes typically hinge around a concept, such as: what you invented a device that puts the world on pause, for everyone save who you want to spend more time with, or what if there was a rusty sculpture called the Echo Sphere, where you could hear your voice age as the sound reverberates. Featuring actors including Rebecca Hall and Jonathan Pryce, and put together by behind the scenes talent ranging from Mark Romanek, Jodie Foster to Pixar’s Andrew Stanton (“WALL-E”), the series often hits like the quiet power of an imaginative prose paragraph with cerebral melancholy and emotional cadence. – AB
16. “City So Real” (National Geographic)
In a year of excellent docuseries like “Love Fraud,” “The Last Dance,” and “I’ll Be Gone in the Dark,” nothing really came close to the remarkable achievement of Steve James (“Hoop Dreams”), who captured the arc of a city through one of its most important elections and then picked it up and followed it through the chaos of 2020. When it premiered at Sundance early in 2020, “City So Real” focused on the crowded race that resulted after Rahm Emanuel announced he wouldn’t run for re-election for Mayor of Chicago. Picking up with the Laquan McDonald case that Emanuel handled so poorly he had to leave office, James and his crew followed the many candidates fighting for the job won by Lori Lightfoot. After 2020 became defined by the pandemic and racial unrest of the summer, James came back to Chicago to film a feature-length fifth episode that is the best single piece about 2020 so far. And it’s already out! – BT
