I have no doubt that many who watched television this year thought
that 2022 was the end of an era. Several of the greatest and most important
series of the past decade – among the ones I will list black-ish and This
is Us – aired their final episodes this year. Much of the world of television is considered
to be in flux, with broadcast networks beginning to cut back on original
programming as a whole and possible cuts into their schedule. Netflix, considered the gold standard for
streaming for the past decade, has spent much of the last year involved in a
financial, creative, and cultural collapse. HBO Max, a promising entry into
original programming, is in the midst of an ownership change which is taking on
the context of a purge when it comes to programming. Others fear that given the current trends in
so many programming buys throughout television general, that television as we
have known in the past twenty years may be undergoing a creative shift it will
never recover from.
All of this may very well be true. But that said, I came away from
watching TV this year with a sense of optimism that pervades much of my top ten
list and beyond. There have been signs
that both the network drama and comedy may have true creative potential for the
first time in years. The hiatus that led many of the series I spent years
waiting for many of these series ending with some of the most incredible
television in all of 2022. And while it is true that some of the greatest shows
of all time are ending, there have been enough new series premiering in the
last year and a half in unexpected places to make me believe that Peak TV may
never truly come to an end.
Before I begin my list of the ten best series of the past year, I
should make the addendum that this list only includes series that watched every
episode of the current season in the calendar year. This will lead to the
exclusion of the current season of The Crown and The White Lotus among
others. In addition, I occasionally will
forego some of the more obvious choices for the best of the year list to put it
in some series that might very well have been overlooked by so many of the
critics this year.
10. Alaska
Daily (ABC)
I debated which brand new broadcast drama I would
put in this slot the longest – it was either going to be this series or the equally
imaginative and engaging So Help Me Todd, which puts the best spin of
the legal drama since The Good Wife did thirteen years ago. Ultimately
though, Alaska Daily won out because it took on a format at its center
that few, if any TV series have tried in decades, and did so in broadcast
television.
At the center of the series is Hilary Swank as
Eileen Fitzgerald, who plays a character so complicated and hard-to-like that
you don’t see outside the world of Shondaland. Unlike so many of those characters,
however, Eileen is driven fundamentally to try and make a difference at the
most fundamental level and is working in a job that is in more jeopardy that
lawyer and political fixer – print journalism.
The story at the center of the series is a superb one, too, as Eileen
and native Ros Friendly (Grace Dove) try to figure out the fate of missing
Alaskan native that is part of a larger pattern of how the world views the fate
of anyone who isn’t a white person. This couldn’t have been driven home clearer
in the fall finale when the paper examined how much time, energy and money was
being expended to find a white twenty-ish girl who drunkenly fell of a cruise
ship and how little was being spent to find a native woman. It was brilliantly illustrated and the kind
of story we need to be telling anywhere. The series is superbly cast all the
way through, including Jeff Perry, finally getting to play someone admirable as
the editor of this troubled paper.
Created by Thomas McCarthy, one of the great
writer-directors of the 21st Century, this series would have been
just as sensational had it premiered on cable or streaming and much more likely
to have a future if it did. That said, I think Alaska Daily’s exactly
where it needs to be. Like the profession at its center, the quality broadcast drama
is in danger of extinction as budget cuts loom and network are driven towards
the safest possibilities. We need series like this to remind us what they are
for. With Swank taking a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress earlier this
month, there’s a chance critics realize this. I hope that ABC does too.
9. The Gilded Age (HBO)
Those of you who read my columns on this show last year know the
ecstasies that I went into about it when it debuted way back in January. I
called this extraordinary period piece the best new drama of the decade and the
first truly great drama to debut on since This is Us. While I was wrong
in some regard (I’ll get to why in a moment) its hard not to come away from a
series so creative remarkable as The Gilded Age and not look away in
wonder. This is even more remarkable considering that Julian Fellowes, the
wizard behind it, was the force behind Downton Abbey a series that I
outright dismissed when it was on the air.
For all I know, Gilded Age is just an earlier American version of
that same series. But even so, you have to marvel at just what you are seeing.
Here is a show airing on a network known for pushing every single
boundary you can imagine and it looks like it would be just as at home on Masterpiece
Theater. There has been no violence, no real nudity or sex and if there’s been a use
of any obscenity stronger than ‘goddamn’ I don’t recall it. But the dialogue is just quotable and often as
witty and anything one would hear on Deadwood. There’s a cast nearly as
large as that series, too, but not one of them seems wasted. And the women are
at the absolute of this series, with three of the greatest actresses in
television history Christine Baranski, Carrie Coon, and Cynthia Nixon – at the
center of it all doing work that rivals their best ever. The entire cast is
equally able all the way down, from Morgan Spector as one of the most dynamic
millionaires you’ll ever meet, Louise Jacobson, demonstrating that Meryl’s
brilliance has seeped down to yet another daughter and all the smaller roles
involving such brilliant character actresses as Debra Monk, Jeanne Tripplehorn
and Audra McDonald.
This series is, in my opinion, infinitely superior to Succession when
it comes to discussing the lives of the very wealthy, in that demonstrates the
level of conservatism between ‘society’ and new money. It’s also infinitely more
optimistic as the world of the Roys shows the end of all of this climbing. The
Gilded Age represents the beginning of the Progressive Era and the changes
that would unfold, also showing how utterly resistant the old guard was to it
all the way through.
Appropriately, The Gilded Age is symbolic of the new wave of
great television that has begun since the decade began. The previous year we were graced with the
presence of the incredible Yellowjackets and the astounding Cruel
Summer. (The former will return next year; I wait in breathless
anticipation for the latter.) These series, combined with The White Lotus, The
Old Man and some of the other series that will appear on this list make as strong
an argument for those of us who cling hard to the idea that the Golden Age has
passed that progress never stops even for Peak TV. ‘We are witnessing history,” is said at one
point in The Gilded Age. And change never stops.
8. Zahn McClarnon – Dark Winds (AMC)/ Reservation
Dogs (FX on Hulu)
Yes, I’m violating one of my own rules by putting two shows here but
trust me I’ve seen TV Guides list and their worse offenders by far. Besides,
the link between these series is far clearer than some of the ones they tried.
Zahn McClarnon has been one of the great Native American actors of our
time who, like so many, rarely gets work worthy of him. This year, he finally
managed to land the lead role in a new recurring series that is the kind of show
both the network, actors like him and the genre it represents, needed.
For years television’s idea of the mystery series has either been locked
in the procedural or relocated to Britain, despite the literally dozens of
American set mystery series that climb the best-seller list. With Dark Winds
AMC has adapted to the screen Tony Hillerman’s legendary Leaphorn and Chee
mystery novels, set on a Navajo reservation in New Mexico in the 1970s. McClarnon takes the role of Leaphorn in a
complicated series of murders that ultimately involve a high-stakes bank
robbery, corruption among the FBI and the desire for independence against a
world of oppression against Native Americans.
Featuring exceptional acting (Noah Emmerich and Rainn Wilson are cast
memorably against type) the series starts in an ethically grey area and ends in
even murkier territory. By the end of the first season, the law had triumphed
over the criminal element, but not even the characters who survived are clear
whether good has triumphed over evil.
Then again, given the world most of them live in, evil managed to win a
long time ago. Dark Winds was deservedly renewed for a second season and
considering how many novels Hillerman wrote they will have no shortage of
material for a long time.
McClarnon, because of being lead in Dark Winds, had less time
to appear in his semi-regular role as another reservation lawman, Big on Reservation
Dogs. (Though the writers did go out of their way to give his character a
memorable acid-trip conspiracy based episode that was perfectly true to him.)
But the series was just as fine with his diminished presence. The already rollicking
series became slightly more serious as the gang of four split when Elora went
with archrival Jackie to California on a trip that was a disaster. She and Bear
spent most of the season vehemently opposed to each other, with not even deaths
and reconciliations working. Only a move by Cheese near the end of the season
brought them back together and to California at last. The series also expanded
its world by looking at the parents and families of the children - and showed that some of the troubles they
have are deep – but they don’t stop trying to live.
Both series are written and directed by Aboriginals and considering
how much their voices have been suppressed, its incredible to hear them
speaking out in two completely different series with completely different tones.
Both series have been renewed for another season and I look forward to seeing
what stories they will tell.
7. Gaslit
(Starz)
There are days I am prouder of my chosen profession than others. They
include the days that the Hollywood Critics Association and The Critics Choice
Awards give their nominations for TV, and almost inevitable both groups make
better selections than the Emmys. (Many of the shows on this blog benefited a
lot from them.) I was particularly grateful when the HCA gifted Gaslit with
five nominations in the Limited Series and, after the Emmys had shafted it, the
Critics Choice gave it four. The only reason I can think that the Emmys decided
to nominate such infinitely more juvenile series than Inventing Anna and
Pam and Tommy over it was because they appeared on streaming platforms
that the Emmys recognize, whereas Gaslit airs on Starz, a cable network
the Emmys have decided doesn’t exist. It certainly had nothing to do with quality
or historical or cultural relevance.
Half a century after the break-in at the Watergate, some might think
there’s nothing left to say about what we once called the greatest scandal in
political history. Creators Rob Pickering and Sam Esmail proved us wrong. By
centering the story around Martha Mitchell (Julia Roberts in a triumph) once simply
considered Attorney General John Mitchell’s ‘crazy’ wife (an unrecognizable Sean
Penn), a human element was put upon just how a man utterly devoted to the
President will do to protect the chain of command – even if that means utterly
destroying the woman he once loved.
Nixon only appeared in the series in stock footage and recordings, but
at this point what’s left to be said about Nixon. Gaslit told a more
compelling narrative – that the President’s men were loyal to a man who didn’t
respect him (most of the names were played by comic actors) that the Plumbers
who organized the break-in were incompetent buffoons who had no business being near
the White House and that the only reason the truth came out is that the man who
came out the hero (Dan Stevens as John Dean) only came around to doing the
right thing when there was no other choice.
They also point out that we may very well have learned the wrong
lessons from Watergate – that it was a story where the system worked, the
corrupt forces were brought to bear and good triumphed over evil. Did it
really? The good guys - Frank Willis and
the FBI agents who did the ground work – never got the credit they deserved.
Most of the bad guys ended up serving reduced sentences or no time at all.
Nixon spent the rest of his life traveling the world as an elder statesman. And
as for whether the nation got the message – there’s a reason one of the last
shots of the series is of a campaign poster for Reagan with a very familiar
slogan. Gaslit puts a human face on what we consider a victory for truth
and justice and makes it very clear that there wasn’t much of either. Maybe
that’s one of the reasons the Emmys basically ignored it.
6. Atlanta
(FX)
The world spent better part of four years waiting to see what happened
to Earn and Paperboi on the European tour when the second season of Atlanta ended
in 2018. In the last eight months, we got the last two seasons of the series.
In my opinion, it was well worth the wait.
The third season of Atlanta was a stirring and remarkable achievement,
yet many fans of the show had a mixed reaction to it. I have little doubt that
it had less to do with the quality of the episodes and more to do with the fact
that they had left the familiar world. I don’t just mean that nearly half the
season Donald Glover and Hiro Murai seemed to set the show in an alternate
universe that seemed like David Lynch and Jordan Peele were collaborating; I
mean that the rest of that season was in the confines of Europe and somehow
made the rest of the weirdness of the show seem out of place. I don’t think the
quality diminished one bit: ‘New Jazz’ was a wonderful episode and the season 3
finale featured some of the best work Zazie Beetz ever did for the series, but
I can understand why the fans wouldn’t accept this world, even if they could
handle ‘Teddy Perkins’ just fine. We got the barest hint that their might be
some connection between the worlds in the season finale, but it was never followed
up on. I think that was for the best; would any explanation have sufficed?
Season 4 returned to Atlanta, and the surrealism continued to a new
hype. Trips to the malls became sites for riots, we saw just how ugly the world
of Mr. Chocolate could be and it turns out ‘crumping’ could get you killed. Nor
did we completely abandon the alternate universe of Season 3; in one of the
last episodes of the series, we got a B.A.N. documentary of the only African-American
head of Disney and learned just why A Goofy Movie was the blackest movie
Disney ever made. Even the episodes that might have been considered
heartwarming – Earn and Van finally committing to a relationship and agreeing
to move to LA together – were undercut by the increasing oddness of their
daughter, who for some reason doesn’t like her birthday. (If Glover ever tried
to do an Atlanta follow-up, I’d like to see how their daughter turns out
ten or so years down the line; that kid’s gonna be messed up somehow.)
The series ending on a perfectly surreal note in which the viewer,
like Darius, is utterly unconvinced as to the reality of the world around him.
Some might feel cheated one way or another, but having watched the series for
four entire seasons, how convinced are you that any episode of the show took
place in anything resembling reality? Glover and Murai have spent four season
showing you just how utterly bizarre the world that Earn and his friends live
in. A St. Elsewhere type ending might actually be too normal for
the show we’ve watched.
Donald Glover has spent the last decade proving that he is one of the
greatest creative forces in any form of media he chooses to inhabit. I have
little doubt he will return to TV in some form at some point. But he’ll never
create another Atlanta. There was only one series ever like it, and we
should be grateful we got to inhabit this weird world.
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