Top 10 Television Shows of 2023
“Because you’re The Bear and I remember you.”
The narrative I see in the landscape of television in 2023 is one of endings. Sure, shows end every year. 2013 saw the end of 30 Rock and The Office. From 2017 to 2019, many of the late-stage series of the “Peak TV” era (The Leftovers, The Americans, Game of Thrones, Veep) wrapped. But 2023 felt like the biggest shift in the television landscape in recent memory. With Better Call Saul departing in 2022 and officially stamping the end of “Peak TV,” the “Prestige TV” era seemed to also be winding to a conclusion that led to an uncertain future in which television may be nebulous and hard to define — unless that’s what makes it so evergreen in its brilliance.
“Prestige TV” involves the shows that came after the wave of the Renaissance that were creatively daring and formula shattering and auteur-driven. Bill Hader’s Barry, Donald Glover’s Atlanta, Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag. These sorts of shows prove to be emblematic of what I mean by that division of the television eras. And in 2023, we bid farewell to one of them: Barry. But also How To with John Wilson from John Wilson and Nathan Fielder. Never Have I Ever from Mindy Kaling. Succession from Jesse Armstrong. Ted Lasso from Bill Lawrence, Jason Sudeikis, and Brendan Hunt. Reservation Dogs from Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi. High School Musical: The Musical: The Series from Tim Federle. Fargo from Noah Hawley (allegedly). Even Mike Flanagan wrapped up his annual spooky fare on Netflix tenure with The Fall of the House of Usher.
And, yes, television shows end all the time. 2024 will apparently see the finales of shows like Curb Your Enthusiasm, What We Do in the Shadows, and Stranger Things. Some shows came to more abrupt endings than expected, due to cancellation (The Afterparty, Our Flag Means Death, Schmigadoon!). Yet, 2023 marked the end of that specific, aforementioned “Prestige TV” era that seems to shepherd in something new.
Think about it. All of the shows I mentioned that concluded in 2023 represent some aspect of the past five-to-seven years in television that might not be as prominent going forward. A genre-bending, give-them-the-keys series like Barry may not flourish under David Zaslav in the same way it did when Casey Bloys got to run his ship how he wanted. Yes, How To seems relatively inexpensive to make, but will new regimes and streaming consolidation still allow for chances to be taken on people like John Wilson, whom was certainly unheard of before he broke out? Will Netflix allow a beloved show from a creator they inked a lucrative deal with to actually extend to four seasons like Never Have I Ever did? The questions go on and on because we’re not yet certain what the new era of television is.
By studying the 2023 television landscape, the best I can surmise is that the era might be one of infinite possibilities, more demented and dreamy than the eras that came before. Yes, shows like The Curse were nutso and shows like Bupkis were auteur-driven, but that doesn’t mean they’re still of the past eras. Greenlit then? Sure. Greenlit now? Perhaps not. But if the time period when green lights were being given to anything so corporations could build up their streaming libraries is over, then all that really means is that the Wild West era of television is over. The idea that there could be a show called Beacon 23 and it could star Lena Headey and be set in space and air on something called MGM+ and actually get a season two renewal? That is the Wild West. As this winds down, with shrinking budgets and fewer “figure it out” vibes from streaming execs who pulled the trigger on everything, it doesn’t mean that the chaos will suddenly dissipate and the quality will stop rising to the top.
Instead, think of the analogy this way. The Wild West is done, but what was crazier than the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago or the 1964 World’s Fair in New York, both of which occurred after the west was done? It wasn’t a venue where an infinite amount of things could happen, but it was a venue where the best and most creative things could happen with concerted effort, attention, and devotion behind them. Sure, we’ll always have the stalwarts. Corn dogs are as ubiquitous there as new seasons of Planet Earth or It’s Always Sunny, for example. But as ingenuity replaces possibility, perhaps we will find — going forward — that television will become everything it’s always been all at once. We’ll find shows that move back towards traditional models from before Tony Soprano heard the tones of Journey (Poker Face evokes Psych; Hijack evokes 24). We’ll find shows that continue to push our imagination and dare to be provocative (The Curse, Beef). We’ll find shows that cash in on IP as movies have been want as of late (The Last of Us, Loki). And we’ll find the comfortable, familiar strings of the characters we love and the stories that shape them (Only Murders in the Building, Shrinking, Bluey, Platonic). Television is always changing, but I learned in 2023 that if you’re always looking in the right place, it’ll always be what you need it to be.
Honorable Mentions: Barry, Beef, Behind the Attraction, Bluey, Bupkis, Daisy Jones and the Six, For All Mankind, Frog and Toad, Hijack, The History of the Minnesota Vikings, How To with John Wilson, I Think You Should Leave, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, The Last of Us, Loki, Never Have I Ever, Only Murders in the Building, Planet Earth III, Platonic, Shrinking, Survivor
10. The Curse
I’m going to say that this blurb will have spoilers for The Curse. I don’t know when I’ll get another chance to write about The Curse, so this is happening. You’ve been warned. Spoilers are ahead. So, The Curse is a satirical comedy-drama about a couple, Whitney and Asher, who are trying to get an HGTV-esque neighborhood/home flipping show off the ground. Played by Emma Stone and Nathan Fielder, respectively, the two hosts end up becoming a takedown portrayal of “well-meaning,” liberal, white people who only care about “helping” others when it looks good to their audience. And even then, that “help” becomes a glorified version of gentrification. There is a lot that is mined from this subject, even as the show zeroes in on the dissolution of a loveless marriage at the same rate. However, what has stuck with me about The Curse since it wrapped its first (and, I have to assume, only) season is the surreality. At the outset, I could not fully adjust to Fielder’s performance because I didn’t know if he was doing a “performance” like Nathan for You or The Rehearsal featured or if it was a genuine performance that actors give in fictional, serialized storytelling adaptations (I still don’t fully know). And that’s only the first egg that is cracked. There is the potential murderous and lecherous nature of Benny Safdie’s Dougie character. There are characters lingering in the background of scenes that are more haunting than any potential Munchkin rumors from The Wizard of Oz. And there is, of course, the finale that throws every trope and structural element of the show out the window and throws Asher out with them by completely rewriting the laws of physics and literally sending the protagonist of the show hurtling into outer space. I haven’t the foggiest idea of what to make of any of it beyond faint grasps at metaphor/allegory and I still haven’t worked out if a lick of it works, but considering no show has challenged me like this in some time, I’d be mistaken not to find a way to include it here.
9. Party Down
I had a lot to mention about The Curse, so not every blurb will be that long. Take Party Down, for example. In 2009 and 2010, Party Down was one of the funniest and least-watched shows ever. The Starz comedy about a catering company starring Adam Scott and Ken Marino was so scantly watched that Starz canceled it. Starz! They should be lucky to even have a sliver of a fanbase for anything! But steadily, over a decade, the fanbase for Party Down grew and did not relent from their love of the show. When it was announced that a third season had been ordered for 2023, I was a little skeptical. Arrested Development, for example, had some merits to its fourth and fifth seasons, but it didn’t seem like bringing back a beloved comedy years later would necessarily be effective at maintaining what was great about the original series. Party Down rebuked that because it did not change the entire structure of the show. Instead, it acted as if the show was merely just back for another season. Crucially, John Enbom and Rob Thomas also maintained the quality and humor of the show with new characters who fit the old ones well, leading to one of the most purely funny seasons of any show from this year.
8. Succession
Lately, we’ve had a lot of Succession celebration. The Golden Globes and the Emmys served as one last coronation for what seemed to emerge as the heir apparent to the long lineage of television dramas that hold “the belt” for being the best at what they do whenever they return to the air. Succession is certainly worthy, even if it is about that time to let it rest and celebrate what it was without trying to reclaim or recreate what it did well. Its final season was a spectacular homage to the show that came before. The detestable characters that comprised the world of Waystar Royco have always been horrible, even if the fans and viewers sometimes find themselves compelled to root for them. Yet, the show did not acquiesce to this empathy and instead raked them over the burning, scathing coals one final time. The question of the show’s title emerged in breathtaking fashion with a series of epitaphs and impeccably written episodes that will not soon be forgotten in television’s pantheon. Farewell to you, Succession.
7. Poker Face
During the “Characters Welcome” era of USA, television shows used to pride themselves on their episodic, “case of the week” nature while also maintaining a larger narrative. The loss of Hank’s licensure on Royal Pains, the threat of a falsified law degree on Suits, the “whodunnit” aspect of Monk’s wife’s death on Monk and Michael’s burn instigator on Burn Notice. However, what elevates Poker Face above series like these amidst all the comparisons it has garnered to them is twofold. For one, I feel Poker Face has conducted itself much more seamlessly when balancing the two threads of the show. Rather than the overarching storyline of Natasha Lyonne’s Charlie on the run from powerful casino brokers who orchestrated a murder of her friend serving as a stinger for an occasional episode, it drives forward even the standalone installments. The cat-and-mouse dynamic between Charlie and Benjamin Bratt’s Cliff delivers her to specific locations and provides her with a nuanced insight on how to best utilize her enhanced ability to pinpoint lying (it’s less a gimmick here than it is in, say, The Mentalist). Secondly, the impact of Rian Johnson (who wrote two episodes and directed three) ensures that each episode’s mystery is clever, twisty, and only somewhat predictable if you can surmise which star will have the meaty role of a killer in a given story (Tim Meadows, Stephanie Hsu, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and more all pop up). To turn Johnson’s acerbic mystery style into a sprawling and compelling television series is merit enough to include it in this top ten.
6. The Fall of the House of Usher
If I had written a list of my most anticipated television series of the year back in January 2023, The Fall of the House of Usher would be near the top. I was never a big horror fan, but I found an auteur who crafted exactly the kind of stories I like to see in the genre when I gave Mike Flanagan a chance with Hush. From there, he has created (roughly) one horror series per year on Netflix and it has become a highlight of each October. 2018’s The Haunting of Hill House is one of my favorite shows of all-time, but 2020’s The Haunting of Bly Manor, 2021’s Midnight Mass, and 2022’s The Midnight Club all have their varying levels of quality and captivation, to me. Considering I also place Edgar Allan Poe in my pantheon of favorite writers, I have been sincerely and eagerly anticipating what will be Flanagan’s final horror collaboration with Netflix, The Fall of the House of Usher, for some time now. Based on my favorite story of Poe’s, Flanagan utilizes that phantasmagorical piece of short fiction as a springboard to weave a tale of self-serving avarice and the unavoidable fates that befall all of us that could be as recognizable to people voting in the 2024 presidential election as it would be to people who were Poe’s contemporaries. What really elevates this series — pseudo-operating as the Avengers: Endgame of Mike Flanagan’s troupe of actors — is the implementation of Poe, though. It’s not just “Usher” that gets the Flanagan treatment. The whole show is a jukebox musical of Poe’s best, including “The Raven,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Pit and the Pendulum,” “The Masque of the Read Death,” and more. Flanagan and Poe prove to be as vital a combination as Flanagan and Shirley Jackson were.
5. Jury Duty
When Netflix announced the premiere of BoJack Horseman in 2014, I was hooked by the cast. Will Arnett, Alison Brie, Aaron Paul, Amy Sedaris, and Paul F. Tompkins were all actors I loved for different reasons, so putting them all together guaranteed that I would watch the first season. Most of the reviews only covered the initial six episodes of that arc and dismissed it pretty readily. And while I definitely struggled with some of the awkward pangs of the show getting its legs underneath it, I stuck with it and was proud to become one of the champions of it before everyone came around to it. This isn’t to be a BoJack hipster. Rather, it’s just to say that if you believe in something, stick with it. This was the case with Jury Duty. Many of my most trusted television critics were dismissive of Jury Duty from the jump, but I found some sort of spark in the early episodes that made me want to continue watching it. By the time they went to Margaritaville together, I was all in and it paid off more and more with each passing episode and each growing voice in the chorus that sung its well-deserved praises. Jury Duty is a pseudo-comedy series in which a jury is made up of actors (including James Marsden, playing himself) who are pretending to be involved with a fake case in a fake courtroom. However, one man (Ronald Gladden) is not an actor and thinks it’s all entirely real. While it may sound like a prank series, it is actually one of the most wholesome explorations of the human spirit that we have on television. I stuck with it and, seemingly, so did the creators who followed that unexpected, anti-pranking thread to brilliance.
4. Ted Lasso
While there is enough that seasons one and three of Ted Lasso have in common, you would not be wrong to assess that the seasons seem to have markedly different identities. The debut season of one of my favorite shows of the decade was tightly-written, expertly-plotted, and highly satisfying and surprising in equal measure. The farewell season of it, however, was sprawling, messy, ambitious, occasionally unfocused, and altogether triumphant. Evolving from a fish-out-of-water comedy to a treatise on mental health and the impact of empathy for our fellow humans is no easy task and it would be silly to say Ted Lasso didn’t stumble to get there (some of the abandoned story threads from the first couple episodes of season three were better off that way), but what a glorious finish it had all the same. Essentially, everything from the Amsterdam episode onward was phenomenal television and a showcase of Ted Lasso at its best. Whatever the future may hold for this story and these characters, I feel ever so grateful that we had the three seasons we did. I loved them so much!
3. Fargo
After the fourth season of Fargo (which I was higher on than most) concluded, creator Noah Hawley stated that he had an idea for what would be a fifth and final standalone arc for the show. Three years after the Jason Schwartzman — Chris Rock season, we have now seen what this fifth story looks like in the northern midwest. The fifth Fargo was not so much a cat-and-mouse tale as it was a tiger-and-tiger tale. You have some of the show’s familiar trappings: the home-spun murders, the well-meaning cops, the sleazy fixer archetypes who aren’t long for this world. But at the core of it, you have something deeper: a story about toxic relationships. In some ways, that manifested in the form of abuse, torture, and rape. In other ways, it manifested in the form of narcissism, mistreatment, and affairs. In all ways, it manifested in the sense of watching characters stand up for what they deserve in this world and — unfortunately — taking a bit too long to ask for help from those who could provide it. Additionally, of course, it wouldn’t be Fargo without a bit of folklorian mysticism and Coen-esque symbolism. Juno Temple, Jon Hamm, Lamorne Morris, Joe Keery, Richa Moorjani, Jennifer Jason Leigh — all excellent! It’s a powerhouse of sensational performances and you should just let them bathe over you with a stunning story you won’t believe with each passing chapter.
2. Reservation Dogs
Of all the shows that aired their final seasons this year, I feel that Reservation Dogs had the strongest one. In the first two seasons of the show, the narratives revolved around the titular group of friends who make a pact with one another to honor their best friend, Daniel, after he committed suicide. The form this tribute takes is that of working towards moving away from Oklahoma and to California instead. After two seasons of sensitive, empathetic, and frequently funny storytelling, the crew finally made their way to the Pacific Ocean in a stirring tribute that would have more than sufficed as a potential series finale. Yet, Harjo wanted to probe deeper into the characters and in a more far-reaching sense for the world he had built that they occupied. While seasons one and two centered on this particular friend group’s dynamics, season three explored what it means to carry on cultural and familial legacies across generations and across decades. It made for a much richer text to see where our beloved characters are potentially destined and the ways in which they can improve their own fates — even those methods are entirely fantastical. Plus, seeing Devery Jacobs fully come into her own as a creative force in the media landscape (as both director and performer) is a delightful bonus treat for those of us who adore the show and those who helped make it so easy to do so.
1. The Bear
“Time is passing, slowly passing you by / You better try to find it before it passes you by / As I watch you walking to another cold dawn / And you keep on walking / And they keep on talking / Talking all along.” So goes the chords of “The Show Goes On” by Bruce Hornsby, the first tones we hear in the second season of the FX/Hulu breakout, The Bear. So much of the story of The Bear can be told concurrently in the show’s expertly curated soundtrack (Taylor Swift, Eddie Vedder, R.E.M., Darlene Love — all featured). This moment of the opening song can be read as an anthem for Ebon Moss Bachrach’s loudmouth Richie Jerimovich. In season one, he is despised by all and placed at risk of manslaughter charges. But as season two kicks in, he is found reflective in the basement of the restaurant (in the midst of a season-long arc that transforms the setting from an Italian beef sandwich shop to a fine dining establishment that redefines Chicago’s culinary scene) and anxious that the prime of his life has passed by, leading to a fear that the ones he is afraid to openly love will “drop his ass.” While the chatter in the restaurant may have decreased in decibels in season two, it did not decrease in tempo. They kept on talking, but Richie kept on walking. He sought to find his purpose. And in the seminal midway episode, “Forks,” he learns from Olivia Colman’s Chef Terry at a neighboring restaurant for staging that “every second counts.” Cue “Love Story” and the seventy mile an hour pace down back alleys. So much of what made The Bear brilliant during 2023 can be distilled into this ethos that positions The Bear closer to a Gilmore Girls/Parks and Recreation-esque drum of the common lovers building a community to persevere through the day and to achieve lofty goals together than a loud and shouting industry treatise like Uncut Gems. Yes, you still get the moments like that, as in the flashback Christmas episode, “Fishes,” one of the most exceptional hours of television ever created. But those moments of anxiety and chaos are made all the worth it when you finally find the quieter moments. In the freezer section of a convenience store. Underneath a table that’s not as wobbly as we’re pretending it is. By a boardwalk in Copenhagen. Man, I was wrong about The Bear when I saw the trailer for season one. This is already one of the greats.
What did you tune into this year?
More from the Best of 2023:
See also:
My 25 Favorite Television Shows of 2017
My 15 Favorite Television Shows of 2018
My 20 Favorite Television Shows of 2019
My 30 Favorite Television Shows of 2020
