Even in a pandemic year, when Hollywood was forced to take it slow, there were more great new television series than will fit into this traditionally tight year-end space, into whose 10 slots I have already stuffed 12 shows. Except for a coronavirus line inserted into the closing seconds of, all places, a "Saved by the Bell" reboot and the last act of a documentary about Chicago politics, the pandemic itself is not portrayed in any of these choices yet it is somehow felt in all of them, from a sense of difference, or of absence, whenever someone shakes hands or hugs or hangs out in a bar or — what I find especially triggering — goes in somewhere for coffee. Do you miss me, cafes?
As ever, I do not like the definitive word "best" when it comes to such list-making, though I will swear on a stack of TV Guides to the high quality of these shows. It's more than a matter of comparing apples and oranges — television is also grapes and carrots and cheese and potatoes. These are just to my taste. Some were pleasurable in unexpected ways; others fulfilled expectations with skill and, if I can get a little mushy here, heart. What they do share is a sense of possibility and characters out to better themselves and/or to change the world; these are the cords that link "City So Real" to "The Great" and "Betty" to "The Queen's Gambit." (There is also, I note, a wealth of self-actualizing women among them.) And most are funny, even when they aren't strictly speaking comedies.
In no particular order, they are:
