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I don't care about Black Mirror so this here list is firm. 10 Ultimate Beastmaster (Netflix) Not exactly your typical TV/IV celebratory programming but hear me out. This is Ninja Warrior done correctly. The personal sob stories are much more tightly edited, the obstacle course is more interesting, and rather than spending 42 minutes watching a crop of people from insert-city-name-here try and fail at the same course, you get a field of competitors whittling down as they progress through a much longer and more complicated and interesting course split into 3-4 sections over the course of an hour. The competitors themselves hail from a handful of countries, and the respective teams display effusive camaraderie and joy when their teammates do well. I just love it when people are nice to each other on unscripted competitive programming. The parkour and upper body strength isn't all though. The best part is the commentary! Each country has two commentators, and they exhibit campy and overly-produced senses of national pride and oneupsmanship. France and Italy hate each other, for instance, and it's pretty much the funniest thing ever. Also, for this most recent season we have Anderson Silva for Brazil and CM Punk for the USA so that all just rules. 9 The Profit (CNBC) This is also kind of out there. It airs on CNBC for gently caress's sake. This is Shark Tank meets Kitchen Nightmares. In this show, mystery rich man Marcus Lemonis is summoned to shitshows of businesses to inject cash and expertise and save the day. Since an actual rich man's actual money is involved, he takes more time and care than the average 3-5 day restaurant flip for cameras and melodrama. Marcus deals out relevant money-saving-and-making advice and doesn't take poo poo when the business owners try to dish it. Marcus also does not always sign a check upon these disasters, and he's walked out on deals already made out of sheer disappointment at the humans in charge. This is a good show! If you have Hulu and/or any passing interest in business in general, you should check it out. 8 RuPaul's Drag Race (LOGO/VH1) It's trashy. It's overly produced. For a GLBTQ production it's problematic at best. She-Mail, am I right? AND IT HAS HAD THREE SEASONS THIS YEAR AND THEY'RE ALL FABULOUS. And they were all spoiled! To poo poo! And nobody cared!!! Also, Manila Luzon and Latrice Royale are CURRENTLY BACK. Trust me, this means winning. If you're not already on the bandwagon, I'm not convincing you with this. Buu~uut.... 7 Drag Race Thailand (Erm, the internet) If you've never had a sketchy landlord who disappears to Thailand for six months over the winter, you've not lived. That said, south and southeast Asian cultures have distinctly different notions of gender than we do in the west, and I'd imagine they were all sat there in Bangkok watching RuPaul's mess and thinking, "We can do better." And they have. They so have. And they will continue to do so as I surmise that this was quite a popular program as it aired. Those twee Americans better hide their tucks and work on their styling. Finally, if PanPan doesn't give you life, I don't think I want to know you. 6 GLOW (Netflix) (Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling) Heart, soul, wit, television production drama, wrestling, and girls doing all the dirty work. Marc Maron and Alison Brie. Their chemistry is astounding. For further proof of this, check out this episode of Marc Maron's podcast. I'm not sure what to say about this. Even if you don't love wrestling you ought to like this, though if you hate campy 80's stuff you might be out of luck. Still, seeing the new season pop up on Netflix was one of the quickest and easiest wastes of time I've experienced this year. It's simply a solid and good show, a joy to watch. Bonus points for the bottle episode! GLOW was in reality a television program and they took the time to recreate what one of the episodes would have looked like with wrestling and promos and poorly-acted comedy sketches. When you have a cast that can act well in pretending to act poorly, you know you have something awesome. 5 Trailer Park Boys (Netflix) This series felt its age on Showcase back in the day and bowed out when the bowing was good. Losing Corey and Trevor hurt, and the entire enterprise was just getting a bit stale. Netflix revived the thing a few years back, and it wasn't glory days, it wasn't deserving of this list, but it was pretty okay. This year, however, was a return to form. The plots were engaging, the characters were there, the heart was back in the show. And then the world lost Mr Leahy. For what it's worth, John Dunsworth was a stalwart in the Nova Scotia theater community. This isn't a dumb celebrity death; it's one that bears a lot more cultural relevance than the Mr Leahy of the countdown to liquor day may have you expect. Although he was often antagonistic, he was also in many ways the heart and soul of it. So, everybody just knows. It's done now. It's over. This season was the swan song. But what a swan song it was. It belongs here on this list. 4 Masterchef Australia (Ten) Five episodes a week. With 24 home cooks and roughly two eliminations weekly, you can do the math and find this to be a fairly heavy 2-3 month commitment over the late spring and early summer (or, well, the opposite I suppose actually). Every episode is a goddamn joy, though. Even the dumb Wednesday immunity episodes that totally don't count. Even when Chloe loving MINCES AN INCREDIBLY GOOD CUT OF BEEF FOR loving DAN DAN NOODLES and AVOIDS elimination. Somehow. You might be familiar with American Masterchef, holding a raised eyebrow to this entry. It's different; trust me. These people can seriously cook. Every year the competition ramps itself up; contestants get inspired by each previous season and we see these armchair warriors busting out dishes of better quality than American Top Chef. You know, professionals. My final selling point is the Monday-episode pressure test, invariably a horrendously complicated signature menu item from a serious pro. We're talking dozens of ingredients and many more dozens of steps to the recipes. They post these recipes on the website and it's all downright educational. Best reality competition show in the world, hands down. 3 Barry (HBO) This one really caught me by surprise. I was expecting a dumb HBO romp starring Bill Hader, kind of like how Ballers is an Entourage reboot starring Dwayne Johnson and Rob Corddry, and boy was I wrong. The premise is that Bill Hader is an ex-Marine who was very good at killing people in the Middle East, and remains very good at killing people for much more money upon his return home. Upon getting a job in Los Angeles, however, he accidentally takes up acting classes and discovers a sense of unfortunate morality, so things get complicated. Between Mr Hader and Henry loving Winkler we have some known quantities here, but beyond that we have a story that's actually fun and unique, season-long arcs that make sense, some great performances all around and a final product that runs the gamut from laugh-out-loud funny to cringe-funny to white-knuckled-terrifying action to sheer melodrama. This show has it all, folks! 2 The Good Place (NBC) One day in August my best friend tells me, this show has an entire episode dedicated to the trolley problem. Over the next day or so I watched two full seasons of television. BORTLES! TED DANSON! This is the funniest and smartest show on network television, and seeing as it apparently got the top spot for 2017 I think I'll leave the flowery pontificating for some other poster more articulate than I. You don't need me to convince you. Just go watch this show. It's a 22 minute sitcom with 13 episodes per season, for crying out loud. First two seasons are on Netflix. Go. Do it to it. 1 Cobra Kai (YouTube) Daniel LaRusso is the bad guy. DANIEL LARUSSO IS THE BAD GUY. It's not like this is news. This video went up in 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_Gz_iTuRMM But they ran with the concept. Now that Daniel and the guy he crane-kicked are all grown up, they have more developed life stories, grudges, and brand new petulant teenagers to train for the ALL-VALLEY TOURNAMENT. Every episode of this show made me so drat happy. The relationships are realistic and just complicated enough. Every character has a distinct point of view, justifiable to them. Nobody is quite evil, nor is anybody quite good. Karate remains a bullshit martial art, but the spirit and moxie bring me to a happy place of childhood innocence anyway. Speaking of kids, this is as good a cross section of Los Angeles high schoolers in 2018 as you're going to get. Some have money, some don't, some are popular, some aren't, all have smart phones, the racial representation is on point, and they're all both noble and flawed. (except for that one girl, you know the one, she's just a oval office but there had to be a straight up oval office for narrative purposes, you know?) The world gives us lots of reasons to despair, but we 80s/90s kids are incredibly lucky to have something like this. It's the reboot to justify reboots.
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Dec 18, 2018 01:47
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