There can really be no doubt that we’re living in the Golden Age of TV. There’s so much good TV these days that it’s literally impossible to keep up. But I try… and here are the ten best series I watched in 2023.
10. Hijack. John Oliver recently joked that Apple+ was the place where big stars went to hide, and there’s definitely some truth to that. Anyone who goes in and looks at the streamer’s line-up will be shocked at the number of shows they’ve never heard of with huge stars in the lead. That Apple keeps drawing the kind of star power to their shows, and keeps delivering truly incredible content, is one of the entertainment industry’s least-talked-about successes—in fact, fully half of the titles on this list can be found there. The first is this tense limited series starring Idris Elba, who finds himself on a hijacked airliner heading to London. Of course, hijackings are much higher stakes in our post-9/11 world, and the show nicely juggles the potential threat to those on the ground with the very real threat faced by those in the air. The series, as I already mentioned, is available on Apple+.
9. Platonic. Rose Byrne is an actress whose entire resume seems filled with enjoyable films and shows, and Platonic is no different. Byrne plays a suburban housewife who is increasingly unhappy with the choices that led her to abandon her legal career to raise her kids, a situation made worse when she encounters an old college friend who hasn’t quite grown out of his partying ways (played by Seth Rogan.) As he draws her back into her old, more carefree life, she struggles with her obligations at home. But this doesn’t go where that story normally does. As the title states, Byrne and Rogan are really, truly just friends, and while Byrne may be questioning her life choices, it in no way diminishes the love she shares with her extremely understanding husband (played in an Emmy-worthy performance by Luke MacFarlane) or her kids. Platonic is available on Apple+.
8. Lessons in Chemistry. Another one of those big-stars-on-Apple+-series, Lessons in Chemistry stars Brie Larson as a brilliant scientist who is, unfortunately for her, living in the ’60s and ’70s. She struggles to be taken seriously at her job, a situation made far worse when she falls, somewhat reluctantly, in love with the lab’s other brilliant (but male) chemist. What follows are 10 episodes on misogyny and racism, but also love and family and loss and grieving and everything in between. Anchored by an incredible performance by Larson, the show is certain to make you laugh and cry and be just a bit disappointed at the end that it’s actually over. It’s available, of course, on Apple+.
7. Shrinking. My wife is a therapist, and, in general, hates shows about therapy. And so perhaps the highest praise I can give Shrinking is that she loved it. Starring Jason Segal and Jessica Williams, the show follows a therapist (Segal) who lost his wife and doesn’t know how to deal with it. While every performance in the show is outstanding, the true scene-stealer is none other than Harrison Ford, making everyone wonder why he wasn’t a comedy star from the very beginning. Yup, it’s on Apple+.
6. The Bear. If I’d done this list in 2022, there’s a good chance that the first season of The Bear would have topped it. The second season focuses on the team as they attempt to turn their corner sandwich shop into a fine dining establishment, and follows as they struggle to pass health inspections, learn new skills, and come together as a team. While the second season doesn’t hold together quite as well, it has some of the best single episodes of the year. Jeremy Allen White, Ayo Edebiri, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, and the rest of the cast continue to deliver stand-out performances. The Bear is available on Hulu.
5. The Last of Us. You’d think that The Walking Dead and its 8 million spin-offs would have effectively killed the zombie apocalypse genre, at least for a time, but then something like The Last of Us comes along and shows that there are still plenty of stories to be told about the end of the world. Based on a popular video game franchise (which, for the record, I have never played), it follows a loner (Pedro Pascal) as he has to care for a young girl (Bella Ramsey) who may hold the cure to the outbreak while they trek across the country. Anyone who watched Game of Thrones knows how well Ramsey can steal a scene, and here she does so over and over again, and yet Pascal is able to hold his own. Like all good apocalypse stories, this doesn’t lose sight of the fact that the zombies should be little more than McGuffins, and what we really want is interesting characters. As a bonus, the show’s third episode, “Long Long Time,” is one of the best 76 minutes of television of all time. The Last of Us is on Max.
4. Ahsoka. While no Star Wars show is ever likely to equal the brilliance of Andor, Ahsoka certainly comes close. Bringing to life the characters we all grew to know and love in Rebels (yes, I know Ahsoka was introduced in Clone Wars, but Rebels is the superior series, so don’t @ me) was always going to be tricky, but who better to manage it than Dave Filoni? The task was definitely helped by brilliant casting, from Rosario Dawson in the lead role (a role she debuted in The Mandalorian) to Natasha Liu Bordizzo as Sabine, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Hera, and helped by the voice acting of the always-brilliant David Tennant as Ahsoka’s droid companion. Even the villains are perfect, with Lars Mikkelsen bringing Thrawn to life—something that Star Wars fans like me have been waiting for since Timothy Zahn invented the character over 30 years ago—and the late, great Ray Stevenson playing a former Jedi, now gone over to the Dark Side. This is everything Star Wars can and should be. Ahsoka is available on Disney+.
3. Poker Face. Younger readers may not recall the days of the ’80s shows in which our hero or heroes traveled, seemingly at random, from one town to the next, conveniently arriving just in time to solve some kind of crime before moving on to the next town. Whether it was The Incredible Hulk, The A-Team, or even Quantum Leap, we really haven’t seen this kind of episodic show in decades. Until Rian Johnson revived the format with Poker Face. What makes this show different from those others, though, is quality: the quality of the writing, the quality of the acting from star Natasha Lyonne, and the quality of the guest stars, the roster of which included Benjamin Bratt, Adrien Brody, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ellen Barkin, Hung Chao, Rob Perlman, Chloe Sevigny, Nick Nolte, Cherry Jones, and many, many others. You can watch Poker Face on Peacock.
2. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. I’m a long-time Star Trek fan, but these last few years have been tough. Look, I’m glad there are people out there who found a way to enjoy Discovery and Picard, but what we all wanted (even if we didn’t know we wanted it) was a return to the truly episodic, planet-of-the-week format that made the original series a success 60 years ago. After season one, we already knew that Strange New Worlds was just that, but this season took the story-telling up a notch. It’s not too often that you get a show that can slide effortlessly from broad comedy to fantasy to mystery to horror to a musical from one week to the next, all the while remaining grounded. And yes, the musical really did work, even before we got Klingon K-Pop. Strange New Worlds is availabe on Paramount+.
1. For All Mankind. I’ve been arguing for years now that For All Mankind was the best show no one was watching. (It is, after all, on Apple+.) Now that the alternate history has almost caught up to us—season 4 takes place in 2003—it’s amazing seeing how executive producer Ronald Moore is managing to still thread that needle between keeping the show grounded in what could have been while still giving his writers the freedom to make the best sci-fi show out there. And in large part, they’re doing it because, like every other show on this list, they’re remembering that at the end of the day, what we really want are human stories. For All Mankind is available on Apple+.
