The Best TV Shows of 2020
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
CORPORATE (Comedy Central)
A pitch black look at office workers even deeper into late capitalism than we are, Corporate capped off a great three season run by digging deeper into the interior lives of its characters while maintaining its spot-on and singular absurdist vision.
HIGH MAINTENANCE (HBO)
A great season of High Maintenance isn’t news at this point, but the fourth season of this show went into deeper thematic places and wasn’t afraid to dig into darker, more complex areas the show hadn’t dared enter before. Also, the reveal of our titular protagonist’s first name was one of the best TV surprises of the year.
JOE PERA TALKS WITH YOU (Adult Swim)
The idea of “radical kindness,” at least on the internet, can be cloying, but a show like Joe Pera Talks With You shows it can actually work. A show about kind, ordinary people, it finds genuine humor and wonder within their everyday lives. Also features a pretty damn nice bean arch.
PRIMAL (Adult Swim)
Stunningly animated, Adult Swim’s Primal turned prehistoric ultraviolence into a beautiful phantasmagoria. It’s a fitting addition to Genndy Tartakovsky’s (famous for creating Samurai Jack and Star Wars: Clone Wars, as well as working on many other successful animated series) stacked oeuvre.
SAVED BY THE BELL (Peacock)
The cruelest twist that 2020 pulled off was revealing that NBC’s streaming service Peacock could give us a legitimately good TV show, and that said show is a reboot of Saved By The Bell. Former 30 Rock writer/producer Tracy Wigfield developed the reboot, which is a riotous 30 Rock-esque live action cartoon that takes the original show’s hokey comedy and morphs it into a charmingly self-aware fish out of water tale that parodies the kind of privileged, scheming rich white kids that the original series sanctified while also smartly observing the numerous plights that underprivileged, non-white teenagers face in 2020. Josie Totah gives one of the funniest performances on television this year as the Jenna Maroney-esque mean girl of the cast.
WE’RE HERE (HBO)
Comparisons to Queer Eye are inevitable for We’re Here: both are shows from major television networks that follow queer people adventuring into America’s heartland to ostensibly improve people’s lives. We’re Here, however, inverts Queer Eye’s neoliberal approach: instead of “improving”, they observe and document the lives of (usually queer) people living in America’s heartland, and help them (and their community) express themselves by putting on a drag show. Despite the fact that the three stars are all RuPaul’s Drag Race alumni, this show currently makes the better TV case for drag as a cathartic, empowering art form.
And now, the list:
10. THE BOYS (Amazon Prime)
Perfect 2020 agitprop, The Boys depicts a funhouse mirror of our world with an even more inflated (super)power imbalance that must be equalized by a multicultural working class rebellion. The show is equal parts smart and dumb: there’s plenty of gross out gags and gore alongside intelligent jabs at both Marvel and DC’s superhero franchises. It’s at its best and most subversive when it shows how a fascist society leaves the disadvantaged with no easy choices.
9. BETTER THINGS (FX)
Better Things is still one of the most consistent shows on television, only becoming better at making its virtually plotless season long stories among the most affecting on television. Season four saw the series tackle Sam’s (Pamela Adlon) midlife crisis, contrasting it with her daughters’ imminent, long awaited maturation into young women, and doing it in its typically unorthodox, artful way.
8. WE ARE WHO WE ARE (HBO)
Growing into your identity before you can even pinpoint exactly what it is. As bizarre and exhilarating as leads Jack Dylan Grazer and Jordan Kristine Seamón, who give two of the best TV performances of the year.
7. PEN15 (Hulu)
Turns cringe into an art form. As painfully unbearable as it can be to watch a realistic childhood unfold on TV (even if they’re played by adults), the show finds earned sweetness, humor, and complexity in the ongoing lives of these two young women.
6. WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS (FX)
The best laugh per minute ratio of any show this year. A stunning ensemble cast matched with perfectly absurd plot lines, no other show was more fun to watch this year.
5. SEARCH PARTY (HBO Max)
The third season of Search Party arrived three years(!) after its second season and on a completely different platform, but it was more than worth the wait. Few prestige dramas portray their characters’ continuous descent into darkness with as much aplomb as this show, and definitely not with the same amount of humor. Search Party also boasts one of the best supporting casts on TV, with Shalita Grant, Louie Anderson, Cole Escola, and many others turning in finely tuned performances alongside the already supremely talented main cast.
4. NORMAL PEOPLE (Hulu)
The myriad ways we can change and mold one another. Intimacy on TV isn’t easy to pull off and this show made it look effortless. A miniseries that will probably go down as one of the best in television history.
3. BETTER CALL SAUL (AMC)
Jimmy McGill’s facade finally cracking, having been fully eroded from the inside, is the result of the most dramatically satisfying longform writing on television. The fifth season played around in this devilish mode before realizing an even more shocking, tragic twist: that Jimmy’s influence is stronger and more charismatic than he knows.
2. RAMY (Hulu)
There’s no easy path to absolution. Pretenses of tradition and faith won’t protect you from the introspection necessary to properly behave not only in front of your God, but also in front of your community, and in front of your loved ones. Ramy’s darkly humorous, rich tapestry of characters that struggle nonstop with their deep fallibilities and unknowing self-righteousness is the most dramatically well-rounded show of the year.
- HOW TO WITH JOHN WILSON (HBO)
There wasn’t a better, more life affirming show in 2020 than this. In a year that made going outside terrifying, John Wilson’s video essays, as funny as they are poignant, made visual poetry of a world that’s constantly shifting in increasingly absurd ways.
And now the best TV episodes of 2020:
“Listen To The Roosters” // BETTER THINGS
Better Things makes its characters finding catharsis feel miraculous every season, but never with such a stunning music choice and final shot than as the fourth season ender.
“How To Make The Perfect Risotto” // HOW TO WITH JOHN WILSON
The only television to properly capture the COVID-19 pandemic was How To with John Wilson’s melancholy first season finale.
“Lowkey Happy” // INSECURE
Insecure, a show that famously has extremely passionate ‘shippers, managed to reconfigure its contentious main ex-couple with smart, layered callbacks to the show’s (and the couple’s) history, prettier than usual cinematography, and especially charismatic performances from Issa Rae and Jay Ellis in this lovely two-hander.
“The One Where We’re Trapped on TV” // LEGENDS OF TOMORROW
A “trapped in television” episode is an underrated genre TV staple that Legends of Tomorrow pulled off impressively, with a strong emotional underpinning to boot.
“Vendy Wiccany” // PEN15
Perfectly captures what it feels like to have a “phase” as a teenager, and how intoxicating, empowering, and deeply bizarre that can be.
“Uncle Naseem” // RAMY
Only a show as complex as Ramy would give one of its most onerous characters a deeply tragic backstory, but never condescend or give the character any easy sympathy, instead letting actor Laith Nakli’s performance speak for itself.
“You May Also Like” // THE TWILIGHT ZONE
The newest Twilight Zone reboot is unfortunately mostly a bust, but this Osgood Perkins directed installment not only thoughtfully references a classic episode, but also has the most potent commentary of the entire series so far, savagely examining modern consumerism and conformity with dark humor and style. The last scene of the episode — people still willing to go out to stores despite almost certain doom outside— became eerily prophetic during COVID.
“The Curse” // WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS
The reveal of the titular “curse” is the hardest I’ve laughed all year.
