Every year I give what I call the grand
jury prize, honoring series and actors that fall just beneath my qualifications
for the top ten. These include certain promising new genre and sources of original
programming that might fall under the radar.
Most Surprising Source of Brilliance This
Past Year: Starz
Starz has been the redheaded stepchild of
pay cable for most of its existence, often present exceptional programming that
gets recognition in some quarters for excellence (Outlander, Power, Gaslit)
but rarely receives immense credit. This year they took it to a new level with
three radically different adaptations.
In the spring viewers saw Julianne Moore
and Nicholas Gallizet play Mary & George, the mother and son of the Villers
clan who became favorites of the gay king James of Scotland, only to
self-destruct by their own desires. The fall brought us the long-delayed (and
formerly Showtime) limited series Three Women in which Shailene Woodley
told the story of three very different women in 2010s America who wanted more
out of their lives. One of the most boldly erotic (as opposed to pornographic)
series in recent years, it featured brilliant performances by all four leads,
especially Betty Gilpin in a performance that has already received consideration
for Awards this year. And we rang out the year with Sweetpea the very
black comedy that featured Ella Purnell as Rhiannon, a twentyish woman who has
spent her entire life not being noticed – and then decides to come out of the
shadows as an avenger – or so she thinks.
Starz has been showing a remarkable upgrade
in television in this decade. I look forward to 2025 when I meet The Couple
Next Door.
Best Revived Genre: The Workplace Comedy
Coming off the incredible success of Abbott
Elementary the workplace comedy has seen a remarkable revival, sometimes in
places you wouldn’t expect. This fall has brought the arrival of two very
different kinds of comedy series in that atmosphere.
The English Teacher rang in the fall season with Brian Jordan
Alvarez playing the title role, a gay teacher at an Austin high school trying
to deal with an increasingly fragmented America and not nearly as good a person
or enlightened as he thinks he is. He was helped by a brilliant supporting
cast, including Stephanie Koening (Alvarez’s co-creator) and Enrico Motolani in
some of his best work in nearly a decade as the ultra-harassed principal.
November brought to NBC the exceptional St.
Denis Medical, which features some
of the greatest comic performers in what could be described as Scrubs meets
Parks and Rec. Alison Tolman, Wendi-McLendon Covey and David Alan
Grier are all superb as more cynical caregivers in a hysterical world.
Both of these series were nominated for
Best Comedy by the Critics Choice Awards and while neither have yet received a second
season renewal, both are more than worthy. I’ve argued The Bear is a
workplace comedy above all else but if you insist it is, these are definitely
funnier and more consistent.
Brilliant
Reimaginings
I didn’t much like the idea of Amazon’s
remake of Mr. & Mrs. Smith mainly because I didn’t think the
original movie deserved to be remade in the first place. After just a few
episodes Donald Glover proved me wrong. Glover and Maya Erskine are both
brilliant comic performers and hyphenates but both showed a darker side to
their characters that led to a kind of drama and comedy mesh that became
increasingly unsettling as they worked for a mysterious boss that sent them on
mission that they didn’t understand and never knew why they were trying.
Visited by arguably the best field of Guest performers of any series this year
(the show received five Emmy nominations in that category) the series was
exceptional from beginning to end. It is not clear if either lead will be back
next season but given the nature of what we learned in the 1st season finale,
there’s certainly a lot to explore.
Presumed Innocent was a more likely candidate for a superb
drama treatment and we got just that from David E. Kelley’s adaptation of it
for Apple. Putting Scott Turow’s legal thriller into contemporary settings with
all of the racial and sexual mores involved never once seemed awkward. Jake
Gyllenhaal was exceptional throughout as Rusty, a man who as the series
progresses the viewer becomes more convinced of his guilt and harder to like
with each episode. Peter Sarsgaard delivers an extraordinary performance as
Tommy Molto, the ADA who has both a persecution complex and a narcissistic
complex that seems to be the defense’s best advantage – until the trial begins
and we see just what made him perfect for the job. And the additions to the
cast, including Elizabeth Marvel and Lily Rabe as well as making Carolyn more
of a presence in the show than she was in earlier versions were all brilliant decision
and made the twist of the ending – a critical change from the original –
devastating.
Actresses
of the Year
Actresses I would never want to kill: Ella
Purnell. Purnell was a scene stealing bad girl in the first season of Yellowjackets
and had such an impact she hung around as a ghost in Season 2. She apparently
spent much of 2023 working in everything known to man because she came away the
female lead of two radically different series.
In Amazon’s Emmy nominated Fallout, she played Lucy trying to find a way to
walk through an apocalyptic world with only a Ghoul as her aide. Then in the
fall she played Rhiannon, the avenging angel (or so she thinks) of Sweetpea another
and equally brilliant adaptation. Somehow between this she also did voiceover
work for Star Trek: Prodigy and Arcane. And its good thing both
those series have ended because both her live action ones have been renewed.
Allison Janney never seems to take time off
either because she was in two very different Emmy nominated series this year.
In February she played Evelyn Rollins, a palm beach socialite who was Kristin
Wiig’s biggest obstacle in joining society and was a lot of fun being obnoxious
to everybody (except as we saw, a beached whale) Then this past October she
dropped in as Grace Penn, the current vice president (whose job Keri Russell is
being quietly vetted for) who has a bigger role behind an international crisis
than we thought – and who may be headed for higher office very quickly. Both of
these roles tied into the two roles that Janney won six of her seven Emmys for
and give every indication more may very well be in her future.
Actors
of the Year
You’d think having just spent four
years playing Mike November on Amazon’s Jack Ryan Kelly would want a
break from television or at least morally ambiguous characters. You’d be wrong.
During 2024 he took on the role of Johnny Vitti, the second in command in the
Falcone family who tries to maintain order in the death of the leadership and
ends up being the final victim of Sofia’s hostile takeover. Then he returned to
his role as Byron Westfield, the CIA director trying to increasingly maintain
order in a dangerous political setting and facing flak from both below (Zoe
Saldana) and above (the White House)
There is no ambiguity to be found in
Michael Emerson’s work: he’s just Evil. I don’t just mean his work as
Leland, the acolyte of demons, the babysitter to the Antichrist and the force
that has brought so much malevolence to the world today. I also mean his work doing
voiceover as Brainiac, the AI of Krypton who has manipulated Supergirl all her
life and chooses to do the same to Superman in the incredible second season of My
Adventures With Superman. His character was destroyed but we all know how
much that lasts in comic books. By the time he was playing the corrupt
(murderous) judge at the end of Elsbeth this past year, it was clear how
much fun he was having. As we always are watching him.
Series I Will Miss The Most (That Left on
Its Own Terms)
Adieu Somebody Somewhere. Your cancellation
may have been abrupt and you may have had some loose ends to wrap up. But in
what was your series finale, you left us feeling the way we always: hopeful,
warm and with a song in our heart and one that Bridget Everett had just sung.
Now maybe the Emmys can honor you for an encore.
Series Whose Cancellation Cut Me To The
Quick
There were more than a few this past year I’m
sorry are gone but the one I think I’ll mourn the most is the exceptional So
Help Me Todd. It seemed to be bringing back the revival of the network
drama and I thought it’s cancellation meant a body blow to it. Fortunately,
this new season which has already brought us the reboot of Matlock and
the exceptional High Potential shows it’s not going anywhere.
HBO Procedural We All Should Have Watched
Instead of True Detective
Get Millie Black was everything Night Country wasn’t
and I don’t just mean the Jamaican setting instead of the Alaskan one. It
featured a female lead who seemed to be more driven and morally upright than
either Navarro and Danvers but revealed her to be a force far more destructive,
more determined to throw everything away, and more comfortable with saving
strangers than being close to her own friends and family. By choosing her
through the perspective of everyone around her Marlon James showed that Millie
eventually destroyed everything she touched and had such tunnel vision about
her job that she never cared about anything around her. I don’t know if there
can be a second season (the finale was very definitive) but I wouldn’t mind getting
Millie Black again.
And
to wrap this up….
Reality
Show Star of the Year (Not a Typo)
Jeopardy champions had come from odd places
before but I never once thought one could come from Survivor. Nevertheless
Drew Basile demonstrated those skills, not only when he managed to flatted
fifteen game winner Adriana Harmeyer but when he went on a seven game winning
streak of his own that netted him just under $130,000. He certainly
demonstrated the ability to Outsmart and Outwit his fellow contestants and by
surviving the sixth tie-breaker in Jeopardy history, he proved he could outlast
it. In his last appearance he rang in to deliver the clue: “the tribe has spoken”
and Ken asked if it exorcised bad memories for him. We will see him attempting
to do all three of those in next year’s Tournament of Champions, and just as
Ike Barinholtz managed to convince me of the intelligence of winners of Celebrity
Jeopardy earlier this year, Drew has made me consider that of reality show stars.
(I’m still not gonna watch Survivor looking for future contestants, that’s
a bridge too far.)
And that is my last column for 2024. My
readers will next see this kind of work in regard to the Golden Globes later
this week; Jeopardy fans for my reviews of the Second Chance Tournament soon
enough. My continued thanks for all of you who are following and commenting on
my blogs – even those of you who have made it very clear that I am wrong about
what I think.
See You in 2025.
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