The best TV shows of 2023 that made me enjoy being alive

It's the end of the year so let's try to remember television

I had a weird relationship with TV this year - after a couple of years of commissioning articles about TV for my day job, writing articles about TV for my freelance job, talking about TV shows on the radio in the middle of my work day… I suddenly realised I hated TV so much that I basically became my mum in the nineties. I hated TV and I felt a deep spiritual yearning for sundried tomatoes.

I literally found myself procrastinating from watching Succession so I could read a dense literary biography. I reverse-nerded myself! It eventually got so bad that I quit my job and took a lifestyle writing contract (which has been fun, but also I maybe should have just taken some leave lol. Also there were other reasons, such as being broke).

So, I sort of feel like I missed some of the biggest shows of the year - yeah I watched Beef, but I didn’t enjoy it because I didn’t enjoy television. I think objectively it’s a great show, but I was too broken. Yeah I saw The Bear, but it stressed me out.

SO. My best of list are the shows that managed to pierce the weird burnout fog and made me remember why I love the idiot box.

The Last Of Us

The Last Of Us aired so long ago it feels like a different lifetime, which is funny because that feeling of general regret for moments gone permeates the show in many different ways. A prestige drama about mushroom zombies was always going to be risky, but I’d say the show was so brilliant was because it didn’t try to reinvent the zombie genre, just take our familiarity with the tropes as a base level and use great storytelling and performances to build on it. The capsule episode focusing on the gay love story, which I wrote about in February, is a great example of elevating how to tell the story of humanity during an apocalypse.

The Other Two

I just adore a show with gags, and this one is goddamn packed with it. The third and final season built on everything and managed to escalate the humour, without treading over the same ground again. I can’t think of another show that has managed to lampoon the modern entertainment industry so effectively and hilariously. This final season showed the brutal reality that success can be just as embarrassing and cringe as wanting success, a lesson that can only be achieved by being both very brutal and very funny at the same time. The episode where Cary plays Globby, Disney’s first “queer” animated character is deeply funny and uncomfortable.

Also it’s a shame that The Other Two ended with a shadow of real world controversy over it, but I guess in 2024 i’m separating art from the artist? Idk

Deadloch

Oh my god, I adored every moment of this show. There’s an instinct with parodies to use the references that signify the satire AS the gag. Deadloch is so funny because despite clearly parodying the nordic noir cop drama that the Tasmanian setting so easily provides - think your Broadchurches or The Bridges - the jokes come from, well, actual set ups and punch lines and comedic sensibility. The Kates are the best comedy writers in Australia.

Deadloch makes the brilliant decision to trust that the audience understands the parody happening, and instead of spoon feeding us it, decides to give us very funny gags, an interesting and genuinely puzzling crime story, and some brilliant comedic performances. Kate Box beautifully carries the show. Nina Oyama and Tom Ballard’s performances are particularly noteworthy to me, as they provide a kind of goofy heart to the show that could have been easily lost. Susie Youssef’s mayor always made me laugh, with only subtle facial expressions and line deliveries. I found some of the main character dynamics a little jarring in the first few episodes, but when they settled into their roles, I stopped caring.

I think what also made me love the show was its commitment to the absurdities of Australiana, which obviously come from a place of love - but without any real glorification or cringey statements about it. It’s a hard line to tread, and one that few Australian shows manage, which I have theories about, but won’t elaborate on because I am a creature of mystery.

If you haven’t seen it yet, run, don’t walk.

Succession

We found out who got that kiss from daddy. I love a soap opera. Look, every cultural critic in the world has written about this show, and I don’t feel like adding to it.

Interview with the Vampire

Thank god we’ve gone back to the original depiction of vampires: incredibly hot and sad queer men who live forever. Does anyone else watch this show and think: I want that? Maybe just me. There’s something so over the top about this series that I couldn’t help but fall in love with it, which is so true to Anne Rice’s original books - she wrote a melodrama that could last forever because it involved vampires.

Oh my god and this show is so HOT, I want unhappy but passionate vampire sex. Also - Lestat did nothing wrong.

Blue Eye Samurai

I watched a lot of Netflix “anime” this year, because it was one of the only ways I could watch something without switching on my broken discourse brain and think about how I could write about it. Not because they’re worse or anything, just that none of the places I tend to write for would be interested in paying me to talk about them/ I don’t have a lot of contextual knowledge to add about the genre.

This very beautiful revenge narrative is just done well - amazing voice acting, beautiful art, and a compelling retelling of history. I quickly grew obsessed. Very pleased that it did well enough to get renewed for a second season.

Starstruck s3

The final line of season 3 of Starstruck ends with our often hapless protagonist, Jessie, being asked “where do you want to go?”. Her answer, in a kind of updated millennial version of Hugh Grant’s Notting Hill bumbling, is simply “I dunno?”.

This is important because season 3 of this show strips us of whatever shiny rom-com certainty we managed to retain after season 2, firmly showing us that this show is more complicated and messy than a “happy ever after”. The decision to make a rom-com tv series by necessity takes away the fade-out joy that comes at the end of a romantic comedy film. No Hugh and Julia sitting on a private park bench, blissfully in love forever. Instead we get to see the ups and downs, the falling in and out of love. Jessie doesn’t know where she wants to go with her love, with her romances - despite the pressure, internal and external, to follow the sparkly laid out path of romantic certainty.

I love a happy ever after, so I’m not saying that including them is bad - but creator Rose Matafeo is both a deeply talented writer and comedian and someone who loves the rom-com genre. She’s written a show about people who love the tropes and trials of rom-coms and asks what it’s like when someone like that - someone who loves love and finds themselves in something resembling a rom-com - falls in love. It’s the messiness of reality that powers this show, and the desire for the certainty of romantic tropes that creates the hurdle. I deeply love it.

Gen V

The superhero boom has started to burst, so the brutal cynicism and commentary of Gen V (a spinoff of The Boys) is kinda perfectly timed. That said, as much as I love its commentary and its satire, I’m not BEYOND just enjoying some ultra violent superhero fighting. Once you realise the gore is kinda the point, it just becomes fun. It really pierced the fog of despair.

Wheel of Time season 2

The first season fucking sucked (for covid related reasons apparently), but this season was GREAT. I need everyone to watch it so it gets renewed again. I think that the attention to detail with costumes and setting was almost worth it on its own, but the story actually felt cohesive now, and the new characters are slay. Lanfear? I love my scary forsaken mother. Rosalind Pike as Moraine? I love my cold magic mother.

I also read a great review where they say that it’s best to consider the TV version as another alternate reality, another turning of the wheel or mirror version like found through the portal stones. That really helped me stop trying to find “accuracy”, which made it really enjoyable.

—

Thanks for reading! I love you! Stay tuned for some new newsletter plans next year lol.