Best TV of 2019

I saw a lot of good TV in 2019 and it was hard to rank some shows (the top two on this list are virtually tied). There were plenty of good shows not on this list that I really enjoyed, but don’t have much to say about, like Good Girls, The Boys, Legion, Steven Universe, The Gifted, etc. A few shows are not on this list because we’re not caught up yet, like Succession, The Good Place, Killing Eve, Grace and Frankie, and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Here’s the unscientific countdown:

12. Stranger Things. Not too much to say about this. I just really enjoyed the pool and the mall, which completely encapsulated the summer of 1985.

11. GLOW. I liked that the setting shifted to Las Vegas. I also liked Debbie’s power moves in negotiating a piece of the show. Not sure about the aborted romance between Ruth and Sam.

10. Game of Thrones. I’ve said enough about this in my weekly recaps and don’t really feel like talking about it anymore.

9. The Handmaid’s Tale. Was it good this season? I don’t know. I liked it better than season two. I’m still not sure what to make of June (Elisabeth Moss). She proves herself a capable leader, organizing to get dozens of children out of Gilead. But the show sometimes tips too far into ignoring the contributions of the (mostly of color) Marthas, equally capable women who could have evacuated the children themselves. June also has a reckless side, getting one of the Marthas killed just so she can stand outside the walls of a school and hear her daughter’s voice among a crowd of children playing. Was it worth someone’s life? That’s the question the show has to answer. I almost think it would be more interesting to leave June and focus on another part of Gilead, or show more of those who resettled in Canada. Also, the Washington handmaids who were gagged and had steel rings in their mouths really nauseated me.

8. Veep. In the end, Selina Meyer faces a floor fight at the convention, gets re-elected president for one term, goes down in history with a shrug, and her funeral is upstaged by the death of Tom Hanks. In its last season, Veep matched the madcap speed of our political world, where Meyer almost got referred to the World Court for war crimes, and then the whole thing just disappeared. The casual glance Meyer gives loyal aid Gary during her convention speech, as he is hauled off by the FBI for taking a fall for something she did, is one of the coldest things I’ve ever seen on TV. Julia Louis-Dreyfus is a national treasure who deserved every Emmy she got for this role.

7. The Crown. We’re not caught up yet but I’m enjoying Olivia Colman’s turn as Queen Elizabeth II and Helena Bonham-Carter as Princess Margaret. The former lets emotions play out all over her face without letting them bubble over, while the latter is vivacious but frustrated. The episodes we saw had some good character studies of Prince Charles and Prince Philip, as well as a spirited appearance by Princess Anne. I also never thought I’d be interested in the fate of King Edward VIII (who I had little sympathy for in earlier seasons), but his story was a neat exploration of the idea of duty and the crown going to the right person.

6. Years and Years. I’m a sucker for alternate future stories so I enjoyed this, which focused on all the changes endured by a British family going 15 years into the future. A charming despot, Vivian Rook, becomes prime minister and secretly herds immigrants into camps. At the end of his second term, Trump nukes China. The economy collapses, governments fall, the environment degrades, and all sorts of other stuff happens. It’s both horrific (the sight of the one son washed up dead on a beach after trying to help his immigrant partner escape to safety) and hopeful (when the cast exposes the evils of Rook at the end).

5. Mr. Robot. This review is a little late so I could see how the series ended. I’m still evaluating the last episode and the reveal that Elliot had locked a real part of his personality in a fantasy world so he could take down E Corp, but I really liked the basic plot of the season, showing the downfall of the Deus Group, mostly set on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. In season four, Mr. Robot continued to be formally daring, with a dialogue-free episode, an episode staged like a play, and a rom-com episode. I liked the focus on Darlene as the heart of the show and Elliot’s anchor to reality.

4. Chernobyl. How is something so feel-bad so popular? This was a stunning indictment of the 1986 nuclear meltdown as the fault of not just human error but bureaucratic incompetence. The performances were particularly strong, with an anguished Jared Harris, a determined Emily Watson and a subtly powerful Stellan Skarsgard. There were so many horrific scenes, such as the workmen cleaning up radioactive material for only 90 seconds each before the fallout can kill them, a helicopter dropping over the reactor like a puppet with its strings cut, and the heartbreaking but gorgeous shot of concrete sealing the mass grave of those who died, the concrete moving over them like an ocean. I don’t think I’ll ever hear the word “graphite” again without getting goosebumps.

3. Russian Doll. I’m not sure exactly how to describe Russian Doll, which we burned through in a weekend. It’s the story of a woman who keeps dying after experiencing a time loop at her birthday party, but it’s much more than that: a look at human connections with deep empathy for its characters. Natasha Lyonne is vivid, unique and fantastic.

2. Watchmen. I loved this even more than I expected. It’s not quite a sequel to the Watchmen comic but an extrapolation of the comic’s themes. As Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons subverted the superhero genre, this show subverted some of the story in the comics. In an astonishing episode of TV, which almost by itself earned the show this high spot on my list, we learn that Hooded Justice was not white as assumed but was a black man who wore a hood to conceal his race to fight crime. This was a smart exploration of race and whitewashing history, with one character noting that a white man in a mask is a hero while a black man is a criminal. Partially set during the 1921 Black Wall Street massacre in Tulsa, the show tackled how the pain of black people in the past is inherited by the future, crystallized in one shot—a black-and-white modern police car pulling corpses of black people behind it and trailing their red blood—that took my breath away. The performances were magnificent, with Jean Smart, Louis Gossett Jr., Jeremy Irons and especially, presumed Emmy winner Regina King.

1. The Americ— Sorry. Force of habit.

1. The Deuce. This was such a great show that nobody watched, showing the evolving sex trade in Times Square from the early ‘70s to the mid-‘80s. In its third and final season, set in 1985, the prostitutes are being pushed out of midtown, the massage parlors are closing, and porn is moving from New York theaters to videotape in California. While the city is gentrifying, pushing out sex workers and others deemed undesirable, the population also faces the slow-motion horror show of the AIDS crisis. The Deuce was a deft exploration of how women are exploited. As prostitute/porn star/porn director Candy Renee says, “What men want—no, what they’ll pay for—that becomes the world.” Candy is one of the women who survived the brutal world of sex work, eventually becoming a respected movie director. Maggie Gyllenhaal was brilliant in this role (if you pause in just the right spot her monologue about her father taking her to get a back-alley abortion as a teen and then driving off without her, you can actually see the spot where she should earn an Emmy nomination). Lori Madison (a great Emily Meade) wasn’t so lucky. She moved from prostitution to porn to stripping and after trying unsuccessfully to start a music career, realized that the world would never see her as anything other than a porn star. Out of options after turning one last trick, she matter-of-factly shoots herself in a hotel room. None of the cast mentions her again. What was really striking about The Deuce was its sense of community. When one person got sick, it seemed like everybody got sick. These people moved in the same circles for 15 years, and it’s sad to see how they got shuffled aside as the city changed.