2023 Media Roundup: Telly
Dec. 26th, 2023 10:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyIn the interstitial period between Christmas and New Years, I traditionally do lists of things that I read, watched, and listened to. But since covid it's been increasingly a problem. What aired in 2023? What even is time? Do I even remember all the things I watched?
Okay here are the things I liked the most, in no particular order except for the last two.
Atlanta
I think this ended in 2022, but I only saw it this year. What starts as a kind of cool slice-of-life show starring the guy from Community and that "This Is America" song ends up being...not that. I heard it described as "Twin Peaks with rappers" and that's essentially it. Not that the first season is bad per se—it's got a real "city-as-character" vibe and really compelling writing, but as the show spirals into further levels of surreality, it gets brilliant. It's like Black Mirror if Black Mirror had kept the quality of its first season instead of turning into "what if cell phones were your mom." The less you know about it going in, the better. But truly one of the most inventive, incisive TV shows I've seen.
Doctor Who
I'm as surprised as you are to see this back on my list. It was only specials this year, but after several years of the show being really bad, I am pleased to announce that it is good again. Like I am actively looking forward to each new episode instead of it being something to slog through in hopes that it will change back to the thing that I liked. It has now changed back to the thing that I like. (Obligatory note that this has nothing to do with 13 being a woman and everything to do with Chris Chibnall being the showrunner and turning the Doctor into a neoliberal cop.)
The Bear
A show about a chef who tries to save his dead brother's neighbourhood restaurant with the help of an ambitious sous chef. I had no idea what this show was about when I started watching it—someone just said that I'd like it, and I did. It's like those baking shows that I watch, except it has an actual plot. It's very low-stakes drama that makes you feel how huge the stakes are for the characters. And it involves a lot of competence porn, which is a thing I adore.
What We Do In the Shadows/Our Flag Means Death/Good Omens
These are all the same show and I like it a lot. I would say that WWITS did the best job of continuing from strong earlier seasons and GO did the worst, but they were all very fun to watch. Middle-aged slow burn queer longing is kind of my favourite thing and I like that there are three shows that give me what I want in that regard, even if they are determined to torture every other viewer who doesn't want that. Too bad. They can have all the other shows that have nonproblematic gays who have healthy relationships in them.
Andor
This was not a show I expected to like, since it was Star Wars, which has worn out its welcome for me, and on Disney+, which is not exactly the home of radical politics. But instead it was Leftist Infighting Simulator: The TV Show, and actually amazing??? to the point where I kept asking if anyone at Disney was checking, because I don't think they were. I think someone who had read a lot of Marxist and anarchist theory (and has possibly spent time in radical organizations) somehow ended up in the writing room and just got away with putting all of that in the scripts. Even if you don't like Star Wars this is very much worth your time.
Weirdly it is also the most true to the initial themes of Star Wars, which included a Viet Cong-inspired anti-imperialist teddy bear uprising, but the franchise has kind of lost the plot since then.
Succession
My other favourite thing are shows where absolutely no one is a good person and they all do terrible things that you don't want them to do, and yet you still end up feeling sympathy and attachment to the characters. American shows tend not to do this, whereas British shows do it splendidly, so I was not surprised when the showrunner turned out to be the guy from The Thick Of It who wasn't Armando Iannucci. This is just one of the most well-written character dramas I've ever seen and takes a sharp scalpel to the bloated corpse of the American ruling class. Everyone is hateful and compelling, and I couldn't look away. The way the show plays with your sympathies, focusing on one sibling as the Least Bad Person Who You're Kind of Liking only to turn it around on you and reminding you what little billionaires are made of is just masterful. The election episode was probably in my top five episodes of TV ever, where every character has a chance to do the right thing and fails to do so in exactly the way you'd expect, while paying off every bit of characterization established in the rest of the series. Capitalism is bad, actually, and inevitably leads to fascism. God this is good, and would have ranked as my favourite TV show of 2023 were it not for...
Reservation Dogs
Obviously this takes the #1 spot for a third year in a row as it's one of the best things on TV ever. It came to a close this year, which I think everyone was a little sad about, but look. You can have three perfect seasons or you can drag it on forever until it sucks, and they made the right choice here. And it really was perfect—a story that in the end is about the bonds and responsibilities of community, and what we owe to generations to come. I was sobbing through multiple episodes but in a good way. It does the thing that great literature does where the themes are universal but the characters and setting are so highly specific that their world and inner lives are immersive. I'm glad it ended where it did because I don't think they could top the final arc. I do hope that everyone involved goes on to be in a million other things that I can watch, as the level of talent involved at every level, from writing to cinematography to music to of course acting, is just off the charts.
How about you? What are your telly thoughts?
Okay here are the things I liked the most, in no particular order except for the last two.
Atlanta
I think this ended in 2022, but I only saw it this year. What starts as a kind of cool slice-of-life show starring the guy from Community and that "This Is America" song ends up being...not that. I heard it described as "Twin Peaks with rappers" and that's essentially it. Not that the first season is bad per se—it's got a real "city-as-character" vibe and really compelling writing, but as the show spirals into further levels of surreality, it gets brilliant. It's like Black Mirror if Black Mirror had kept the quality of its first season instead of turning into "what if cell phones were your mom." The less you know about it going in, the better. But truly one of the most inventive, incisive TV shows I've seen.
Doctor Who
I'm as surprised as you are to see this back on my list. It was only specials this year, but after several years of the show being really bad, I am pleased to announce that it is good again. Like I am actively looking forward to each new episode instead of it being something to slog through in hopes that it will change back to the thing that I liked. It has now changed back to the thing that I like. (Obligatory note that this has nothing to do with 13 being a woman and everything to do with Chris Chibnall being the showrunner and turning the Doctor into a neoliberal cop.)
The Bear
A show about a chef who tries to save his dead brother's neighbourhood restaurant with the help of an ambitious sous chef. I had no idea what this show was about when I started watching it—someone just said that I'd like it, and I did. It's like those baking shows that I watch, except it has an actual plot. It's very low-stakes drama that makes you feel how huge the stakes are for the characters. And it involves a lot of competence porn, which is a thing I adore.
What We Do In the Shadows/Our Flag Means Death/Good Omens
These are all the same show and I like it a lot. I would say that WWITS did the best job of continuing from strong earlier seasons and GO did the worst, but they were all very fun to watch. Middle-aged slow burn queer longing is kind of my favourite thing and I like that there are three shows that give me what I want in that regard, even if they are determined to torture every other viewer who doesn't want that. Too bad. They can have all the other shows that have nonproblematic gays who have healthy relationships in them.
Andor
This was not a show I expected to like, since it was Star Wars, which has worn out its welcome for me, and on Disney+, which is not exactly the home of radical politics. But instead it was Leftist Infighting Simulator: The TV Show, and actually amazing??? to the point where I kept asking if anyone at Disney was checking, because I don't think they were. I think someone who had read a lot of Marxist and anarchist theory (and has possibly spent time in radical organizations) somehow ended up in the writing room and just got away with putting all of that in the scripts. Even if you don't like Star Wars this is very much worth your time.
Weirdly it is also the most true to the initial themes of Star Wars, which included a Viet Cong-inspired anti-imperialist teddy bear uprising, but the franchise has kind of lost the plot since then.
Succession
My other favourite thing are shows where absolutely no one is a good person and they all do terrible things that you don't want them to do, and yet you still end up feeling sympathy and attachment to the characters. American shows tend not to do this, whereas British shows do it splendidly, so I was not surprised when the showrunner turned out to be the guy from The Thick Of It who wasn't Armando Iannucci. This is just one of the most well-written character dramas I've ever seen and takes a sharp scalpel to the bloated corpse of the American ruling class. Everyone is hateful and compelling, and I couldn't look away. The way the show plays with your sympathies, focusing on one sibling as the Least Bad Person Who You're Kind of Liking only to turn it around on you and reminding you what little billionaires are made of is just masterful. The election episode was probably in my top five episodes of TV ever, where every character has a chance to do the right thing and fails to do so in exactly the way you'd expect, while paying off every bit of characterization established in the rest of the series. Capitalism is bad, actually, and inevitably leads to fascism. God this is good, and would have ranked as my favourite TV show of 2023 were it not for...
Reservation Dogs
Obviously this takes the #1 spot for a third year in a row as it's one of the best things on TV ever. It came to a close this year, which I think everyone was a little sad about, but look. You can have three perfect seasons or you can drag it on forever until it sucks, and they made the right choice here. And it really was perfect—a story that in the end is about the bonds and responsibilities of community, and what we owe to generations to come. I was sobbing through multiple episodes but in a good way. It does the thing that great literature does where the themes are universal but the characters and setting are so highly specific that their world and inner lives are immersive. I'm glad it ended where it did because I don't think they could top the final arc. I do hope that everyone involved goes on to be in a million other things that I can watch, as the level of talent involved at every level, from writing to cinematography to music to of course acting, is just off the charts.
How about you? What are your telly thoughts?
no subject
Date: 2023-12-28 03:10 am (UTC)But if the TV show is about romance beats, it'll probably sit in the great unwatched pile (that was my gripe with S2 of OFMD).
Atlanta tho I will watch. Community lost something when Troy left.
no subject
Date: 2023-12-28 01:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2023-12-28 01:37 pm (UTC)