YEAR IN REVIEW: The 10 Best TV Shows of 2023
From the fourth and final season of Succession to a bloody samurai anime, our TV critic Alan Sepinwall’s picks for the best shows of the year
10. Party Down (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.
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.
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)
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 trying to make sense of middle-age while living in their rural Kansas hometown.
The show casts its spell on viewers precisely because so little is happening, which only makes it easier to appreciate how adrift the characters feel.
A deliberately small show packed with huge emotion.
8. Cunk on Earth (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.
American viewers got officially Cunk’ed with this new limited series where Philomena attempts to recap all the major events in human history.
The show was the most consistent laugh generator of any show this year.
7. Blue Eye Samurai (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 characters.
The show excelled in both its visuals and storytelling.
