Horror movies are all well and good, but sometimes 90 minutes of white-knuckle terror just aren't enough.
Sometimes you want to spend hours or even days hiding behind your hands and muffling your screams as you're sucked into a terrifying realm of blood and guts and ghosts and monsters. When you're in that kind of mood, you need a TV show that can consistently deliver nightmares straight to your skull.
So if you're planning to spend this entire month leaving the lights on when you go to sleep, these nine shows, all streaming now on Netflix, are sure to get you there.
"Black Mirror"
Charlie Brooker's anthology series for Channel 4 and Netflix delves into the horrors of our technologically-driven era, extrapolating concepts like brain-computer interfaces, augmented reality, and our increasing reliance on social media into parables that range from ridiculous to vaguely haunting to deeply terrifying.
The series generally seems to take place in a near-future reality where current tensions and problems are cranked up to 11. And while the show is fairly hit or miss, when it hits it leaves you with a new and unsettling perspective on society, and memorable episodes like "Metalhead," "Men Against Fire," and "The Entire History of You," stand on their own as compelling hour-long horror films.
"Hannibal"
Based on the urbane, cannibal-killer Hannibal Lecter—from Thomas Harris's series of suspense novels—Hannibal follows Mads Mikkelson delivering a chilling performance in the titular role and Hugh Dancy as disturbed FBI consultant Will Graham.
Over three seasons of twists, misdirects, murder, and cooking sequences that are equal parts appetizing and nauseating, they engage in psychological battle as Dr. Lecter, a renowned psychologist, "assists" and evades law enforcement. Creator Bryan Fuller (Dead Like Me, American Gods) brings his visual flare to the horror genre in this tense and beautifully disturbing series.
"The Walking Dead"
Back in 2010 zombies were all the rage virus. In that stretch between 2007's hilarious Zombieland and 2013's disappointing adaptation of World War Z, the draw of zombie content was strong, and no media has capitalized on that draw as much as AMC's adaptation of the comic series The Walking Dead.
While zombie content has generally fallen out of popular culture, the walking dead has kept going for 10 seasons, focusing less on the threat of animate corpses than on the survivors learning to live in a post-apocalypse—though always with a background of truly horrifying corpses walking around trying to eat everyone.
"The Twilight Zone"
Rod Serling's classic 1959 anthology series is generally more thought-provoking than it is horrifying. Each episode takes on a mind-bending concept with an all-star cast.
And while modern viewers may even find the old-school effects and excessively earnest dialogue cheesy, if you're willing to engage with ideas like the tiny tyrant in "It's a Good Life," and performances like William Shatner's portrayal of a man driven to madness in Nightmare at 20,000 Feet, the show can be genuinely disturbing.
"Penny Dreadful"
Showtime's Penny Dreadful, starring Eva Green (Casino Royale) and Timothy Dalton (Hot Fuzz), ran for three seasons, bringing new life to classic gothic horror stories from the 19th century, including Frankenstein, Dracula, and The Portrait of Dorian Grey. The series is known for its heightened approach to the macabre and grotesque and for its excellent acting and cinematography.
"Bates Motel"
There are few characters as iconic to the genre of cinematic horror as Norman Bates from Alfred Hitchcock's 1960's classic Psycho: the soft-spoken proprietor of the Bates Motel who murders his victims while inhabited by the persona of his overbearing mother, Norma.
The movie played up common stigmas at the time, treating mental illness and queer-coding as fundamentally frightening character traits. While it could be argued that such outdated tropes would be better left in the trash heap of history, A&E's Bates Motel took a different approach, building a backstory over five seasons for how Norman and Norma developed such a twisted, co-dependent relationship—a relationship that Norman couldn't let go of even after his mother's death...
"Chilling Adventures of Sabrina"
For fans of the '90s sitcom Sabrina the teenage Witch, the Netflix series Chilling Adventures of Sabrina is hardly recognizable. While all the familiar characters—from Zelda and Hilda to Harvey and Salem—the show takes a much darker approach to witchcraft, with Satan, demons, witch hunters, and murder galore.
The show also tackles social issues like class divides and the challenges faced by trans teenagers who can't afford to transition—all through the lens of supernatural horror. The final set of eight episodes are set to premiere in late 2020.
"American Horror Story"
The FX series American Horror Story, from the producing team of Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk (Glee, Pose, Nip/Tuck) has been running since 2011 with an anthology format. Each season has its own arc, paying homage to particular settings and subgenres within horror—from cults to covens to haunted houses and asylums.
The format allows the creators to recast some of their favorite actors in a variety of roles for some truly memorable performances from Sarah Paulson, Kathy Bates, Evan Peters, and others. While the heightened reality of the series frequently slips into pure absurdity, each season delivers at least a handful of deeply disturbing characters and horrific sequences. The first seven seasons are currently available on Netflix—with seasons 8 and 9 streaming on Hulu.
"The Haunting of..." Series
When Mike Flanagan's The Haunting of Hill House was released in 2018 as a miniseries, it seemed like a shame that the 10 episode story was over so quickly. Loosely based on Shirley Jackson's classic 1959 novel, the atmospheric terror and exploration of generational trauma made for compelling viewing.
But then, in October of 2020, Netflix unveiled the unofficial sequel, The Haunting of Bly Manor, based on Henry James' horror classic, The Turn of the Screw. Once again, Mike Flanagan and Netflix have delivered a gripping, subtly creepy hit just in time for Halloween binge-watching.
So just put these 9 shows in your queue and don't plan on sleeping for the next year or so.
In the world of design, there are two ideals that must be balanced: form and function.
They rest at opposite poles of a spectrum, and a designer's vision must find a compromise between them.
At one extreme, the designer can prioritize form over function to achieve a compelling and appealing aesthetic that may be wildly ineffective in terms of their creation's intended role. At the other end of the spectrum, there is an ergonomic and effective tool devoid of flare, style, or emotion.
In the world of science fiction these extremes of design are often played with to inform how the technology and culture of an imagined future have evolved. Is the world functional and sanitized like a Federation Starship in Star Trek, extravagantly brutal like the Mad Max universe, or minimalist and hipsterfied like the world of Her?
These movies give us glimpses of possible futures, but they are rarely if ever accurate. Rather than looking for similarities or prescient predictions, it is often more interesting to see the ways reality diverges from these fictional worlds as time goes by.
Killer Robots
Take, for instance, the killer robots from the Terminator franchise. Conceived as the terrifying, soulless enemy, that terror was prioritized above all else in their design.
Does it make sense for Skynet to model its foot soldiers after the human form—with arms and legs and a head full of teeth? If they're blending in with the humans like Arnold Schwarzenegger, sure. Otherwise, absolutely not.
The human body is designed for a wide range of biological tasks, most of which have nothing to do with murder—making that design wildly inefficient. Yet throughout the Terminator franchise infiltrators like Arnold's T-101 (which at least makes sense) are vastly outnumbered by the marching legions of bare metal skeletons (which do not).
Something like the robotic "dog" in Black Mirror's "Metalhead" would be a much more sensible design for a killer robot. But when it comes to Terminator's foot soldiers, their appearance is the point.
They tap into our most fundamental fears by reminding us of our own mortality. They are emotionless killer robots that embody death—with shining skulls and glowing, blood-red eyes. Director James Cameron and his team clearly made them as frightening as they knew how.
The Sperm Extractor
And yet, reality and the preference for function over form have somehow managed to produce machines that are far more disturbing. For example, feast your eyes on the clinical Sperm extractor.
Manufactured by Jiangsu Sanwe Medical Science and Technology Center in Xuxhou, China, it's certainly not an ugly device. Available for between $5,000 and $6,000 on Chinese retail site Alibaba, it looks a bit like a cross between a Dalek and a ladies' electric razor, and the company apparently sells around 10,000 each year.
'Sperm Extractor' Machine Replicates Human Vagina for Donors | NowThiswww.youtube.com
There was clearly some effort put into making the design simple and appealing — with soft curves and pink highlights working to feminize it. Nonetheless, its clean industrial design—shiny plastic, devoid of emotion or even a basic nod at the human form—becomes nauseatingly surreal when you understand what this machine truly is: a sexbot.
While said to be more efficient than the manual process, the machine doesn't perform its extraction with needles or plungers. It provides users with a lubricated "massage pipe" (which, incidentally, also has a glowing blood-red eye) that operates at an adjustable height and width, and performs a reciprocating motion with variable speed.
On top of the machine's pedestal there is a screen offering users the option of visual stimulation—although explicit sexual content is prohibited under Chinese law—along with a series of knobs that allow users to control speed and various functions such as warmth, vibration, and "twitching."
On the sides, there are handles that either make it easier to move the machine, or possibly give users something to grip when they are convulsing in ecstasy/horror.
Its "Purpose"
Introduced to Chinese hospitals in 2010 — at a time when China had a shortage of willing donors — the primary function of the extractor is supposedly to allow those who are uncomfortable with the prospect of self-stimulating in a hospital environment to donate their sperm. But it is also marketed as providing "desensitization training" for individuals who struggle with a, uh...hair trigger.
Seeing the details of the machine's operation, it's hard to deny that it would provide significant desensitization. While the product listing asserts that its "massage pipe" can "simulate [the] vaginal environment," it clearly does quite a bit more than that.
Its pulsing grip and textured interior appear to be aiming for extremes of genital stimulation, and no amount of clinical branding can alter the fact that this strange, thoroughly unsexy device was built to provide pleasure.
Our Horrifying Future
What makes that so disturbing is hard to articulate. If a person with $6,000 to burn and the appropriate biological equipment wanted to have a machine on hand that would provide that kind of intense stimulation, why is that substantially different than the wide range of "personal massagers" that are available for other forms of stimulation?
I genuinely don't know the answer, but there is something about the concept of a sexbot designed to look like a sleek home appliance that suggests a horrifying science fiction future that is somehow our very real present.
It's a machine that seems to be trying to replace the humanity and passion of sexual acts with pragmatic, industrial efficiency, and it begs us to imagine a world in which the old-fashioned way of doing things is forgotten. It calls to mind the genetically modified ChickieNobs in Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake—headless masses of living, growing chicken meat.
Our lives are already so divorced from anything like a state of nature. Our processed foods resemble nothing that occurs in flesh or fruit. Our homes are constructed of fake stone and our furniture is stamped with phony wood grain. And we celebrate all these advances that help us forget we're animals.
Does this machine mean that sex is next on the chopping block? Will we soon forget that we ever did anything so savage? Keep it beside your toilet to relieve yourself of your other unclean biological needs, and let it collect your gametes for safe-keeping — in case a baby ever becomes useful.
It's a machine that has somehow managed to take the sex out of sex… And I will take an army of shiny murder-skeletons over that concept any day.
Quarantine: when jobs have either been lost or relegated to the living room, wherein social functions are limited to Zoom, wherein the 24-hours in a day can really be felt.
With less to physically fill the time, the time remains unfilled. Fortunately, sequestered humans have never had such a bevy of entertainment options available to them. But that kind of freedom can be paralyzing. Never has there been a better time for binge-watching, but what are we to binge? And how?
Since all this free-time demands discipline, here's an unconventional suggestion: Pick one of the all-time great shows, something you've always wanted to watch but couldn't find the motivation nor time to do so, and start not at the beginning, but at season three instead. Whether it's a comedy or a drama or simply something you've put off watching because the plot is too involved or the show is too hyped, ignore the first two seasons entirely, and fall into a world that's already in motion. Using our knowledge of television in general, and by tapping into the cultural conversation of characters and references, we can spare ourselves the slow starts of seasons one and two, and get right to the meat of the matter. Why sit around waiting for a show to find itself? Why settle for less than the best?
First seasons are often uneven or uncertain, anyway. Second seasons are often better and more compelling, but shows that make it to season three emerge with a clear tone and complete characters: two necessities for any show with long-term success.
Examples abound of shows finding themselves in their third seasons. Arguably, the greatest comedies of the 21st century are The Office and Parks and Recreation, though contenders such as It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Curb Your Enthusiasm are important to the discussion, as well. As for dramatic examples, look to the Olympic podium of TV's Golden Era: Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, and Mad Men.
Mad Men Season 3 Promo PhotoAMC
A weighted-review aggregation site like Metacritic is not the law, but it is useful. The numbers almost universally favor third seasons and beyond. Parks and Rec improves in score from a 58 in season one to an 83 in season three, a change signifying an ascension from "mixed or average reviews" to "Universal Acclaim," in the critics' words. The Office's highest overall score is season three's 85. Breaking Bad starts solidly with its first two season garnering scores of 73 and 84, but in its final three earns marks of 89, 96, and 99, an unprecedented run of greatness. Game of Thrones' two highest marks of 91 and 94 are for seasons three and four, respectively. Mad Men is the lone outlier of the bunch, as its second season outscores its third by a single point. However, its fourth season, ruled a 92, is the series' high-point. Why? Shows generally hit their strides in season three.
First, character development peaks at season three. First seasons tend to be myopic about their characters, hoping that closeness will lead viewers to love them. Season two is the experimentation room, wherein worlds shift, and season three is the fruit of that labor, with confident characters and expanded worlds.
By season three, the main characters have been poked and prodded for two full seasons, experimented on until their truest selves have been revealed. How? Conflict. Characters are made complete, in mold and mindset, through consistent conflict. They are built through what are essentially a series of thought experiments: How would x react if y? A byproduct of such conflict is a fleshing out of a show's world. Conflict requires fresh subjects to be placed before a character, be they fresh faces, strange circumstances, or unfamiliar situations.
For instance, two of Parks and Rec's most iconic characters, Ben Wyatt and Chris Traeger aren't introduced until the very end of season two, where they immediately begin foiling Amy Poehler and Rashida Jones, the series leads. Breaking Bad's first two seasons lack the series' big bad, Gus Fring, creator of the fictional restaurant, Los Pollos Hermanos, the logo of which adorns the show's most popular merchandise; yet, it's only introduced in concept at the tail-end of the second season. The Office changes dramatically in season three, adding mainstay Andy Dwyer, flirting with a young Rashida Jones, and cementing Jim and Pam's relationship, which was until then a typical will-they-won't-they situation. Once resolved, it formed the literal backbone upon which the show is built.
Once they got together, Jim-and-Pam as a concept burst outside the confines of the show they were in, taking up real-estate in the general pop culture consciousness. The great shows, the all-timers, the ones you really should be watching in this quarantine time, share this Jungian trait. One doesn't need to have watched Seinfeld to understand the terms "shrinkage" or "close-talker." "We were on a break," is just part of our dialect.
Though this principle doesn't inform our viewing of many great shows, it does so with some of our touchstone comedies, like the aforementioned It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Curb your Enthusiasm. Shows of this format don't have one cohesive story pulling them along; it's possible, if not normal, to jump around to the great episodes through seasons, without care for continuity. Once it's known that the characters in Always Sunny are narcissists who work at a bar, it's easy to understand any episode, to jump in without further background. Ditto Curb, where Larry David is culturally understood to be an off-putting schmuck, and that's all one must know for maximum enjoyment.
Because the DNA of these two shows, and their dramatic brethren like Grey's Anatomy and NCIS, is accessible via collective unconscious, we culturally understand that it's unnecessary to sit and watch every single episode in a row. We know enough from our general human wanderings that we can skip the fluff and enjoy the standout performances and pieces, allowing superfluous details to slowly fill themselves in, as they always do.
Which of the truly great shows don't also already exist in our cultural consciousness? Nobody goes in blind to any piece of art nowadays, so it's hard to think of even one. Everyone knows Tony Soprano is a gangster in therapy. Lost takes place on an island post-plane crash. Jon Snow in Game of Thrones is a bastard, and if that isn't abundantly clear, they'll say it five or six times an episode.
No show is ever entered into truly blind. Between our bevy of previous cultural knowledge and the practice we've had in consuming other content en media res, it's possible to spare ourselves the slog of shows when they're just starting out. We've just never strayed from the unimaginative formula that shows are best began at the beginning. But that's clinging to tradition alone. Shows in season three will contain characters at their most compelling, jokes at their most pointed, worlds at their most alive. The show itself will be easier to enjoy, and that enjoyment will come quicker. Is that not the point? Maximum enjoyment, minimum commitment.
And when it's all over, when you love these people desperately and want so bad to live in their world for just a few minutes more, you can rejoice! For there are two more seasons for you to watch, saved, untouched. Their growing pains will seem quaint, their iffy characterizations cute. And the exercise alone will make you feel powerful, able to ground yourself in a world in movement.
Picture this: There's a viral pandemic quickly sweeping across the globe.
Wow, you pictured that really quickly, good for you. Now add a wrinkle: The cast of a reality show (Big Brother) has been sealed off from the world for almost the entire ordeal. They have no idea what's going on, but they're about to find out. While their isolation was a condition of their participation in a silly TV show, it has also served to protect them from the spread of a lethal contagion and kept them oblivious to the tremendous changes unfolding in the world around them. While they've been sheltered away, society has somehow very quickly approached the brink of collapse. Will they even believe it when they find out how much has happened? Will it seem like just another twist in the "social experiment" of reality TV?
If that sounds exactly like what just happened to 14 unsuspecting housemates on Germany's Big Brother, congratulations on keeping up with entertainment news while a global health crisis destroys civilization—must be nice. It's true that the cast of the current season of the German version of Big Brother (much like Jared Leto) had been kept in the dark about the developing COVID-19 pandemic since their isolation in early February—and found out in a live televised event Tuesday night on German network Sat.1. But if you just think the whole concept sounds kind of like the plot of an episode of Black Mirror, that's because you haven't seen Dead Set.
Dead Set was a miniseries that aired on E4 in the UK in 2008. The brainchild of Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker, its plot matched the current situation almost perfectly. While the cast of Big Brother (in London in this case) has been sealed up in their panopticon home, a virus has rapidly taken over the world outside, and it's at last reached the point where they're going to find out. The main difference is that, rather than the coronavirus, the outbreak in the miniseries is spread through biting, and causes its hosts to take on aggressive behavior and a corpse-like appearance… Okay, they're zombies. It's a zombie show about the world collapsing while Big Brother housemates are cut off from the world—with all the confusion, drama, and gore that implies.
— (@)
It's also streaming on Netflix now, so if you've already watched Contagion five times, and you need some new escapist/masochistic viewing, the entire run of Dead Set is two-and-a-half hours of pandemic horror-prophecy.
In the time of "social distancing" (AKA the best way to stop the spread of COVID-19), many of us may find ourselves turning to technology to fill the void that our lack of human connection has left in our lives—as if we weren't already doing that.
Appropriately, the Japanese-Australian sibling duo Lastlings' new video depicts a future in which people, deprived of their connections to others, are able to access old memories of past relationships through virtual reality technology. The Black Mirror-esque visual explores the poignancy of memory and the ways technology can help transport us to distant times and places. It makes you wonder—is it enough? Can a simulation actually replace a lost human connection?
Set over the energetic track "Take My Hand," the video provides a sobering contrast to the song's dreamy, synthy sense of forward motion and its upward build. While the track feels like it's moving forward, the video is all about looking back into the past, and this creates an intriguing dissonance. (In a time when existence, itself, is often a practice of cognitive dissonance, maybe that contrast is more timely than anything).
Lastlings have been exploring questions about connection and transformation in different forms since they began releasing music. "We love making music that transports our listeners to a better place," they told Happy Mag. And their music is certainly capable of that. Though music can't exactly bring AI simulations of our loved ones into the room with us, it can help connect us to long-suppressed emotions or lift listeners to more blissful planes, if only for the expanse of a song.
Lastlings draw inspiration from groups like Alt-J and Beach House, and though the duo's music swings closer to electro-pop, they certainly share these artists' transportive talents.
The band includes Josh and Amy Dowdle, siblings Australia who played music together as kids and gravitated to futuristic sounds while growing up. They both modeled and performed music independently as young adults, Josh playing gigs and Amy uploading videos to YouTube and later joining shows, but they finally found their niche and made the Lastlings magic happen.
Now they're looking to the future. Coming off a Coachella run (where they performed alongside fellow sibling duo Billie and Finneas O'Connell), and recently signed to Astralwerks, Lastlings seem poised to catch on.
Their visuals seem to match their rapidly evolving careers in terms of innovative scope. "We're really inspired by a lot of sci-fi movies at the moment, especially Blade Runner, we've seen that like eight times. Sort of dystopian, apocalyptic. It fits in with our Lastlings name," they explained to RUSHH magazine.
"Take My Hand" was also inspired by a favorite anime, "Your Name" by Makoto Shinkai. "[The song] is about two people who are unprepared to let goof each other," they said. "They both care about each other deeply but have to go their separate ways."
Interestingly, many of their interviews don't seem to cite which one of them is speaking, and the siblings are often quoted as "they," which perhaps speaks to their synergy. You can hear that synergy on "Take My Hand," a synergy speaks to a brilliant future together—presuming of course that their name, "Lastlings," wasn't too prescient.
Thanks to streaming platforms like Netflix and Hulu, it was suddenly possible to watch multiple episodes of a single TV series in one sitting without the interruptions of commercials. As the way we watched TV changed, so too did the kind of shows we watched. Gone was the overabundance of vapid, sugary-sweet sitcoms, and in came the era of political satire, dramatic comedies, and searing commentaries on everything from abortion to Hollywood. Summarily, the 2010s saw a golden age of television. Here are our 50 favorites, with the top 25 and bottom 25 listed in alphabetical order.
The Top 25 TV Shows of the 2010s
Atlanta
Atlanta first aired in 2016, with Donald Glover's Earn learning that his cousin Alfred has released a hit song under the stage name Paper Boi. Since then, the show has followed Earn's struggle to navigate different worlds as he takes over managing his cousin's burgeoning music career while also trying to be a good father to his daughter, Lottie, and to prove himself to Van, his ex-girlfriend and Lottie's mother. The show uses varying perspectives to flesh out the city of Atlanta and the complexities of being black in America with surreal touches that highlight the real-world absurdity. Yet despite the heaviness of much of its subject matter, it frequently manages to be among the funniest shows on TV.
Barry
For anyone who ever wondered whether or not SNL-alum Bill Hader could carry a serious TV show, Barry answers with an overwhelming "yes." To be clear, Barry is technically a dark comedy, or perhaps a crime comedy-drama, but Bill Hader brings a level of unprecedented seriousness to his titular character that oftentimes makes the show feel like a straight tragedy.
Playing a hitman who wants to leave his life of crime behind in order to pursue a career in acting, Bill Hader imbues Barry with an earnestness that makes us as an audience truly want him to succeed. This likability serves to make Barry's violent acts all the more disturbing. Barry's greatest success is its ability to effortlessly fluctuate between the quirks of life as a struggling actor in LA and the violent inclinations of a man who murders for a living and can never really escape that truth. It's one of the best character studies currently on TV and is sure to cement Bill Hader as an extremely versatile A-list talent.
Baskets
Baskets premiered on FX in 2016, telling the story of Chip Baskets, an aspiring clown played by Zach Galifianakis, who is moving back to Bakersfield, California to live with his mother after a failed stint at clown school in Paris. Galfianakis' talent for melancholy slapstick makes the show by turns hilarious and touching, but it's his mother Christine Baskets—artfully portrayed by Louie Anderson—whose simple enthusiasm for small-town life makes the show one of the best of the decade. Watching Christine, Chip, and his twin brother Dale (also Galifianakis) heighten relatable family drama to exquisite absurdity never gets old.
Black Mirror
Nothing would be the same without Black Mirror. Though its later seasons have been inconsistent in quality, its earliest contributions were digital horror at its finest, with some of the episodes being downright visionary in terms of how accurately they predicted the near future. From the nostalgic visions of virtual afterlife in "San Junipero" to the eerie foresight of "Nosedive" and its digital ranking systems, Black Mirror made an indelible impact.
Bob's Burgers
Whatever you've heard about Family Guy or South Park, Bob's Burgers is the true successor to the golden age of The Simpsons. The Belcher family offers an update to The Simpsons' satirical view on middle class family life that reflects how America has changed since the 90s—slightly more urban, with less overt child abuse and a lot more economic precarity. And just as with the best seasons of The Simpsons, Bob's Burgers maintains a touching core of familial love and solidarity amid the absurd hijinks and veiled political commentary. Throw in the added value of the frequently hilarious, occasionally moving musical numbers, and Bob's Burgers easily secures a spot as one of the best shows of the decade.
Bojack Horseman
In terms of the quality of its writing, BoJack Horseman outdid itself season after season. What began as a parody of Hollywood's excesses quickly turned into a searing, and boundary-pushing meditation on depression, addiction, and what it means to change (or to be unable to). Increasingly self-aware and conscious of its hypocritical tendency to obsess over the misadventures of an evil but sympathetic celebrity, thereby glorifying them while criticizing them, BoJack Horseman is the political, devastating, timely, often hilarious show about an animated horse that none of us knew we needed. It's buoyed by the strength of its secondary characters, from the workaholic Princess Carolyn to asexual Todd to self-loathing Diane, and altogether the show takes deep-rooted fears that many share and refracts them in a funhouse mirror that's impossible to look away from.
Broad City
Ilana Glazer and Abbi Jacobson began producing an independent web series about their struggles to "make it" in New York City in 2009. Soon, Amy Poehler took interest in the series, and it moved to Comedy Central in 2014. The smash hit comedy was not only laugh-out-loud funny, but a beautiful portrait of a genuinely healthy, supportive female friendship—something TV has historically seen little of. Broad City can be credited for helping to usher in a new generation of female comedy creators and has become a cultural touchstone for millenials.
Catastrophe
Catastrophe, created and written by the show's stars, Rob Delaney and Sharon Horgan, is one of the realest, grossest, and funniest takes on love and the mess of life. Two people entering middle age meet and hit it off, they spend a reckless night together, and when she gets pregnant, they decide to make things work—not realizing how complicated that will be. It's a simple enough premise, but the cutting dialogue and the absurd comedy that plays out as two near-strangers build a life together make Catastrophe one of a kind.
Fargo
Anthology series like True Detective and American Horror Story can be really hit or miss, but in the three seasons that have aired on FX since 2014, Fargo has been consistently great. Maybe it has to do with the leisurely production schedule, the all-star cast, or the near-perfect movie that forms the basis for its tone, but whatever the cause, Fargo delivers murderous midwestern tragicomedy better than any show on TV—and nearly as well as the original. Season three, which followed the rivalry of the Stussy brothers—as played by Ewan McGregor—deserves a particular call-out, with season four due next year and featuring Chris Rock, Timothy Olyphant, and Jason Schwartzman.
Fleabag
Phoebe Waller-Bridge's stage-play-turned-two-season-TV masterpiece took the world by storm at the end of the 2010s. In the series, the viewer is made into the protagonist's (an unnamed woman played by Bridge) confidante as she uses sex to cope with grief and complicated family dynamics. As the show progresses, the closely protected inner life of the protagonist begins to reveal itself. Many consider the second season to be an essentially perfect season of television, in large part because of the hot priest (played by Andrew Scott). Fleabag is a funny, searing commentary on what it means to exist as a sexual, complicated being in a world with ever-changing expectations of women.
Grace and Frankie
70 is the new 30, or 20, or whatever arbitrary year of life we as a culture are deciding to glorify for no reason, because age is just a number. If you weren't aware that Jane Fonda glowed with money or that Lily Tomlin is our collective spiritual mother, then Grace and Frankie enlightened you. When two septuagenarian women are told that their husbands are gay and in love with each other, the best phase of their lives begins.
Haikyu!!
It's almost 2020, the world is upside down, and yes, an anime about high school volleyball is genuinely one of the best shows of the decade. Haikyu!!, literally "Volleyball" in Japanese, is about the trials and tribulations of the Karasuno High School Boys Volleyball Team. Unlike pretty much every other high school sports anime out there, Haikyu!! takes a relatively realistic approach to...well...high schoolers playing sports. In doing so, Haikyu!! translates the genuine passion that goes into high school sports and the real dynamics of teamwork, better than any other show I've ever seen.
The protagonist, Hinata, isn't a superpowered Volleyball God; he's an extremely short boy who can't reach the top of the net, but works his butt off because he loves the game. Likewise, all the other boys in Haikyu!! have realistic strengths and weaknesses (both on and off the court) that they work to overcome with help from their teammates. Haikyu!! is an exercise in wholesomeness––there are no villains, just other kids at other schools who love the same sport our boys do––and in a decade full of so much bitterness, it's a much needed dose of medicine.
Hunter x Hunter
For anyone who likes long-running shonen anime, Hunter x Hunter is, without a doubt, the pinnacle of the genre. While the original manga began publication in 1998, and a previous anime adaptation ran from 1999-2001, the 2011 adaptation re-started the series from scratch and, most importantly, covered the Chimaera Ant arc (or season––kind of––for you non-anime watchers).
The entirety of Hunter x Hunter is fantastic, featuring likeable protagonists, dastardly villains, and a brilliantly creative power system called "Nen." But there's a reason the Chimaera Ant arc is often considered the greatest shonen arc ever, and that's because it's a total deconstruction of the genre's tropes and conventions. Everything from the "always optimistic protagonist" to "the ultimate evil villain" is turned completely inside-out. The Chimaera Ant arc is intensely brutal and ultimately poignant, making us question the very nature of what makes us human.
Killing Eve
Phoebe Waller-Bridge can do no wrong, and even if she could and did, I'd probably still clap. The combination of Waller-Bridge's cutting wit and Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer's flawless performances makes for a TV show that never quite lets you find your balance before sending you spinning again. It's dark and surreal, while managing to still be deeply human.
Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
Being a professional stand-up comedienne is hard, but being Midge Maisel is wrapping chaos in a designer dress. Created by the fast-talking husband and wife behind Gilmore Girls, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel created a stage for Rachel Brosnahan to showcase her comedic timing and Alex Borstein to be a solid, deadpan pillar within Mrs. Maisel's world of quippy, fast-talking, energy. Also Michael Zegen (Joel) is dead cute.
Mob Psycho 100
While One Punch Man might be manga artist One's best known series (and is fantastic in its own right), his other series, Mob Psycho 100,is profound in a way quite unlike anything else I've seen. The show revolves around Mob, an awkward, unconfident middle school boy with god-like psychic powers. Any other shonen anime would use this premise as a gateway to epic battles (and there are a few, and their animation is absolutely incredible), but Mob Psycho 100 focuses far more on the coming-of-age angle instead.
See, Mob doesn't like his psychic powers because they make him feel weird. So instead of focusing on the one thing he's innately talented at but doesn't like, Mob tries to improve himself in the ways he actually cares about improving––making friends, talking to girls, working out with his school's Body Improvement Club. If anything, Mob's incredible psychic powers are a backdrop for the show's larger message––that no person, no matter what natural abilities they may have, is better than anyone else. Mob Psycho 100 shows that everyone has their own struggles, and that the only person you should ever hold yourself up in comparison to is the person you were yesterday.
The OA
Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij's labyrinthine show only ran for two seasons, but it managed to earn a cult following during that time. Deeply weird, profoundly earnest, and full to the brim with observations on the connections between the environment, parallel universes, and technology, the two seasons that we do have are irreplaceable and paradigm-shifting examples of what TV could become, if we let ourselves believe.
Orange Is the New Black
Piper Kerman's post-grad rebellious stage went from a felony to a cultural touchstone. As Netflix's most-watched original series, OITNB boasted a female-led cast and cutting commentary on race, class, and the industrial prison complex.
PEN15
Those who didn't have a gruelingly awkward middle school experience are, by scientific evidence, simply inhuman. Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle tell it best in Hulu original PEN15, which co-stars the real-life BFFs (who also wrote and executive produced together) as 13-year-olds. Here, there's no sugarcoating the calamities of tweenhood, whether they're as trivial as thongs and AIM messaging or as weighty as race identity. All delivered with Erskine and Konkle's razor-sharp wit, it's absolutely hysterical to anyone who's lived past the seventh grade.
Rick and Morty
"To be fair, you have to have a very high IQ to understand Rick and Morty. The humour is extremely subtle, and without a solid grasp of theoretical physics most of the jokes will go over a typical viewer's head."
Okay, so first things first, we need to separate Rick and Morty from the Rick and Morty fandom. The Rick and Morty fandom is so annoying that memes making fun of them are barely distinguishable from the things they actually say. But, to be fair, Rick and Morty really is a great show full of smart writing, surprisingly deep characterization, and the exact kind of bizarre, abstract humor that lends itself perfectly to endless memes. No doubt, Rick and Morty will be the defining animated comedy of the 2010s.
Russian Doll
This tightly-wound and big-hearted thriller stars Natasha Lyonne as a jaded New Yorker who gets caught in a loop in time and has to relive the night of her 36th birthday party over and over again. A perfect blend of humor and seriousness, and riddled with quantum leaps and profound connections, it's as satisfying as it is provocative.
Shameless
We fell in love with the trainwreck family the Gallaghers when it debuted on Showtime in 2011. William H. Macy brought so much toxic charm to the abusive and neglectful father Frank Gallagher that we actually found him, if not likable, then good television. Emmy Rossum managed to cause tears and laughter within the same scene, and the entire cast was as impressive as their characters were appalling.
Shingeki no Kyojin (Attack on Titan)
After the first season of Attack on Titan premiered in 2013, it received so much hype that even people outside of the anime community were raving about it. The show featured an incredibly high-concept premise, following the last surviving humans as they tried to fight back against giant, man-eating monsters called Titans. Had Attack on Titan stuck to that premise, it would have been top-notch action-horror, albeit not necessarily one of the best shows of the decade.
But Attack on Titan turned out to be so much bigger than its initial premise. As the seasons progressed, Attack on Titan reshaped itself time and time again, leading viewers through an increasingly complex, expertly plotted narrative featuring some of the most compelling characters and intensely emotional moments that I've ever experienced in fiction. At its core, Attack on Titan is a deeply thematic contemplation on war, othering, and humanity's will to survive against impossible odds, alongside the moral sacrifices they oftentimes make to do so.
Shrill
It shouldn't be revolutionary for a show to feature a fat female lead, but it is. Shrill, the brilliant Hulu adaptation of Lindy West's memoir, Shrill: Notes from a Loud Woman, gave audiences a badly needed narrative about a woman who is actively seeking to change her life for the better, in ways that have nothing to do with her body. It's funny, it's heartfelt, and it shows a woman getting an abortion and finding it empowering. Woah. Hell yes.
Steven Universe
When Steven Universe first aired on Cartoon Network in 2013, it was a light-hearted and silly children's show with some super-powered action from the Crystal Gems and a lot of silly jokes from their sidekick—the childish titular character. Since then an entire galaxy has been fleshed out around the boardwalk of Beach City where much of the show takes place. Along with the alien gem creatures and their elaborate history, the show has introduced us to a cast of characters that have grown and changed—overcoming insecurities and facing complex questions of love and identity. While Steven matured and developed into a hero worthy of his last name, the show evolved to become one of the best of the decade.
Mad Men Season 3 Promo PhotoAMC
