When discussing similar Top 10/Best/Favorite lists related to film and TV me and a buddy realized something. We watch both too much and not enough TV. There’s just waay to much stuff for one person to take in and that is fantastic. With the end of Breaking Bad we have lost the TV monoculture universal property and that’s fine now we can all enjoy the stuff we like. Don’t take this list as any sort of clear authority, this is just what spoke to me the most this year.
Fargo
My reaction to the news that FX was developing Fargo, one of the most well known Cohen Brothers films, into a TV series was cynicism. A well placed distrust or wonderment, since it had actually already happened and it bombed. 10 hours in and around Bemidji, Minnesota later and it was my favorite thing on TV for 2014.
Skeptical first impressions aside, Fargo did have a cast including Martin Freeman and Billy Bob Thorton, so it was worth a peak. Noah Hawley’s subversion of both Freeman and his character Lester Nygaard was a fantastic twist, providing the actor one of his better roles. Lester’s intial turn to darkness appearing to be more by devlish influence but it becomes a learned skill soon enough. Billy Bob Thorton reminded us that yes he can act as the lethal and biblical Lorne Malvo . But most importantly was lead Allison Tolman as Deputy Molly Solverson, the warm optimistic and badass heart of the show.
Hawley wrote a series that was worthy of being called Fargo, taking elements from the film but never forgetting to be its own dark crime tale stuck in Minnesota snow.
The Americans
The Americans should be such an easy sell, a pair of deep cover KGB spies working to undermine America and her interests from within and their neighbor is FBI. As a spy show, The Americans uses its 80’s setting for some tense cloak and dagger sequencing. But really, it is the focus on the more mundane aspects that make it great. The Americans first season was all about the Jennings as a married unit and the realness found in their layered real fake lives. For its second season, the realness of fakery is taken to the next logical step and explores the Jennings as a familial unit. After a shattering discovery, Phillip and Elizabeth must deal with the continuing conflict between their two realities and the fact that for all their fantastic wigs and rules, the FBI and KGB don’t care about boundaries.
- READ: The Kids Are Not All Right by Andy Greenwald
- LISTEN: The Andy Greenwald Podcast: ‘The Americans’ Showrunners Joe Weisberg and Joel Fields
Hannibal
I Love Hannibal. I Hate Hannibal. There is no other show on television so in control of its aesthetic, creating baroque nightmares to subject Will Graham and the audience to. Nicely cleaved into two parts, Hannibal second season pushes further into the Hannibal mythos and pushes at those limitations in surprising ways. Having spoken to friends who have read the Harris novels it is surprisingly faithful to “cannon” while reinterpreting it all at the sametime. No other show this year or ever makes me so simultaneously excited and filled with dread.
- READ: Bryan Fuller’s entire Walkthrough of Season 2 on the AVClub by Todd VanDerWerff
The Knick
Other than having Clive Owen, with his sweet scathe and boots, and a slightly novel period setting, The Knick isn’t that different from the generic hospital drama. Like Gregory House, Dr. John Thackery (Owen) has a drug problem and god complex. Due to its setting it does get to surface race and gender relations. All the while using this to show how despite a hundred years of progress, we haven’t changed that much. What elevates The Knick is the fact that it is directed entirely by Steven Soderbergh. Soderbergh’s meticulous direction, cinematography, and editing elevates what is on some levels a generic hospital drama to something truly amazing. Hannibal filled me with supernatural dread but The Knick was the scariest show on TV.
- READ: ‘The Knick’ Finishes Its Brutal, Triumphant First Season As the Scariest Show on TV by Andy Greenwald
- LISTEN The Soderpod
Legend of Korra Books
Full Disclousre, I haven’t finished Book 4: Balance I still have about 6 episodes to go. But Book 3 alone was one of the most consistently enjoyable things to watch and Book 4 has continued that path. Giving Korra and Team Avatar their own anarchistic doppelgangers allowed for Studio Mir to animate some of the best set pieces irrespective of medium. And still within all that awesome action was the politics and character that we have all come to expect from the series. Part of me hopes for more of Team Avatar, perhaps in comic book form, but man after you’ve beaten giant mecha, kiaju monsters, the embodiment of chaos and so on what’s left?
- READ: How a Nickelodeon Cartoon Became One of the Most Powerful, Subversive Shows of 2014 by Joanna Robinson
- LISTEN: Republic City Dispatch (all of it)
The Flash/Arrow
Yea, I’m kind of cheating by having this tied, but I challenge you to name two shows so connected and informed by one another. Together, The Flash and Arrow titular characters show that yes you can make a varied DC shared universe, or at least, Greg Berlanti, Marc Guggenheim and Andrew Kreisberg can. Where the first half of The Flash was sure footed and fast, Arrow first half of season three has been slower and meandering. I’d blame the dramatic engine, a murder investigation, and moving the emphasis off Oliver Queen and Co. on to shiny new guest stars. Still together they make an entertaining one two punch of super heroics on the small screen.
- READ: The Year in Comic Book TV: Go Small or Go Home? By Alan Sepinwall
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver
I don’t watch the news. I’ve got anxiety issues that just don’t play nice with broadcast news. Last Week Tonight however is too good not to watch, partly due to HBO putting up the long form segments on YouTube rather quickly. Oliver turns his gaze on to a variety of mundane subjects but makes them both informative and funny, from tackling the death penalty, net neutrality, and for profit schools.
Game of Thrones
After a rather shocking penultimate episode for season 3, the Game of Thrones keeps on going. The focus on House Lannister and Daenerys was a good call, Charles Dance and Peter Dinklage are the series top actors. They introduced a great new character in Prince Oberyn Martell. Mance marched upon the Wall. The Game keeps going and it has still found ways for me to cry and crush my soul.
True Detective
Your show manages to cast Matthew Mcconaughey and Woody Harrelson, that’s worth a watch. Even if it’s part of a rote murder mystery. The series name is derived from an old pulp magazine and that’s what the series is. Look at that murder mystery. But writer Nic Pizzolatto infused his pulpy foundation with equally low art artifacts like a rashomon structure and obscure proto-cosmic horror story in The King in Yellow, creating something glorious. Much credit is also deserved to season 1 director Cary Joji Fukunaga. Maybe my enjoyment of the ending was never trying to make some kind of big wall of crazy connection between The King in Yellow and the series, I always viewed them simply as thematic accents Pizzolatto was using to articulate the kind of dread that comes across.
WATCH:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVK_scFlCHg
UPDATE: READ: The Raid The six-minute ‘True Detective’ tracking shot, and the night TV changed by Chris Ryan
Orange is the New Black/Transparent
OitNB was a surprise hit for me and its second season continued Piper Chapman story but reinforced the already excellent existing cast. Transparent was another surprise, perhaps more so given the batch of Amazon pilots it debuted with. Both of these shows represent what is possible on digital platforms like Netflix and Amazon, I don’t think they’d exist if it weren’t for these disruptive distribution models. For all the progressive qualities each show has they are ultimately about families born into and chosen and that is always an easy way in for me.
I am Michael Mazzacane and you can find on Twitter @MaZZMand at weekntv.com and comicweek.com
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