If 2022 was the height of Peak TV, with upward of 600 scripted series vying for overwhelmed eyeballs, then 2023 was the Great TV Descent. After the dual strikes that stalled Hollywood for the better part of the past 12 months – not to mention all but the largest streaming services failing to turn a profit – it can’t help but feel as if things are looking down. But even if the next few years are going to be supremely messy, there will always be diamonds hidden amidst the transport trucks of coal. To that end, here are The Globe and Mail’s Top 10 TV Series of 2023, as selected by resident screen junkies Barry Hertz and Rebecca Tucker.
Barry Hertz’s Top 5
1. Succession, Season 4 (HBO/Crave)
Jeremy Strong, Sarah Snook and Kieran Culkin in Succession.Claudette Barius/Amazon Prime
If the final and fantastic episode of Succession needed to provide its own epitaph, then Shiv (Sarah Snook) pronounced it right toward the end when she neatly and sharply summarized just what it is about these awful people that makes their stories worth watching: “I love you, but I cannot stomach you.” At its cold, black, deliciously diseased heart, showrunner Jesse Armstrong’s magnificent saga about a Murdoch-esque media empire has succeeded (get it?) at turning awful people doing horrendous things to the institutions we hold dear – you know, like democracy – into awfully funny, horrendously entertaining viewing that is as smart as it is savage. The dirtier the Roy family’s hands become, the more eager we have become to lick their muddy little fingers clean.
2. The Curse (Paramount+)
Emma Stone and Nathan Fielder in The Curse.Richard Foreman Jr./Paramount+
Your mileage may vary as to how much of Canadian comedian Nathan Fielder’s shtick you can stomach. His style is one that’s equal parts subversive and sinister, deadpan and deranged. But for those on Fielder’s wavelength, it’s hard to deny the brilliance of his latest reality-bending hybrid, The Curse. Co-created by and co-starring Benny Safdie, The Curse is a massive undertaking, satirizing everything from reality television to urban gentrification, with a hall-of-fame Emma Stone performance right at its sick centre.
3. Dead Ringers (Prime Video)
Rachel Weisz in Dead Ringers.Niko Tavernise/Prime Video/Amazon Prime Video
In a way, it’s good that the SAG-AFTRA strike ended up delaying the 2023 Emmy Awards until the new year – that means there’s still time for voters to come to their senses and retroactively nominate Rachel Weisz for her dual-lead performance in Alice Birch’s unlikely instant-classic reworking of David Cronenberg’s Dead Ringers. Morbid and poetic, surreal and sordid, the six-part series balances the line between homage and innovation brilliantly, stitching together new and old ideas to create something thrilling. Birch’s big twist is switching the gender of Cronenberg’s original Mantle twins – famed obstetricians who feed each other’s worst habits – from brothers to sisters, a flip that might not have worked as well if Weisz didn’t handle the job with remarkable identity-switching skill.
4. Platonic (Apple TV+)
Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne in Platonic.Paul Sarkis/Apple TV+
Between the Jason Segel-Harrison Ford series Shrinking and this series run by the husband-and-wife team of Nick Stoller and Francesca Delbanco, Apple TV+ is pumping out the best sitcoms that no one seems to be talking about. The 10-episode Platonic, following two friends from college (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne) whose lives have drifted apart, has a vibe that is instantly witty and warm. Every episode is beautifully shot, every supporting role filled by an ace comic bit player, every closing-credits song a bouncy banger. And Rogen and Byrne, who already played a couple in Stoller’s two Neighbors films, have enough chemistry to power a billion iPhones.
5. The Diplomat (Netflix)
Keri Russell in The Diplomat.Netflix
It hasn’t been the best year for Netflix. Sure, its subscription numbers are back up after last year’s big drop, and it boasts a solid number of Oscar-bait movies in its original films department. But in terms of prestige series, the love of Netflix viewers can be blind. And yet, the streaming giant does have a good hold on the dumb-but-fun genre. Take The Diplomat. The Keri Russell vehicle is the best kind of small-screen stupid – knowingly so, and eager to embrace its limitations. Playing the American ambassador to Britain who must deal with a crisis between the West and Iran, Russell is all winking grit and hard-charging determination. And she is surrounded by a wealth of supporting players – including Michael McKean as the U.S. president and Rory Kinnear as the British PM – who all know exactly what’s required of them, and how to make sure the final product is as entertaining (re: ridiculous without seeming foolish) as possible.
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Rebecca Tucker’s Top 5
1. The Bear (Disney+)
Gillian Jacobs and Abby Elliot in The Bear.Chuck Hodes/Supplied
If the first season of The Bear was – sorry – an amuse bouche, in its second season, the series goes full tasting menu. In it, the action moves out of the kitchen and uses protagonist Carmy’s central goal of opening his own restaurant in his late brother’s sandwich shop to investigate his past, and to flesh out the storylines of the show’s supporting cast. It’s a meatier serving (sorry again) than Season 1, not insofar as it provides much more plot (it doesn’t), but in that it delves deeply and thoughtfully into the motivations of so many characters, branching out into their respective storylines and then deftly weaving them back into the main trunk. And the soundtrack is killer, to boot.
2. Reservation Dogs (Apple TV+)
Graham Greene in Reservation Dogs.Shane Brown/The Associated Press
One of the year’s greatest losses was Reservation Dogs, which wrapped up a three-season run in September. The show – which featured tons of Indigenous talent both in front of and behind the camera – finished, fittingly, with a funeral that brought a number of the series’ guest stars and recurring characters (including Killers of the Flower Moon star Lily Gladstone) back for one last go. Reservation Dogs, which was created by Taika Waititi and Sterlin Harjo (and cancelled by them – the decision to end the series came from Waititi and Harjo, not from FX), was an informed, at times unflinching, and smartly nuanced look at the lives, shared histories and contemporary challenges of four Indigenous teens. It will be missed, but its positive reception should allow for a wider breadth of contemporary Indigenous storytelling on TV and beyond.
3. Telemarketers (Crave)
Through a stroke of prescient genius, in the early 2000s, Sam Lipman-Stern began documenting his time working as a telemarketer for Civic Development Group, the company that was then actively pulling one of the most famous telemarketing scams in U.S. history. That footage forms the investigative backbone of Telemarketers, a three-episode limited series co-directed by Lipman-Stern and Adam Bhala Lough that plays out like one of the best true-crime documentaries you’ve ever seen, despite (or, perhaps, because of) most of the action taking place in call centres. The Safdie brothers – originally approached by Lipman-Stern and Lough to direct the doc – act as producers, which could account for some of the high-stakes tension in low-stakes environments.
4. Somebody Somewhere (Crave)
If ever there was a show that could fairly be described as “tender,” it’s this one. As Sam and Joel, Bridget Everett and Jeff Hiller play best friends working to carve out space for themselves in suburban Kansas; for Jeff, that means reconciling his identity as a queer man with his Christian faith; for Sam, that means reconciling with past insecurities after a move back home. It’s a beautifully understated series that explores the magic of the mundane. In a New Yorker piece about the series published in May, writer Inkoo Kang suggested that Somebody Somewhere – which had its second-season finale the same night as series closers from Succession and Barry – could fairly act as counterprogramming to those shows, and I agree: In them, you may see parts of your humanity – a bit of greed, some avarice here or there – reflected as caricature. In Somebody Somewhere, you just see your whole self.
5. I Have Nothing (Crave)
On paper, it feels like a miracle that I Have Nothing ever got made: The series follows actor and comedian Carolyn Taylor as she attempts to choreograph a figure skating routine to the titular Whitney Houston song, with no choreographic experience at all. But then there’s a little bit of a miracle at play throughout the show itself, as Taylor persuades various key players and stakeholders – champion skater Sandra Bezic to teach her how to choreograph; the estate of Whitney Houston for permission to use the song; Ekaterina Gordeeva and David Pelletier to perform it – to agree to her gambit. It’s funny, sure, but it’s also just about as heart-warming as it gets, as Taylor approaches her quest with genuine earnestness. You can’t help but cheer her on.