When COVID-19 first hit, there were tweets and posts aplenty about how people were so bored in lockdown that they had watched literally everything on all the streaming platforms known to man.
While I wonder how true that, since I suspect there is enough content on those platforms to keep someone happily sustained for a good millennia or two, the fact is that did not alas happen to me.
Instead, my job became ever more busy to the point where keeping up with any of my pop culture pursuits became a singularly tenacious act of implacable will.
It may not sound like a lot of fun and it many ways it wasn’t, but I did manage to keep up with a slew old favourite TV shows and more new ones that I expected to get to, and I did it while mostly managing to enjoy them.
By that I mean not that the shows were deficient in any way that made them unwatchable or which detracted from my enjoyment; they wouldn’t be on this list if that was the case.
Rather, when you are rushing to watch TV shows on a very time poor schedule, the enjoyment can be overshadowed by the stress of fitting everything in.
Fortunately, all 20 shows are so good that they surmounted any stress-related collateral damage, adding in the process a lot of viewing pleasure to a very dark and stressful year.
- Please note that the TV shows are listed in no particular order and do not reflect a 1 to 20 ranking.
(1) Lost in Space (season 2)
Trouble does follow them wherever they go, and while you might think twice, should you ever be assembling a colonisation attempt of far flung stars, about including them in your colonist complement, they are undeniably talented, ferociously close and earnestly good, all things that make them and Lost in Space one of those rare shows that effortlessly combines action, substance and heartfelt humanity, like the Battlestar Galactica revival before it, to such a galaxy triumphing degree, that you pray Netflix does indeed order a third and highly-necessary third season. (The second season does end on a cliffhanger so non-renewal would be a cruel and unusual punishment.)
(2) Grace and Frankie (season 6)
… in the end, the lion’s share of time and emotional gravitas in Grace and Frankie go to the show’s two leading ladies – though one of the standout scenes of the season belongs to Robert and Frankie confessing some less than stellar life moments to each other – with Tomlin and Fonda continuing to share a rich, easy chemistry, assisted by finely-honed, comedically on point dialogue, an eye for the narrative silly and absurd alongside the meaningful and the heartfelt, and a renewed sense that come what may, what makes their lives worth living is the depth of friendship and mutual understanding that is no less potent now than it was in season 1.
(3) Sex Education (season 2)
Sex Education manages to do this, and tell a multiplicity of stories in a way that somehow does justice to them all while balancing life and dark tones, quirkiness and substance, despair and hope in ways that feel very authentic and liberating, especially if you come from a background where sex was seen as some sort of twisted embarrassment best pushed into the shadows.
That doesn’t, of course, happen even remotely on Sex Education which creates a world in which life can be harsh, sad and judgmental and where growing up opens a window onto how fucked up messy things can be, but where there’s also connection, support, love, friendships of the most unexpected kinds (the bond that develops between Vivienne and tortured swim star Jackson Marchetti played by Kedar Williams-Stirling is a particular delight) and a sense that while messy is normal is doesn’t have to be fatal and maybe, just maybe, somehow good and affirming can emerge from the chaotic detritus of being alive.
(4) Star Trek: Picard (season 1)
SNAPSHOT
At the end of the 24th Century, and 14 years after his retirement from Starfleet, Jean-Luc Picard is living a quiet life on his vineyard, Chateau Picard. When he is sought out by a mysterious young woman, Dahj, in need of his help, he soon realizes she may have personal connections to his own past. (synopsis via IMDb)
I reviewed this season week-by-week. To read reviews, go to Sparkly Pretty Briiiight and search Picard.
(5) The Good Place (final season)
It hurts to say goodbye to them as they take that final step out into the vast oneness of the universe after endless Jeremy Bearimys – it’s a goofily cursive concept of time and space that makes perfect sense when you ruminate on it – in the Afterlife, but then that parting underscores, as it does in real life, how much our links to those we love so dearly matter to us.
They matter, we know that, but just how much only really becomes clear in death which may sound desperately sad, and kind of is, but which is also rich beyond measure.
That is very much the case with The Good Place whose departure from our screens, while triumphantly and creatively executed in such a way that it is intensely sad and yet ridiculously funny and massively meaningful all at once, leaves us richer and better off in ways that only the very best of shows can.
Are we sad to see it go? Yes. Will it leave an Afterlife-sized hole in our frog-shaped hearts? (That’s an in joke that makes sense when you watch the show which if you haven’t, you really should). How could it not?
But after we immensely better off for four season of its time with us? Yes, we are, and even if it makes us ruminate to the point of gut-wrenching tears when we think of all we have lost, it also reminds in ways too numerous to mention that we are blessed in ways we never even knew, and perhaps life, and maybe even death (though that can wait thank you very much) are far richer and more wonderful than any of us have ever given them credit for.
(6) Altered Carbon (season 2)
While the story of season 2 might not be as riveting as its predecessor, failing to make the most of its themes of imperialism, and the fatal consequences of rapacious greed and twisted manifest destiny, and of the regret they can engender, it is still a beguiling watch, powered by vividly-realised characters, a grounded, vivacious exploration of humanity, connection and a sense that while technology may offer a great deal of promise, it is nothing if we, rather disastrously as it turns out, lose sight of our humanity, the very thing that makes us, US, and without which we are little more than a collection of blinking lights and failed ideals.
(7) Feel Good
Feel Good is a small and perfect gem that dives deep into the stuff of love, life and relationships, laying bare the lies we tell ourselves and the sabotage, intentional or not, that we routinely employ, in its humourous, heartfelt and charmingly engaging path to exploring whether happily-ever-afters are in fact possible and if so, whether we have it within ourselves to make them happen.
(8) Carnival Row
Carnival Row is sprawling and drawn out, contemplative and heartbreakingly, often unsettlingly and relentlessly bleak but it is a fascinatingly substantial and thoughtful exploration of the soul of humanity and its inability to see that its actions beget other consequential actions that can, properly handed with contrition, compassion and an openness to fundamental, transforming change, lead to the very best of things, or ignored and mishandled, create more misery, chaos and the very worst and ultimately damning of things from which nothing good can come.
(9) I Am Not Okay With This (season 1)
I Am Not Okay With This tells it story with a noticeable sense of quirkiness, fun and sass true but there’s also a considerable amount of real, grounded, gritty humanity at work too that makes this mutant-in-the-making show a stellar breakout of the genre and a wholly unique entry that understands that while super powers are whiz ban impressive, the greater and more emotionally impacting lies in how it affects the people with these powers who simply want to be normal but discover that’s no longer an option and have to either adapt and perish.
And as for the ending? Lordy but there are spoilers aplenty; suffice to say, I Am Not Okay With This goes out with a narrative bang that pays huge emotional dividends but also sets up Syd for the mother of all transformative journeys, the kind that will be worth watching well down the metal-bending, soul-searching road.
(Alas, I Am Not Okay With This was one of this year’s COVID-19 cancellation victims, and while initially renewed for a second season was then cancelled.)
(10) After Life (second season)
The second immaculately well-executed season After Life is some of the most profoundly beautiful and insightfully touching TV you are likely to see this year.
It gets grief, really gets it, understanding and articulating its messy, non-linear unpredictability, knowing all the time that though we want to be happy, that’s not always possible in the aftermath of the death of someone special and it’s okay to be who you are and where you are in the inglorious, ever-emotional interim.
(11) Unorthodox
Unorthodox is elegant and affecting storytelling that is respectful of everyone’s positions even as it makes it abundantly clear that what works for some, does not work for all, and that while belief and rituals are important, they cannot be allowed to trump basic humanity or the needs of individuals like Esty who either must either be given some consideration for their unique personal circumstances or be allowed to make their own way in the world, free from condemnation or persecution and the mental and emotional horrors that entails.
(12) Never Have I Ever
Never Have I Ever is funny and quirky and silly and sweet, a joy to behold with fine performances, witty, clever writing and a knowing sensibility about how life really works, but it is also rich in its understanding and articulation of grief and how, much as we might want everything to fall back into some kind of idealised normal without fear, favour or pain, the reality is we have no choice but to face the stark truth of grief, only then able to emerge into something that resembles what we hope and pray life has the ability to become.
(13) Upload
Upload is very much its own vibrantly engaging creation, however, a show that winningly combines existential comedy, murder mystery, incisively affecting social commentary and ruminations on the afterlife in all its possible forms and which deserves the second season it has just been awarded, if only so we can find out if the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42 … or is it, in the brave new world digital world of the near-future, simply as many 0s and 1s as you can afford?
(14) Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist
That is remarkable television on every level and testament to Winsburg’s creative vision and execution for Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist which manages to deliver on the easily-accessible warmth and vivacious quirkiness and colour of the trailer while taking us to some very dark and heart-sick places all while assuring us that this is life, it is normal and it too shall pass.
But until it does, there are people who love you, music to soundtrack everything that happens to you and a power in connection and belonging that won’t always make life better but which will sustain when the music dies and you can have to face life in its stripped-back, unadorned agony, wondering as you do if you will ever sing again.
(15) The Marvellous Mrs Maisel (season 1)
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel is an unbridled joy – searingly insightful about society’s hypocritical, patriachal underpinnings and the lengths must go to to accommodate them – Rose and Midge’s nightly routines, while funny, are cuttingly condemnatory about a system which demands little of the men but a great deal of the women with consequent rewards in direct proportion to the effort expended – affectionate but honest about the simultaneous sanctity and insanity of family, and humourously truthful about the way in which even the most accomplished of us can struggle when life’s expectations end up being chasmically subverted by its grim consequences.
This is a show that is both hilarious and heartfelt, fantastical and authentic, serious and silly, a love letter to the 1950s in all its flawed glory that, more importantly, delights in every possible way while holding a light to the contradictions inherent in our humanity, a state of being that both gives and takes and which is a rich well from which The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel draws with accomplished and joyful skill and a life-affirming brilliance which, while admits to life’s great gaping flaws, never admits to defeat, offering up a viewing experience that looks life in the eyes, admits to the very worst of it while making it clear that that is not where the story ends.
(16) Insecure (season 4)
Helping you along, of course, when things don’t go according to plan, are close friends, and while Insecure spends much of this season making merry with the key relationships that underpin the show, especially that between Issa and Molly, it returns again and again, whether negatively or positively framed, to the fact that all the things we get or don’t get in life mean not a thing with no one by your side to celebrate them or help you lick your wounds.
Proof positive of that is the final scene of episode 10, “Lowkey Lost” where two key characters come right back to the place where they reaffirm the centrality of their relationship to all the things that matter to them.
It underscores in ways resonant and truthful that if you go to strive for great things and put the pieces in places for big life transitions, you need to pay most attention to the people who are there for you, good and bad, because without them, all that striving is hollow and empty which kinds defeats the point of embarking on it in the first place.
(17) The Mandalorian (season 2)
SNAPSHOT
The Mandalorian has been tasked with returning his charge, a child, to its people, the Jedi. He begins searching for other Mandalorians who he believes can help him find the Jedi, and is directed to a rumored Mandalorian operating out of the Tatooine town Mos Pelgo. (synopsis via Wikipedia)
I reviewed this season week-by-week. To read reviews, go to Sparkly Pretty Briiiight and search The Mandalorian.
(18) Fear the Walking Dead (season 6, part 1) and The Walking Dead: World Beyond (season 1)
SNAPSHOTS
Fear the Walking Dead (season 6
The season follows Morgan Jones (Lennie James) who has been left for dead by Virginia (Colby Minifie), while the remaining members of Morgan’s group have been separated by Virginia and her Pioneers and are dispersed across her various settlements. (synopsis via Walking Dead Wiki)
The Walking Dead: The World Beyond
The series, set in Nebraska ten years after the zombie apocalypse, features four teenage protagonists and focuses on “the first generation to come-of-age in the apocalypse as we know it. Some will become heroes. Some will become villains. In the end, all of them will be changed forever. Grown-up and cemented in their identities, both good and bad.” (synopsis via Wikipedia)
I reviewed these seasons week-by-week. To read reviews, go to Sparkly Pretty Briiiight and search Fear the Walking Dead or The Walking Dead: World Beyond.
(19) Muppets Now
Overall, Muppets Now, while not perfect, is a treat, updating things quite beautifully while keeping true to the spirit of the original show and to the look, feel and personalities of a quite beloved group of characters who have been given a digital opportunity to reacquaint with old fans and find new ones and who look to have quite a lot of life left in them yet!
(20) Dash & Lily
Dash & Lily is that rare escapist show which gloriously celebrates the very ethereal, emotionally light and thrilling otherness of Christmas, a place where anything and everything can happen and all of it is good, very, very good, while managing to inject some real, earthy, grounded reality into proceedings, all without breaking the magic spell being woven by a show which adores and loves Christmas, New York and love itself, and importantly its two lead characters who are the beating heart of this most smile-inducing of shows. (All with an amazing array of music choices such as much personality to the show as it setting, witty dialogue and characters.)
Watch it because it is full to the brim of its innate festiveness, and because it loves narratively-convenient coincidences that you know aren’t even remotely realistic but accept without question anyway, and because it is an escapist bundle of giddy joy that makes the world seem like a place with promise and hope, but mostly because it celebrates that great longing we all have to experience life as fully and completely as possible and to do in the company who delights us and knows better than we know ourselves.
Is that too much of a fairytale? Maybe it is, but you will believe implicitly as you watch this most gorgeous and magically heartfelt of shows and who knows, you may even find yourself hugging Santa.