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Hot. Completely wrong. But hot.
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Dec 10, 2021 17:18
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 18:33 |
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The dance party episode in the first season was when I "got" the show; though I think the first season finale isn't all that hot tbh, and kinda drags down the season. It's a weird show, because for all that I liked the characters, I really never felt like the show's central couple were better together than they were apart. Dickinson should have hooked up with Louisa May Alcott IMO. They felt like a better fit. Edit: this isn't Couch Chat, gonna throw up some spoilerbars.
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Jan 6, 2022 14:24
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So, preamble, I skipped all series that haven't finished (so no Better Call Saul) and miniseries (with one possible exception, see below), because otherwise this list would be too loving long. It's already too long as it is -- which I apologise for; some of this is pretentiously overwritten, and I don't really have time to go over and edit down my thoughts. I just wrote and word vomit came out. 20. SouthLAnd  A cop show about the daily grind of being a police office, presented in a no-frills, quasi-realist style. While early seasons flirted with something a bit more commercial and restrained, the show’s cancellation, and subsequent move to TNT, led to a stripped down, more focused version of the same concept. The move away from free-to-air also had the side benefit of pushing up the darkness and the gore, as was the mood in the early 2010’s, but presented here often with a retrained matter-of-factness that allowed it to feel shocking without being cheap. In its later seasons, SouthLAnd fell into a unique structural pattern that I’ve not seen repeated elsewhere on television. Each episode is almost entirely composed of incidents, sometimes with running plots but these were by far the minority of what each episode, or season, dealt with. The real meat of the show was the way these little interactions slowly accreted into character arcs, told slowly and naturalistically over years. Some of the characters slowly improved, most slowly devolved; a central part of the show’s thesis was the a slow mental and physical degradation was an inevitable part of being a police officer, and the show presented this with the same unvarnished attitude as is presented everything else. Regina King is awesome here, as are quite a few of the supporting actors, but Michael Cudlitz steals the show, anchoring what’s ultimately a very dark character arc. Apparently this wasn’t the intended arc for the character, but the final episode is such an effective series finale that I didn’t realise this wasn’t where the show was meant to end up. 19. Mr. Robot  Sam Esmail’s highly pretentious and deeply fun story thriller about mental illness, crypto currency and terrorism, Mr. Robot is an utterly audacious trip I read somewhere, can’t remember where unfortunately, that a primary interest of television during the 2010’s was playing with genre – shows that looked like they were one thing slowly morphed into something else. I don’t know if that’s generally true, but Mr. Robot’s certainly a classic case of that occurring, and it’s just such a headrush, man. The show was utterly ambitious. Each season occupies a slightly different generic space – the second season plays with horror, the third season has more action thriller and sci-fi elements – though each season was really a blend of a bunch of different things. The show’s flexibility also allowed it to have some great concept episodes, hitting pretty much all of the greats (I think the only major gimmicks they skipped were the time loop episode and the musical episode, and even then they did a whole music video at one point). I don’t think the show managed to thread the needle in the end, but it was consistently entertaining all the way through. Yes, even the second season. Especially the second season. It’s great. 18. Gotham  I do wonder what history will make of Gotham. When it came out, it was lambasted for being a nonsensical take on Batman canon, a distinct departure from the self-serious tone that had been cultivated by both DC marketing and Batman fans alike (thanks in no small part to the success of Christopher Nolan’s taken on the material with his recent films). And looking at the show through this rubric… well, that’s not wrong. Gotham was sloppy and strange, populated by a cast of scenery chewers, scored by some unholy medley of gothic xylophones and grunge music. It’s also an argument that completely misses the point. Gotham was never a drama, it was high camp, an utterly delirious reinterpretation of the antecedents and folklore that inspired the city of Gotham and the stories told within its bounds. It was a blatant mishmash of a hundred different influences, featuring stories that parodied The Godfather, Cinderella, Hitchcock (particularly Vertigo), British comics, John Carpenter’s Halloween, The Island Of Doctor Moreau, exploitation films, toxic fandom, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang… and it was gay, gloriously loving gay, pushing up against the insane restrictions on permissible content, frustrated by behind the scenes franchising nonsense and all that red tape. This resulted in a show that was often sloppy and strange, but at once liberating and thrilling to watch. Unless the stories focused on Batman, unfortunately. Played with a dour absence of charisma, Lil’ Wayne was often the worst part of “his” show – which fit, because at times it felt like the show absolutely hated Batman and everything he stood for. In some sense then, the show configures to be a tragedy, the assertion of the boring straight man over the exciting, gay, hilarious, queer, camp, GAY villains; one which sees the queer characters ultimately erased or subsumed into a heterosexual kyriarchy. But I love it all the same. 17. Continuum  In a lot of ways, Continuum isn’t a good show. There’s something very basic about the episodic genre plots, as is true of a lot of Canadian genre television, and its dialogue frequently just functional exposition, as is again typical of the subgenre. But there’s a restlessness to it, a need to constantly shift up what kind of a show it is, and an endearing earnestness to its politics. Because one of the ways in which Continuum distinguishes itself is a rare genre show that’s unashamedly political, with a keen and urgent need to comment on police corruption, corporate greed and environmental collapse – and, frankly, I’d rather watch something that’s absolutely fearless in its approach to narrative than something far more polished, but ultimately built on unimaginative stock scenarios. Like many of the best television shows, Continuum lashes together several different unwieldy concepts. Essentially, it’s an ironic take on Terminator, retelling the story from the point of view from the time travelling killer from the future. It uses this framework to consider how organisations engineer compliance from their employees, slowly, painfully, charting the lead character’s emerging political consciousness. Apparently unsatisfied with this, early episodes complicate this narrative by adding in a spy-counter-spy element, and rather than resolve any of these elements, further seasons add more and more complications to the narrative. This results in a situation where there are, effectively, no minor characters – a late in the show episode delves into the psychology of a character who died two episodes into the show, after uttering maybe four lines. This is, obviously, ridiculous, but again speaks to the show’s idiosyncratic devotion to its central themes and messaging over how, you know, television is supposed to “work”. It was also just wholly devoted to being a handsome looking show with killer fight scenes, fun schlocky performances from its heroes and villains, and an absolute killer ending. So, basically, genre trash, but made with a heart and brain that most of its peers lack. 16. Channel Zero  Look, the 2010’s were actually really good for the Syfy Channel – Defiance? Pretty good. Continuum? See above. Wynonna Earp? Laugh riot. The Expanse? Sure! The Magicians, Happy, I’ll even go to bat over Ghost Wars. But their best show, by far, was Channel Zero. Kinda impressive, tbh, given that it was actually four shows. Each season adapted a different piece of spooky web fiction, (though some of these adaptations are so loose that it’s a wonder why the show even bothered). Still, it’s hard to argue with the power of the new material, which is frequently disturbing, thoughtful, and creative. Also it was pretentious as gently caress, and each season spent their (loving miniscule) budget on hiring performance artists, sculptors, uknown arts-y directors, to just put a bunch of cool poo poo on screen. Of the four season, my favourite is the third, which uses combines Giallo with cosmic horror. Arkasha Stevenson’s direction is loving fantastic, the entire thing looks gorgeous, there are a bunch of inspired shots, she just directs the absolute gently caress out of it. There’s this one split dioptre shot where a character walks from one plane to another, and it’s just… chef’s kiss emoji, water droplets emoji, spooky ghost emoji. But every season is loving cool, and has something to recommend. In some ways this presaged the tv-season-as-film model, which makes it important in and of itself, but Channel Zero distinguishes itself from, you know, Mickey Mouse poo poo by being good. Just watch it. 15. Heathers  Utterly loving brilliant satire, savaged by critics that – to be honest – just didn’t get it. I was lucky enough to live in a country that aired the uncut version of the show, so I’ve sadly never seen the American edit of the final two episodes, but I’ve got to feel that it probably defangs the show’s thesis. It’s not perfect; there’s some slightly ropey acting from a few supporting cast members, and one or two early episodes seem to flail a little. However, for a first time attempt this thing is pretty drat good, and the entire thing ends with a very strong finale, one that left me in no doubt that the show had its head screwed on properly the entire time. 14. KIDDING  I dunno if this is universal, but you know when you're a kid and you're making soap bubbles, and you're trying to make this one really majestic soap bubble that can just float on and on forever, only for it to serenely wobble onto some grass and suddenly collapse? That's this show. Jim Carrey stars as a Mister Rogers pastiche, someone who's essentially quite good and wholesome, while also quite bruised and hosed up thanks to his constant interactions with a bruised and hosed up world. I love the show's central ambivalence, caught between admiring the character's ethos while also seeing it as something that's far too naive to function in any real capacity, and the way it explores this through a creative, borderline stupid, sense of whimsy and fun. Carrey, too, is excellent just excellent in this, and he's ably supported by Catherine Keener and Judy Greer, both operating in more of a realist mode. There's another show further down this list that I think captures a lot of what this show does better, but that's no sleight against Kidding. It's genuinely great that the 10's could produce two high calibre shows that work in such an incredibly specific niche.
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Jan 8, 2022 14:44
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13. Nathan For You I have a lot of difficulty pinning down what this show is – fundamentally, it’s a reality TV prank show, but also something closer to documentary than that title would imply. Nathan Fielder’s host personality has this really obsequious quality, one that’s easily capable of tricking his guests into revealing way too much about themselves or just intimidating the poo poo out of people by being quietly, passively weird. I know someone who can’t watch this show because she finds him too scary, and yeah, he is kinda scary if you think about it. Still, a great, outlandish, uplifting show. 12. Tangle  No, not the Disney movie, or the show that inspired it – that one’s got a “d” on the end. No, Tangle was an Australian family drama that aired during the early 2010’s. And that’s basically all that it is, “just” a family drama, but one with incredibly strong character writing. The cast arrives fully formed, they’re funny and horrible and bad things happen to them, they develop over three short seasons, some get better, some get worse, some die, and then the show ends. In and of itself, that might not sound like an astonishing achievement, but as television moves increasingly further and further away from drama and towards pulp, it’s important to recognise a show that could do the basics so loving well that it didn’t need explosions, time travel, parallel universes, coups, aliens, mass hysteria, robots, gore, guns, erotica, etc. to distract audiences from creaky scripts. What the show had instead was a number of very strong insights into grief, sexuality, parenting and work, coupled to strong acting and nuanced characterisation provided by Australian talent including Justine Clarke, Kat Stewart, Dan Wylie and (a pre-breakout) Ben Mendelsohn. And, yes, it's "just" white middle class people in crisis, but it's remarkably well done all the same. For those of you interested in checking it out, please not that the show’s also a spiritual successor to Love My Way, with which it shares a lot of behind and before the camera talent, and though they share no narrative overlap, they benefit from being watched in order. 11. Twin Peaks  The first season is okay, though much of it is dealing with soap opera cliches that I’m largely not familiar with. The second season is better, except for the parts where it actually becomes that kind of cliched soap opera – the show’s famously dull middle act, that drove audiences away and ultimately cancelled the show. The film, Fire Walk With Me, is excellent, trucking primarily in the kind of provocative weirdness that was only present occasionally in the original show (or so this was apparent to me anyway, like I said, I’m not familiar with how Twin Peaks Season 1 is playing with genre even though I can recognise that it’s doing so). I do struggle with the vaguely Reaganite image of historical normalcy that the show treats as, if not axiomatic then fundamentally desirable, and there are the aforementioned patches where the show doesn’t work for me, which is why this is fairly far down on the list. However, The Return is a loving marvel. I ate every single episode up and thought about it a whole lot while it was airing, and the community the show generated was an insanely wonderful experience too. I even like the sweeping episode. 10. Mozart In The Jungle  One of Amazon’s first shows, from back when it was trying to deliver HBO style content instead of chasing the next big blockbuster, Mozart In The Jungle is a smart, cute show about eccentric artists and the people who try to keep them performing. Yes, no one can mime playing an instrument for poo poo, but I don’t think that actually matters. There’s a wonderful, chaotic sensibility to the show, delivered with a lightness of touch – particularly once it moves past its first season. The central romance between the callow Hailey (Lola Kirke) and the symphony’s wilful conductor Rodrigo (Gael Garcia Bernal) is lovely and convincing. Speaking personally, I feel like television doesn’t really do romance much anymore, and it’s nice to see one done well. Bernadette Peters(***) does some amazing work too, her character going from some sort of uptight 80’s villain to something utterly loopy and loose. The show’s also lush looking and makes the most of its Amazon money to secure overseas filming every season, climaxing in a ridiculous trip to Japan involving a slap fight with a robot. I love it. Also the Roman Coppola episodes are so loving good. (***) Fun fact: Bernadette Peters is not meant to be singing in the above shot, she's meant to be Really Angry About Her Job. It's great. 9. The OA  I feel like every so often television fucks up and pours a whole bunch of money into something that’s never going to make much money. The OA, Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij’s weirdo artsy show about Gaia theory, story telling and intense compassion was absolutely never going to make that channel any money – I suspect the only reason it was ever renewed is because that’s just what Netflix used to do with shows, way back when. Utterly and deliberately preposterous, the show actively challenged you to call bullshit on its earnestly delivered, deeply heartfelt fantasy narrative, one that drew an incredibly long bow in an attempt to connect the quiet death of suburban life with existential mysticism, survivor stories and trauma, and about fifty other utterly insane things. I loving loved it. It helps that The OA is a beautifully and deliberately structured story, one that’s actively playing with what streaming television is capable of in a way that loving previous few shows have tried before or since. It also has one of the most memorable scene transitions out of everything I’ve ever seen. It’s just an astonishingly constructed, absolutely total vision in TV form – like The Underground Railroad, or Too Old To Die Young, and maybe a very few other shows, it honestly feels more like film in the way that it’s shot, while still being a distinct televisual object. The second season pushed the narrative to stranger places, deepening the show’s conflict between storytelling and the people who’d seek to corrupt and commercialise our collective imagination. In some ways it’s fitting that the show ended where it did, given how television has progressed into TV’s Blockbuster Age. It’s also incredibly sad, and a show I really wish hadn’t been ripped from us so soon. Deeply missed. 8. Being Human -- UK VERSION BEST UK VERSION STRONG  Famously a script about three “normal” housemates with everyday problems, before being redrafted into the story of a vampire, werewolf and ghost sharing a flat, what I find appealing about Being Human is that it’s ultimately more of the former than the latter. That’s not to discount the show’s fantasy credentials; it’s still very much a goth, young-adult, angst-driven show that’s somehow found itself displaced from the late 90’s, but it’s also one with a surprisingly high standard for both writing and acting. The show’s dialogue is snappy, its characters three-dimensional and contradictory, and -- unlike a lot of Buffy(*) derivatives – largely uninterested in its lore. In a time when most genre television seems all too eager to crawl up its own arse in pursuit of more ~*lore, Being Human can read as, perhaps, a bit basic, but like all television its strength comes via the accumulation of its arcs and episodes rather than on the back of individual outings. Despite earlier feints towards amoral indifference, Being Human ultimately reveals itself to be a show with an aggressively moral core, a positive and life affirming narrative about utterly doomed characters living fairly miserable lives. It’s my favourite soppy show, one with an awful lot of heart. (*) and, amusingly, the one time Being Human attempts to reference Buffy it gets the reference completely wrong. 7. Adventure Time  Adventure Time is the ultimate hangout show. I remember that a lot of people watched it for the plot, and that’s cool, but for me it was just a dumb show about dumb things happening and occasionally someone would say KABAM! or “You forgot your floaties” and it was just the coolest poo poo ever, man. Adventure Time’s secret sauce is that it’s about 50% stoner logic, 30% irreverent dislike of kids show moralising, and 100% sincere, and just motivated by a liberated sense of… eh, whatever, it’s hot, I’m going to eat some ice cream. Show good. 6. Girls  I love this show. I think Hannah is a great character, and that Lena Dunham is really good at capturing her character's essence, both as a writer and actor. I think telling a story about how four toxic women are actually (mostly) super poo poo for each other and ultimately can't -- or won't -- support each other is a really clever way of rejecting all the weird, shallow, Sex In The City bullshit that Just. Won't. Die. I love that the show's most "likable" of the four girls ends up as probably the worst human being, while still being the most entertaining. I think all the character arcs were well constructed, and that the show was interesting and consistently thoughtful. I love that show dipped into experiemental storytelling, particularly the odd little horror arc in the show's second season. It's just good. 5. Community  loving hilarious comedy that’s basically The Breakfast Club for adults, except every third week or so everyone disappears off into some insane imagination land and the entire show briefly becomes an extended homage to another, completely unrelated, movie. The homages are really good, the show is colourful, the jokes all hit and I have a good time watching it. I even really like the last two seasons, though season four is mostly unenjoyable crud. 4. Breaking Bad  The great two hundred pound gorillas of television, and deservedly so, though I think it’s fascinating that it’s actually a very small show, being primarily a character drama about a relatively small cast of characters. The show really made its meat and potatoes out of digging into the mechanics of the thriller situations it presented to its audience – both in the sense of the plot mechanics, but also in terms of the characterisation that drove the plot. As much as the show always placed characters first, it was a tightly structured show, built around an excellent understanding of how to lay out information and develop character and theme. This was something the shows frequently leveraged into some very strong episodic thrillers episodes, episodes like 'Fly' and 'Peakaboo', and they’re probably my favourite part of the show. Its overall plotting could occasionally lead to weak stretches, I'm mostly thinking of the middle of season three, and I don't think the ending fully works; I find it a bit small and prosaic. But when it was on, the show was loving on. Better Call Saul seems, in some sense, to be a second go around and a companion piece to this show, and I wonder if Breaking Bad can only truly be finished when Saul is completely over. Regardless, it feels weird not to include it in any list of the best shows of the 10's, so here it is. 3. Hannibal  Of course this would be the Bryan Fuller show that everyone remembers, as it’s his most macho and serious – television criticism has always tended this way, I think. Though I also enjoy that this show is not actually all that macho, and probably not all that serious either. Hannibal is a gothic camp nightmare, a deeply silly cat-and-mouse thriller loosely adapting the Thomas Harris novels into queer fanfic. Something that stands out to me is Hannibal’s influence on the horror landscape. Pretty much every good horror show of the last five years owes something to this show, whether because Hannibal kickstarted someone’s career, or because it helped define how to plot and structure horror for television. (The only real exception, IMO, might be Castle Rock) I love the way episodes tend to end without much resolution, using during a moment of uncertainty or existential horror, and it strikes me as being a clever way to sustain audience anxiety across episodes and even multiple seasons. Even so, individual episodes still maintained an episodic, self-contained quality, offering some minor sense of catharsis while building an ongoing narrative. The structure of this impressed me. There’s also strong dialogue and excellent performances. Everyone likes this show, I don’t need to tell people this stuff. It’s good. You’ll like it. 2. Flowers  I don't know what show acts as the best focal point of Channel 4's contributions to television in the 2010's: Flowers or Love Island. Of the two, I prefer Will Sharpe's gentle, manic-depressive comedy concerning the Flowers family, though frankly I think you could make a case for either. The Flowers family, headed up by Olivia Colman and a very melancholic Julian Barrat, are a study in British repression, tragically incapable of processing their feelings despite their clear artistic temperaments. I love how Sharpe shoots each season differently. I mean, both seasons have some loving gorgeous visuals (Utopia what now?), but where the first season has a gauzy, photographic appeal, the second is more lurid and hot looking -- I like that the show was brave enough to change its visual palette as the show's characters evolved. Just as a heads up, the show ends on a very loving miserable note, made all the worse for being both entirely implied and largely unreferenced by the narrative. It's a very brave ending, and I think it's a great choice for the show, but I feel that it'd be wrong of me to recommend the show without flagging this in some way. 1. Mad Men  I’ve got to say, I don’t think the early seasons are as strong as what the show eventually morphed into, but that show – which was just one form of mental disintegration after another, really – was loving grand. Absolutely the funniest show on television, unexpectedly delightful or violent, constantly throwing curveballs at you. I really don’t have the skill to do this show justice, IMO, but I will say this: the show’s control over its tone was second to none, and the cast was loving fire. Oh, and Bob and Ginsberg should have made out. Open Source Idiom fucked around with this message at 15:27 on Jan 8, 2022 |
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Jan 8, 2022 14:56
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Escobarbarian posted:Open Source, you should probably specify which version of Being Human you’re referring to. Fixed! Rarity posted:I'd guess Flowers cause Love Island was ITV lol, my brain. I thought I'd checked and changed that, my bad. Not editing it tho, my shame shall last for eternity. I can't believe either of you read all that btw. Thanks. (Also looking forward to reading your list Esco)
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Jan 8, 2022 15:30
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"Okay Jeremy, eat the frog. It's the sexy thing to do."
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Jan 8, 2022 17:17
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This was pretty fun. Would people be keen to do something like this again, but for the noughties? I'd be pretty keen to read people's thoughts about that decade too.
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Jan 10, 2022 16:37
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Looten Plunder posted:My votes not counting cost so many shows: getting the distinct impression from this post that you didn't vote for taskmaster NZ smh
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Jan 13, 2022 14:08
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Looten Plunder posted:Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (Netflix) I think this was BBC America, not Netflix. Looten Plunder posted:Being Human (UK) (SyFy) And this would have been BBC3.
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Jan 19, 2022 00:38
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 18:33 |
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Wooo! Thanks Looten. This was awesome.
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Jan 19, 2022 05:12
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