So many series, so little time
Movies were definitely hit or miss in 2023, but streaming series still hit the sweet spot for viewers seeking a longer arc and new storylines. Personally, I was gobsmacked by all the viewing choices available out there. Big screens are for blockbusters, but settling in for a series still holds a lockdown appeal.
Beef
Netflix served up Beef, with Ali Wong and Steven Yeun in a delicious game of revenge tag. The limited series has two American Asians muscling for ascendance in LA—Wong’s thriving houseplant business and Yeun’s feckless success schemes battling it out after a minor traffic altercation leads to mounds of bad karma, unexpected salvation and some kind of transcendent empathy by the finale. Great performances from both.
On Netflix.
The Bear
Season 2 of The Bear raised the stakes even more as Chicago chefs Carmy Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) and Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) try to take their revamped fine-dining restaurant—called The Bear—to the big leagues, with money backers and a big opening night. It also brings ne’er-do-well cousin Richie (Ebon-Moss Bachrach) to a happier, more stable place, even as Carmy starts to fall apart at the seams. A flashback episode set in the Berzatto home during a disastrous “7 Fishes” Christmas feast suggests that stress and breakdown are part of the family DNA. Super use of Midwestern music, too, from Bruce Hornsby to Wilco.
On Disney+.
Drops Of God
Food shows were addictive this year, including this adaptation of a manga comic about a famed wine critic whose monumental collection of bottles after his death will go either to his daughter Camille (Fleur Geffrier), who now has a violent reaction to drinking vino, or his Japanese protégé Issei (Tomisha Yamashita) who is as tight as an unripe Margeaux. It’s a battle of wills and senses as both vie for the prize, showing off their ability to name varietals, vintages, and even plots of land from a single swirl and sip. Might be an excellent series for drinking games, too.
On Apple TV+.
Succession
The final season of the HBO saga—revolving around which Roy family member will inherit the Waystar multimedia company after their dad (Brian Cox) barks out his last “F**k off!”—does not disappoint. Stronger ensemble acting from Jeremy Strong, Sarah Snook, Kieran Culkin, Matthew Mcfadyen and Nicholas Braun bring this tightening vise of a plot to its unexpected close, though who ever thought any of the Roy kids deserved to get what they wanted?
On HBO.
The Last Of Us
That rarity—a TV series based on a video game that actually excels on all levels—is why people were hooked on the plight of Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey), set on a permanent road trip after a mushroom-based virus destroys most of humankind. Nearly every episode focused on how disparate clumps of human survivors turn out to be just as bad—or even worse—than the virus itself. And there’s that chemistry between mentor Pascal and protégé Ramsey that sparks joy and hope.
On HBO.
Fargo
For season five, Noah Hawley’s time-skipping spin on the Coen Brothers’ 1996 film sets us in 2019, aka pre-pandemic Trump years, where Dorothy (Juno Temple, brilliant as ever) is hiding a past life while married to a Kia car dealer named Wayne Lyon in Scandia, Minnesota. This season seems most akin to the original Fargo plot, down to kidnapping, monstrous hired killers and a tenacious female protagonist. Dorothy has been hiding out from abusive MAGA-like sheriff Roy Tillman (Jon Hamm), and the series hasn’t concluded yet, but expect Jennifer Jason Leigh’s poisonous mother-in-law Lorraine Lyon to have some decisive sway in the outcome. Or not, because after all, in the Coens/Hawley universe, only irony has the upper final hand.
On FX.
Slow Horses
Slow horses, indeed. This sleeper British spy series based on Mark Harron’s novels shows us an MI5 that seems more suitable to Tom Cruise’s technological M:I world than actual paper-pushing UK bureaucracy. But with Gary Oldman in a masterful turn as seasoned, rumpled agent Jackson Lamb, heading a bunch of washouts and misfits far away from MI5’s glossy headquarters in a hovel called Slough House, it sets up a cracker of a thriller each season, winding through its six episodes at a breakneck pace. We are not here to question if British spycraft is this weapons-heavy, corrupt and self-devouring; we’re here to listen to Oldman deliver one of his killer putdown lines in a cockney accent.
On Apple TV+.
All The Light We Cannot See
This Netflix limited series based on a novel by Anthony Doerr was preposterous, non-historical, blatantly sentimental—and completely hooked viewers with its depiction of cherubic Nazi youth Werner (Louis Hofmann) who switches sides during WWII after hearing the on-air musings of radio truth-teller Hugh Laurie, joining up with French blind girl Marie-Laure (Aria Mia Loberti) and her father (Mark Ruffalo) in France’s Resistance Movement. Schmaltzy at times, the plot nonetheless kept viewers sutured into the narrative, with over-the-top SS officer Lars Eidinger hot on their trail and a story device that seems lifted straight out of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
On Netflix.
Honorable mentions:
Barry, The Crown, The Curse, Silo, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, Poker Face, Cunk on Earth