Any time we watch a television show, we seek to be transported to
another place. That was especially true in 2020, a year in which we were forced
to spend large periods of time isolated and indoors, where our televisions,
mobile devices, and streaming-service subscriptions became some of our closest
companions. Many of us didn’t merely crave entertainment from our television
experiences; we wanted portals that could pluck us out of the confines of a
COVID world and put us in normal-time settings, where we could hang out with
characters still able to engage, mask-free, with family members, friends,
classmates, colleagues, lovers, and even enemies. The best and safest way to
travel in 2020 wasn’t by plane, car, or train. It was by logging into Netflix
or HBO Max.
These lists of the ten best shows of 2020, then, are more than a
rundown of personal favorites, or the programs made with the highest level of
quality craftsmanship, although that’s certainly a big part of it. These lists
— as selected by Vulture critics Matt Zoller Seitz, Jen Chaney, Kathryn
VanArendonk, and Angelica Jade Bastién — are also a reflection
of the shows that allowed us to temporarily forget all the reasons to feel
anxiety during this wretched year, and let us exist somewhere else for a few
minutes or hours. These aren’t just very good TV shows. These were our escapes
from despair in 2020.
1.The Boys
Shrugging
off any notion of a sophomore slump, Amazon's The Boys barreled into its second season with gusto. Coming off
the big conclusion of season one, Butcher and the boys are on the run for a
murder, so on top of unveiling the corruption behind the Seven and the abuse of
their superpowers, they're also fugitives on the run for murder. A superhero
series has the potential to veer into the unwieldy, but The Boys remains a tight show whose narrative in Season Two
managed to hit tragically close to home.
2.Better Call Saul
Five seasons in, this series
has established its own quirky identity so firmly that it seems reductive to
think of it as a Breaking
Bad prequel. Its hard-boiled story lines and
eyes-wide-open approach to ethical decay have become so bleak that Walter White
might find them alarming. But the show can also be laugh-out-loud funny, even
adorable at times, especially when Bob Odenkirk’s Jimmy/Saul embarks on a new
grift. The thoughtful score, imaginative soundtrack, and subtle sound design
give insight into the characters that dialogue and performance alone can’t
provide.3.I May Destroy You
This series from Michaela
Coel — about a writer named Arabella (Coel) trying to identify and punish the
man who spiked her drink and raped her — dove into the heart of horror yet
miraculously managed to be funny and light on its feet as it followed the
heroine on her quest.
No other 2020 series did as
many things as superlatively well as this one. Director
Liz Garbus’s long-form adaptation of writer
Michelle McNamara’s posthumously published true-crime book charts McNamara’s
quest to find and punish the Golden State Killer — later identified as Joseph
James DeAngelo — for a decades-long string of home invasions, sexual assaults,
and murders. But the series also has a lot to say about the changing nature of
crime and punishment over the last five decades, the effects of McNamara’s
obsessive search on her loved ones, and the difficulty of creating while
battling depression. Most impressively, it found a way to capture savagery
without re-creating it by focusing on the domestic spaces that the killer
profaned and making shadows seem to glide unnaturally across crime scenes.
One of the most uplifting
developments in the last quarter of 2020 has been watching so many people fall
in love with this impeccably made series about … chess. Actually, to say The Queen’s Gambit is about chess is as reductive as describing Friday Night Lights as a show about football. Really, the series is about a
woman with a naturally strategic mind who tries to beat back her addictions while
excelling at a game where nearly all of her adversaries are men. The fact
that chess whiz Beth Harmon is portrayed in her teen and adult years by the
thoroughly compelling Anya Taylor-Joy is just one of the elements that takes The Queen’s Gambit to another level. To click play on one of its episodes
is to sign up to luxuriate in a whole other reality, which is precisely what we
craved in 2020.
The Crown has always had a high bar, but when you
factor in an Olivia Colman-turn as the Queen, Gillian Anderson's haunting
portrayal of Margaret Thatcher, and Elizabeth Debicki's nuanced portrayal of
Princess Diana, it was obvious that this would be the most dazzling season to
date. It would be easy for a series about the monarchy to grow stale over a few
seasons, but The Crown has managed to pick apart the intense energy that is
teeming underneath the surface of political abstention. You don't stay in power
for nearly 75 years by having knee jerk reactions, and this season unwraps the
volatility that comes by simply staying in place.
I think I underrated The Great when I first reviewed it earlier this spring. I still see the
flaws I pointed out when I watched. It’s just too long, and it could be much
better paced. The more I let it roll around in my mind, though, the fonder I
grew of it. It’s easy to love Nicholas Hoult’s and Elle Fanning’s performances
as Peter III and Catherine the Great, and it’s even easier to love the lavish
excess of its production design. It’s a show full of high-sheen fabrics and
sky-high wigs, and it’s a show also more than willing to douse everything in
vomit or mud or other even less savory substances. I loved the show’s sense of
abandon from the beginning. But with more time, I found myself admiring its
delicacy, too. There’s so much fast-changing tonal variation in The Great, and there’s legitimate terror and real humor held together,
often in the same breath. It’s a show I’ve found myself wanting to go back to,
just to appreciate how carefully it assembles all the pieces.
This is the only returning
show from my 2019 “best of the year” list, which is something I debated for a
little bit. Maybe it’d be better to give this spot to another show that hadn’t
gotten the spotlight yet? But What We Do in the Shadows’ second season was even better than its first, and to try to deny that is just silly.
It highlighted and improved on all of the things that made it such a generously
goofy, oddball, sweet, and strange series in season one. Its band of dumb
vampire roommates and their secretly-a-vampire-slayer
servant Guillermo were consistently the best,
funniest thing on TV this spring, and “On the Run” is high on the list of the very best TV episodes of
2020.
David E.
Kelley has found his new niche: popcorn TV about fancy white women in
precarious positions. His newest
installment is The Undoing: a psychological drama about a
psychotherapist named Grace (Nicole Kidman) whose world is rocked when her
oncologist husband Jonathan (Hugh Grant) is accused of a heinous murder. The
series takes you through twists and turns, making you wonder exactly who is at fault for this crime. Even when it is unwieldy,
the HBO series manages to draw you in with a charming turn from Hugh Grant, a
woefully underused Lily Rabe and Donald Sutherland, a star-making turn for Noah
Jupe, and of course—the queen of coats herself, Nicole Kidman.
What a glittering hot-house
spectacle! In lesser hands this series about a high school cheer squad and their
new, young, mysterious coach (Willa Fitzgerald) could have been a superficial
affair that leaned on the gorgeous, neon-drenched cinematography of Dagmar
Weaver-Madsen and Zoe White. But novelist Megan Abbott and screenwriter Gina
Fattore adeptly explore the show’s femme characters — as well as the crime that
sends their lives spinning. There is delight here, too, thanks to the complex,
at times sexually charged bond between best friends Beth (a magnificent Marlo
Kelly with spark-plug energy) and Addy (a beautifully yearning Herizen F.
Guardiola).
The first episode of The Third Day was so anxiety-inducing for me I wasn’t sure I would continue
— but I’m glad I did. The show follows two separate journeys taken by Sam (Jude
Law) and Helen (an excellent Naomie Harris) to a mysterious island named Osea
off the British coast. The visuals are particularly strong — the out-of-focus
cinematography and oversaturated colors in Sam’s storyline are set against the
chillier ones in Helen’s. The lushly overwrought look lends the entire show a
strange and intriguing mood. But I also dug the mystery it spins: The story
reveals itself slowly, unfurling a narrative in which Sam is consumed by a cult
that may have ties to his son’s death. Law continues to prove he is one of the
most exciting actors working as he channels the confusion and fear his
character faces.
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