Before we begin let's talk about
where TV is and where it isn't.
First of all I think the part of Peak
TV that was all about the White Male Antihero is officially dead and buried.
Some, perhaps many, will mourn this and rightfully so. If, however, that
particular genre had started to pay increasingly diminishing returns in recent
years – and for me personally the well had started to run dry well before the
2016 election - you might count it a
blessing.
To be sure the darkness that
surrounds television, much like the world we live in today, will never truly go
away and I was drawn to more than my share of those series as this list will
illustrate. But increasingly I found myself more inclined to find brilliance in
a different kind of television that has become more prominent in the 2020s. The
kind of dramas and comedies that are built more around community then
individualism. The kind of television shows that deal with people trying to do
good against impossible odds, even knowing they might – and possibly will – fail.
And more and more they are the kind of series that are built around women and
minorities, far more often in the same cast.
What follows as always is the
usual list my readers have come to expect from me over the years: a list that
is often an alternative to the group of ten best we get from most groups
(though there certainly will be overlap) a list that tries to strike a balance
between all models of television be they streaming, cable and in quite a few cases, network television.
In an era where we needed our art to be as much as escapist and aspirational as
we do grounded in reality I found these shows were more than willing to do so.
For this part I will deal with 10-6
on the list.
10. Doc
(Fox)
If nothing else 2025 marks a
remarkable about face in the medical drama. After twenty seasons of drowning in
Grey's Anatomy with no sign of anyone taking that show off life support,
viewers got a series of brilliant hospital dramas that were actually more about
medicine and less about bed hopping. The most promising start (debuting weeks
before the most important one) same with Fox's Doc, which debuted last
January and has done something that has also become more appreciated in the
last few years: running a full season.
Doc's premise deals with Amy Larsen,
played by that masterful actress Molly Parker. In the pilot she suffers a car
accident that causes a form of amnesia that causes her to forget the last eight
years of her life. The last thing she remembers is being a wife and mother of
two. Now her husband has divorced her and remarried, her daughter is estranged
from her and her son is dead. Amy has to relearn all of this as well as the
fact that in the previous eight years she became increasingly cold and impersonal
driving her family away and almost everyone else at the hospital she was chief
of staff. She has one friend left in psychiatry.
Parker is brilliant as we watch
her relearn every part of herself through medicine and the many messy parts of
her personal life including who she pushed away and who became closer. Yet Doc
did everything its could to make it about medicine far more than personal
as well as practice. Each season it has put a remarkable actor in as a
professional nemesis. In Season 1 it was Scott Wolf as a doctor who was lying
to her about a professional judgment. In Season 2, it is Felicity Huffman as an
old friend of Larsen who wants the best from everyone but who also did much to
wreck the personal life of her favorite student. Doc is too good a show
to paint either character as one dimensional villains (we'll be seeing Wolf
back when the show resumes) and it makes clear that everybody – even the intern
who is currently wrecking her professional life – has a reason for what they
do, even if it’s a flawed one.
Doc does have a love triangle at his center,
complicated romantic relationships between its staff and will have major
traumas but it has a basic respect and humanity for its characters that is more
present in the first year than I ever saw in the five seasons I spent at
Seattle Grace before checking out. We need Amy Larsen more than the Meredith
Greys in our world and I'm grateful for a show that gives us one.
9.
CBS Thursday Night Matlock and Elsbeth
Those of you who read these lists
know that I have a habit of 'cheats' like this when their warranted. That being
said ranking the two female led CBS TV shows that make up Thursday night is
perhaps my most forgivable one over the years, particularly considering what
remarkable things they've done with the formula.
Matlock is a reboot of the Andy Griffith
series in name only. Kathy Bates Mattie acknowledges that in this world Matlock
is a TV show and that she – and the writers – are using to create the kind
of genius series that no one could have thought of when we heard the idea.
Bates has already won her share of awards for this show (and an Emmy will come
I'm sure of it) for her work as Madeline Kingston, a former attorney who went
to work at Jacobsen Moore to find out which attorney hid information that could
have exposed the opioid crisis ten years earlier and saved countless lives –
including her daughter.
In Season 1 she spent most of it
both trying to get the truth and forming an unlikely bond with Olympia (the
incredible Skye P. Marshall) who assigned her to a team with two interns and
then found them bonding. Eventually Olympia learned of the truth and not long
after learned a darker one – her ex-husband Julian (an exceptional Jason
Ritter) did so in a last ditch attempt to win his father's approval, which we
know he will never get.
Season 2 has unfolded with Olympia
and Maddie playing chess to try and both find the truth and gain the upper hand
over each other as well as trying to rebuild their friendship. This has
unfolded over a series of well-done cases, a brilliant supporting cast both in
the office and the home front (Sam Anderson is brilliant) and a back and forth
play with flashbacks not done this brilliantly since Billions ended.
It's a magnificent drama that I expect Emmy nominations for in the future.
I don't have to hide my love for Elsbeth
the brilliant show that has officially (and deservedly) been categorized as
a comedy by the Critics' Choice Awards, who nominated both it and its wonderful
star Carrie Preston for awards at the end of the year. Every time Preston is
onscreen the viewer's heart lifts as we see one of the sweetest and good-natured
protagonists in TV history, a brilliant logician and crime solver who feels empathy
and sympathy for the criminal she locks up on a weekly basis. And she's such a
good person that most of them even like her when they do it. How could they
not?
And because this show was created
by the Kings of TV (Robert & Michelle) it has increasingly been able to gently
poke at all the aspects of the formula in the way the Kings always do,
frequently making topical jokes but never to draw attention to them and
increasingly bringing in characters from the Good Wife Television Universe to
join in the fun. This year Sarah Steele has joined as a regular as Marisa Gold
who is following in her father's footsteps as a political consultant for a mayoral
candidate who seems to good to be true – and as we saw in the winter finale,
almost certainly is. It's telling that the reason we're bothered is because
we're more upset as to how Elsbeth will take this because we love her so much.
I hope the decision to categorize
Elsbeth as a comedy leads the Emmys to finally give it and the show the
nominations it deserves. (Then again it is a King show so they know the
odds are stacked against them.) What I do know is that with these two
incredibly brilliant female led dramas in prime-time and led into with the
powerhouse comedy Ghosts Must See TV Thursday exists again on network
TV. And we're all the richer for it.
8.
Abbott Elementary (ABC)
Just because Abbott Elementary
is slightly lower on my list this year then usual (this is the first time
it isn't in the top five of my end of year list) does not mean that it has suffered
a drop in quality. If anything four seasons in Quinta Brunson and her
incredible cast continue to find new and wonderful ways to make us fall in love
with the remarkable cast and school – though that last part is about to change.
We started the year with a
wonderful crossover with It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, followed it
up with Janine and Gregory continuing to build on their romantic relationship, saw
as the District finally found out about the 'bribes' that they had been taking
from the local golf course which led to Ava being fired – and landing on her
feet.
Naturally we had a wonderful
period when Gregory managed to be principal and found out Ava's filing system
was based on reality TV, Ava having a wonderful career as a motivational
speaker, the entire community and the class rallying for Ava to get her job
back (which in Ava fashion she has completely forgotten at the start of Season
5) and a wonderful trip to the Please Touch museum where we saw how much the
kids loved their faculty, and how both Ava and her new beau and Gregory and
Janine are solid couples.
Then throughout Season 5 as the
relationships have gotten better, the school is starting to fall apart.
Literally. The gas malfunctioned in the season premiere (leading the cameraman
to pass out) the school failed its phone policy and in the winter finale the boiler
broke down so badly that the entire school will have to be closed down for the
foreseeable future – and the school will be taking place in a mall. (I really
want to see the new opening sequence next week.)
All of this has led to the usual
sterling run of acting which naturally the Emmys didn't bother to give an award
this year (Janelle James is crying out for one) and the wonderful moments that you
never know you needed until they do. I didn't know I needed to see both the
Abbott faculty and the student body doing the Macarena and now I can't believe
I lived this long without it. But there are signs of personal growth and
change. Ava has made up with her father after years of estrangement last season
but at the winter finale Janine finally made a break with her dysfunctional
mother and we know there are going to be a consequences. (Though if they mean
Taraj P. Henson doesn't show up anymore I'm staging an intervention.)
I don't know how much longer Abbott
Elementary will stay on the air until Brunson decides she wants to move on
to other things. (She's talked about in interviews in recent months.) What I do
know is that we should rejoice at the fact that not only did she create one of
the greatest shows of the decade but one of the greatest comedies of all time.
To say the show's made the honor roll is an understatement.
7.
All Her Fault (Peacock)
Overall this year I've been
underwhelmed by the caliber of limited series that all services had to offer. I
was one of the few people who believed Adolescence was one of the most
overrated shows of 2025 (and I stand by that) and while there were some very
good limited series in a more comic mold this year (Dying for Sex and Sirens
both had exceptional moments) until this December I wasn't sure there'd actually
be a limited series on my ten best of 2025.
Then I saw the first episode of All
Her Fault and I knew I was looking at a potential masterpiece. Halfway
through the potential was gone and when it was over I wasn't surprised that
this had become the most watched original program in Peacock's history.
I've written an article praising
in great detail this past week, so for purposes of this column I'll talk about
the incredible things that helped it play out which by and large was its
incredible cast that didn't have a single weak link. From Sarah Snook to Sophia
Lillis never once did we see an actor who didn't have a false note in them.
Unlike the overwhelming majority of even the best limited series, in which
every character has something dark beneath the surface that makes them capable
of horrible things, the genius of All Her Fault was that while it
illustrated all of its characters were flawed they were all doing their best to
overcome it and were in many cases succeeding until the horrible tragedy that
was Milo Irvine's abduction laid all of their problems bare.
The brilliance of All Her Fault
is the title was actually a lie – everything that happened was all his fault:
specifically Peter Irvine, played by Jake Lacy in a performance that started with
his usual nice guy persona and then went into levels of such darkness that not
even his work in The White Lotus (previously the greatest example of his
malevolence) could come close to the true emptiness of the soul within. A man devoid
of compassion, who could only see people in regard to himself, who genuinely
believed all of the horrible things he did were for a greater good for the
people he loved. Even Walter White would be appalled by this man's monstrosity –
and might well have applauded how he met his fate.
It's difficult to say that the
cast is all doing their best work on TV mainly because from Snook to Abby
Elliott to Jay Ellis all have done incredible work over the years. What I will
say is that at the end of the series, with one key exception, I actually agreed
that these characters (with the exception of Peter) were "These Nice
People." As for the 'Killing Each Other' part, well, most of the deaths
are basically the results of the one bad person and since he felt no remorse
about it, I can't exactly argue about what happened to him.
Both the series and Snook have
been nominated for Best Limited Series and Best Actress by the Golden Globes
and the Critics Choice, with the latter group also nominating Pena and Lillis.
How many awards they will starting next week is hard to say but this is a show
that deserves to be contending for Emmys next summer. If it isn't, it really
will be all the Academy's fault.
6.The
Gilded Age (HBO)
This year apparently everyone
seems to have stop hate watching The Gilded Age and realized it was a good
show. As someone who always considered it a masterpiece (it has been on my top ten
list every season since it debuted) I have considered the people who have only
watched it ironically with the same disregard Agnes Van Rijn feels towards,
well, everybody. Only while most times they don't deserve it, those people absolutely
do.
The pace did pick up a bit from
previous seasons but you also got a sense that showrunners Julian Fellows and Salli
Richardson-Warfield are now comfortable enough with the setup to begin to start
taking apart the foundation they've built bit by bit. This was seen most obviously
with the decision to start tearing apart all the goodwill we'd felt about
Bertha Russell (the incomparable Carrie Coon) from someone doing everything to
climb the social ladder and make her something of a monster, choosing to marry
off her daughter to a Duke to help her own social standing more than any
compassion for who her daughter loves and torpedo her relationship with both
George and her son. At the end of the third season she is at the absolute pinnacle
of the social ladder but her husband has left her, her daughter is on the other
side of the world and her son has made it clear that she is in it for herself and no one else.
We saw a similar struggle between
Agnes and Ada as with the death of her husband and the loss of Agnes' fortune
(due to Oscar) Ada is now in charge of the household. We saw Ada spend the
season struggling to find a cause and deal with the very real pain of her
husband's death. We saw Agnes try to find a place in society now that she no
longer had money. By the end of the season they had found a new way of doing
things and a new way forward and it was a wonderful balance to what was happening
across the street. Christine Baranski and Cynthia Nixon continue to do some of
the best acting in their long and already ridiculously distinguished TV
careers.
And that was just the tip of a delightful
universe led some of the most brilliant cast members, including some of the
greatest actresses who are working today. From Louisa Jacobson, Denee Benton
and Talisa Farmiga to Kelli O'Hara, Audra MacDonald and joined by the
incomparable Phylicia Rashad this is one of two of the great female driven masterpieces
on TV today. (We'll get to the other in the top half.) With impeccable scenery
and cinematography and some of the greatest and wittiest dialogue I've heard on
TV (and they don't even need to say goddamn!) The Gilded Age is one of
the great joys I get watching television. And if you were only watching it
ironically, well, as Agnes might say, clearly you weren't brought up right.
Tomorrow I'll deal with the top five
shows of 2025.
No comments:
Post a Comment