Does anyone else think it’s a little quiet out there? And it’s not just because the writers are on strike. After a few years of almost too much television to watch, especially around Emmy deadline season, the first half of 2023 has been relatively… quiet. Part of it is the decline of one-time critical darlings from the peak of the TV mountain with new seasons of “Yellowjackets” and “Ted Lasso” falling short of viewer expectations.
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But it was also a preponderance of “just good” TV. There seems to be a lot of stuff to watch in 2023, but little of it is memorable enough to remember midway through the year, much less at the end of it. Let’s hope the last six months of 2023 turn things around. Until then, don’t miss these 15 shows, the best so far (and yes, in alphabetical order to make it easier and not play favorites).
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“Abbott Elementary” Season 2 (ABC)
The best show on network television remains Quinta Brunson’s Emmy-winning comedy about life at a Philadelphia public school. The creator/star took the success of the first season and used it to confidently build on what fans loved about these characters. While it was nice to see the romance between Brunson’s Janine and Tyler James Williams’ Gregory pushed forward, the writer’s smartest move has been in giving her entire ensemble chances to shine. Yes, everyone loves Sheryl Lee Ralph and Janelle James, but Lisa Ann Walter, William Stanford Davis, and Chris Perfetti all had stand-out moments in the 2023 run of this show too. It takes a fully-staffed faculty to make a comedy this consistently great. – Brian Tallerico [Read our review]
“Barry” Season 4 (HBO)
If the fourth season of “Barry” has taught us anything, it’s that Bill Hader is not afraid to take big swings. And we mean big, big swings. Not only did the show take a massive time jump halfway through the season, but Hader, who directed every episode for the first time, took the familiar band of characters in often unexpectedly surreal directions. Grounding it all were powerhouse performances from not only Hader as the title character but Anthony Carrigan as NoHo Hank (who experienced the most heartbreaking moment of the entire series), Sarah Goldberg as a transformative Sally, and Stephen Root as the somehow unkillable Fuches. Hader and co-creator Alec Berg stretched the lines of narrative credibility as they sped toward the finale, but it ended in a cinematic flourish that could only be overshadowed by the “Succession” series finale that aired right before it (a bizarre scheduling decision we’ll never understand). – Gregory Ellwood [Read our review]
“Beef” (Netflix)
The spark for Lee Sung Jin’s breakout black comedy is a road rage incident between a frustrated small businesswoman, Amy (Ali Wong), and a struggling contractor, Danny (Steven Yeun). And as much as their anger at each other is relatable to anyone who has driven a car in a moderately inhabited area, “Beef” is much more than a revenge tale through a prestige television filter. Unlike some of its more heralded counterparts, at its heart, the Netflix series is actually a pretty sophisticated takedown of the promise of capitalist society (hey, not every show needs to hit you over the head like “Squid Game”). At every turn, either Amy or Danny finds their dreams coopted by moral compromises or sabotaged by their own overzealous mistakes. And sure, maybe the story is stretched out an extra episode (or two), but Wong and Yeun are so good you almost don’t want it to end. – GE [Read our review]
“Copenhagen Cowboy” (Netflix)
Following his blisteringly angry and uber-provocative America/Trump-era screed “Too Old To Die Young,” Danish filmmaker Nicolas Winding Refn returns to series form once again, this time dialing things back… well, slightly. A crime noir, a supernatural fairy tale, a gauzy, nightmarish fantasy, a surreal horror, etc. Refn reaches into his vast and genre-filled toolkit to create one of the year’s most original and fascinating mini-series. Titled “Copenhagen Cowboy,” and seemingly even borrowing from the superhero genre a little bit, Refn return to his Danish roots, seemingly determined to do something in the vein of his crime genre film “Pusher” trilogy, but veering off as he wont to do into the strange and enigmatic. ‘Cowboy’ centers on Miu (Angela Bundalovic), a renegade with various psychic abilities who goes on an unknown quest in Copenhagen’s criminal underworld. However, it gets David Lynch-ian, fever-dream-like, bizarre, and unreal. With its throbbing electro music and neon-soaked imagery, it’s classic Refn, and yet, the series is hard to encapsulate; it’s something to experience rather than read about, and it won’t be for everyone. But its magical realism is super captivating, an unknowable story about fate, destiny, and inexplicable forces battling for dominance in a way that is just thrilling and enthralling. – Rodrigo Perez [Read our review]
