The Best TV of 2023, Part 1: Top 10, Number 10-6

 

I can’t tell you how many times in the past year I’ve read something online that the era of Peak TV as we have known is over. Hell The New Yorker essentially wrote an obituary for it in November. You almost expect that when the Emmys do their inevitable ‘In Memoriam’ sequence this January they will acknowledge it in an extended sequence among the (far too many) dead TV celebrities we’ve lost this year.

No one, certainly not me, will deny the turmoil the industry has faced this past year. The WGA and SAG-AFTRA went on what amounted to a six month stoppage that paralyzed the industry and wiped out not only the fall broadcast network schedule but almost any new shows for much of this year and the next. Delays for new seasons for so many prestige shows on cable have been pushed back to the point that it will likely be until 2025 when HBO can finally start airing the second seasons of its breakout hit The Last Of Us and God knows when some of the series I’ve listed here will get new seasons.

And that’s actually the least tumultuous part of what’s been happening this year. The HFPA has dissolved and the Golden Globes are now under new ownership. There is continued argument removing gender categories in awards  altogether which is, I need to keep repeating this, a horrible idea for every one involved including those non-binary performers who it is designed to benefit but has yet to actually help any of them in the awards shows where it has taken place. The fact that Bella Ramsey and Emma Corrin received nominations for the Spirit Awards this year will no doubt strengthen that argument; the fact that their competing against each other – and to be clear would not be doing so in any other awards show – will do nothing to lessen the argument that this is the future when it’s a step backwards.

Cable channels continue to suffer from the fact that industry is increasing suffering from smaller and smaller profit margins and more consolidations. As these mergers take place, more networks are getting out of the original series business altogether and the men and women who are head of production have been fired. The labor stoppage in Hollywood did nothing to help the condition of the industry and it’s hard to argue that either guild truly got anything from that strike. The behavior of the union heads for both sides made fools of themselves in so many ways during the strike and its clear significant members of both are still unhappy with the terms. The stoppage led to the cancellation of many network shows and streaming series some of which had been renewed – something that the creative forces considered purely punitive and nothing to do with the state of the industry to begin with. When you throw in the tensions in the world that have led to a similar amount of division in Hollywood – and that the stoppage has only exacerbated -  it’s hard not to see the gloom at the end of the year.

Yet paradoxically during this period I could find as much joy from television as I did in the past. I fundamentally believe that the reports of Peak TV’s demise are, to paraphrase Mark Twain, premature if not much exaggerated. It was easy to lose myself in television shows to distract myself from my rage at the business of television. And while I had immense rage at the creative forces for striking in the first place, I continued to remain in awe of the work that they produced.

Now I should mention my top ten of the past year follows some of the usual provisos of my watching patterns. I have yet to see many of the series of 2023 that so many have rejoiced about such as the second season of The Bear or the final season of Reservation Dogs. I have begun the process of watching many of the series that were among those such as Shrinking and The Diplomat and am immensely fond of both but because I did not complete either, I will not list them here. Similarly while the final season of Succession is clearly one of the best shows of 2023 and did lead me to realize that it was a far better series than I had spent so much time and space berating, I felt that because I had not watched the series before – and to be clear, watched only half of the final season in its entirety – I could not in good conscience include it here. All that said, I believe sincerely that all of the shows that are going to be on my top ten list deserve to rank among the best of the year. Many of them already have made several lists I have seen online and in other sources and others are the kind of undervalued gems that because of the services they are a part of would almost certainly be missed by most critics. Besides, if you’d read these end of year pieces, you know that my top ten lists traditionally take on the road less travelled -but still the one that should be.

So without further ado, here are the series I feel represent the best of the past year.

 

10. Found (NBC)

Gabi Moseley is an African-American woman who helps resolve crises with a team in DC but she inhabits a world that Olivia Pope spent seven seasons fundamentally ignoring. Shanola Hampton gives a star-making performance as the former victim of a year in captivity who has recovered from her trauma by trying to help the badly broken: first by assembling a team of victims of trauma in their own pasts that left them on the point beyond repair and then using their skills to help reunite families with those that the Amber Alerts and the local news will never bother to cover.

The writers of Found make it clear from the series premiere that while all the members of Gabi’s team can function they are all, in their own ways, just as broken as they were when she found them. The most jarring example is Margaret, played by veteran actress Kelli Williams in the most wrenching performance in a career that spans nearly thirty years, as a mother who has a non-super-power superpower to read people but still spends every night at the bus station where her son was abducted thirteen years ago. It is the gift of the show that it never flinches from showing how close to the surface all these traumas are; in one episode Gabi asks her team to remember when they thought of killing themselves and all of them can instantly remember a place they would go – except for one for whom the memory is clearly still too fresh.

If it were just a procedural, Found would be a more than welcome entry to the 2023 season, as it raises questions that we never get in network procedurals. Local law enforcement calls Gabi’s team vigilantes, a term she uses with pride, but we are constantly being reminded of whether the end justifies the means. The fact that none of Gabi’s team are cops doesn’t make the questions any less pertinent, particularly because of the biggest twist. Sometime in the past year Gabi tracked down her former abductor, Sir, and has imprisoned him in her basement, using him to help solve her cases. Mark-Paul Gosselaar gives a performance unlike any we have seen in his more than thirty year career. Sir is clearly a monster and we feel no sympathy for him. But when Gabi tells him as such and he gestures to his chains and asks: “What does that make you?”, like Gabi the viewer has no answer. Gabi has clearly spent the last several months justifying her actions to herself but there are none that truly make any sense. She  might have acknowledged it in the winter finale, but only by blaming Sir for her own actions.

I am incredibly grateful that this series, which only aired this fall because of the strikes in Hollywood, has already been renewed for a second season. I don’t know where Found can go in the final two episodes of the season but I have full confidence that I want to find out.

 

9. Will Trent (ABC)

I had never heard of Karin Slaughter’s Will Trent series before I watched the pilot way back in January but it took very little time for me to fall in love with it. Critics and viewers quickly agreed with me: it was renewed for a second season and many awards shows have been more than willing to show love for it. In yet another move that justified their existence the HCA nominated it for eight awards, including Best Network Drama. Ramon Rodriguez, who plays the title role, has also deservedly received nominations for his work from the Critics Choice Awards and the Spirit Awards.

In the last several months I have read five of Slaughter’s Will Trent novels and intend to read as many as she has written. I acknowledge that the showrunners have made several differences in some of the races of the characters. Amanda Wagner and Faith Mitchell, Will’s boss and new partner at the GBI, are now African-Americans. I don’t object to this because having seen Sonja Sohn play Amanda, I can’t imagine anyone else in the role. They also had to slightly soften her because in the books Amanda is the boss from hell. Here, Amanda’s still the boss from hell but at least she’s not a full out monster all the time.

There have also been some critical differences involving Angie Pulaski, Will’s soulmate on the show and a harridan in the books and Michael Ormwood, who – well, if you read Triptych, you know he shouldn’t have lasted past the Pilot. But I think it is possible to enjoy both the books and the series as separate institutions, though to be clear there are elements of the plots of several of the volumes in Season One. (I’ll leave it for those who haven’t read the books to know why.)

Rodriguez’s work in the title role is the most series dramatic debut I’ve seen from a relative unknown since Jon Hamm burst on to the scene in Mad Men. Will has immense scars, both psychological and physical and its astonishing how well he manages to function in a world this broken. Will’s connection to Betty is established in the Pilot, the individual cases he investigates can be wrenching and mesmerizing and Erika Christensen delivers one of the best performances I’ve seen her do in years. I know from the books that they are horrible for each other. Part of me hopes that the show keeps diverging from canon in that respect.

Will Trent was the best network show in 2023 and shows that despite the fact that broadcast TV is on life support when it comes to quality entertainment, it is still more than capable of occasionally giving us masterpieces. Shows like this, So Help Me Todd, Found and the reimagined Quantum Leap give me hope that the networks can still play a role in the evolving world of Peak TV in the 2020s. I look forward to the second season.

 

8. Poker Face (Peacock)

Shifting gears dramatically, Poker Face is the first series I’ve ever been willing to subscribe to a streaming service for the sole purpose of watching. I don’t know if it justifies the existence of Peacock but I do know that there is nothing quite like on any service – even though it’s very clearly ripping off one of the most iconic shows of all time, right down to the opening credits.

Natasha Lyonne has been one of the great icons of Peak TV ever since Orange is the New Black debuted and there has never been an actress more suited to the medium. I have increasingly become convinced Lyonne can do anything, and Poker Face shows that, apparently, she can do a perfect Peter Falk impression. And no, I’m not kidding; I swear she started to sound like him by the end of the first season.

Of course Charlie Cale would just as soon not be Columbo. She has the ability to tell when someone is telling a lie. And in the opening of the series that lands her in a situation where she spends the entire year running from gangsters who want her dead and somehow always landing with a new group of character who are killing each other everywhere in America. Furthermore, it’s worth noting that almost all of these guest stars are far from criminal masterminds: in fact, they are so dumb you honestly wonder how much work the police would need to do without Charlie. But you don’t care because the series features incredible guest actors every week: Adrian Brody, Ellen Barkin, Nick Nolte, Tim Blake Nelson, Judith Light, Charles Melton, Joseph Gordon-Levitt – really every episode has a ready nomination for Best Guest Actor or Actress; the Emmys truly dropped the ball in the nominations for them this year.

Lyonne is the glue that holds it together and the viewer laughs with her as she finds herself dealing with all of these liars and increasingly beginning to wonder if she seeks out these people because of how dark they are. There is a scene in the season finale when she is desperately trying to flee for her life and goes to see her sister – and her sister doesn’t care how she has spent the last year. The fact that Charlie, given the opportunity to become a cop and stop running chooses not to, does speak volumes about who she is.

Lyonne has been nominated for Best Actress in a comedy by every major awards group this year. The show itself has been having trouble getting there; the Emmys and Golden Globes inexplicably ignored it; the Critics Choice and the HCA were more than willing to sign on. Lyonne will win an Emmy for her work, if not this year then soon. And I can’t wait to see how many strange murders she winds up in when Season 2 drops.

 

7. Fellow Travelers (Showtime)

I will confess I’ve had a certain amount of difficulty in my life getting involved in LGBTQ+ themed shows. It took a lot for me to commit to Pose though I did consider a masterpiece and worthy of the recognition it got in the three seasons it was on the air. I loved Transparent but I never finished it. And even now shows that are extremely graphic in their sexuality still turn me off, which may be one reason I still can’t get behind Euphoria.

I had doubts with the description some gave to Fellow Travelers as ‘Mad Men with copious gay sex.’ But I committed to it because the show was not only a period piece but also dealt primarily with a period that many of the gay actors in the series did not know about before they signed on. For that reason alone Showtime deserves massive praise for creating this limited series. It’s also one of the greatest limited series in a year full of them.

Matt Bomer is extraordinary as Hawkins Fuller, a State Department employee who believes in absolutely nothing but keeping his ‘bulletproof’ cover intact. Initially he has no problem using Tim both for sex and to put him on the staff of Joseph McCarthy at the height of the Red Scare. McCarthy is about to be at the center of the Lavender Scare, in which ‘deviants’ in DC were the targets of witch hunts far worse than the Red Scare. The fact that McCarthy, Roy Cohn and David Schine, the figures who led the hunt were known as ‘Bonnie, Bonnie and Clyde’ in DC shows a level of hypocrisy even deeper than that we find in DC even to this day. At one point, it is implied that Cohn more or less leads to the hearings in the Army because he blames them for drafting Schine a man that he clearly loves but is so deep in denial about his sexuality that he refuses to acknowledge. That he will destroy McCarthy’s career publicly doesn’t matter. (Both Will Brill and Chris Bauer are magnificent as Cohn and McCarthy.)

Just as telling is the story of Lucien, an African American who feels that part of his identity trumps even his sexuality. Late in the series after Harvey Milk has been assassinated, Lucien keeps telling both his longtime lover and a student of his not to get involved in the protests “because what those white men isn’t are business.” By the end of the series Lucien has finally managed to square all the parts of his identity – something that Hawkins spends the entire series unable to do until the end.

Bomer and Jonathan Bailey have justifiably each received extraordinary praise for their word as the two romantic leads in this series, men who spend the better part of thirty-five years desperately in love but whom Hawk refuses deep down to ever acknowledge is a part of who he is. You might find Bailey’s are more tragic considering how reckless and arrogant Bomer is until the end of the series, but it isn’t until the end that we truly realize just how painful denying this part of his identity had been. Both men will be heavy contenders for awards as will the series in the year to come.

We need stories like Fellow Travelers more than ever, not merely to tell us how far we haven’t come but how far we have. Tim lives his entire life unafraid and committed to his causes even when they clash with his identity. Hawk spends his entire life hiding and putting up a public face, never acknowledging that the two will ever collide – until they do at the end. That Hawk feels he can finally tell the truth about who he is might seem like a tragedy – until you consider how many spent their entire lives never being able to at all.

 

6. The Gilded Age (HBO)

I am not the kind of person who normally does victory laps but now that the rest of the world finally seems to be catching up on this extraordinary series where I was last February, I feel I am entitled to toot my own horn a little. Yours truly was the only critic of any kind to consider The Gilded Age  on their best shows of last year, something that most critics back in 2022 seemed utterly unwilling to acknowledge was even a good show. I mean, it was a period piece, but where were the dragons? Lots of rich people, but they didn’t swear! How dare HBO produce a series that could just as easily air on PBS!

Well, the rest of the world has begun to catch up with me, even if they’re not entirely there yet. Many critics acknowledge that this is a superbly done series with many comparing it far better than Julian Fellowes’ Downton Abbey. Many are in awe of the performances and the writing in the second season, saying that it is superior to the first season by far. (I think they are damning with faint praise but still.) At the end of the day, I think it is the fact for all intents in purposes this is not the kind of HBO drama that those of us who have enjoyed their work for a quarter of a century are used too, certainly not from the network whose most famous period pieces are Deadwood and Boardwalk Empire.

But in every other aspect that you measure an HBO series – writing, directing, acting, technical aspects – this show is clearly a masterpiece. It’s also a show that you could freely let your teenage child watch despite the ridiculous TV-MA rating, which seems to be the best argument I’ve seen we have to throw out the rating system entirely: there hasn’t even been one goddamn in the entire series. The Gilded Age is adult, in subject manner only. (Something you could not, say, accuse Euphoria of being.)

The Gilded Age is one of the best representatives that for the evolving Peak TV, the future is female. All of the three major leads – Carrie Coon, Cynthia Nixon and Christine Baranski – have the best lines and all the power. Louise Jacobson and Denise Benton are the models of the working women that we did not even think would exist even now and yet both show they have sheltered lives as Benton’s character learned too well when she went to Tuskegee to check in on Booker T. Washington’s school. And some of the greatest character and Broadway actors are in the case, from the wonderfully acerbic Debra Monk to Kelli O’Hara and Audra McDonald.

The series shows that we are in a New York that is evolving – both the Metropolitan Opera and the Brooklyn Bridge are critical to the story of this season. And we see figures and events that will be critical in the years to come. This season we have met not only Washington, but Oscar Wilde and Jane Adams. And the series, almost without knowing it, dealt directly with the labor issues that are facing both Hollywood and the nation this past year, and show the divide between the rich and working class can never be truly healed, even within the 1 percent of the era.

I practically leapt off my chair when The Gilded Age got renewed for a third season. Now if only the awards shows can catch up with it. Perhaps now that Succession is gone and House of the Dragon, The Last of Us, The White Lotus and Euphoria are not going to be eligible for this year’s Emmys, might we suggest this show for consideration for HBO?