2023-2024 Bonus Entries

(Excellent shows that started last year and ended up on a lot of 2023 lists but which didn’t air their final episodes till January 2024)

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters

Created by Chris Black and Matt Fraction; based on the work of Ishirō Honda and others (Apple TV+)

The best compliment I can pay this spinoff series from the Legendary Godzilla/Kong movie series, which in quality ranges from dumb fun to just plain dumb, is this: I remember the romance better than the monsters. Actors Wyatt Russell, Mari Yamamoto, and Anders Holm capture the spark and the ache of a love triangle as well as I’ve seen it done, pretty much, with Anna Sawai providing an echo as their younger counterpart. The season finale reunion between Russell’s aged character (played as an older man by his father Kurt) and Yamamoto’s time-marooned one, scored by the Ross Brothers, is movie magic plain and simple.

Fargo

Created by Noah Hawley; based on the work of Ethan and Joel Coen (FX/Hulu)

A strong contender for the strongest overall season of Noah Hawley’s still-controversial Coen Brothers homage, this most recent entry shares many of its predecessors’ concern with the rapacious forces on the move in America today, personified by Jon Hamm’s monstrous enforcer of the patriarchy, Sheriff Roy Tillman. Its bold contention, embodied by Juno Temple’s brave battered wife Dot Lyon, is that we don’t have to swallow what they feed us.

The Curse

Created by Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie (Paramount+)

Like Too Old to Die Young, the first season of Them, and the Adult Swim Infomericials This House Has People in It and Unedited Footage of a Bear, this cringe-horror masterpiece feels less like a television program and more like an acute, crescendoing mental health crisis. I hated, hated, hated the pilot, which I thought was smug and self-congratulatory about the dark side of liberal do-gooding; by the end of the nightmarish and somehow prophetic finale I thought I was watching one of the best shows I’d ever seen. I was right the second time.

The Top 15 Shows of 2024

15. The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power

Created by J.D. Payne and Patrick McKay; based on the work of J.R.R. Tolkien (Prime Video)

Jeff Bezos is an evil man, and he prefers to keep the company of evil men these days, so I wish I could say that this show was as much an embarrassing folly this season as it was during its initial installment. Alas! Like The Wheel of Time and Foundation before it, it got gud, son. The credit is largely due to the emotionally and physically abusive relationship between Charles Edwards’s Da Vinci–like Elf genius Celebrimbor and Charlie Vickers’s gaslighting Dark Lord in sheep’s clothing, Sauron. This season made me understand why these particular guys wanted to make this particular show. I felt the purpose.

14. Presumed Innocent

Created by David E. Kelley; based on the book by Scott Turow (Apple TV+)

Clive Barker once explained that he made his monsters sexually compelling because that’s the only convincing way to write characters stupid enough to open the door that has the reader shouting “Don’t go in there!” Kelley’s adaptation of Turow’s legal thriller rightfully focuses on the explosive sexual connection between Jake Gyllenhaal’s leading man and his other woman, played in flashback by Renate Reinsve. If they make you believe in that, they can make you believe anything else. Bonus points for the insufferable antagonists muttered into life by Peter Sarsgaard and O.T. Fagbenle.

13. Tokyo Vice

Created by J. T. Rogers; based on the book by Jake Adelstein (Max)

How often do you get to say “this stylish, sumptuous crime thriller” and really mean it? But Tokyo Vice‘s second season was all that and more — an almost Dickensian (apologies to David Simon) look at the underbelly of a lost time and place. It delivered on everything the first season only promised.

12. The Old Man

Created by Jonathan E. Steinberg and Robert Levine; based on the book by Thomas Perry (FX/Hulu)

Another sophomore outing that bettered its already pretty good first season by a substantial margin. This season’s setting in the rugged wilds of Afghanistan gave it mythic last-gunslinger gravitas. It’s a fine showcase for the formidable talents of Jeff Bridges and John Lithgow, but this was really young gun Alia Shawkat’s time to shine.

11. The Regime

Created by Will Tracy (HBO/Max)

In this sharp and subtle satire that actually looks as interesting as its dialogue reads, a mentally ill autocrat and her also mentally ill macho object of obsession plunge their country into a whirlpool of quack medicine, economic ruin, diplomatic isolation, and civil war. I dunno, it all seems funnier when Kate Winslet does it.

10. Fallout

Created by Graham Wagner and Geneva Robertson-Dworet; based on the games by Tim Cain, Leonard Boyarsky, and others (Prime Video)

Though it’s one of the more egregious offenders in this year’s woeful trend of truly over-the-top teal-and-orange color grading, Fallout can be forgiven: The blue-and-yellow jumpsuits were taken right from the game, and there’s only so much you can do when you’re filming a desert wasteland against an azure sky of deepest summer. That aside, this is an unexpectedly nasty and batshit anti-capitalist/anti-American post-apocalyptic sci-fi satire from your friends at Amazon. The lead performances of Walton Goggins as a strangely sexy revenant and Ella Purnell as a pretty straightforwardly sexy fish out of water sell the whole thing.

9. Disclaimer

Created by Alfonso Cuarón; based on the book by Renée Knight (Apple TV+)

Disclaimer features arguably the year’s hottest scene and its most harrowing. It’s a sinister little dance between Cate Blanchett in glamorous Tár mode and Kevin Kline as the kind of English schoolteacher you might hear Roger Waters sing about. It’s directed with a unique eye for light and color by Alfonso Cuarón, whose work filming in the ocean feels like yet another technological feat of filmmaking in a career characterized by them. It’s not perfect, but that’s plenty for me.

8. Them

Created by Little Marvin (Prime Video)

While less brain-breakingly brutal and disturbing than its debut season, which is honestly fine with me, the second installment of Little Marvin’s horror anthology series cements returning star Deborah Ayorinde’s place in the pantheon of great horror actors. There’s a fun scary-movie feel to some of the proceedings, which makes the really bitter parts that much harder to swallow.

7. Shōgun

Created by Rachel Kondo and Justin Marks; based on the book by James Clavell (FX/Hulu)

Or: How I Found Out The New York Times Won’t Let You Call An Assisted Suicide Erotic. Featuring at least four of the year’s most memorable performances (Anna Sawai, Cosmo Jarvis, Hiroyuki Sanada, Tadanobu Asano), this tragedy of manners was every bit as epic in feel as its sci-fi and fantasy counterparts. But its emphasis on restraint gave it a ruminative, romantic, melancholy tone all its own.

6. Supersex

Created by Francesca Manieri (Netflix)

A desire for sex so insatiable and profound that it takes over your whole life until there’s not much else left: This is traditionally the stuff of European art films. To my great surprise, and ultimately my benefit, it’s also the stuff of this season-length biopic of the notoriously intense Italian porn star Rocco Siffredi, played by Suburra star Alessandro Borghi. Rocco’s background of poverty and savage bullying, his emotionally incestuous relationships with his mother and brother, his treatment of lust and pleasure as matters of paramount importance no matter the cost — this is livewire stuff, handled with skill, care, and artistry.

5. Sexy Beast

Created by Michael Caleo; based on the screenplay by Louis Mellis and David Scinto (Paramount+)

I know what you’re thinking, because I thought it too: A prequel to the first in director Jonathan Glazer’s run of back-to-back-to-back-to-back movie masterpieces? Best of luck to you! But intrigue got the better of me, and boy am I glad it did. This is — realize I understand the weight of this statement — a worthy companion piece to the original film. As the young thief Gal Dove, James McArdle has incandescent romantic chemistry with Sarah Greene as his true love Deedee, and makes a believable big-brother figure to the strange and belligerent Don Logan (Emun Elliott.) But the romance is messy and complicated and unpleasant, as these things often are. Behind it all lurks Stephen Moyer as up-and-coming gangster Teddy Bass, somehow as terrifying in his way as Ian McShane was in his.

4. Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story

Created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan (Netflix)

Ryan Murphy’s empire is what it is, but you do, under these circumstances, gotta hand it to him: Between The People v. O.J. Simpson, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, Dahmer, and Monsters, he’s given us probably all four of the best true-crime miniseries ever made. The story of the Menendez brothers is handled with immense respect for the gravity of the subject matter and backbreakingly frank dialogue as to its horrifying nature. Directed by Michael Uppendahl, the fifth episode, a single shot of two actors, made me sick, as well it should.

3. Interview with the Vampire

Created by Rolin Jones; based on the books by Anne Rice (AMC/AMC+)

Like the first season of The Terror did with Dan Simmon’s sprawling, detailed work of historical horror, the first season of Interview with the Vampire took everything good about its source material, jettisoned everything bad, and improved on the results in every conceivable way. For its second season, IWTV improved on its first season in every conceivable way, ending with its absolute best episode to date. That’s a fucking feat, man. This is the most drama-club goth show ever made, with all the beauty and the bloodshed that implies. With the aid of wrenchingly physical performances by all its leads, it uses the supernatural to supercharge the ecstasy of love and the agony of loss.

2. House of the Dragon

Created by George R.R. Martin and Ryan Condal; based on the books by George R.R. Martin (HBO/Max)

I believe in Westeros. Westeros has made my fortune, such as it is. And I write my reviews in the Westerosi fashion. When a show uses size, scale, spectacle, and the supernatural to convey ideas and emotions, to me it’s like a whole new kind of thing, as much an opera as a drama. These nude incestuous psychopaths flying around on their giant war-crime reptiles are, quite simply, playing my song.

1. Industry

Created by Mickey Down and Konrad Kay (HBO/Max)

I can’t believe I was late to this show. I can’t believe no one told me about this show. I can’t believe no one grabbed me by the shoulders and said Sean, Sean, Sean, this is a show for you. What if Billions, Mad Men, Mr. Robot, and Girls were all the same TV series, and every episode featured sex scenes as frank and explicit as…well, I can’t think of any points of comparison, really. This show treats sex seriously, even as it depicts its rapacious young (and envious middle-aged) hypercapitalists as beautiful sociopaths, their bodies colliding against one another in the water they make their living boiling. As a bonus, you get to watch episode four, “White Mischief,” in which director Zoé Wittock takes Uncut Gems to After Hours school. It’s the year’s most invigorating hour of television, and it feels like this show slapped it down like a casually spent hundred, pulled from a bottomless pocket.

Sexy Beast is as good a TV prequel as Andor, House of the Dragon, and Better Call Saul. I hope it runs exactly as long as creator Michael Caleo wants it to. […] It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a crime show this rich. I mean, the obvious antecedent really is Better Caul Saul. I’m very pleased to say, however, that it hasn’t been that long since I’ve seen a prequel or adaptation this good. From Dead Ringers to Fargo Season 5, miraculous extrapolations of preexisting masterpieces are, strangely, thick on the ground. I’m so glad this show exists, so glad for the performances by James McArdle, Emun Elliott, Sarah Greene, Stephen Moyer, et al — so glad that a movie I love as much as I love Sexy Beast spawned a show worthy of the name.

I reviewed the season finale of Sexy Beast for Decider. Incredible show.

As Nancy Sinatra sings “Bang Bang,” my stomach ties itself in knots. Two episodes remaining in this season of Sexy Beast and I find myself torn. Part of me wants the story to go on for however long the filmmakers want. But another part hopes they wrap everything up, since high quality isn’t the kryptonite of short-sighted cancellation it was just a few short years ago. (Fatal Attraction, we hardly knew ye.) 

More importantly, though? I’m nervous as hell. My body’s reacting to the prospect of pressing play on this episode as though it thinks I’m actually in danger myself. The atmosphere of mounting dread, created by showrunner Michael Caleo and now helped along here by writer Alastair Galbraith and director Stephen “Teddy Bass” Moyer, has me that shook. 

As it needs to. In the original Sexy Beast, you know from moment you see Aitch, Jackie, Deedee, and Gal react to the news that Don Logan called that this man is terrifying; you spend the movie wondering when he’ll make good on his reputation. The TV show’s trick is to set whatever event gave Don that reputation—whatever made people stop thinking of him as weird and annoying and start thinking of him like an alien could burst out of his chest and eat them at any moment—in the indeterminate future. We know we’re getting closer to it, but we don’t know how far we’ve gone.

I reviewed the fantastic penultimate episode of Sexy Beast‘s first (?) season for Decider.

Which brings us back to Mr. Black Magic himself. The Teddy Bass of Sexy Beast the television show is played by a TV vampire of considerable experience: Stephen Moyer, True Blood’s Bill Compton. Watching Moyer slink his way through this show, leaving a trail of dropped drawers and broken bodies in his wake, you can’t help but feel that this is the kind of monster Moyer had hoped to play all those years ago. Finally, he’s got something he can really sink his teeth into.

Younger, hungrier, and more dynamic than the older version played by McShane — who by that point is firmly on top of the pyramid — the TV Teddy is vampire-coded to a major degree. He’s quiet, pale, raven-haired, black-clad with red accents, largely nocturnal, possessed either by brooding malice or sinister good cheer and nothing in between. He kills men without compunction, rapes men without shame. He tends not to step into a home unless he’s been invited. And once he is, all are powerless before him.

In the most recent episode at the time of this writing, Teddy wheedles his way into the manse of his quarry, the corrupt aristocrat politician Sir Stephen Eaton (the marvelously named Julian Rhind-Tutt), by seducing his wife’s best friend from her university days. “He walked right up to me, this close,” she recalls giddily, “and he said ‘Everyone in this room, man and woman, wants to fuck me, but I only want you.’” Teddy fingerbangs the friend under the table at dinner, using the same hands he used to nearly shatter the bones of a loudmouth at the party, to the delight of all onlookers. By the end of the evening even Sir Stephen is tenderly brushing his hand against Teddy, even though he knows, for a fact, that Teddy has been spending the past few weeks using Gal and Don to rob him blind. He is irresistible. 

But he is also angry, righteously angry. In the monologue that opens this piece, from the episode that airs this week, Teddy explains to Gal, in a voice more Cockney than Queen’s E, that he loathes the upper class for its thievery and entitlement. It’s not until the season finale that you see his real supervillain origin story in this regard, and I won’t spoil it for you, but it’s ferociously, almost frantically anti-oligarchy, making their menace to the body politic concrete in their menace to the human body itself. Sir Stephen’s enrichment of himself at the expense of the public fuels Teddy’s quest to take him down every bit as much as Teddy’s own lust for power. This man is excited to plan a heist for Guy Fawkes’ Night because he vocally admires Guy Fawkes. 

I wrote about Stephen Moyer’s portrayal of Teddy Bass in Sexy Beast for Luke O’Neil’s Welcome to Hell World.

Sexy Beast bristles with ideas, images, emotions, and sensations. This episode in particular is like the Hellraiser puzzle box, opening up and shooting chains in every direction, tipped with hooks that sink in and pull. 

[…]

Every single layer that Sexy Beast adds has enhanced rather than obscured the source text. It’s like if Coppola had made a TV series of the Vito Corleone section of The Godfather Part II. It is absolutely the goddamnedest thing. 

I reviewed this week’s amazing Sexy Beast for Decider.

Keep in mind that this comes hot on the heels of Deedee’s gutting storyline, involving a disastrous attempt to reconnect with her family over Sunday dinner. Her shitty father stonewalls her and eventually kicks her out. Her mother smiles and cries but does nothing. And her sister, who’s ostensibly her remaining friend in the family, is revealed to be the person who told Deedee’s father she’d started filming porn. (And kissing girls.) In a harrowing flashback, he bodily drags young Deedee from the house and throws her out. A more effective evocation of social conservatism — a political movement dedicated to giving men a pretext to abuse their spouses and children — I haven’t seen in a long time.

I reviewed this week’s Sexy Beast for Decider.

Don Logan is the Gollum of the Sexy Beast cinematic universe. Sometimes he’s harmless, fawning Sméagol — desperate for his friend buddy Gal’s affection, willing to catch a bullet if it means sparing his only friend in the world. Sometimes he’s Gollum, paranoid and dangerous, prone to flying off the handle at the most minor perceived slight and spurring the sort of altercations that end with cops dead at the hands of their own crooked partners in full view of multiple witnesses. The problem for Gal is you never know which Don you’re gonna get; this is also the problem for Don.

I reviewed this week’s Sexy Beast for Decider.

Sexy Beast the TV show is basically like someone Andor’d Sexy Beast the movie. How’s that for high praise? But that’s what creator Michael Caleo and his co-writers have done on this thing: They took an iconic work of cinema (referring to the whole Star Wars gestalt rather than Rogue One specifically here) and made something rich, challenging, ugly, and darkly humane out of a prequel that fleshes out the original work’s world at length. It’s the damnedest thing.

I reviewed episode three of Sexy Beast for Decider.

Oh. So it’s a real show then. Upping the ante of violence considerably — from shocking and stylish to prolonged, sexual, and horrific — this episode of Sexy Beast is at times a very tough watch. It probably had to be. There’s nothing wrong with a slick ‘90s British crime caper series featuring well-executed younger versions of characters we know and love from a bona fide movie masterpiece. But that movie is absolutely grueling to watch at times, however much its London gangster cool and brilliant soundtrack convince you otherwise. For this show to be more than a good time on the telly…well, it has to be a bad time, too.

I reviewed the second episode of Sexy Beast for Decider.

I don’t know how they do it. I really don’t. How do you take a stylistically unique, psychologically intense, stone-classic thriller from the past 40-odd years of English-language cinema and make a really good show out of it — not just once, but enough times that trend pieces can be written? What alchemy is this?

I reviewed the series premiere of the Sexy Beast prequel series for Decider. It’s really good!

I wrote about Jonathan Glazer’s incredible British gangster movie Sexy Beast for today’s edition of the New York Times’ “Watching” newsletter, which features recommendations for streaming shows and films three times a week. If you sign up for it today (it’s free) you can read what I wrote. Enjoy!