Each fall the networks glut the airwaves with all of their new offerings at once – and few survive. It’s like The Hunger Games, but with Debra Messing playing a mom who is also a cop. There are plenty of new shows to choose from, but these 10 were the absolute best. There are lots of dramas (we are in the golden age of the TV drama) but some comedies and even – gasp! – a reality show. It wouldn’t have been such an awesome year without them.
1. Transparent
None of us knows who we really are, do we? And if we figure out our true identity late in life, how do we rectify everything we hold dear with these new discoveries? Transparent doesn’t wrestle with identity politics because it centers on Mort (Jeffrey Tambor, a shoo-in for an Emmy nomination), a man who decides late in life to transition into a woman. It’s about identity politics because Transparent is about the deep, abiding need for all of us to figure out who we are and the hilarious, narcissistic, awful, flailing and joyous way it unravels in all of our lives.
As Mort becomes Maura, his three adult children are also facing their own struggles. Sarah (Amy Landecker) transitions from a staid housewife with a husband and two kids to a staid housewife with a lesbian partner and even more kids. Josh (Jay Duplass) metamorphoses from a playboy to a man who wants to settle down and doesn’t know how. Alli (Gaby Hoffman) has no idea what she wants in life because maybe she wants to be a man.
All of these people do strange, gross, awful things to each other in order to find their authentic selves, but isn’t that what all of us do? Everyone has a chance to be an asshole but, after binging on this show on Amazon Prime, they’ll be like your family and you’ll love them for being your assholes. Writer/director Jill Soloway has created a thing of beauty, a loose, trippy, experimental show that unflinchingly looks at how four people interpret the world and how that world arcs and changes over time.
This is also an important show because it was on Amazon Prime and was the platform’s first critical hit. It shows the power of streaming video in our new TV landscape and the wonders of being able to binge a dozen episodes of something so fine. Why should we have to sip this delicious wine when we can get drunk glugging the bottle? Transparent is a truly modern show in many ways, and we’re all a little bit closer to ourselves for having it.
2. You’re the Worst
It’s easy to say that this is a show about two awful people falling in love, but Gretchen (Aya Cash) and Jimmy (Chris Geere) aren’t awful, they’ve just been hurt. In a year packed with forgettable romcoms, this is the only one that really works because it is thoroughly modern. The sex comes before love and when the pair find the latter, they resist it. The jokes are hilarious and filled with references that both skewer millennials (the Sunday Funday episode especially) and make them feel at home in the show’s universe. Blessed with a killer supporting cast and a sense of humor unlike anything else on TV, this FX sitcom is nothing short of delightful.
3. The Honorable Woman
It is extremely difficult to make sense of the conflict between Israel and Palestine, but this limited series doesn’t try to do that. Instead it looks at the personal toll the conflict takes on one family. Nessa Stein (Maggie Gyllenhaal, with a perfect accent) is a rising star in the House of Lords whose middle eastern telecom business she runs with her brother is involved in some shady dealings that get the attention of MI6. Stylish, densely plotted and full of shocking twists and revelations, this is a spy thriller that doesn’t skimp on the action, intrigue or, most importantly, the deeper political implications.
4. The Knick
The most striking thing about The Knick is its score. The Cinemax (it’s not just for softcore anymore) show about a New York hospital in the early 1900s has music by Drive composer Cliff Martinez. The synthesized drones of modernity serve to highlight how barbaric some of the procedures are. But it is director Stephen Soderbergh who deserves most of the credit for this moody show. He coaxes out Clive Owen’s best performance yet as a drug-addled but brilliant doctor trying to work wonders in a cash-strapped hospital that tries to make money off the rich to serve the poor. Tense, brooding, and full of 20/20 hindsight, this is Mad Men for the medical community.
5. The Chair
First of all, this little-watched Starz reality show is gorgeous. Each episode looks like a really expensive American Express commercial except it’s full of fun stuff you really want to see – not just, you know, Tina Fey shopping or something. Created by Project Greenlight personality and film producer Chris Moore, this reality competition takes two first-time directors – one a YouTube celebrity, one a veteran screenwriter – and has them both make a movie based on the same script. Whoever makes the best movie wins $250,000. For anyone who loves film, making art or tense television with great personalities working on impossible challenges, this is the show for you – even if you think you hate reality television.
6. Silicon Valley
Is there any part of American life more in need of being taken down a peg than the money-hungry, hoodie-clad elite of the tech industry? The brilliant Mike Judge does just that by giving us Richard Hendricks (Thomas Middleditch), a lovable loser whose mother probably describes him as “on the spectrum”. He has to face the best and worst of the Valley when his startup gets caught in a fight between a wealthy venture capitalist and the owner of a Google-like business. Just as funny showing the relationships between Richard and his outlandish friends as it is parodying the increasingly powerful and dreadfully sincere tech industry, Silicon Valley is about not losing your heart and soul when the machines take over. Still, like the real Silicon Valley, it could use a few more females to make it truly superb.
7. Black-ish
There is really nothing new about Black-ish. Sure, it was conceived as a show about a successful black man (Anthony Anderson) whose suburban children don’t understand their racial heritage. But quickly it got away from race and became a typical family comedy. Not typical exactly, because the humor is more astute and modern than some other ABC family sitcoms that claim to be modern but aren’t really. While the race is still in the title, the show is at its best when dealing with universal themes like mothers-in-law and whether to spank a child. Also, every scene with matriarch Tracee Ellis Ross is a gem.
8. How to Get Away with Murder
Is this show great like some other prestige dramas? Maybe not. Is it more fun? Oh boy, is it ever. Not a classic whodunnit – we know from the first scene that tough-talking defense attorney and law professor Annalise Keating’s (Viola Davis) star students killed her husband – but we’re just looking to find out why. As the intricately plotted mystery unravels, we keep reexamining what we know based on new information. It’s like a kaleidoscope of betrayal. Also, HTGAWM features a female lead of color, a diverse cast, progressive sexuality and a scene where the star utters the line, “Why is your penis on a dead girl’s phone?” It’s everything popular entertainment should strive to be in 2014.
9. Fargo
Turning a beloved, Oscar-winning film into a television series with a very similar plot seems like a foible, but Noah Hawley, who made this for FX, picks up where the Coen Brothers left off. Full of great performances and chilling (literally) locales, Fargo looks at what happens when darkness and murder, embodied by hit man Lorne Malvo (Billy Bob Thornton), seep into the life of a bumbling but enraged insurance salesman (Martin Freeman). It really deserved all those Emmys.
10. Happy Valley
The idea of bringing a cop’s personal story into her investigation isn’t a new one, but rarely is it done with the honesty and brutality as it was in this British import that aired in the US on Netflix. And rarely is there a performance as riveting as Sarah Lancashire’s as Catherine Cawood, a police sergeant raising her emotionally distant grandson after her daughter’s suicide. When her daughter’s rapist gets out of prison for unrelated charges, Cawood expects that he is up to no good, but has no idea the violent scheme he’s involved in – one that involves and indicts many members of the community. American TV is rotten with procedurals that get personal. They could all learn something from Happy Valley.
