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brandonshimoda · 2 years ago

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THE BOOKS I READ IN 2022, in the order in which I read them (*books I read before, that I was reading again):

Alexandra Chang, Days of Distraction

Elizabeth Miki Brina, Speak, Okinawa

Cynthia Dewi Oka, Fire Is Not a Country

Hanif Abdurraqib, Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest

*Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings

Victoria Chang, Dear Memory

*Etel Adnan, Of Cities & Women (Letters to Fawwaz)

Sun Yung Shin, The Wet Hex

traci kato-kiriyama, Navigating With(out) Instruments

Raquel Gutiérrez, Brown Neon

Solmaz Sharif, Customs

*Etel Adnan, Journey to Mount Tamalpais

Lucille Clifton, Generations: A Memoir

Emerson Whitney, Heaven

Kim Thúy, em, tr. Sheila Fischman

Angel Dominguez, Desgraciado (the collected letters)

Janice Lee, Separation Anxiety

*Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee

*Cathy Park Hong, Translating Mo’um

Kyoko Hayashi, From Trinity to Trinity, tr. Eiko Otake

Lao Yang, Pee Poems, tr. Joshua Edwards & Lynn Xu

Yuri Herrera, A Silent Fury: The El Bordo Mine Fire, tr. Lisa Dillman (

Mai Der Vang, Yellow Rain

Chuang Hua, Crossings

José Watanabe, Natural History, tr. Michelle Har Kim

Walter Lew, Excerpts from: ∆IKTH 딕테/딕티 DIKTE, for DICTEE (1982)

*Bhanu Kapil, The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers

Vasily Grossman, An Armenian Sketchbook, tr. Robert & Elizabeth Chandler

Hiromi Kawakami, Parade, tr. Allison Markin Powell

Lynn Xu, And Those Ashen Heaps That Cantilevered Vase of Moonlight

*Etel Adnan, Sitt Marie Rose, tr. Georgina Kleege

Jennifer Soong, Suede Mantis/Soft Rage

*James Baldwin, No Name in the Street

*Hilton Als, The Women

Dot Devota, >She

V.S. Naipaul, The Return of Eva Perón

Yasushi Inoue, The Hunting Gun, tr. Sadamichi Yokoo and Sanford Goldstein

Molly Murakami, Tide goes out

Adrian Tomine, Shortcomings

Hisham Matar, A Month in Siena

Leia Penina Wilson, Call the Necromancer

Gabriel García Márquez, News of a Kidnapping, tr. Edith Grossman

Amitava Kumar, Bombay-London-New York

Elizabeth Alexander, The Trayvon Generation

Ryan Nakano, I Am Minor

Constance Debré, Love Me Tender, tr. Holly James

Hilton Als, My Pin-up

Victoria Chang, The Trees Witness Everything

Leslie Kitashima-Gray, The Pink Dress: A Story from the Japanese American Internment

Emmanuel Carrère, Yoga, tr. John Lambert

Ronald Tanaka, The Shino Suite: Sansei Poetry

Patricia Y. Ikeda, House of Wood, House of Salt

Soichi Furuta, to breathe

Kiki Petrosino, Bright

Sueyeun Juliette Lee, Aerial Concave Without Cloud

Nanao Sakaki, Real Play

Esmé Weijun Wang, The Collected Schizophrenias

Francis Naohiko Oka, Poems

Geraldine Kudaka, Numerous Avalanches at the Point of Intersection

Steve Fujimura, Sad Asian Music

Augusto Higa Oshiro, The Enlightenment of Katzuo Nakamatsu, tr. Jennifer Shyue

Julie Otsuka, The Swimmers

Salman Rushdie, The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey

Margo Jefferson, Constructing a Nervous System

Hua Hsu, Stay True

Barbara Browning, The Miniaturists

Kate Zambreno, Drifts

*Julie Otsuka, When The Emperor Was Divine

Louise Akers, Elizabeth/The Story of Drone

Wong May, In the Same Light: 200 Poems for Our Century from the Migrants & Exiles of the Tang Dynasty

Gabrielle Octavia Rucker, Dereliction

Trung Le Nguyen, The Magic Fish

Jessica Au, Cold Enough for Snow

Tongo Eisen-Martin, Blood on the Fog

Lucas de Lima, Tropical Sacrifice

*Like a New Sun: New Indigenous Mexican Poetry, ed. Víctor Terán & David Shook

Billy-Ray Belcourt, A Minor Chorus

Kazim Ali, Silver Road

*Sadako Kurihara, When We Say Hiroshima, tr. Richard Minear

Simone White, or, on being the other woman

*James Baldwin, The Devil Finds Work

Christina Sharpe, Ordinary Notes

*Raquel Gutiérrez, Brown Neon

Marguerite Duras, The Man Sitting in the Corridor

Gayl Jones, Corregidora

*Bhanu Kapil, The Vertical Interrogation of Strangers

*Etel Adnan, Seasons

Gwendolyn Brooks, to disembark

Cristina Rivera Garza, The Taiga Syndrome, tr. Suzanne Jill Levine and Aviva Kana

Gwendolyn Brooks, In the Mecca

Nona Fernández, The Twilight Zone, tr. Natasha Wimmer

Selva Almada, Dead Girls, tr. Annie McDermott

*Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dictee

Valerie Hsiung, To Love an Artist

*Theresa Hak Cha, Exilée and Temps Morts

Dao Strom, We Were Meant To Be a Gentle People

Randa Jarrar, Love Is An Ex-Country

*Dao Strom, Instrument

Osamu Dazai, Early Light, tr. Ralph McCarthy and Donald Keene

Osamu Dazai, The Setting Sun, tr. Donald Keene

Rachel Aviv, Strangers To Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us

Mahmoud Darwish, Journal of an Ordinary Grief, tr. Ibrahim Muhawi

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byneddiedingo · 2 years ago

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Ronald Colman in The Prisoner of Zenda (John Cromwell, 1937)

Cast: Ronald Colman, Madeleine Carroll, C. Aubrey Smith, Raymond Massey, Mary Astor, David Niven, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Screenplay: John L. Balderston, Edward E. Rose, Wells Root, Donald Ogden Stewart, based on a novel by Anthony Hope. Cinematography: James Wong Howe. Art direction: Lyle R. Wheeler. Film editing: James E. Newcom. Music: Arnold Newman.

The identical cousin is a genetic anomaly known only to Anthony Hope and the creators of The Patty Duke Show, but both got a great deal of mileage out of it. Hope's novel about a man who finds himself posing as a Ruritanian king to fend off a threat to the throne was such a hit that it was immediately adapted for the stage, turned into a film in 1913, and even became a Sigmund Romberg operetta. But leave it to David O. Selznick to produce perhaps the best of all adaptations. It was once said of Selznick -- I forget by whom, but it sounds a lot like something Ben Hecht would say -- that to judge from his movies, he had read nothing past the age of 12. Among the novels he made into movies are David Copperfield (George Cukor, 1935), A Tale of Two Cities (Jack Conway, 1935), Little Lord Fauntleroy (John Cromwell, 1936), and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Norman Taurog, 1938). But it has to be said that each of these adaptations remains probably the best screen version of its source. The 1937 Prisoner of Zenda is so good that when MGM decided to remake it in Technicolor in 1952, producer Pandro S. Berman and director Richard Thorpe not only used the 1937 screenplay by John Balderston and Noel Langley, with Donald Ogden Stewart's punched-up dialogue, but also the score by Alfred Newman, following the earlier version almost shot for shot. The chief virtue of Selznick's production lies in its casting: Ronald Colman is suave and dashing as Rudolf Rassendyll and his royal double, Madeleine Carroll makes a radiant Princess Flavia, and Raymond Massey is a saturnine Black Michael. Mary Astor, C. Aubrey Smith, and David Niven steal scenes right and left. Best of all, though, is Douglas Fairbanks Jr. as Rupert von Hentzau, a grinning scamp of a villain. Fairbanks is so good in the role that we cheer when he escapes at the end. How Selznick got this one past the Production Code, which usually insisted on punishing wrongdoers. is a bit of a mystery, but he may have told the censors that he was planning to film Hope's sequel, Rupert of Hentzau, in which Rupert gets what's coming to him. He never got around to the sequel, of course, being distracted by Gone With the Wind (Victor Fleming, 1939).

#The Prisoner of Zenda #John Cromwell #Ronald Colman

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cyclament · 1 month ago

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Colour Reduction Printmaking Assignment | Ronald Mcwongald

September 18, 2022 - November 2022

Inspired by John dies at the end. What David Wong, resident non-chinese protagonist, saw in the window of a Mcwongalds on a normal Tuesday morning.

Gr12 assignment where we could either choose this or a still life/realistic pencil drawing of a 'terrible beauty.' We got to choose between these two because there's just not enough time to do all of these assignments in a semester, and we've done still lives all 3 previous years. All the people who chose still life are cucks.

I don't have the linoblock anymore 😭😭. I forgot to steal it when I took all my artworks home and when I sent my friend to get it for me the next year they didn't have it ??!??!?!?! It must be in that art room somewhere rahh

Lining up the prints was soo hard. Especially for the last layer because there was so little material left on the block that it would really easily shift around. I was smart by picking this subject, though. Any extra red smears just add to the blood, and whenever they don't line up it just makes it more distorted and fucked up 💀😏

Paint on fancy paper

#linocut #linocarving #printmaking #block printing #linoleum print #cyclamen trad #cyclamen school assignment #cyclamen fanart

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the-firebird69 · 6 months ago

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Here we have it this is what it is it is a Renault captor. And now that has meaning and it's a French car and Queen Elizabeth has been captured and she's been captured by the morlock Mac thinks it will work to get her out. And he's trying to grab our son to get her out and get everything else and he's another kidnapped bag f**** but really this is what he wants to do and the more luck think it's they think it's a good idea it calls out from them to grab the higher ups and they want to now to go after the pseudo empire fleet

We're going to publish now cuz that pretty much says it all

Thor Freya

Been a few other things to add it's a nice looking car hers is silverish and black mostly black with silver accent and black sucks here but you turn the AC on I guess full blast everybody has to it's terrible and he's wondering if you can put that white film on if it's guaranteed not to mess up your paint people say it's not a bad idea there's a few other things to do that we have going on but this is one that's up in the forefront. Matt wants them to move around a little the sitting still is a problem he says it and he was moving around before and they lost it and the warlock I think if he moves around again they can get it them to lose it again

Hera

We think they'll both lose it

Chao phat

It's very tiring and we know you're on medicine have you seen it and it's terrible these people are very mean but but you say you'll get sleep in those too much but it can't be huge so we get that me too dangerous and yeah you're going to be huge you're a big boy and yeah you know he is what's funny is what would I look like oh my God smaller than the guy next to the abomination in the hulk lawyer movie or show this is horrible he's going to be so ridiculous hey as far as life anyways this is the car and it would not be the bronco yet or Blazer that is because it goes in order with a mohawk are going after the pseudo empire and really it looks decent

Sandy wong

Yeah wrong Wong and I'll tell you what this car is perfect it means regular people too it says how so it says the queen is a captor what does that mean it means the queen is going to Captain capture him oh that's the code he says it's not really a queen but they're calling themselves empress and emperor it seems to be about Titan and that would be pretty quick

Bja

I don't think this is nice we'll find it all

Mac daddy

We doing what to say we do know what to say she's the leader of the women's thing so but still she got to put there because of that and he didn't say it the car is going to heat it up and there's a way that they want to get here and the max want it because of the Empress

Ellie

It is because of me and it is important and it's going to happen soon I have to tell you it's going to go on really soon and he says this period of a month and a half is going to be blindingly different changes happening and it's true too it's way up there in Montreal and it's really quite fun far it's really a Ronald be Rudy moves only three blocks from where they were and it's near downtown Montreal Lily knows all about it and it's too cars one of them is the renauts and the other the VW and that's not true. Each one has a his and her and those two Reynolds one of them is mine so Lily wants one of the results. It's a nice little car and zippy you can't tell much with it but this car works so I'd like to see it happen so I can fight Lily over the car constantly

Hera

Olympus

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diarioelpepazo · 8 months ago

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El zuliano estuvo muy productivo en victoria de Boston. Terminó de 3-2, doblete, con un boleto, tres empujadas y una anotada. Omar Narváez, por su parte, quiere pelear un puesto en los Mets de Nueva York. Se fue de 2-2 con doble, dos carreras empujadas, una anotada, y una base por bolas. El maracayero es la principal amenaza de Francisco Álvarez en la receptoría del conjunto neoyorquino. Ronald Acuña regresó y lució. Se fue con un boleto y un ponche, pero protagonizó la jugada de la semana. Orlando Arcia debió salir de emergencia en medio del compromiso de Spring Training contra las Medias Rojas de Boston al ser golpeado en una mano. Wilyer Abreu está aprovechando el máximo su paso por la primavera. El jardinero venezolano la vio clarita este domingo en la victoria de los Medias Rojas 12-6 sobre los Yankees. Los patirrojos, que despacharon hasta 15 inatrapables para imponerse en el Jetblue Park, sentenciaron el juego temprano con nueve carreras en el primer inning, seis de ellas ante el abridor Will Warren. Wilyer Abreu empujó dos en esa emboscada con un sencillo al jardín derecho ante el primer pitcheo que recibió de Warren. Entonces puso la pizarra 5-0. El maracucho, de 24 años, volvió a ser productivo en la baja del sexto con un doblete también ante el primer pitcheo que recibía el inning, en ese ocasión por parte de Clayton Beeter. Empujó la carrera 11 de Boston. Wilder Abreu, que espera ver acción en Grandes Ligas por segundo ocasión, terminó de 3-2 con un boleto, tres empujadas y una anotada. Una producción similar a la de él solo tuvo Trevor Story de 4-2 con jonron y también con tres empujadas. Además de Story, se fueron para la calle por Boston Connor Wong y Rafael Devers, ambos en el primer episodio, y Eduardo López, en el séptimo. La victoria fue para Tanner Houck y el revés para Will Warren. Productivo y decidido Omar Narváez [caption id="attachment_106254" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Omar Narváez | Foto cortesía[/caption] A pocos días del arranque de la temporada 2024 de las Grandes Ligas, Omar Narvéz busca afianzarse en la pelea por la receptoría de los Mets de Nueva York. Si bien todo parece indicar que su compatriota Francisco Álvarez será el encargado de esa posición, el experimentado maracayero está decidido a mantenerse en el roster. El manager Carlos Mendoza sabe que necesita todo el apoyo posible de sus peloteros para este año, y es por eso que Narváez salió a demostrar que su bate y su guante estarán siempre activos. Justamente en la jornada de este domingo dejó una clara prueba de eso. Los neoyorquinos se midieron en un duelo parejo ante los Nacionales de Washington, equipo que al final se quedó con el triunfo por 9-8. No obstante, el criollo de 32 años se hizo presente en la pizarra con par de batazos importantes para ese entonces. Los Mets perdían por una rayita en la alta del cuarto, cuando Omar Narváez tomó turno al bate con hombres en primera y segunda. Allí conectó un sencillo lo suficientemente lejos para que Pete Alonso anotara la del empate. Un inning más tarde, el venezolano colaboró para ampliar la ventaja momentánea. Con un compañero en la antesala conectó un largo elevado hacia el jardín central, el cual le valió para llegar sin problemas hasta la segunda base. En ese entonces ganaban los de Queens por 6-4. Al final, Narváez se fue de 2-2 con doble, dos carreras empujadas, una anotada, y una base por bolas. Este es apenas el séptimo compromiso en el que participa durante el Spring Training. En total ha conectado cuatro indiscutibles en 15 visitas al plato, con dos remolcadas y cuatro anotadas. 40-70 com la jugada de la semana [caption id="attachment_106256" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Ronald Acuña Jr. | Foto cortesía[/caption] No hay nadie que se alegre más por ver a Ronald Acuña Jr. tomar turnos al bate que el propio Ronald Acuña Jr. Aquella pequeña lesión que por un momento alarmó a toda la organización de los Bravos

de Atlanta parece que quedó en el pasado, ya que el criollo regresó con todo a su rutina en el Spring Training. Su objetivo no es otro que estar 100% saludable para encarar el Opening Day, y durante la tarde de este domingo se exhibió tanto con el guante como con el bate. Los Bravos tuvieron una doble cartelera y las Medias Rojas de Boston fueron el rival que enfrentó el de La Sabana. Como ha sido costumbre, Acuña Jr. salió como jardinero derecho y primer bate del equipo. En el primer inning le sacó cuatro malas seguidas al dominicano Brayan Bello para embasarse por boleto. Luego, en el tercero, el lanzador le ganó el duelo y lo ponchó con tres envíos. Para la alta del sexto capítulo protagonizó la jugada de la semana. El venezolano leyó de gran forma un elevado por su pradera y se lanzó para evitar un indiscutible que pudo impulsar una carrera para Boston. En esa misma entrada conectó un sencillo con línea al jardín derecho, el cual significó su salida del encuentro. Con el de hoy, ya son dos compromisos en los que el venezolano ve acción desde que se reintegró tras su lesión en la rodilla. El pasado 14 de marzo, contra los Rays de Tampa Bay, se fue en blanco en tres turnos al bate con par de ponches. Vale recordar que apenas cuenta con dos indiscutibles en cinco juegos de este Spring Training. Golpeado Orlando Arcia en una mano [caption id="attachment_106264" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Orlando Arcia | Foto cortesía[/caption] Los encuentros de exhibición del Spring Training no bajaron su intensidad durante este domingo. Los Bravos de Atlanta tuvieron la particularidad de jugar en par de ocasiones, siendo las Medias Rojas de Boton los rivales que enfrentaron los criollos Ronald Acuña Jr. y Orlando Arcia. Justamente, el oriundo de Anaco sufrió un inconveniente cuando consumía su tercer turno al bate. En la baja del sexto capítulo, el primer lanzamiento del relevista Chase Shugart impactó de lleno en la mano izquierda de Arcia, que tras las asistencias médicas tuvo que abandonar el compromiso. Horas más tarde, el periodista Justin Toscano informó que afortunadamente el criollo evitó una lesión de gravedad, pese a que la pelota iba a unas 96 mph. Las radiografías resultaron negativas y ahora la organización deberá llevarlo día tras día para ver cómo progresa la contusión. Ahora, Arcia se ausentará por unos pocos días antes de regresar al lineup del equipo. Además, todo dependerá del plan de rehabilitación del staff técnico para que pueda estar a tono de cara al Opening Day. Spring Training productivo para Orland Arcia No hay dudas de que Orlando Arcia es una pieza clave para el manager Brian Snitker. En un equipo plagado de estrellas, el campocorto siempre cumple sin tantos focos de atención, algo que tratará de retomar en esta temporada 2024 de las Grandes Ligas. Por ahora, el de Anaco ha disputado 13 juegos de Spring Training este año, conectando siete indiscutibles en 30 visitas al plato, con tres cuadrangulares, cinco carreras anotadas y cinco impulsadas. Además, en 70 innings a la defensiva no ha cometido errores y ha colaborado con 17 asistencias. Para recibir en tu celular esta y otras informaciones, únete a nuestras redes sociales, síguenos en Instagram, Twitter y Facebook como @DiarioElPepazo El Pepazo/Meridiano/Líder

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cyarskaren52 · 1 year ago

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Best TV Shows of 2023

Series like “The Bear,” “Beef,” “Happy Valley,” “Reservation Dogs” and “Succession” dazzled in a year when much of the TV business was in disarray.

Sign up for the Watching newsletter, for Times subscribers only. Streaming TV and movie recommendations from critic Margaret Lyons and friends.

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James Poniewozik

Best Shows of 2023

TV in 2023 was like synchronized swimming. Below the surface, there was roiling and churn. The writers’ and actors’ strikes wiped out much of the production year. The hangover from the corporate binge on streaming platforms led to cancellations and cutbacks. A number of hall-of-fame series left the air, with no clear plan of, as it were, succession.

But above the waterline, the dance went on. As usual, it was challenging to whittle down my year-end list to 10. (So I picked 11.) As usual, I am listing it in alphabetical, not ranked order. As usual, I made it a rule not to repeat shows from the previous year, and as usual, I broke that rule. (I couldn’t not include “Reservation Dogs.”)

And as usual, I probably missed stuff: I have the same number of hours in the day as you, even if I spend more of them in front of a screen. Herewith, the best of what I did see, for your catching-up pleasure. Even if Peak TV is dead, Off-Peak TV should keep us plenty busy.

‘The Bear’ (FX)

“Beef” was a good story about people getting mad: Amy Lau (Ali Wong) and Danny Cho (Steven Yeun), whose road-rage encounter descends into a quagmire of terrible choices. But it was a great story about why people get mad. It peeled the blazing onion of their conflict to expose class differences, family resentments and inter- and intragroup tensions among its Asian American characters, in an unsparing but empathetic telling. A big enough collection of last straws, “Beef” said, can build a highly flammable house. (Streaming on Netflix.)

‘The Curse’ (Showtime)

Like the mirrored eco-houses that its two lead characters build, “The Curse” is a polarizing creation. The collaboration between Nathan Fielder and Benny Safdie, with a stunning performance by Emma Stone, is deeply uncomfortable. It is also an entrancing, original, astute, creepy — and funny! — study of guilt, marriage and benighted altruism. Enter this haunted house if you dare, but watch your step. (Streaming on Paramount+.)

‘Dead Ringers’ (Amazon Prime Video)

We’d have been just fine without so many remakes, reboots and adaptations in 2023. “Dead Ringers” was a bloody, brilliant exception. Rachel Weisz — playing twin gynecologists in a gender-swapped version of the Jeremy Irons film role — and the writer Alice Birch delivered a truly distinctive reimagining of this story that kept the body horror while adding a contemporary take on scientific hubris and big-money medicine. (Streaming on Amazon Prime Video.)

‘I’m a Virgo’ (Amazon Prime Video)

Boots Riley’s Brobdingnagian satire was both fabulistic and fabulous. Through the misadventures and explorations of Cootie (a marvelous Jharrel Jerome), a 13-foot-tall teen in Oakland, Riley personified the idea of the young Black man as threat, while spinning a wild, political and relentlessly entertaining tale that incorporated superhero mythology and anticapitalist critique. The series strained to control its outsized ambitions, but it was proof that you can never aim too big. (Streaming on Amazon Prime Video.)

‘Jury Duty’ (Amazon Freevee)

Like a jury summons, this innovative reality-comedy was a surprise. But in this case, it was a pleasant one. An unsuspecting citizen, Ronald Gladden, was called to serve on a fictional case, joining a jury of his fake peers played by actors (as well as the actor James Marsden, playing himself). Miraculously, the production pulled off the elaborate “trial” without blowing its cover. And marvelously, what might have sounded like a cruel joke turned out to be a feel-good, hilarious test of decency, in which Gladden, er, acquitted himself with charm and integrity. (Streaming on Amazon Freevee.)

‘The Last of Us’ and ‘Somebody Somewhere’ (HBO)

You might think that a thriller about a fungal zombie apocalypse has nothing in common with a slice-of-life account of friendships, queer life and cabaret music. But these very different HBO series showcased two of 2023’s great duos. (Each of them involving a Joel!) In “Last of Us,” Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey starred as Joel and Ellie, an odd couple forced to consider what they would sacrifice for endangered humanity. Season 2 of “Somewhere” tested the bond of Sam (Bridget Everett) and Joel (Jeff Hiller) in an endearing story of heartland eccentrics. One series splattered more guts than the other, but each had heart to spare. (Streaming on Max.)

‘Reservation Dogs’ (FX)

It is fitting that the final season of this comedy, set on a Native reservation in Oklahoma, had a story line involving extraterrestrial life. This was a story of a small community that, over its three seasons, managed to fill an entire universe. A rare coming-of-age story that does as well by its elder characters as its young leads, it left me with my heart brimming and my eyes wanting more. (Streaming on Hulu.)

‘South Side’ (Max)

What is a “year,” really? Yes, eagle-eyed readers will note that the final season of this comedy aired at the end of 2022, but it arrived too late for my previous list. Over a too-short, three-season run, “South Side” expanded a workplace comedy about a Chicago rent-to-own shop into a fantastical universe of eccentrics, scammers and hapless police and pols, and the final season packed years’ worth of ideas into a final blaze of surreal world-building. This was one for the ages, even if it lived on borrowed — or rented — time. (Streaming on Max.)

‘Succession’ (HBO)

Like the Roy family empire, the final season of this corporate saga dominated all available media. But the saturation coverage was deserved. The drama followed its dark instincts to the end, giving a send-off for the ages to the patriarch Logan Roy (Brian Cox) and living up to its title in his heirs fight for his legacy. The C-suite brawl — in which American democracy was collateral damage — managed to be cynically satisfying and deeply emotional. Money could not buy the Roys happiness, but their misery was priceless. (Streaming on Max.)

Honorable mention: “Barry” (HBO); “Blue Eye Samurai” (Netflix); “Dave” (FXX); “Happy Valley” (BBC America); “How To With John Wilson” (HBO); “I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson” (Netflix); “Killing It” (Peacock); “Minx” (Starz); “Mrs. Davis” (Peacock); “Party Down” (Starz); “Scavengers Reign” (Max); “The Traitors” (Peacock).

Flawed but fascinating: “Foundation” (Apple TV+); “Hello Tomorrow!” (Apple TV+); “Three-Body” (Rakuten Viki); “The Wheel of Time” (Amazon Prime Video).

MIKE HALE

Best International Shows

It cannot be overemphasized: The wild proliferation of series, especially imported ones, makes the word “best” at the top of any list a hazy approximation at, you know, best. Here are 10 shows from outside the United States, in alphabetical order, that I particularly enjoyed in 2023.

‘A Spy Among Friends’ (MGM+)

This languorous yet nail-biting variation on the espionage thriller dramatized the end of the friendship between Kim Philby, the British spy who was a double agent for the Soviets, and Nicholas Elliott, the fellow spy sent to bring Philby home and then suspected of treason himself when Philby escaped. Written by Alex Cary (“Homeland”) based on Ben Macintyre’s book, it was a smart and complicated puzzle play and an icy dissection of the British class system; most of all, it was a tour de force for Guy Pearce as Philby, Damian Lewis as Elliott and Anna Maxwell Martin as a fictional agent caught in the middle. (Streaming on MGM+.)

‘C.B. Strike’ (Max)

The rapport between Tom Burke, as the gruff British private eye Cormoran Strike, and Holliday Grainger, as his assistant and then fellow investigator Robin Ellacott, has always been more than enough reason to watch this series based on J.K. Rowling’s Strike mystery novels (written under the name Robert Galbraith). The show’s balance of detection and thorny, soulful friendship-cum-romance is close to ideal; the fifth season, based on Rowling’s book “Troubled Blood,” combined a cluster of family crises with a deft, surprising mystery involving the 40-year-old case of a missing doctor. (Streaming on Max.)

‘Happy Valley’ (BBC America)

Sally Wainwright’s intimate, everyday epic about the life-or-death struggle between a Yorkshire police officer and her nemesis, the blandly brutal sociopath who was also the father of her grandson, reached its reckoning in its third and final season. Sarah Lancashire and James Norton were terrific to the end, along with Siobhan Finneran as the cop’s ruinously, redemptively softhearted sister. (Streaming on AMC+ and Acorn TV.)

‘Oshi no Ko’ (Hidive)

From idol singing groups to TV dramas, reality-dating shows, anime musicals, modeling, YouTube stardom, performing-arts high schools, celebrity journalism and online trolling, this animated series offers an almost documentary-style account of the wages of success in the Japanese entertainment industry. Because it is a sprightly, goofy anime, its darkly earnest accounts of struggle and exploitation share space with teenage romance and a murder mystery, and its hero and heroine are a young doctor and his teenage patient reincarnated as the twin babies of a pop singer they both idolized. (Streaming on Hidive.)

‘Paris Police 1905’ (MHz Choice)

The latest winner from the French network Canal+ (progenitor of “Spiral” and “The Bureau”) is a police procedural that doubles as a panorama of French society at a time when overwhelming change barrels into ossified conservatism and privilege. (The first season was titled “Paris Police 1900.”) The plot of the new season of this highly entertaining melodrama, which matches a grisly sang-froid with the driest humor, is driven by syphilis, homophobia and a deadly new menace, the automobile. (Streaming on MHz Choice.)

‘Slow Horses’ (Apple TV+)

The second season of this wonderfully sardonic British series about a cadre of misfit, career-stalled MI5 agents (which premiered on Dec. 2, 2022, after last year’s edition of these lists appeared) was, if anything, better than the first — its mystery twistier, its action more tense and shocking. Season 3, premiering Wednesday, is a slight step back — the bullet count goes way up, which is always a bad sign — but the average of the two seasons is still awfully high. (Streaming on Apple TV+.)

‘Somewhere Boy’ (Hulu)

In its flashbacks, this compact drama is a dark fable: a bereaved Welsh husband, terrified of also losing his young son, keeps the boy captive by telling him that the world outside their isolated home is populated by monsters. In the present, it’s an astringent coming-of-age story, as Danny (Lewis Gribben), now nearly an adult, emerges into the confusing, disappointing, equally frightening real world. Gribben and Samuel Bottomley, as the cousin suddenly saddled with being Danny’s protector, are excellent. (Streaming on Hulu.)

‘30 Coins’ (Max)

“It’s all quite incomprehensible,” a character says of events in the second season of Álex de la Iglesia’s apocalyptic theological thriller. “But life is incomprehensible, too.” That’s the correct spirit in which to watch de la Iglesia’s rococo riot of a series about a handful of ordinary, though in some cases extraordinarily attractive people — a small-town mayor, a veterinarian, a lapsed cop, a YouTube ghostbuster — battling Satan, the Vatican, Paul Giamatti (as an L. Ron Hubbard-style cult leader) and possibly God over the fate of the world. (Streaming on Max.)

‘Wolf Like Me’ (Peacock)

Abe Forsythe’s charming, sometimes extremely bloody Australian dramedy is a moving and tartly comic account of a blended family in which part of the blend is a werewolf. Isla Fisher is enormously appealing as the no-nonsense, highly suspicious wolf, Mary, who spent the second season pregnant by her lumpenly human boyfriend (Josh Gad); the season-ending cliffhanger promises to radically change the show. (Streaming on Peacock.)

‘Yosi, the Regretful Spy’ (Amazon Prime Video)

The Argentine writer and director Daniel Burman based this absorbing drama on the true story of a government agent who infiltrated the Jewish community of Buenos Aires in the years leading up to the horrific terrorist bombings that targeted that community in the early 1990s. Through two seasons, its depiction of the automatic, paranoiac anti-Semitism of the country’s establishment is all the more chilling for being utterly matter-of-fact. (Streaming on Amazon Prime Video.)

Margaret Lyons

Best Shows That Ended

This year brought a few banner finales and a few shows unjustly cut off in their primes, some slow fades and some purposeful but (to a fan) premature endings. So goes my lament each year.

To qualify for my list, arranged below in alphabetical order, shows had to air in 2023 (or just about) and also officially end; renewal limbo is the enemy of the fan and the list-maker alike. Miniseries and limited series did not count (God bless, though), and I considered shows in toto, not just their final runs.

‘Barry’ (HBO)

Bill Hader cocreated, starred in and directed most of this assassin black comedy, which was among television’s most brooding and violent shows but still bubbled over with snappy one-liners and zippy satire. The show’s virtuosic action sequences and fight choreography were only part of its appeal, though. Barry discovering a love of and aptitude for acting; his relationship with his grandiose mentor, Gene (Henry Winkler); his abusive romance with Sally (Sarah Goldberg) — all of these marvelous facets refracted light through a dark gem. (Streaming on Max.)

‘Doom Patrol’ (Max)

The first two seasons of this show are much better than the second two, but, man, they are a ton of fun. While a lot of comic book fare is trite, didactic and redundant, “Doom” was raucous, silly, arch — but with a fairy-tale wistfulness and a real, beating heart. It was filthy and funny, and not particularly attached to always making sense, full of a vibrant strangeness that allowed for both immature humor and richly depicted sorrow and longing. (Streaming on Max.)

‘The Great' (Hulu)

Few shows, if any, wring as much from each fiber of their existence as “The Great” did: Every line, every gesture, every hat, every plate conveyed something rich and thrilling, a ballerina telling an entire tragedy through the tilt of her pinkie. Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult cultivated an electrified sense of menace and then a real but twisted love between Catherine the Great and Peter III. So many period dramas just feel like inert, expensive Wikipedia entries, but “The Great,” through its irreverence and artistry, was alive at every turn. (Streaming on Hulu.)

‘Happy Valley’ (BBC America)

“Happy Valley” debuted in 2014, when the bleak foreign crime show was more in fashion, but it was never strictly a misery-murder show. Sarah Lancashire starred as Catherine Cawood, a police sergeant in West Yorkshire still tormented by her daughter’s suicide and raising her grandson in the shadow of that grief. Where lots of sad cop shows flatten their characters, “Valley” always sought depth and fullness — characters make jokes, the relationships have texture, choices have emotional heft. (Streaming on AMC+ and Acorn TV.)

‘How To With John Wilson’ (HBO)

This mesmerizing collage series always felt maybe a little too fragile for this harsh world, its tender musings and awkward but reverential curiosity leading to moments of human resonance that were so lovely they were almost painful. John Wilson reassembled his obsessive catalogs of New York City (and occasionally elsewhere) into poems about yearning, growing, belonging, changing — all these snippets of minutiae that would add up to a beautiful, illuminating gut punch. The end of this show stings harder than most because there won’t ever be anything else quite like it. (Streaming on Max.)

‘The Other Two' (Max)

Over its three seasons, “The Other Two” was thrillingly catty and cynical while keeping a tiny ember of sweetness burning all the way through. Heléne Yorke and Drew Tarver starred as the older siblings to a teeny-bopper idol who each crave the spotlight in their own ways, too. The show loved mocking their thirst for fame and especially ridiculing the hollowness of much of the entertainment industry and media. The Season 3 episode about a play called “8 Gay Men with AIDS: A Poem in Many Hours” is a particular treat. (Streaming on Max.)

‘Reservation Dogs’ (FX)

“Reservation Dogs” was so suffused with death and absence, maybe I shouldn’t feel so aggrieved that it is ending after just three seasons. Maybe I should internalize one of the central ideas of the show, that the end of a life is not the end of a relationship. Maybe someday I will be that sanguine, but for now, I’m still bummed out! In its short run, this coming-of-age series about Native American teens in Oklahoma was as gorgeous, surprising and nimble as TV gets — funny and whimsical, daring and important. (Streaming on Hulu.)

‘Single Drunk Female’ (Freeform)

This is one of our unjustly canceled specimens this year, a show cut off mid-blossom. In Season 1, we met Sam (Sofia Black-D’Elia) as she hit rock bottom, moved home with her difficult mother, joined Alcoholics Anonymous and tried to crawl out of her despair. In Season 2, the show, like Sam, found its footing, and its warm approach made grim themes accessible to Freeform’s younger audience and to anyone drained by sad-coms who still wanted something with depth. Adding insult to injury, Disney, which owns Freeform, also pulled the show off its streaming platforms. (Buy it on Amazon Prime Video.)

‘South Side’ (Max)

This is our asterisk entry this year — “South Side” did not air in 2023, but its third and final season aired in December 2022, after last year’s list went to print, and its cancellation wasn’t official until February of this year. So it is sneaking through on multiple technicalities. Also because it was so dang funny, with among the highest jokes-per-minute rate of any contemporary show. The show, set on the South Side of Chicago, had one of the most fully developed worlds on television, where characters who were onscreen for only a line or two still felt woven in. (Streaming on Max.)

‘Succession’ (HBO)

I mean … it’s “Succession.” Bury me in its fine textiles and viciousness, its fascinating ability to depict its characters as piñatas filled with more emptiness, its filthy rejoinders and knack for detail. A show this grand had to go out big, too, and killing off Logan not as its denouement but rather as its 11 o’clock number gave its final batch of episodes a swirling urgency. (Streaming on Max.)

Honorable mention: “A Black Lady Sketch Show” (HBO); “Miracle Workers” (TBS); “Painting With John” (HBO); “Sex Education” (Netflix); “Summer Camp Island” (Cartoon Network).

Margaret Lyons is a television critic for The Times. She previously spent five years as a writer and TV columnist for Vulture.com. She helped launch Time Out Chicago and later wrote for Entertainment Weekly, among other publications. More about Margaret Lyons

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