Welcome to the end of my list of the absolute best TV that aired this year. We’ve made it to the top 10, including cowboys, musicals, kind of a lot of shows about mental illness now I think about it, and a completely loveable dog. I can’t recommend all of these shows enough, and I really hope you check something new out after reading. Enjoy!
You can find the first half of the list here and #26–11 here.
10. High Maintenance: Perhaps as 2016 as 2016 gets, High Maintenance was both a webseries’ first season on a major network and another anthology show, with multiple stories linked only by the framework of one or more characters being clients of a bearded, bicycling weed delivery guy in New York City. In only six half-hour episodes, it provided a poignant look at many different characters and attitudes, managed to give depth to many previous characters from the show’s Vimeo days without being unwelcome to new viewers, and showed many great comedic set-pieces.
Married creators and sole writer-directors Katja Bilchfeld and Ben Sinclair manage to give their stories a very unique tone, with a relaxed attitude and beautiful, ethereal cinematography — think a stoned, teenage Terence Malick — that makes them a joy to watch, yet more universal and less “druggy” than the concept might indicate. Storylines include lighter faire such as a couple hosting an orgy mixed with depictions of the pressure of being a modern-day college student trying to mix strict religious values. The best episode, however, is by far the third episode “Grandpa”, which spends its entire running time from the point of view of a dog, and manages to provide one of the most moving, thought-provoking treatises on love and loyalty in some time.
09. Mr. Robot: By far the most frustrating show on this list in a variety of ways, everything Mr. Robot did in its second season was fantastic, dramatically sound, and beautifully-performed….yet the sheer amount it didn’t do compared to what had been set up last year meant it came off as disappointing in the end. Last year I thought the first season had been the show finding its feet and the second season was gonna get started with the full story and was really going to blow my socks off, yet by the end of this one I find myself…..in essentially the exact same position. And it suffered from internet theorycrafting, with the big mystery of the season’s first half solved by the end of the premiere.
But while the storyline was sort of a letdown, the character work was stronger than ever. Watching lead Elliot Alderson struggle with the demons inside his head provided some of the most intense dramatic scenes of the year, with Rami Malek hopefully earning an armful more awards, while his sister Darlene received far more development than before, the episode largely focusing around her a highlight. But one of the best additions to the cast was Grace Gummer as FBI agent Dom DiPierro — watching her figure out the show’s goings-on was a delight, and her character’s loneliness was expertly portrayed, her late night conversation with an Amazon Echo possibly the strongest piece of product placement in TV history. The season ended up better than the last by a hair, but I really hope the third has more progression with the central storyline.
08. Lady Dynamite: Maria Bamford is a comedian who I’ve wanted to see get her own starring vehicle for some time, yet this Netflix series completely snuck up on me. A semi-autobiographical sitcom would have been enough, but to have it be co-created by Arrested Development’s Mitch Hurwitz and Stone/Parker collaborator Pam Brady? I was sold. Luckily, the show itself ended up completely brilliant — it’s completely madcap and off-the-wall while also sticking to a specific structure, and deals with heavy mental health issues while keeping the laughs coming at a higher rate than almost anything else this year.
The show follows three different periods in Bamford’s life — her past life in Los Angeles, a breakdown that landed her back in her home town of Duluth, and a present where she returns and attempts to restart her career while keeping her head. The differences between the periods are stark, with the past being all saturated colours in an exaggerated depiction of hypomania and the Duluth section being more downbeat, yet the show never loses sight of the absurdism of each situation. It’s easily one of the funniest shows of the year, but certain subplots may be too much for some — the episode where she goes to Mexico is simultaneously insanely funny and utterly bleak.
07. You’re the Worst: I can’t say for certain that I won’t get along with you if you don’t like FXX’s You’re the Worst, but it sure feels like that a lot of the time. The anti-rom-com has spent years as one of the best programmes on the air, first proving itself to have the sharpest sense of humour of any show currently running, before pulling off more dramatic elements in its second season perfectly, receiving universal acclaim for its handling of depression. This isn’t the easiest way to be going into a third season — the one where many shows decide, for better or worse, who they are — yet creator Stephen Falk and the team pulled it all together to create a season that, despite some pacing issues, was very likely the show’s best year yet.
Season 3’s biggest strength is the same as its weakness — some plotlines throughout the season don’t get enough development with certain turns seeming to come out of nowhere, which is a drag, but is also entirely due to multiple episodes focusing on side characters, which ended up being some of the best episodes any show made this year. The storylines are still mostly solid, however, and by the final three episodes end up coming together expertly. The humour, meanwhile, was funnier than ever — one thing the second season had forgotten is how awful the characters are all meant to be, which we were reminded of constantly and excruciatingly this year.
06. Better Things: Pamela Adlon’s show is described as “female Louie” a lot, and not without good reason — it’s on the same network, produced by the same companies and Louis CK himself is a co-creator and frequent writer-director on the show. Yet it only takes a few episodes for Better Things to shed this skin, focus less on the working actor business, and become possibly the best study of motherhood and daughterhood ever seen on the small screen, with some of the most distinctive and likeable (or not, depending on the scene) children characters on TV right now.
Adlon’s character is called Sam Fox, but is essentially her in every way — a divorced actress raising three daughters with a tough streak and a world-weary sense of humour. Even when it initially seemed like it was just going to be a show about the world from Sam’s perspective, it was strong, with a public speech at her daughter’s school about menstruation a particular comedic highlight, yet the more the show went on and became more emotional and dramatic the stronger the writing and performances became. There are multiple scenes of Sam trying to get the house together as chaos reigns around her that feel like the most true-to-life of their kind I’ve ever seen. By the finale, a strong declaration of womanhood and maternal love, this had become one of the most moving comedies on the air. Hopefully it lasts a while longer.
05. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: One of the biggest surprises of the past year to me has seen Crazy Ex-Girlfriend — already a show on the CW I didn’t hate, a minor miracle in itself — improve immeasurably past its already-strong opening episodes and develop its central conceit to turn a show about an irritating crazy woman into a wry look at many female issues, while still having some of the wittiest writing any show can claim and note-perfect satirical songs that put any parody acts working today to shame while serving the story.
My initial worry with CXG was that the concept itself — damaged woman moves across the country after a chance encounter with her summer camp crush and tries to get in with his peers — has an inherently short shelf life, yet it became clear in the latter half of the first season that Rachel Bloom and crew knew this, and were already working to develop the characters past this. By the beginning of the show’s second season it had better things on its mind, with male drama largely serving as a conduit for stories about female friendship. And the songs….my god the songs are just so great. From Jewish lawyer rap battles to fuzz-folk plays on self-esteem, pop-punk jams about ping-pong to hair metal odes to stubbornness, they’re an absolute treat every single week.
04. The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story: The announcement that Ryan Murphy was going to be bringing his bizarro, madcap anthology format to the true crime format sent a shudder down the spines of many, me included. Of all the creators with the necessary grace and respect needed to make this kind of show, he seemed to me to be at the very bottom of the list. Yet he kept his head down, kept himself out of the writers room, and ended up delivering one of the most bombastic, timely, fun and meaningful shows there was to be found anywhere this year.
It’s still a surprise to me at times that a biopic of such a major recent event could turn out to be such a success, yet everything, most especially the performances, are amazing. Sarah Paulson and Sterling K. Brown completely slay as the chief prosecutors, yet almost all other performances are up to their level — Courtney B. Vance is revelatory as Johnnie Cochran, while even David Schwimmer and John Travolta are fantastic in their roles. The choice for each episode to focus on a specific element of the case was a great one, providing structure to a very messy event, while the series brought the 90s into the 21st century perfectly, showing how the OJ trial was in many ways the instigator of today’s current media/celebrity culture.
03. Westworld: It can be…..tough to know how to begin discussing Westworld. HBO’s sci-fi drama was by far the most talked-about show of the year, but frequently to its detriment, as many online uncovered all its secrets and spread them around before its first season was even half over. Usually this wouldn’t be the biggest issue, but it can be argued that the show’s continued focus on mysteries and obfuscation over clear motivations for its characters led to certain storylines becoming frustrating or the season as a whole being a “prequel” season for the main action. Yet the only reason these flaws stand out so much is because the show around them is something truly special, with the potential to be the best sci-fi programme TV has ever seen.
Adapted from a Michael Crichton movie about robot cowboys running amok, Westworld takes this premise and examines it in astounding detail, examining the moral implications of creating and having control over consciousness, as well as showing you how life would work through the eyes of an “advanced” artificial being. The cast was almost the best of 2016, from the inscrutability of Anthony Hopkins to the dawning awareness of Evan Rachel Wood, with many characters having intriguing arcs. The cinematography is excellent, sterile when it needs to be but also capable of providing heart-racing action scenes. It can be an annoyance to spend so much time discussing the things Westworld’s first season gets wrong, but it’s largely because it gets so much right, and I truly believe it has the opportunity with upcoming seasons to be one of the best shows of all time.
02. Atlanta: Donald Glover’s FX sitcom was three years in the making, and it’s clear as you watch Atlanta that no time was wasted. This is a show that was clearly crafted from the ground up to give off a very specific tone — one that mixes in the hangout show vibes of your parents favourite comedy with surreal drama, absurdist humour, and even a level of “issues” shows ala The Wire, yet feels like it could only have come from the brains of the Glovers (Donald’s brother Stephen ran the writers room). It carries itself with a level of confidence rarely seen in debut seasons, occasionally leading to underdevelopment in the season’s overall arc as it chases a bottle episode idea but providing enough unique moments to make up for it. And it does a fantastic job with its sense of time and place — Donald stated he wanted to make people understand what it feels like to be black in America, and while I obviously can’t confirm or deny this, it absolutely seems like one of the all-time best examples of TV as anthropology.
What else? Oh yeah, despite its ambition, it never forgets to be stupidly funny — Glover spoke in interviews about wanting to avoid “clapter”, and every scene is full of the funniest asides or one-liners you’ll hear this year, as well as bigger, stranger moments such as Justin Bieber being black or Marcus Miles owning an invisible car. Yet there’s also a sadness lurking behind many of the situations — only amplified by the bittersweet, heartbreaking closing shot of the finale. The characters, especially the main trio, are among the strongest you’ll see all year — Glover kills it as straight man Earn, but Brian Tyree Henry delivers one of the single greatest performances of the year as his cousin Alfred while their friend Darius, played by Keith Stanfield, is only prevented from being the best new comedic creation of the year by…..well, shall we move on?
01. Horace and Pete: One afternoon at the end of January, I got an email from the Louis CK mailing list. “Horace and Pete episode 1 is out”, he said. “it’s on my website, it’s $5, I hope you get it”, he continued. I’d never heard of it, because of course barely anyone had, but I forked over my money and sat down to watch. Sixty-seven minutes later, my world was different than before, and over the next ten weeks, CK and co kept on entertaining, exciting, and destroying me again and again. This isn’t just my favourite programme of the year — it’s a potentially revolutionary step into a new method of storytelling, and a show I’ll still be gushing to people about in 20 years.
So some background — Horace and Pete was created entirely independently and released, one episode a week, on CK’s website, with no announcement of what each episode would contain and it ending as abruptly as it began. Each episode mixed the ongoing mishaps of the owners of the titular bar with improvised dialogue based on real news stories from that week. It had an all-star cast, from Steve Buscemi as the co-lead to Edie Falco and Alan Alda. It was shot like a stage play, with only two main sets. And it was…..basically the first 31 bucks I ever spent.
Simply put, I’m not sure any show has ever — ever — blended gut-busting, absolutely hilarious comedy with brutal, despair-inducing tragedy as well as this one. It was like Cheers if created by David Lynch. It had my favourite comic creation not even of the year but possibly of the decade so far in Alan Alda’s Uncle Pete, an angry, opinionated bigot who provided the funniest, most unwoke lines of the year and giving Alda potentially (I’m not kidding) his best performance ever, and a great many other hilarious, ridiculous, dark, or bizarre laugh lines. Yet it also told a tragic tale of sins passed down through generations and the necessity and potential inability of change. Some parts were absolutely messy — the serialised elements never totally blended with the news of the week talk, and some characters ended up written out too swiftly — but the nature and mystery around what was coming every week led to each episode feeling like a genuinely special event.
In the end, this is the easiest #1 pick ever. Horace and Pete was both my favourite comedy and favourite drama of the year — nothing tickled my funny bone more or hit me harder in the chest. It was the funniest, saddest, weirdest, most blindingly ambitious show released in 2016, and could go down as a modern masterpiece. In one of the best years for television in history, this show was a cut above the rest, and I can’t recommend it more. This’ll stay with me.
That’s it for my list! This was exhausting. Hope you stick around in the new year and keep on reading my upcoming reviews and such. Thanks!
