The 10 Best TV Shows of 2023

There was a week in late May when Ted Lasso, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Succession, and Barry all released their final episodes. These are shows that dominated awards nights and year-end best-of lists like this one over the past few years, and all of them were gone within five days of one another.

Between that busy farewell weekend and the businesswide contraction that’s taking place as every network, streamer, and studio realizes that making 500-plus scripted shows per year just isn’t sustainable, it’s fair to wonder if that May stretch marked the end of an entire era.

Maybe it did. There will be fewer original series moving forward, and thus less room for creators to experiment with the kind of strange ones that occupy some of the slots on my list of 2023’s 10 best shows. But most of the shows on the list did not come to an end this year. And some seem to only be getting started on long and memorable runs. But two of the top three have already said goodbye, which means all we can do is encourage anyone not lucky enough to watch them the first time to give them a shot.

10. Party Down (Starz)

COLLEEN HAYES/STARZ

Television over the last decade has grown just as overrun by revivals of old shows as superhero movies have taken over multiplexes. And most of these sequel series feel like pale imitations of the original versions, which were products of a particular place in the lives of the characters, the creators, and the audience. Party Down — an ensemble comedy about a team of L.A. cater waiters trying and failing to make their primary career dreams come true — picked up, quality-wise, right where it left off in 2010. If anything, the premise is even funnier and more poignant now than it was 13 years ago, since anyone who is still working for Party Down after all this time (or who has returned to it) can’t possibly be living the life they wanted. The ensemble, led by Adam Scott and Ken Marino, still worked together hilariously, and new additions Zoe Chao and Tyrel Jackson Williams fit in like they’d been there all along. It’s unclear whether the ratings improved even slightly from the minuscule audience Party Down got in the late 2000s, but if Starz wants to make more, the show seems built to keep going for quite some time.

9. Somebody Somewhere (HBO)

HBO

Other shows on this list are filled with action, spectacle, and globe-shaking geopolitical events. Then there is Somebody Somewhere, a dramedy about two former high school classmates (Bridget Everett and Jeff Hiller) trying to make sense of middle-age while living in their rural Kansas hometown. I would struggle to tell you more than one or two plot points from the second season, but the lack of eventfulness is a feature, not a bug. The show casts its spell on viewers precisely because so little is happening, which only makes it easier to appreciate how adrift Everett and Hiller feel. A deliberately small show packed with huge emotion.

8. Cunk on Earth (Netflix)

NETFLIX

Over the last decade, actress Diane Morgan and Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker have made a series of sketches and miniseries about Philomena Cunk, a complete nitwit of a TV documentary host whose ignorance is only topped by her confidence that every stupid word out of her mouth is correct. American viewers got officially Cunk’ed with this new limited series where Philomena attempts to recap all the major events in human history — and, frequently, comparing them for some reason to “Pump Up the Jam” by Technotronic. The most consistent laugh generator of any show this year (including What We Do in the Shadows, which narrowly missed the cut).

7. Blue Eye Samurai (Netflix)

NETFLIX

No show this year looked more beautiful — even when the images being depicted were unspeakably ugly and violent — than this animated epic about a biracial, female sword master on a revenge tour through 1600s Japan. And few shows offered a richer understanding of their worlds and their characters, even as our heroine Mizu (Maya Erskine) seemed to defy the laws of physics as she carved her way through one opponent — or army — after another. 

6. Beef (Netflix)

ANDREW COOPER/NETFLIX

Two strangers — one a depressed, inept contractor (Steven Yeun), the other an overextended would-be mogul (Ali Wong) — get into a road rage incident in the first episode of this oddest, darkest of dramedies, then spend the rest of the season attempting to destroy each other’s lives so they won’t have to think about the mess they’ve made of their own. We know Yeun can play things both serious and silly, and he did it exceptionally here, but Wong was the revelation in a primarily dramatic role. Neither the characters nor the audience can be blamed for not being able to predict just how bad things will get for everyone by the end of the story.

5. The Last of Us (HBO)

LIANE HENTSCHER/HBO

It’s putting it kindly to say that the creative track record of video games being adapted for film and television has historically been poor. But with The Last of Us, Neil Druckmann and Craig Mazin were adapting Druckmann’s post-apocalyptic game, which already had a reputation for being more cinematic, and having much deeper characterizations, than almost any game before it. Sure enough, the translation went incredibly well, especially with the casting of Pedro Pascal as a grieving father given a second chance at life by protecting a teenage girl (Bella Ramsey) who may be the key to curing the plague that has turned most of the human race into zombie-like mushroom creatures. Pascal and Ramsey were riveting throughout — and guest stars Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett even more so in a one-off episode about how it’s still possible to find love in a ruined world like this. And at every turn, The Last of Us felt like compelling drama that just happened to have video game origins, rather than a show trying and failing to recreate the experience of playing the game itself.

4. Poker Face (Peacock)

PEACOCK

An old-school show from new-school talent. Glass Onion writer/director Rian Johnson teamed with Russian Doll creator/star Natasha Lyonne for a delightful, clever throwback to Seventies TV mystery dramas like Columbo and Banacek. Each episode starts by showing us a murder being committed, then dials back to reveal that Lyonne’s Charlie Cale — a woman with the uncanny ability to recognize when someone is telling a lie — was lurking on the periphery during the earlier scenes. She solves the crime each week, of course, and in the process proves that the only problem with the standalone procedural format is that people stopped making them this well.

3. Succession (HBO)

GRAEME HUNTER/HBO

We’re now into the rarest of air on this list, where any of the remaining three shows gave us all-timer seasons that have easy arguments for the top spot. Succession died as it lived: funny, dark, and somehow tragic even as it was wrapping up the stories of some of the most despicable, pathetic fictional characters ever presented on television.

2. The Bear (Hulu)

CHUCK HODES/FX

The first season of the FX-produced half-hour Chicago restaurant drama was riveting, even as almost every scene was filled with panic attack levels of stress. For Season Two, The Bear relaxed just a bit, allowing Carmy (Jeremy Allen White), Sydney (Ayo Edebiri), Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach), and everyone else to enjoy the process of transforming their Italian beef sandwich shop into a fine-dining establishment. There was still stress aplenty, particularly in a guest star-packed Christmas flashback episode, as well as the season finale. But there were abundant, spectacular moments of joy, too, from Marcus (Lionel Boyce) going to Copenhagen to master his dessert-making craft, to Richie apprenticing at the world’s best restaurant. A show in complete command of mood, both good and bad ones.

1. Reservation Dogs (Hulu)

SHANE BROWN/FX.

There has never been a show quite like Reservation Dogs, a comedy (also an FX on Hulu production) about Indigenous teenagers growing up on a reservation in rural Oklahoma. Let us hope there will be ones like it again, especially after a masterpiece of a final season where every episode felt different from one another, and where it could be the funniest thing on television one week and the most sob-inducing the next. Throughout, Reservation Dogs walked a narrow tightrope about how much it wanted to treat supernatural Native folklore as a real factor in these kids’ lives, and how much was meant to exist in their imaginations. No matter what you chose to believe, Reservation Dogs was magic of the highest caliber.

From Rolling Stone US.