The 10 Best New Series on ‘TV’ (2017)

The ‘Golden Age of TV’ can officially dump the ‘TV’ from its monicker, since we’re all streaming and bingeing and (sometimes) pirating our ways into a content-created coma these days, provided — almost entirely — by the new digital titans of Hollywood: Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, and Crackle (Haha, just kidding Crackle. Go back to your sandbox, mommy will call when she’s ready for you.)

With the announcement last month of Disney’s acquisition of Fox, which is already re-shaking an already-shook landscape, one can’t help but wonder what the future will hold… Or look back on a year that provided an unprecedented number of new series that kept broadening the prospects for creators everywhere. And I do mean everywhere (looking at you, ‘Dark’).

Without further ado, here were the most innovative and celebrated new series of 2017:

10. Legion (FX)

When FX’s super-stylized and hyper-realized X-Men spinoff is the 10th place entrant to a top-10 list, you know you’re in for a good list. Adapted and written by TV’s new goldenboy, Noah Hawley (Fargo, The Unusuals), it’s eye-popping production designs and superrrrrrb casting make it easy to forgive its sometimes-saturated storylines. Downton Abbey’s Dan Stevens plays psych patient-slash-uber mutant David Haller, the newest recruit to a team of would-be good-guys being hunted by a team of government-sanctioned bad ones. Aubrey Plaza plays his best friend and parasite, Lenny (it’s okay if that doesn’t make sense yet; you might watch the whole season and still struggle with it), while Rachel Keller, Jean Smart, and Jemaine Clement lend their talents in awesome, supporting, mutan-y roles. You can binge Season 1 now on Hulu. Season 2 premieres on FX this April.

9. Dark (Netflix)

I have a historically hard time loving anything in a German accent. Fortunately, Netflix’s first foray into a series from the Deutschland has been better-dubbed over in English than most. When two small-town children go missing, a web of double-lives and sinful pasts unfold with well-crafted charisma and supernatural twists that keep you leaning in and begging for more. You won’t likely recognize or correctly pronounce the names of its lead actors (ie. Jördis Triebel and Maja Schöne), so just do yourself a favor and watch them.

8. Big Mouth (Netflix)

It is said that death and taxes are life’s only certainties, but suffering at least one solid year of embarassing pubescent follies must surely be something we all go through. (Right?… Right?!?) Created and voiced by a who’s who of modern-day comedic royalty (Nick Kroll, Fred Armisen, Jordan Peele, John Mullaney, Maya Rudolph, and many others), this animated tale of five friends awkwardly entering the worst year of their adolescent lives — and the puberty monsters set forth to guide them — ventures into bold, new terrain for a kid-centric cast that’s squeemish, relatable, and hilarious in equal parts.

7. Call My Agent (Netflix France)

To call this fresh series the ‘Entourage’ of Paris would be doing it an injustice, particularly if you kept watching Entourage beyond its third season (you’ll never get those hours of your life back — and that’s just something you’ll have to cope with). Set behind the scenes of France’s top talent agency, Call My Agent follows the personal and professional lives of its crisis-juggling agents and its agent-juggling assistants with well-crafted character, humanity, and refreshingly-organic humor. Though the charm of incorporating and embellishing actual French stars that you likely don’t know, like Cécile de France and Nathalie Baye, it might also endear you to the real-life struggles celebrities face (because they’re people, too. Sort of.)

6. Planet Earth 2 (BBC America)

Ok, so I’m cheating a little; this is neither ‘brand new’ nor an ongoing ‘series.’ Call the blog police. But 10 years after the original Planet Earth prompted a 1000% spike in BlueRay player sales (I made that up), Sir Attenborough upped his game and gifted us 7 new installments of his utterly breathtaking, inspiring, and captivating nature series that exposes us to the world’s wonders, one habitat type after the next. Employing 4K drone footage and ‘how the f — did they film that’ story arcs, these episodes were truly mind-boggling. Both the lizard-hunting snake scene of ‘Islands’ and the mid-air bird battle of ‘Cities’ made me piss myself. It was a messy afternoon, but totally worth it.

5. Godless (Netflix)

First of all, I think we can all agree… anything Michelle Dockery. But as a gunslinging, native-loving, ranch-handling western warrior who vows to protect both the injured outlaw who lands on her doorstep and the all-female hamlet that took her in? Hard yes. Jeff Daniels delivers a scary-good, one-armed villain on the hunt for his wayward protege what shot his arm off (Jack O’Connell) and Merritt Weaver plays the brash, bi-curious widower of the hamlet’s dearly-departed mayor. This was billed as a ‘limited series,’ but if the Hollywood rumor mill’s right, Godless was too good to not bring back. Though I expect we’ll be waiting for quite some time.

4. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel (Amazon)

At first pitch, ‘an aspiring stand-up comic splits from his doting wife in late-1950s Manhattan’ might not appeal to the masses, but this show wasn’t made for the masses. It was made for, well, people with taste. And as the title suggests, the husband (played by HBO-darling Michael Zegen) isn’t the main draw. After the inciting dumpcident, Rachel Brosnahan’s Golden Globe-winning Mrs. Maisel goes on a drunken bender and picks up where her husband left off, exposing her own comedic talents (and other god-given assets) during an improvised set at a downtown showcase that lands her a manager (Alex Boorstein), a mentor (Luke Kirby as the iconic Lenny Bruce), and her first of several arrests for ‘lude behavior.’ The whole series has a giddy, up-tempo quality and timely resonance that will make it the new, femme-forward Mad Men it aspires to be. Plus Tony Shalhoub and Kevin Pollack as the very Jewish fathers-in-law…? I mean, come on.

3. The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu)

In 1985, Canada’s Margaret Atwood painted a dystopian portrait of totalitarian patriarchy at its scariest. Women — labeled enemies of the state — were stripped of their names and basic rights, forced into lives of sexual service, then shrouded in cloaks and giant sun visors for some reason. Then in 2017, a former reality show host and noted ‘pussy’-grabber became the real President of the United States. So I guess sometimes life immitates art. (Let’s collectively shudder and digress.)

If you haven’t subscribed to Hulu yet, here’s your reason. Elizabeth Moss plays Offred — the would-be Princess Leia of New England — whose service to Commander Fred Waterford is complicated by his seeming decency and his wife’s vengeful eye (Joseph Fiennes and Yvonne Strahovski, respectively). What Offred wants most is to escape and find her daughter, but the revolution may have to come first… and Offred may be the one to lead it. There’s far too much story and mythology to unpack here, so in summation: it’s rich and beautiful and complex and funny and tragic and too-timely to skip. Season 2 lands in April.

2. Big Little Lies (HBO)

So many femme rebellions, so little time. The fact that Weinstein didn’t see this coming is just bonkers.

Adapted from Liane Moriarty’s best-selling dark comedy about wives and mothers and murder and mischief in Monterey, California, the subject matter wasn’t particularly novel. And from David E. Kelley — a guy who’s been writing soaps since they started airing at nights — one might not be blamed for not expecting much. (Please don’t blame me.)

But what the show might lack in originality is more than made up for by its stellar cinematography, masterful character development, and transcendent performances. Two of the series’ leads — Alexander Skarsgård and Nicole Kidman — just won Golden Globes for their roles as an abusive husband and the wife searching for ways not to leave him. Two more of the leads — Laura Dern and Reese Witherspoon (who both produced with Kidman) — were also nominated for their parts as feuding Alpha-moms defending the feuding kids. As always, Shailene Woodley played the part of Shailene Woodley to perfection.

What could easily be written-off as rote, suburban drama unpacks layer-after-layer of nuance and context that makes you switch loyalties and sympathies often. And what started as a slow story with talking heads and snarky comebacks became difficult to let go of when it was over.

1. Ozark (Netflix)

If you’ve enjoyed the list thus far, then this choice may be an unpopular one. For starters, this show has literally nothing to do with female tribalism or empowerment, which are both super important and very de rigueur. For followers, it’s almost the opposite of those things: a male-toplined mob story set in rural Missouri, where women are sent after their souls have been traded for jellybeans. (Just kidding, Missourians.) ((No I’m not, everyone else.))

The premise is simple: after his partner secretly double-crosses their Cartel-connected client, a straight-laced but quick-thinking financial advisor makes a deal to save his and his family’s lives. He’ll move to the Ozarks, which has ‘more coastline than California,’ and where (he swears) he can launder half-a-billion dollars in five years to make up for his partners’ transgressions. Jason Bateman plays Marty Byrde with unflinching courage and constant conviction, even after learning his wife Wendy — played to perfection by Laura Linney and for whom he’s doing everything—reveals she’s been having an affair for years.

I watched all 10 episodes in a day. It’s hard to explain why without spoilers, but the twists, the turns, the tricks, the compromises, the sacrifices, the comeuppances… even the hypocrisies that somehow string it all together made for the best 10 hours of my year (much of it, clearly, having been spent watching so many series). Stream it before Season 2 hits sometime mid-2018.

Honorable Mentions: (because what’s a top-10 list without 6 more?)

Dear White People (Netflix), Glow (Netflix), Twin Peaks (Showtime), Patriot (Amazon), The Tick (Amazon), Mindhunter (Netflix)

What do you think I missed? What do you agree or disagree with? Let me know in the comments!