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showoftheyear · 2 years ago

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Personal Opinion on Screen OD’s List

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VORN5I2oJe4

First proper list of the year, although it’s from a source I’ve never heard of! Let’s get into it.

First up we have Rings of Power. I didn’t hate Rings of Power, but I feel like watching it in any proximity to the films reveals that it’s pretty shallow. I enjoyed it the way I would enjoy a CW Superhero show, I don’t think it belongs on a best of list but what can you do.

Next up is The English, an Amazon western show starring Emily Blunt. I haven’t gotten around to it yet, it has relatively positive reviews and just came out super recently. I’ve seen some people think it has awards potential, probably because Emily Blunt is such a big name, plus it’s run by Hugo Blick, whose show The Honourable Woman got nominated almost a decade ago. Have you seen The English? Let me know if it’s worth watching!

Prehistoric Planet is yet another David Attenborough nature documentary, I don’t see a lot of these on year end lists but they do really well in IMDB audience rankings. If you like this kind of show, it’s probably great!

Next up is Pachinko, an amazing show, I’m kind of surprised it’s so low here. I really hope it does better on other lists. This show was really artful, amazing performances, and some really creative episodes.

The Sandman! I loved The Sandman, although I haven’t read the comics. I’m really glad to see it here, one of my favourite shows of the year. I’m glad it was updated to have more racial diversity and more queer characters, and I think the show just really sucks you in, I couldn’t stop watching. So excited for Season 2.

WeCrashed is a show I didn’t get to watch, and it got pretty negative reviews so I’m surprised to see it here. Let me know if you liked it and if you think it’s worth watching.

The Gilded Age is very, very similar to Downton Abbey. I wasn’t a huge fan, but I would probably watch anything with Audra McDonald, Christine Baranski, and Carrie Coon.

Night Sky is a sci-fi drama on Amazon, I don’t know anything about it beyond that it stars JK Simmons, who is always amazing. Let me know your thoughts if you’ve seen it!

Heartstopper is here at number 14! I’m so so happy to see it, it’s a show and comic that are very special to me. I’ve never felt catharsis the way I did getting to see the love story between Nick and Charlie blossom, and I’m so happy it’s getting so much critical attention. This is the gay romance I’ve been waiting my whole life for.

The Bear is a phenomenon and honestly has one of the best episodes of the year with Episode 7, a tight, 20 minutes in real time look into the chaos of the kitchen. Jeremy Allan White and Ayo Edebiri have such intense coworker chemistry that it’s always electrifying to watch them.

Very surprised to see Doctor Who here, but pleasantly surprised as I heard the regeneration special was fantastic. I’m way behind on the Whittaker/Chibnall era of the show, but this makes me excited to catch up.

Better Call Saul is, for me, the best show of the entire year, and putting it all the way down at number 11 is a bit criminal. The final season was so innovative, and the way it intertwines itself with Breaking Bad is like nothing else I’ve seen on TV. Like every other season, Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn hold the show together with they’re heart pumping romance, but Giancarlo Esposito, Jonathan Banks, Michael Mando and Tony Dalton make the other side of the show just as intense. Heartbroken that this is over, I really hope it gets the recognition it deserves.

House of the Dragon is number ten and I know it’s going to do really well here but it’s not a show I’m very fond of. I’m a bit tired of the Game of Thrones “fantasy must be historically accurate but only when it comes to misogyny/racism/homophobia” model and this show hasn’t done much to assuage that. This article does a better job of explaining it than I could, but often HotD and GoT both go out of their way to make things even more misogynistic. This show is going to do amazingly at awards shows and on the year end lists, but I’m tired of it already.

Stranger Things is here at number 9, I was a bit mixed on it but I loved the use of Running Up That Hill, one of my favourite songs, and I thought the plot twist was pretty effective.

This is Going to Hurt is a show I keep meaning to watch, it’s an adaptation of a book about a doctor struggling to work with the underfunding of the NHS, the United Kingdom’s public health care system. Even though I haven’t watched this yet, I’m cheering for this show, both because the lead character is gay and because I like to see shows produced outside the US get recognition.

Julia is an HBO comedy covering the start of Julia Child’s cooking program. I didn’t know much about Julia Child before watching the show, but this show is a really excellent one to put on, relax, and have fun watching. It’s really comfy, and I think Sarah Lancashire and David Hyde Pierce are fantastic and fun actors. Lancashire really gets Julia’s mannerisms and accents. A really fun show.

The Dropout is about Elizabeth Holmes, who scammed her way into making Theranos, a biotech company. This show keeps growing and growing in my esteem as the year goes on, and I think the tension it captures is fantastic. Amanda Seyfried and Naveen Andrews are also fantastic in it, Seyfried’s Emmy was well deserved. I expect The Dropout to be a huge success in year end lists.

Welcome to Wrexham is a documentary about Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney buying a soccer team in Britain. I really don’t know anything about this one, let me know if you’ve seen it what you think!

The White Lotus’s second season is here in fourth place, and I think it’s well deserved. I prefer it to the first season, and I really love this year’s cast, particularly Aubrey Plaza. The way the whole cast bounces off each other is magnetic, I can’t recommend it enough. Hopefully it sticks the landing in its last few episodes.

In third place is Bad Sisters, a show by Sharon Horgan who created Catastrophe. In Bad Sisters, the sisters of a woman with an abusive husband get together to plot how to murder him and rescue her. It’s really interesting so far, but I’m only on episode 2. I’ve heard a lot of good things and I expect it to do really well with British critics.

Second place is my biggest and most major disagreement with this list, Ozark. I feel like Julia Garner basically robbed everyone else at the emmys (most notably Jung Ho-yeon, Sarah Snook, Patricia Arquette and Rhea Seehorn, who all had amazing performances). I’ve never really liked Ozark, it feels like a cheap imitation of Breaking Bad, but even people who liked Ozark felt that the last season was pretty awful (and I agree). Screen OD assures us that the show isn’t “one of those shows with an unsatisfactory ending”, but I’d strongly disagree. Oh well. Every list is going to have one off choice, but I really really think Ozark and Better Call Saul should be swapped, especially because Better Call Saul feels like it’s pretty much just a much better version of Ozark.

However, I cannot have any complaint about the show in first place, Severance. Severance is a fascinating look at how capitalism makes life into a living nightmare for everyone, while also just being a fantastic and compelling piece of science fiction. Every character is fantastic and so is every actor. This deserves first place for the fantastic romance between Burt and Irving all on its own. If you haven’t watched it yet, get going! Or don’t, it’s a long wait until season 2, but I have a feeling this is going to be known as one of the best tv shows of the 20s when all is said and done.

#the english #prehistoric planet #pachinko #the sandman #wecrashed #night sky #heartstopper #the bear #doctor who #better call saul #this is going to hurt #welcome to wrexham #julia #the dropout #the white lotus #bad sisters #severance

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showoftheyear · 2 years ago

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What is this?

This blog aims to catalogue and aggregate every single “best tv show of the year” list. Find one I haven’t? Feel free to let me know! I’ll post every list I find here. Eventually, I’d like to do a back catalog for previous years, but 2022 year end is upon us, so that’ll be my focus for now. Rules for ranked lists:

The show in first place gets 20 points. The show in second place gets 19 points. The show in third place gets 18 points, etc, etc, until we get to the show in 20th place, which gets 1st place. A fun thing to do is contrast and compare this to metacritic, who does something similar but uses a system where first gets three points, second gets two points, and everything else gets 1 point. I want to try and measure the difference between every placement. If a list goes below 20th place, I’ll keep track of those shows in a different list. Rules for unranked lists:

Let’s say a list has five items, but they aren’t ranked. I will add up the totals, 20, 19, 18, 17, 16, and then divide them by 5, making the points distributed averagely between each show. If a list has more than 20 items, the 21st item is worth “0″ points, the 22nd will subtract one point, the 23rd will subtract 2, etc, and then I’ll still divide the total by 21, 22, or 23. This means if a list has too many items, it’ll simply not be counted in the aggregate. I’ve done this for both 2021 and 2020, where the winners were Succession and I May Destroy You respectively. Once there’s a clear winner for 2022, I’ll change my profile picture to that show (most likely to be Severance, but who knows!) Thank you for taking the time to read this and coming along with me. Hopefully like me it’ll be a fun opportunity for you to discover new tv shows!

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