20. “Love”
Coming from comedy magnate Judd Apatow — indeed, the first time he’s created a show (here, with Paul Rust and Leslie Arfin) since “Undeclared” — “Love” has more laughs in it than “Flaked,” a similarly California-set comedy-drama that debuted almost simultaneously. It’s a much better show, certainly, but one that shares a certain sense that it might have turned up a little late at the party, and doesn’t quite live up to its promise, at least after its first run. Based loosely on Rust & Arfin’s own real-life courtship, it tells the story of the L.A. set romance between Gus (Rust), an on-set tutor who’s been freshly dumped, and Mickey (Gillian Jacobs), a troubled radio producer. The show is deceptively formally ambitious, taking the rom-com and stretching it out in slow-motion, so that the romance moves at something of a crawl, with each episode focusing on a particular ritual of dating, from the meet-cute to waiting for a text to the first date. And it’s got plenty of insight, particularly when it comes to the main characters: Rust finding nuance in a ‘nice guy’ who’s much less nice than he thinks he is, and Jacobs proving a far more interesting trainwreck than Amy Schumer in Apatow’s film of the same name. But the supporting characters are, with the exception of Claudia O’Doherty’s charmingly upbeat flatmate, unmemorable, the laughs not entirely frequent, and there’s the occasional odd misstep, like the Andy Dick episode, which sticks in the craw given his history with alleged sexual harassment and Apatow’s open (and laudable) regular focus on Bill Cosby’s actions. But like several other Netflix shows, the biggest problem is that its slo-mo conceit, while making it stand apart, just makes it feel dragged out and bloated, especially when others shows, most notably “You’re The Worst,” have covered the same territory recently, and with more consistent greatness to it.
19. “Grace & Frankie”
If they’re going to be truly massive, Netflix need to lure older audiences as well as millennials, and “Grace & Frankie” was their first attempt to lure your parents to subscribe as well as your friends. From, in part, the mind and pen of Marta Kauffman, co-creator of “Friends,” it sees two well-to-do women approaching older age, cosmetics titan Grace (Jane Fonda) and art teacher Frankie (Lily Tomlin), brought together when their husbands (Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston) announce that they’re not just law partners, they’ve also fallen in love with each other. As you might imagine, the biggest draw here is the cast: Tomlin, Fonda, Sheen and Waterston are all megastars, and all ace it here, able to spin even the weaker material into something that can draw a laugh. Their energy carries the show throughout, making it rarely anything less than a pleasant watch. But the show’s caught awkwardly between eras, its written rhythms that of a 90s mid-camera sitcom aiming for gags above all else, its direction and tone that of a more contemporary dramedy. That clash can sometimes be an interesting one (see below), but here it feels like an awkward fit, particularly because the scripting spreads the material so thin, with not just Grace, Frankie and their husbands in the spotlight, but also various children, few of whom are ringers to the extent that the older generation are. The show’s look at rebuilding a life in your 70s is a refreshing one, and it’s a sweet-natured, compassionate show in its way, even if it defaults to big broad bawdy gags while shying away from any real suggestion of non-hetero sex. But so far — the second season arrives shortly — it’s been a fairly disposable pleasure at best.
18. “Chef’s Table”
Cookery-themed TV is undoubtedly a big deal — there are entire networks devoted to them — but they’re generally not seen as art, but as disposable, eternally disrespected filler for people stuck at home. Netflix have clearly been on a mission to redeem the form, between “Cooked” and flagship food show “Chef’s Table,” but while the latter’s a slight improvement on the former, it’s not yet reinvented culinary television. Hailing from “Jiro Dreams Of Sushi” director David Gelb, and very much in the mold of that earlier film, the show’s first season (a second is imminent, and two more have already been commissioned) looks at a different culinary superstar in every hour-long episode, from Michelin-starred Italian legend Massimo Bottura to sustainable Swedish genius Magnus Nilsson. Few are necessarily household names even to casual U.S. foodies, and the international focus of the picks is pleasing, avoiding some more famous and obvious picks in favor of inventive and little-known cooks. And it looks beautiful, with endless slo-mo shots of tantalizing food making it feel like a less murder-y episode of “Hannibal,” and foodies will undoubtedly get a kick out of the access to these cooks and their processes, painting them as true artists. But, so far, the picks have been rather insubstantial, if we’re being honest: not many of the subjects are terribly charismatic, and few of the films have a point of view beyond ‘look at this chef and their delicious and beautiful food.’ Those looking for food porn will be in heaven, but it feels a little like a flavored foam: pleasant enough, but dissipating pretty quickly when it isn’t paired with something more substantial. We’d recommend that foodies instead check out PBS’s “Mind Of A Chef,” which is available on Netflix and is done with a lot more wit and substance, even if it isn’t as picture-pretty.
17. “The Ranch”
Bowing just last month, “The Ranch” almost seems purpose-designed to be repellent to the blogerati: it’s almost defiantly uncool, with co-creator Don Reo having credits stretching back to “Laugh-In” and “Sanford & Son” (he also co-created “Blossom”), a firmly red-state setting, an unfashionable multi-cam setting, Ashton Kutcher in the lead role. But it’s also a rather pleasant surprise, a show that, though it has plenty of flaws, joins the recent like of “Mom,” “The Carmichael Show” and even “Horace & Pete” in something of a critical revival of the stagey multi-camera form. The premise doesn’t exactly reinvent the wheel, with Kutcher as a former college football player who moves back in to his family’s Colorado ranch with his father (Sam Elliott) and brother (Kutcher’s “That 70s Show” co-star Danny Masterson), while mother Maggie (Debra Winger) lives nearby. Like, say, “Fuller House,” this is a sitcom in the old-school, with a laugh track, pop-culture gags and innuendo. But the show uses the freedom of Netflix to give a little more room to breath (and add some swearing), with an unlikely psychological realism and low-key manner that’s rather disarming. At its best, the show’s sincerity about its characters and their lives (particularly when brought to life by Elliot and Winger, and an impressive dramatic turn from Kutcher), and its boldness in grappling with the subject of failure, something usually done in British comedy rather than American ones, make it feel surprising and distinctive. And while it frequently dips into its worst impulses, “Two And A Half Men” style leering or familiar set-up/punchline combos, its better qualities are more than enough to make it worth sampling at least.
16. “F is for Family”
Bill Burr‘s animated comedy is by no means bad, it just never quite manages to carve out a distinctive niche for itself. Despite a strong voice cast, including Burr himself, Laura Dern, Justin Long, Sam Rockwell and more, and an impressively hard-R approach to vulgarity, it has a mountain to scale to become a really vital addition to the already overpopulated category of “unprepossessingly animated suburban dysfunctional family sitcoms.” Its 1970s setting might seem at first to be its chief point of differentiation from the likes of “The Simpsons,” “Family Guy,” “Bob’s Burgers,” “King of the Hill,” and even Netflix’s own much better and more surreal “Bojack Horseman” but really its raison d’etre is to tear into “political correctness” in much the same way that Burr’s standup comedy does — though whether setting it in the unenlightened 1970s is a boon or a burden to that aim is unclear. It does mean however that it can boast some nice period trappings in new-fangled answerphones, Tupperware obsessions and swinging sex parties (held by Rockwell’s laid-back Adonis next-door neighbor). But the choleric main character, Frank, a balding loser with a short fuse whose children hate him, whose hot wife inexplicably adores him and whose job in airport baggage handling places him firmly on the lower rungs of the middle class American lifestyle ladder, just feels too like an established archetype to get that exicted by (though it’s nice to watch cartoons chain smoke, it’s true).Occasionally touching, sometimes amusing, mostly it’s overfamiliar to the point that we wonder if Burr has inadvertently bolstered the PC movement he’s so set against: the overriding question “F is for Family” leaves us with is “Did we really need another show designed, however self-deprecatingly, to tell this particular aging-white-guy-ordinary-joe story?”