Best television series seen in 2019

[pabs]

List your favourite tv that you watched last year regardless of what year they were produced. Rank them if you want.

For me, hands down, the mini-series CHERNOBYL was unbeatable for its combination of great acting, direction and story. It was doubly horrifying to think this really happened. What a nightmare!

1. CHERNOBYL

Other good watches:

BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ (1980). Fassbinder's 14 part epic.

SUBURRA - Season 1 (2017). Italian. About government corruption in modern Rome and the criminal activities of two competing families.

DARK - Season 1 & 2. German. Sci-fi fantasy about a passage forming connecting past and future. People meet their older selves and make mayhem.

CATASTROPHE - Season 1 & 2. Grew on me the more I watched it. Great characters.

YOUNGER - Season 6 (2019). Fun as always, but starting to run out of puff now everyone's in on her secret (she's older).

[josiahmorgan11]

Bojack Horseman
Watchmen

that's about it for me.

[Roscoe]

SCHITT'S CREEK led the pack for me.

[MrCarmady]

Russian Doll was a neat little puzzle with great use of music and Natasha Lyonne's gravelly voice.
Been getting into The Sopranos which is as fun as everyone says, pretty much.
Caught up on the last few seasons of Curb Your Enthusiasm before the new season, Larry David is my personal hero.
Bojack is a masterpiece, sad it's ending but also happy they haven't pushed it past the point of me caring/watching. Ditto for The Good Place except for the masterpiece part.
I feel like I watched more stuff but this was what came to mind...

[wba]

Favorites

01. Magnum, P.I. (1980 - / Season 1+2) - just saw two or three episodes, but they were fantastic - progress with this is very slow, as it is so good, that I want to enjoy and savor each episode as much as possible (been watching for 6 or 7 years already!)

02. ALF (1986 - / Season 1-4 / completed) - I watched this for the first time as a whole, and I watched it in German! The voice-acting for ALF and Willie is so, so good - especially ALF's voice and dialogue is so much better in German. Loved it to bits!

03. Knight Rider (1982 - / Season 1) - same as Magnum - I'm only slower in finishing Season 1

04. Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987 - / Season 1+2) - so good, and it's supposed to get even better. Anyway, this is a hundred times better and more fascinating than any of the dozen old and new Star Trek films, with the exception of STAR TREK: THE MOVIE (1979) by Robert WIse, which is a fucking masterpiece, of course.

05. Crayon Shin-chan (1990 - / Season 1) - amusing

06. See (2019 - / Season 1) - I enjoy watching Jason Momoa (though he hasn't enough to do), and as I also like post-apocalyptic stuff taking place on earth in the future , it's quite nice.

07. The Witcher (2019 - / Season 1) - good fun, Henry Cavill is delightful - the structure of the series, the whole structuring of the storytelling, the jumping in and through time, etc. is excellent! Most current TV shows should look closely at this and try to learn something from it. There's always a payoff in each and every episode, and all of the characters are connected in a wonderful way. This is the best mix of old-school "every episode is something else"-storytelling and the "new" trend of world-building throughout several seasons, that I have seen.

08. 2 Broke Girls (2012 - /Season 6) - oh no, why on earth did they cancel one of my favorite shows!?!? Well, yeah, I took the plunge and watched it to the end. Imo, they could have made at least another 6 seasons - easily. Love Max.



also good/entertaining:

South Park (1997 - / Season 1) - mildly amusing

Sneaky Pete (2015 - 2019 / Season 1-3) - Giovanni Ribisi is great

Sex and the City (1998 - / Season 1-6) - nothing outstanding, but I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Banshee (2013 - / Season 1-4) - entertaining

Big Little Lies (2017 - / Season 1) - fun and doesn't overstay its welcome

Mindhunter (2017 - / Season 1+2) - mostly fun (though I hope it's finally "going/getting" somewhere after season 2, which just seemed more of the same - the character dynamics are getting a bit stale)

The Purge (2018 - / Season 1+2) - only season 1 - season 2 was a complete letdown as it got progressively worse and worse and... those ridiculous last episodes...



decent

Russian Doll (2019 - / Season 1) - at least the idea was fun

The Punisher (2017 - / Season 1+2) - decent

The Red Road (2014 - / Season 1) - decent, but nothing special



meh

8 Tage (2019 / Season 1) - the idea was good, and Devid Striesow was wonderful. The rest: not so much.

[pabs]

SCHITT'S CREEK led the pack for me.

It'd be an understatement to say I'm surprised that you like it. I'm struggling to see what you see in it after watching 3 episodes of season 1.

First and foremost, I would have imagined that that complete cliché of a gay character, the prissy, huffing and puffing, eye-rolling, tantrum-prone son would have been so offensive to you as to have had you violently throwing your tv/ipad/(whatever device you were watching it on) against the nearest wall. I'm really amazed that you, of all people, don't absolutely detest this series simply for this one, stock, cookie-cutter portrayal of what I assume the producers see as typical behaviour and mannerisms for his kind.

[Roscoe]

Yeah, I was surprised at how much I like the show too. I remember finding myself giggling helplessly at Catherine O'Hara in particular -- those bizarro line readings, like she's channeling some drunken Jackie Kennedy.

Gay character wise -- sorry to disappoint and surprise. I never found David Rose a stock cookie-cutter portrayal, he was just too damn funny. That little argument between him and his sister about who's going to get murdered had me very happy. He does start to human up, showing the well-hidden heart of gold plate beating under those silly sweaters. Yeah, he flounces and rolls his eyes and whines, and if it seems stereotypical it also seems very real. I know that guy. David Rose walks among us. Mileage is gonna vary, you found him offensive, I found him amusing. Later plot developments add some shadings to the fashionista rage machine in those early episodes (I revisited those first few recently and was surprised at how really mean they all are). Later on he gets a job in a small boutique and remakes it in his own image to the boutique owner's dismay, but then he does some surprisingly hard-nosed negotiating to save the boutique's owner from getting ripped off by a big company, and his eventual romance with Patrick is one of my favorite pictures of same sex relationships, never getting crushed by self-pity or bogus tragedy.

What can I say. I bought it. Nobody in that town has a problem with David because he's gay. They have a problem with him because he's an ill-mannered asshole, and that never entirely goes away, and he gets called on it. Frequently. Watch Stevie match him deadpan sarcasm for sarcasm, resulting in him paying her the high compliment "You're very funny."

Also, David Rose is played by Daniel Levy, who co-created the series with his father, Eugene Levy, and Daniel Levy is pretty much the showrunner, and Levy is himself gay.

[pabs]

Thanks for the explanation, Roscoe. It made sense to me. I guess I just couldn't work out why you so strongly objected to, or else completely panned, some representations of gay people in visual media, but then you seemed quite okay with, or even very positive about, others (like this one). My confusion about where you stood on this issue was caused partly by the memory of your strong criticism of the gay characters in Call Me by Your Name more than two years ago, though I know there's no comparing these two things - they're totally different - and that you objected to its treatment of gay characters for very different reasons.

[Roscoe]

Right -- as I my criticisms of CALL ME BY YOUR NAME had more to do with the way the sexuality was handled, or more accurately, ever so discreetly avoided in order to not startle the delicate sensibilities of skittish straight folks whose gay-friendliness might be shaken by the sight of two men actually fucking.