So my brother posted his list of top 20 tv shows and asked for others'. Going off of complete runs that I have seen and where the show hangs together on the whole (The Good Wife is fairly flawless for five seasons and then...)
Despite having watched my fair share of tv, there's obviously so many great shows that I have yet to get to (like The Leftovers) or that I haven't finished (The Wire, Six Feet Under, the Knick, Pose, Black Sails...).
Also, it's still ongoing, but Derry Girls is the best and everyone should stop what they're doing and go watch it right now.
1. Hannibal. My absolute favorite. I'm doing a slow rewatch at the moment and god - it's just so gorgeous. The direction, the cinematography, the production (including the food!). Mads Mikkelsen (who just won best actor yesterday at the EFAs for Another Round!) delivers the most unbelievable performance. I still marvel at the tiniest micro expressions that flit across his face. It's just astounding. The whole thing is a clever, wonderful fever dream.
(plus I mean the fandom is the best and still going strong 5 years later #Fannibalsvoteblue)
2. Breaking Bad. Just the best. The acting was phenomenal, the cinematography just jaw-dropping, and I'm still shocked that it was so good, so consistently, for so long, and just nailed the ending (important for this list!)
3. The Americans. So brilliant, so criminally underrated. Obviously not a new observation, but as much about marriage as spying. The three leads deserved so many more accolades. And all the supporting actors are the best, particularly Martha.
4. Justified. Okay - so season 4 isn't *quite* as good as the other seasons, but only because the first three set the bar so high. And then they set an end date and seasons 5 & 6 are great, and they stuck the landing so hard. God I love the interplay between Raylan and Boyd. I'm planning a rewatch of this next year (once I wrap my current Hannibal/Farscape rewatches) and I am SO. EXCITED.
5. Planet Earth/Blue Planet. Not only are these incredible feats of wildlife photography, and compulsively rewatchable, I am certain their popularity and beauty have made an impact for conservation.
6. Fleabag. Just perfect.
7. Miss Fishers Murder Mysteries. Fancy murder mysteries! Endlessly rewatchable. Hey! Almost time for the Christmas episode!
8. Veep. So funny, so smart. Matt Zoller Seitz & Alan Sepinwall call it a live-action doonesbury, and that feels right.
9. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. My favorite hilarious misanthropes. I mean, there's a reason it's the longest-running live-action comedy series in American television history (I started watching it when I lived in New Zealand!). And it still makes me laugh all the time. (Yes, it's still running, but I feel like 14 seasons is enough to judge).
10. Doctor Who. Okay - obviously also still running, but the complete David Tennant/Peter Capaldi runs stand on their own I feel.
11. Poirot/Endeavour. Combining these because mysteries! David Suchet is obviously the best Poirot and I like that the series spans from early case of the week with Hastings, Japp and Miss Lemon to the later films of some of the bigger cases. Endeavour is *technically* still running but only has one episode left (sob), and I can't imagine that's going somehow retroactively damage the series, based on how good this last series was. (I feel like with How I met your mother and what I heard about Game of Thrones, you knew the last season leading up to the finale.) Anyways, the cast is great, the setting and production wonderful, and if Morse occasionally gets into a few too many scrapes, the excellent characterization and series plotting makes up for it.
12. Deadwood. Okay - I'm holding off on a rewatch until I get my companion book, which means that I also have not seen the movie, which means that it hasn't ended yet. That's how that works, right? Right. (I put off watching the series finale for over a year with that same logic.) The thing I always think of with Deadwood's complex characters and poetic language is 'Shakespearean.'
13. Black Books. More hilarious misanthropes!
14. Farscape. (I could also add in Firefly here, for the similarities in the crews, or the wonderful recent Dark Crystal, for the Henson connection.) I love Farscape for its creature work, so that two central members of the crew truly feel alien. (And even D'argo and Zhaan more than the firefly crew). I love how off the wall it was at times, or that time would have passed between episodes and the show drops the audience into a new adventure and expects them to keep up. I love Crichton and Aeryn and how they evolve over time. I love how the show didn't revolve around them and relationships between each of the crew members got their due (Pilot & Aeryn episodes for example). And, of course, I love it for Warren Ellis' review of the show as "one American’s descent into the Australian BDSM scene."
15. The Durrells. It just makes me so happy. The cast is fantastic, the setting divine. Even when things are hard, it's just so cozy and such a joy. (As someone who grew up with Gerald Durrell's books, I particularly appreciate it. Also, the new All Creatures Great and Small - clearly from the same production team, judging by the credits - is giving me the same cozy, lovely Sunday night vibes.)
16. Person of Interest. So clever! Maybe the best of all the Nolan works? And I like how it starts out as a (somewhat) straightforward procedural* and then pretty quickly gets into some of the smartest, most thought-provoking work on AI, surveillance, the police state, and free will (one of the main characters doesn't even join till half way through season two). I think that also shows in that season 1 has a 63% rating (still fresh!) and then seasons two-five are all 100%. Even the most memorable episode, If-Then-Else, for a while was rated the second best episode of all time after Breaking Bad's Ozymandias at imdb (it's now 11th).
*(not that there's anything wrong with that! I enjoy procedurals and I think they have their place! Leverage and Burn Notice come to mind as really enjoyable case-of-the week shows.)
17. LOST. Speaking of heady (if far-less grounded) sci-fi and Michael Emerson's crazy-good acting skills... Of course, part of the joy of watching LOST was in experiencing it real time; playing the games between seasons, reading message boards for background clues and theories, and sharing in a communal watching experience (hey finale at the Brattle!) I imagine that will happen less and less often (GoT being the latest, but I dropped that midway.) I know some fans didn't like the ending, but I did. And before that it was just such wonderful storytelling, so many wonderful characters, and so much fun to watch. I rewatched the first four seasons with my mother to get ready for the fifth and I enjoyed watching them all over again. Penny!
18. Top Gear. I fell on the floor crying with laughter at the ambulance episode in season 22. (That said, violence in the workplace is NOT OKAY and so I have not watched their new show.)
19. Carnivàle/ Mindhunter. Both brilliant dark dramas cut down in their prime, which is the only reason they are this low. Carnivàle was one of HBOs first big dramas, it was picked up for six seasons, with a whole mythology and plot laid out, but it was so expensive to make (because it was gorgeous) that it ended on a cliff hanger at the end of season 2. Mindhunter is so well done - there's the obvious Fincher perfectionism, Cameron Britton should have won ALL the awards as Ed Kemper, and it only gets better in the second season as the focus switches both to the Atlanta child murders and Holt. (The interview with Kevin Bright is SO GOOD. Speaking of - I know Fincher said it's dead, but given the references to BTK, I still hope it might come back for a final third season a few years from now.)
20. Penny Dreadful. I love it partly for its grand Guignol excess, but also for the cast. Eva Green has rarely been allowed a role this good, Rory Kinnear gets to be great in a tv show (finally), and Helen McCrory, Patti LuPone and Simon Russell Beale pop up. The bottle episode in season three, "A Blade Of Grass," which is mostly a two-hander between Eva Green and Rory Kinnear, is one of my all-time favorites.
21. Parks & Rec/Agents of Shield. Lumping these two together because you do have to skip bits of the beginning! (Parks and Rec skip the first season and it really picks up at the end of S2 when Ben & Chris join, and io9 has an AoS guide). But then they find their feet and they are great from then on out. Agents of Shield also does an amazing job of rotating cast members through the seasons a la Doctor Who.
22. Oz. This is only this low, because I can't not think about the EW review of the final season that called it "Survivor: Maximum Security." But it's still amazing to me that HBO's first drama was all about the carceral state and dealt with issues like recidivism, sentencing, white supremacy, overcrowding, rehabilitation, and the death penalty. As well as who was going to be offed and/or naked on any given week. Also Ryan O'Reilly is one of the all time great tv characters.
23. Daria:
24. Misfits/Preacher. Because they both have Joe Gilgun & Ruth Negga! I've rewatched large swaths of Misfits and found it holds up (although I don't love the addition of Finn to the cast in the last two seasons.) I love a lot of the cast - Antonia Thomas went on to do the charming Lovesick, Nathan Stewart-Jarrett was in Angels in America at the NT, Karla Crome was in Amadeus at the NT, Craig Parkinson was in Hangmen at the NT... And while Preacher season 2 isn't great, they recover and seasons 3 & 4 are. I like the season 1 reimagining prequel with Jackie Earle Haley and Lucy Griffiths (what happened to her?), I love pretty much everything Noah Taylor does, Graham McTavish is great as the Saint of Killers, and Betty Buckley is a queen. But really mostly: Ruth Negga & Joe Gilgun are just so damn good in it.
25. Sarah Connor Chronicles. Okay - I really need to rewatch this, but I remember it being very smart and doing really clever things with time travel. (Speaking of which, I really should get around to 13 Monkeys one of these days...) Plus - Shirley Manson as a terminator! (I also really love Garrett Dillahunt in this.)
26. Crazy Ex Girlfriend. Because even though I didn't *love* the finale, it is SO HARD to make a musical tv show, and this one gave so many great moments, amazing songs, and better mental health representation.
(Not sure why blogger will no longer embed youtube videos, but here: https://www.youtube.com/embed/wmbLB4OIuao)
And Miniseries! There are a ton I need to see (Generation Kill, Queen Gambit, I May Destroy You, Us, and Band of Brothers probably at the top of the list.) I'm also in the middle of Years and Years and may even be able to finish it now that the election is over!
1. Angels in America. The best.
2. Chernobyl. Shockingly good
3. Fosse Verdon. Speaking of excellent musicals...
4. Watchmen. Just the perfect show for right now. And the cast is so great and episode 6 is the clear stand out, as it then improves rereading the book.
5. Tinker Tailor. Alec Guinness!
6. And Then There Were None. One of my favorite Agatha Christies, and kicked off the recent spate of mammoth Christie productions at year-end. It's a lavish production and start studded cast (hey Noah Taylor!). I love adaptations of this one, because there's a book ending and a play ending, so unlike most Christie adaptations, you don't actually know how it's going to end. And then this miniseries came along with a further twist!
7. AHS Murder House/Asylum. Each season of American Horror story is it's own beast (mostly), and I have enjoyed later seasons like coven, apocalypse, and hotel, but the first two seasons are just far and away the best. Asylum has Jessica Lange, Lily Rabe, and Sarah Paulson on a tear, the Anne Frank two-parter and the santa episode. So good. Murder House has some great scares and twists (that landed dramatically, even if you guessed them ahead of time), Jessica Lange is in a class of her own here, and the school shooting is one of the scariest things I've ever seen.
8. True Detective Season 1 - does that count as an anthology?
9. Haunting of Hill House/Haunting of Bly Manor. Speaking of impressive one-takes... Hill House was so damn scary! And then "Two Storms" is just an all time classic episode - it's so much fun to watch. And then Bly Manor's gothic romance wasn't quite as good, to my mind, but still really enjoyable. (Loved Danni, Owen and Hanna, thought Peter Quint was somewhat underwritten). Still - I like the Turn of the Screw and I enjoyed the riff on it here.
10. The Hour was nominated as a limited series, it was great, and - much like Carnivàle above! - ended on a FUCKING CLIFFHANGER. GAH
