Critics name their favorite TV shows of 2023

Transcript

Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

Amna Nawaz: In the age of streaming, there’s never a lack of something to watch. The choices are nearly overwhelming.

Jeffrey Brown consults some critics as part of our arts and culture series, Canvas.

Jeffrey Brown: And to help guide us through this year’s best shows, I’m joined by Lorraine Ali, the news and culture critic of The L.A. Times, and Jen Chaney, TV critic for Vulture and “New York Magazine.”

And hello to both of you. Thanks for joining us.

Why don’t we start with new shows?

Jen Chaney, you want to start? Give us two.

Jen Chaney, “New York Magazine”: Sure.

One of the big shows of the year, especially early in the year, was “The Last of Us,” which was a big HBO series based on a very popular, enduring video game, also telling a story of a pandemic, but a different kind of pandemic, but certainly shades of that catastrophic situation that people have to endure through.

I thought it was a wonderful series with two terrific lead performances from Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey.

Jeffrey Brown: Connected with people because of that sense of out of time.

Jen Chaney: Yes. So, I thought that was a terrific show.

Another really great new show that I feel like not enough people watched is “Mrs. Davis.” It was on Peacock. It was created by Tara Hernandez and Damon Lindelof, who created “Lost” and “Watchmen.” And it’s so hard to explain this show in a brief manner, but it’s about a nun who is opposed to this algorithm that is — everybody’s kind of using to guide their lives.

And the algorithm challenges her that if she finds the Holy Grail, the algorithm will delete itself.

Actress: The Holy Grail?

Actress: The what now?

Jeffrey Brown: A nun, an algorithm and the Holy Grail.

Jen Chaney: Right. I mean, we have seen it 1,000 times, but it’s really good in this particular instance.

Jeffrey Brown: I got it.

(laughter)

Jeffrey Brown: All right, Lorraine Ali, do you have two new shows?

Lorraine Ali, The Los Angeles Times: My first one is one that I don’t feel like a lot of people saw. It’s called “The Horror of Dolores Roach.”

it is a dark comedy kind of along the lines of a “Sweeney Todd” urban tale mixed with horror. And it takes place in a gentrified neighborhood in New York. And this woman gets out of prison. She’s played by Justina Machado, who you might know from “One Day at a Time,” the reboot, and also from “Six Feet Under.”

She gets out of prison, returns to her old neighborhood, only to find that it’s totally been gentrified. How does she survive? She moves in with the only person that she still knows, who runs an empanada shop. Murders begin to happen. And then all of a sudden there’s this new mystery meat in the empanada that everybody loves.

(laughter)

Lorraine Ali: And what I love about this really kind of gruesome, but funny series is that it looks at gentrification as a form of cannibalism. And then it kind of turns it on itself. It’s brilliant.

Jeffrey Brown: All right. You got another one?

Lorraine Ali: I do.

Jeffrey Brown: I don’t know if you can top that, but go ahead.

(laughter)

Lorraine Ali: Yes, that’s a hard one to top, the mystery meat in the empanada.

My other one is “Poker Face.” And that is a series. It’s kind of like a detective series starring Natasha Lyonne. And she really takes the grid of the old series “Columbo” and turns her own character out of that. And so she is kind of like the female Columbo. Each episode, she is in another place in the country solving a crime. She just plays this so wonderfully.

Natasha Lyonne, with her gravely voice, chomping on a cigarette in this old late model car, it’s just fantastic. And there’s something really charming about taking that old network idea of a detective show and modernizing it.

Jeffrey Brown: How about, Jen, two older series? There were a number of big ones this year, including some that came to an end.

Jen Chaney: Well, when I had to make my list of the top 10 shows and decide what number one was going to be, I had a long debate internally with myself, and then I was like, you’re lying to yourself if you don’t put “Succession”…

Jeffrey Brown: At the top?

Jen Chaney: At the top.

I mean, there was nothing that I was more obsessed with this year.

Jeffrey Brown: You and a lot of people.

Jen Chaney: And a lot of people.

Brian Cox, Actor: I love you, but you are not serious people.

Jen Chaney: I just thought they ended that series perfectly. There was so much tension, just so many great performances. I mean, the death of Logan Roy, sort of the patriarch of the family, that episode alone where the kids are finding out that their father died was just an incredible hour of television.

So I’m sad that it’s gone, but a perfect way to go out.

Jeffrey Brown: Another one?

Jen Chaney: “The Bear,” that’s my number two. Thank God it’s still going. This is — was only the second season, but it had such a strong first season.

It’s about a man in Chicago who loses his brother and has to take over the family restaurant business. And in the second season, he’s trying to do something totally different and do like a more elevated, sophisticated restaurant. And it’s just so much fun to watch. You fall in love with the characters. I

literally miss these characters every day that that show is not on. I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Jeffrey Brown: Lorraine, do you have a couple of older or perhaps even ending series?

Lorraine Ali: “Reservation Dogs.” It was its third and final season. And this series did so much to kind of open up the everyday life on reservation.

And the characters are indigenous. And they’re playing kids that are kind of facing, do we leave the reservation? Do we stay here? This final season wrapped up an incredibly nuanced and quirky series with tons of heart, but also this magic surrealism, and then also wrapping a lot of the history, painful history, of Native Americans and what they have gone through into a modern tale. And I love that series so much and those characters will stay with me.

My second pick would be “Barry,” which also wrapped up. The entire show wrapped up. This is, of course, the hit-man-turned-actor. It’s Bill Hader’s HBO show. And I thought the ending of this would not be easy to wrap up, but they really nailed it. And they nailed it in a way that this hit man kind of comes off looking like a hero.

And it just so speaks to our times of like everything being upside down and not what it should be morally.

(laughter)

Lorraine Ali: And I thought they just brilliantly nailed that.

Jeffrey Brown: You know, just in our last couple of minutes here — I will start with you, Jen.

The — can’t really talk about this here without thinking about the strike. What have you seen in terms of any impact? Or, maybe more importantly, what are you looking toward? What will happen?

Jen Chaney: My concern going into 2024 is that, in the wake of the strike, there was already a little bit of reticence to take risks in Hollywood, both in film and in television.

And my concern is that it’s going to be even more stark, that people are going to be I.P.-focused and not necessarily as interested in original stories. I hope I’m wrong, but I’m getting the sense from people in the business that that is kind of the direction, at least for now.

And I think we’re going to see constriction. We have so many platforms, so many TV shows. Everyone’s saying peak TV is over. And we’re just not going to have as many shows, which is probably better for my sanity.

Jeffrey Brown: Yes.

Jen Chaney: But it does reduce the number of possibilities for people that aren’t represented on TV to have a place where they can be represented.

Jeffrey Brown: Lorraine, what do you see?

Lorraine Ali: Much the same. I agree with what you’re saying.

And I also see, when I’m looking forward to even what’s coming out at the beginning of 2024, it’s looking pretty stark. It’s just there’s not a lot there, and which makes me really grateful for what came out in 2023, because we have always complained, at least over the last five or six years, I’m never going to have enough time to watch everything.

Jeffrey Brown: Right.

Lorraine Ali: OK, well, 2024 is going to give you that time, because I think there’s going to be — it’s going to be kind of, like, scarce and scant pickings for a while.

And I do — I’m also concerned about the idea that we’re not going to get as much creative programming, but that’s yet to be seen. Just go back, find what you haven’t seen, which there’s probably a lot of it. You will have plenty of time to binge in the beginning of 2024.

Jeffrey Brown: Lorraine Ali and Jen Chaney, thank you both very much.

Jen Chaney: Thank you.

Lorraine Ali: Thank you.