5. “Godless”
The term ‘limited series’ increasingly seems to have become meaningless, as “Big Little Lies” picked up a bunch of nominations in that category this week, shortly after the announcement of its second season. But one of the things we found so utterly refreshing about “Godless” was that it truly, really felt like a one-off, a complete story with a beginning, a middle and an end. Perhaps that’s not surprising, given that Scott Frank’s masterful Western began as a movie script considered over the years by Steven Soderbergh, David Fincher and Sam Mendes. But what was exciting about the Netflix expansion (which clocked up seven episodes most of which ran over an hour) was that it felt more like a great novel than a great movie — pursuing tangents and side stories in a way that added to more than the sum of its parts. Frank’s filmmaking was classical, but also felt like it wasn’t in thrall to Peckinpah, Leone or Ford in the way that most Westerns are now. And the cast were impeccable, from Jeff Daniels’ fearsome, textured villain to a wonderfully heroic turn by Scoot McNairy, to Merrit Wever as one of our favorite TV characters all year. No, it wasn’t quite the grand feminist ass-kicking Western that Netflix sold it as, to the consternation of some (though it did eventually become something closer to that), but it was something more complex, flawed and, ultimately rewarding. It’s odd to say that we hope a series we loved so much doesn’t return, but we hope instead we get some similar kind of Netflix passion-project miniseries in this slot every year from now until the end of time.
4. “The Leftovers” Season 3
We’ll (maybe) forgive you if you tapped out after season one and still think that Damon Lindelof and Tom Perrotta’s HBO show is an unsolvable mystery box filled with unending despair. But the pivots in its second and third seasons not only opened “The Leftovers” up creatively, but it also added a bit of levity, including beginning episode two of its final season, “Don’t Be Ridiculous” with the theme to “Perfect Strangers.” Those fearing that Lindelof would repeat the letdown of the “Lost” finale were met with two final episodes that were somehow both intellectually and emotionally satisfying. The penultimate installment, “The Most Powerful Man in the World (and His Identical Twin Brother)” returns Kevin Garvey (Justin Theroux) to the alternate universe of last season’s “International Assassin,” and gives us more surreal moments and more Patti (2017 TV MVP Ann Dowd). No spoilers, but “The Leftovers” didn’t “just let the mystery be,” as its erstwhile theme song crooned, it actually, more or less told viewers the nature of the Sudden Departure in its final hour, “The Book of Nora.” The show wasn’t satisfied with simply surprising us with its revelation; it also gave us an emotionally rewarding reunion between two characters, providing one of the most soul-enriching hours of TV we can remember.
3. “The Handmaid’s Tale”
In any year, this speculative Hulu drama would be on our list. Between Reed Morano’s tight, tone-setting direction on episodes 1-3, Elisabeth Moss’s breathtaking performance and a deft use of flashbacks, “The Handmaid’s Tale” is the best TV has to offer. Even in a void, it would be impossible to ignore the merits of this show. But this year – this fucking year – its themes take on real potency, in light of the Trump administration’s attacks on female bodily autonomy (see Jane Doe’s case, for a real-life experience that seems out of a dystopian universe). Showrunner Bruce Miller didn’t know that Trump would win the election, but Margaret Atwood’s novel and this adaptation have frightening new relevancy in its wake. Morano’s visual style also adds to the feeling of immediacy, placing us intimately within the world of Offred (Moss) as she attempts to navigate a near-future state mired in totalitarianism, misogyny and theocracy. Moss’ performance is nuanced, particularly in its silences, but credit is also due to the supporting cast. Samira Wiley and Ann Dowd have previously impressed in “Orange Is the New Black” and “The Leftovers,” respectively, but Yvonne Strahovski and Alexis Bledel are the revelations, with Bledel surprising even fans of her work on “Gilmore Girls.” “The Handmaid’s Tale” challenges binge-watching trends (unless you’re a true masochist intent on suffocating under a blanket of depression), but season one ended with unexpected hope, and we can’t imagine we were the only ones fist-pumping during the compelling season 1 finale “Night.”
2. “Mindhunter”
Even before the recent scandals hits, we were never particularly big “House Of Cards” fans. It’s a show that got pretty silly pretty quickly, and the handful of episodes that David Fincher directed before essentially leaving it for others were perhaps the most anonymous thing he’s ever made. But the second team-up between the director and Netflix (though he directed only four of the ten episodes, and the actual showrunning was done by Joe Penhall) was something different entirely — a sort of summation of Fincher’s career to date, and yet another reinvention of the serial killer genre that he’s made his own. It might have been that “Mindhunter” was a retread of territory that’s been mined frequently since “Silence Of The Lambs” blew up, but the detail and psychological realism with which Fincher and co examine the minds of serial killers here makes it something else — academic, disturbing, often wryly funny, oddly. And in many ways, it’s not really about the serial killers: it’s about, well, the mind, and the way that men’s treatment of women permeates and corrupts every layer of society. With everyone from Fincher’s fellow directors Asif Kapadia, Tobias Lindholm and Andrew Douglas, to an impeccable cast of mostly new faces, bringing their A-game, it’s a show we didn’t so much binge as inhale, and we’re counting the days until season two.
1. “Twin Peaks: The Return”
Is it a movie? Is it a TV show? Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a short story? Is it a five-layer sherry trifle? Is it an uncannily prescient analogue of the Alabama senatorial race whereby a man called Douglas Jones would eventually prevail over dimensions-spanning evil, despite the surreal odds stacked against him? On the one hand, it’s a little depressing that one of the most fascinating cultural artifacts of the last two and half decades prompted one of the most boring debates, but on the other hand, it’s understandable: Back in the early ’90s “Twin Peaks” radically redefined the television category, and 25 years later, its ‘Return’ redefined its own redefinition. On the third hand (because naturally there are more than two), David Lynch‘s 16-hour, 25-minute exercize in narrative elasticity and mind expansion could only ever have been a TV show (especially for those of us who don’t automatically consider TV to be a lesser medium) because of how it was delivered, in calibrated slices that operate as (in)coherent single entities as much as they feed into an overarching arc. It’s in that context that the series’ towering high point, the incredible, paradigm-shifting “Part 8” works best, being as it essentially prequel-izes and sequel-izes not just the ‘Twin Peaks’ multiverse, but also possibly the very nature of humankind itself. Then again, on hands 4 though 430, when you’re dealing with something so completely unique, who cares which list it tops and why? I’m not even going to attempt to explain the greatness of “Twin Peaks: The Return,” as I am unequal to the task, but for this viewer, who always credited the original “Twin Peaks” as one of the foundational pillars of her adult psychology, the greatest thing that ‘The Return’ did was not simply bring ‘Twin Peaks’ back for a brief blast. It told us that ‘Twin Peaks’ has always been there and always will be; it gave us worlds. It is the difference between a show that is transcendent and one that is, in a word, transcendental, and it made me feel privileged to be part of a cultural generation so defined by it. Movie, show, novel, tasting menu, designer fragrance or improvisational jazz opus, “Twin Peaks: The Return” was 2017’s best thing.
Honorable Mention:
Notable by their absence (OMG you guys hate “Stranger Things”? Where the fuck is “Stranger Things”?) are a couple of shows whose earlier seasons placed consistently high on our lists. Chief among those, yes, is “Stranger Things” which we did not hate but also didn’t really love all that much and in which the overall arc felt a lot less satisfying than in Season 1 — @ us all you like. But there are also surprising no-shows from old favorites like “Transparent,” “Orange is the New Black” and “Broad City” which had disappointing outings this time out. And no one was more surprised than us by how little we loved “Top of the Lake: China Girl,” having been so enthralled by the first season, and by how generally underwhelmed we were by “GLOW” (which for the record, one of us loved), considering how excited we’d been for it originally.
There is also a whole host of shows that made it onto our mid-year TV roundup that for one reason or another have slid off by now (perhaps because the last six months have been approximately 12 centuries long). They include “Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events“; “The Young Pope“; “Fargo“; “Legion“ (the only Marvel TV show to come within a corridor punch-up’s distance of this list); “Girls“ (though we do want to shout out its Matthew Rhys episode as one of the best single TV episodes of the year); “The Good Fight“; British import “National Treasure“; the consistently excellent “The Americans“; “Underground“; “Better Call Saul“; “Brooklyn Nine Nine“; “Silicon Valley“; Guerrilla“; Catastrophe“; and “American Gods.” If you want to read us extolling their virtues you can check in here. Oh and the utterly riveting “The Keepers” is going onto another upcoming list, so we didn’t include it here.
Also under consideration at one time or other were “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” and “Mr Robot” two shows that people keep telling us we should adore and we just can’t fully get with. Similarly “Jane the Virgin,” “Curb Your Enthusiasm“; “Hap & Leonard“; “Review“; “Great News“; “Baskets“; “You’re the Worst” and the ever-reliable “Veep” just missed the cut and we really thought long and hard about putting “Riverdale” on (not seriously but we pretended for a minute because of Kevin).
As for new shows we’ve barely caught up with, if at all: “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel“; “Star Trek: Discovery“; “Happy!“; “She’s Gotta Have It” and “Lady Dynamite” season 2 are among the titles we still have to dive into. And finally, we wanted to reserve a special dishonorable mention for Marvel TV shows “Runaways,” “The Defenders,” “Iron Fist,” and “Inhumans” because they were awful, to the point that at one stage our No. 1 Best TV Show Of 2017 was going to be “Anything That Meant You Didn’t Have To Watch ‘The Defenders’.”
Leap to the defense of ‘The Defenders,’ haul us over the coals for whatever else (we’re so battered and bruised another bashing can’t possibly make a difference) or, you know, congratulate us on a job well done if you feel like it! — in the comments below.
— with Kevin Jagernauth