From left, Betty Gilpin in “Mrs. Davis,” Jharrel Jerome in “I’m a Virgo” and Emma Corrin in “A Murder at the End of the World.”
(Photo illustration by Jess Hutchison / Los Angeles Times; photos by Sophie Kohler / Peacock, Pete Lee / Prime Video, Christopher Saunders / FX)
Somehow we have survived almost to the end of another year, but before you mix the nog and hoist the mistletoe, there is still some business to discuss. Yes, friends, we have come to that time in the calendar when the rituals of this job demand that I make a list, and I don’t mean for Santa.
It’s been a tough 12 months in the life of Earth and its people. That’s one of the reasons we turn to television, where mysteries are solvable, problems resolvable and even when things are crazy they’re at least fictional, and maybe funny. And when they are not fictional, or are semi-nonfictional, we might comfort ourselves with the knowledge that those people’s burdens are not ours, or that we are learning something that might make life better — or even improve the wider world, if we are moved to get off the couch and do something.
As to the medium itself, overlapping actors’ and writers’ strikes — which we might as easily call the producers’ strike, an (in)action against negotiation — famously interrupted the flow of homegrown material for more than a third of the year. It was no surprise, then, that content distributors looked abroad for stuff to fill the gaps. To be sure, one is happy that the home team is returning to work, but there’s no need to think less of the shows from Canada, the U.K., Australia and beyond (see below) that made up the difference, any more than it’s fair to torture the substitute teacher or demean the understudy. Good television is made everywhere.
Some headline-writing editor may attach the word “best” to this rundown of things I most liked on television in 2023, but that is not a word I care to use. These are just the shows — all new to the current year, as is my tradition — I most wanted to tell you about. My satisfaction is 100% guaranteed.