Critics’ choice:

Succession

“OK, so there are no ‘likable’ characters in this brutally sarcastic portrait of the American ruling class,” said Matthew Gilbert in The Boston Globe. “But what’s that got to do with fun?” Watching the “morally bankrupt” Roys tear one another apart after renegade scion Kendall mounts a mutiny against his mad king of a mediamogul father was worth the two-year wait following Season 2. In late 2021, Succession “dominated the TV conversation,” for good reason. The scripts were “spikier than ever,” the characters more twisted. HBO

Hacks

“It’s not easy to make a good TV show about comedy,” said Kristen Baldwin in Entertainment Weekly. But the creators of Hacks were beyond wise to build the project around Jean Smart, “the reigning Meryl Streep of tough-broad types.” Smart plays Deborah Vance, a celebrity comedian whose run as a Las Vegas headliner is slipping away when her agent assigns a surly Gen Z comedy writer to restore the icon’s relevance. We watch because the series focuses not on the work of writing jokes but on “the gifted and deeply flawed women who tell them.” HBO Max

Reservation Dogs

Like Hacks, the year’s other best new comedy series is “a love story disguised as a hate story,” said James Poniewozik in The New York Times. Four rebellious Native American teenagers in a dusty Oklahoma reservation town crave escape so badly that they turn to petty crime to raise the getaway cash. But Reservation Dogs is a show about Natives created and written by Natives, and what unfolds, alongside the hijinks, is “the kind of deep character comedy, rich in detail and community portraiture, that can only come from loving the thing you want to leave.” Hulu

The White Lotus

Though Succession may win more awards, Mike White’s hit six-episode comedy series arguably delivered “the year’s most watchable and most scathing