At the beginning of 2023, hope was high for a banner year of quality TV. We were just coming off a stand-out year for prestige fare, after all, with the unequivocal return to form for Game of Thrones in spin-off House of the Dragon, the debut of The Bear, and a corker of a season of The White Lotus.
And that's without mentioning some of the under appreciated deeper cuts: Station Eleven, Bad Sisters and the third season of For All Mankind, the cult jewel in Apple TV+'s televisual crown (sorry, Mr. Lasso) made for some of the most riveting telly in ages.
The year began with the highest of highs. The Last of Us ended up not only being the greatest video game adaptation of all time — though admittedly a low bar to clear — but a total upgrade on one of the best stories committed to the medium. It gave us the best TV episode of the year, which we called back in January; like the TV equivalent of Declan Rice, never did it dip below a 9/10, a testament to its outstanding depth of storytelling, emotionality and gorgeous shot design. And what an achievement that is over a nine episode season — not a single moment of filler.
The downside to starting on such a high is that you're always going to weigh subsequent series' against that. So Shrinking, for example, wasn't bad — it just wasn't The Last of Us, or indeed the third season of Happy Valley. (Shrinking still makes our list as an under-appreciated comic turn for Harrison Ford.) In fact there wasn't a watercooler TV moment that excited to internet so much as The Last of Us until the fourth season of Succession aired in late March, drawing to a close the Roy family saga with more twists and turns than a private jet caught in a hurricane.
So HBO, with the two best shows of the year in The Last of Us and Succession, had a banner 2023. With a caveat: they also produced and aired The Idol — all three shows were aired by Sky Atlantic in the UK — that heinous crime against decent taste, in which The Weeknd did everything he could to be the creepiest, slimiest, stinkiest sex pest put to TV. It was deeply uncomfortable to watch. But then, truth be told, even for how breathlessly awful it was, its gruesome sex scenes still spilled more ink and created more conversation — and exasperated TikTok reaction videos — than anything else this year. If we were giving out trophies, it would get one for being Our Favourite Hate Watch.
This isn't to say the year was bereft of other big moments. The Bear season 2 cooked, another favourite of ours, making a bona fide star out of Jeremy Allen White. Though it never quite caught on in the UK, we had a lot of love for Rian Johnson's crime caper Poker Face. And Paramount+ had a hit in queer history docudrama Fellow Travelers ticked the “gay” and “hot” boxes from the moment Jonathan Bailey slurped on Matt Bomer's toes like a Spongebob ice lolly.
Here's everything we enjoyed on TV in 2023.
Happy Valley (season 3)
Release date: 1 January
The third season of Sally Wainwright's police procedural, after almost a decade in a making, came to a hugely satisfying end per critics and fans (we include ourselves amongst them both). Rolling Stone's Alan Sepinwall offered direct, simple praise, both for Happy Valley and Sarah Lancashire's protagonist, Sergeant Cawood: “What a performance. What a character. What a show.” And The New York Times compared Happy Valley favourably to the recent rise of superhero movies in that it “quietly provided a paradigm of local, human heroism.” Definitely one to catch up with over the holidays — just don't forget the first seasons.
The Last of Us
Release date: 16 January
That haunting score, the gorgeously realised post-apocalypse, Ellie and Joel — all were reasons to be tremendously excited for Naughty Dog and HBO's quote-unquote “enhanced” TV adaptation of generational video game The Last of Us. Thank god they smashed it, then. It could've been season-six-onwards-The-Walking-Dead levels of crap, another derivative take on the televised zombie (ahem: parasite-infected albeit living cannibals) apocalypse, but Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann hit the right balance of emotionality and action with an adaptation that honed in on the best bits of the original game.
Pedro Pascal and an ascendant Bella Ramsay made for a brilliant pairing as Joel and Ellie, the unlikely duo traversing the ravaged American landscape in search of a cure for the plague that has all but destroyed the world. They certainly stuck it to the haters. And yeah, we called it: episode three is still the best TV episode of the 2023.
Shrinking
Release date: 27 January
Harrison Ford made his major small screen debut at the tender age of eighty in this new Apple TV+ comedy series from Brett Goldstein, Bill Lawrence and Jason Segel, who also starred. “A therapist dealing with severe grief begins to breach ethical barriers by telling his patents what he completely thinks, resulting in massive changes to his and their lives,” reads the official synopsis. This rare late-stage foray into comedy saw Ford deploy his comic chops to strong effect, portraying a down-to-earth shrink whose recent Parkinson's diagnosis led him to view to the world in an entirely different light.
Fleishman is in Trouble
Release date: 22 February
Based on Taffy Brodesser-Akner's best-selling debut novel, this miniseries on Disney+ centred on Jesse Eisenberg's title character, a recent divorcee who finds himself immersed in the swipe left-and-righty world of app-based dating. “But as he begins to find successes he never found in his youth, his ex-wife Rachel disappears without a trace, leaving him with their kids,” reads the official synopsis. “As he balances looking after his children, a promotion at the hospital where he works, and all the women in Manhattan, he realises that he'll never be able to figure out what happened to his wife until he can be more honest about what happened to their marriage in the first place.” Lizzy Caplan, Claire Danes and Adam Brody rounded off the cast.
Daisy Jones and the Six
Release date: 3 March
Nostalgia has never been bigger, so it's the perfect time to take a trip back to the 70s and on tour with a fictional rock band. Sort-of-but-not-really inspired by the genuinely almost unbelievable dramatic exploits of Fleetwood Mac, Daisy Jones and the Six chronicles the insane highs and drastic lows of a band going from buzzy to the biggest musicians in the world. Just a lot of fun, with starring turns from Sam Claflin and Riley Keough, and Tumblr-ready musical input from Phoebe Bridgers to boot.
Ted Lasso (season 3)
Release date: 15 March
Did season three of Ted Lasso totally land? It wasn't perfect — come on, why didn't they win the Prem? — but it did manage to develop on, and ultimately resolve, some of the series' more interesting character arcs in meaningful ways. Our favourite episode was the boys' trip to Amsterdam that saw Welsh winger Colin (Billy Harris) come out as gay to The Independent's Trent Crimm (James Lance), a lovely moment — not least compared to the real-world, where a Premier League footballer still hasn't come out since Justin Fashanu in the ‘90s. Whether the final episodes hit the highs of peak Lasso or not, we'll still miss our weekly schmaltz injection (and box of biscuits).
Yellowjackets (season 2)
Release date: 24 March
If friendships can handle this, they can handle anything. The first season of the enormously buzzy Yellowjackets ended on pretty bleak terms, which is understandable when you consider it was, in part, about a plane crash in the wilderness where people may or may not have snacked on their friends. Split into two parts, in the '90s and the present day, the second season saw us reunite with our favourite dysfunctional friends, including Melanie Lynskey and Christina Ricci. Elijah Woods also joined the cast. And meat was most certainly back on the menu.
Succession (season 4)
Release date: 28 March
How do you end such masterful TV as Succession, ensuring its legacy will see it considered among the pack of the greatest series' ever put to air — the Breaking Bads, the Sopranos'? Somehow Jesse Armstrong did it: firstly, with a mega twist midway through the season that turned the show on its head, and then with an explosive, ultimately satisfactory finale that answered the necessary questions while concluding on a note of bittersweet ambiguity for the Roy kids. We'll debate until the cash-cows come home as to whether Succession ever again achieved the heights of season two, but season four came as close to nailing the landing as you'll ever get.
Beef
Release date: 6 April
Steven Yeun (The Walking Dead, Minari) and Ali Wong (Always Be My Maybe, Big Mouth) came to hilarious blows in tense dramedy Beef, about two ordinary Angelenos whose fender bender slowly simmers — and, eventually, explodes — into all-out war. Cars are destroyed, homes trashed, lives ruined; all because Danny (Yeun) and Amy (Wong) can't put their egos aside and get their shit together. One of Netflix's best offerings of the year, and one which surprisingly didn't outstay its welcome over a ten-episode season. And we're never forgetting that gross-out death scene.
Silo
Release date: 5 May
Apple TV+ continued its glorious run of prestige hits in 2023 with the underrated gem Silo, which centred on people living in oblong subterranean bunkers after a mysterious global cataclysm. Rebecca Ferguson, Tim Robbins and Common starred. The reviews were decidedly strong, with The Guardian calling it “absolutely thrilling,” while The Times announced themselves as big fans of its intense watchability. All things considered, we can't wait to get back into the silo for season 2. (A good one to tide oneself over until the release of Fallout next year, too.)
Poker Face
Release date: 24 May
Aside from making the best Star Wars movie of the modern era, Rian Johnson has also established himself as to present king of the whodunnit — Miss Marple, eat your heart out. This locally underseen gem of the genre partnered his talents in screen-sleuthery with the raw charisma of Russian Doll and Orange is the New Black's Natasha Lyonne, portraying a casino waitress who just so happened to be a living lie detector. Critics loved it; it got over so hard in the U.S., despite being relegated to C-tier streamer Peacock, that a second season was quickly commissioned. We'll be there quicker than you can say “kitchen with the lead pipe”.
The Bear (season 2)
Release date: Summer 2023
Even if you haven't seen The Bear, you have probably seen Jeremy Allen White looking dishevelled in a kitchen. It was the screenshot that garnered the show millions of fans, but the series itself is more than worth the hype. The frenetic first season followed White's Carmy, a fine dining chef who heads back to his hometown of Chicago to take over his late brother's failing restaurant. Season two did the nigh-on impossible in being better than the show's debut outing, cranking up the heat and folding in a charcuterie board of welcome cameos on the part of Bob Odenkirk, Olivia Colman (wasn't she in everything this year?), Sarah Paulson and Will Poulter.
Fellow Travellers
Release date: 28 October
Where else, I ask, could you go to see Jonathan Bailey chugging away at Matt Bomer's toes? Such was the delectable USP of Fellow Travelers, the decades-long drama traversing a gay history of the United States from the perspective of Bailey and Bomer's star-crossed lovers. It's also, as that aforementioned bit of foot-based foreplay suggests, a real sex-a-thon. It's been a grand year for gay sex on screen, truth be told, and Fellow Travelers — for all of its dramatic upsides, and merits as a piece of popular queer history-telling — was consistently one of the hottest examples.
For All Mankind (season 4)
Release date: 10 November
For All Mankind is mostly a series about asking star-gazing questions, like: what would happen if the Cuban Missile Crisis happened in space? Or, what would happen if there was a war in space? Or, what would happen if Joel Kinnaman went to space? The fourth series adds an important note of inquiry to that last one: what if Joel Kinnaman went to space and grew a beard? This alt-history series has been an underrated TV baddie since it debuted in 2019, rocketing Apple TV+ to the front of the pack in the streaming race. Season four is the first time the series has waned — as we've moved into the present, the show's signature interest in alt-history has diminished because it's no longer dealing in, well, history, and that was what we all came for — but it's mostly as gripping as ever.
The Curse
Release date: 10 November
All hail Nathan Fielder, weird-out merchant and one of two progenitors (with thanks, too, to Yorgos Lanthimos) of Emma Stone's recent foray into the kooky. The Curse, co-written by Fielder and Uncut Gems co-director Benny Safdie, marked another successful TV outing for uber-indie production company A24, as a blackly comic dramedy centring on a… dysfunctional celebrity couple (Fielder and Stone). To say anything else would spoil the fun.
