Five of the best TV shows from a year unlike any other

There must have been a time, back in those dimly remembered days of a few years back, when writing a “best of” would have been pretty straightforward, and most people would have seen the same shows as the writer.

Today, with scores of different platforms competing for your attention and hundreds of new shows being made, writing a list of the year’s top-performing shows that is relevant to everyone is particularly tough.

To add to this year’s difficulties, 2023 was effectively called off at half-time by US strike action, meaning there's been a real shortage of new US shows for months now.

But, here's five of the best series, that won't be too hard to find, from a strange year.

The Bear (Season 2, Disney+)

I came backwards to The Bear. Many friends had recommended it, but that always puts me off a TV show.

By the time I got around to watching it, I was unaware there were now two seasons – and I was halfway through the second before I realised what I had done.

But, it didn’t matter. Season two of The Bear works just fine as a standalone and I reckon – although I am biased now – that it is even better than season one.

The Bear follows an award-winning chef as he travels home to Chicago in the wake of a family tragedy, to take over the family sandwich shop. If he can’t turn the business around, then what is left of the family’s money will be lost. More importantly, that shop is at the heart and soul of everything Carmen – Carmy – Bezatto wants to resurrect in his life.

The Bear is maybe the most realistic, excruciatingly well-detailed picture of life in a restaurant kitchen that a TV show has ever achieved, but the show takes in romance, addiction, recovery, loyalty, heartbreak and all the stuff that keeps life interesting. Across every 30-minute episode, The Bear made me laugh out loud – and put a lump in my throat many, many times.

Episode six of season two is a standalone, one-hour drama that shows us events from five years earlier in the characters’ lives. I was tempted to name it as one of the best movies of the year. The Bear is that good.

This is a great show, in this – or any – year.

Reservation Dogs (Season 3, Disney+)

When Reservation Dogs first turned up in 2021, it was a revelation. The show is a sweet and knowing portrait of life “on the Rez” among four perfectly drawn and completely convincing teens.

Across two award-winning seasons,

Dogs followed the gang, their friends and families as they dreamed, healed, journeyed and stumbled towards whatever a dream of a future looks like when you’re born into a part of modern America that barely flickers in the consciousness of that country’s vision of itself.

Reservation Dogs has always had a stoic and absurdist heart, but in the third and final series that heart is in full bloom as the storytelling plunges around the decades, explains the origins of a few characters and digs deep into the horrors of the Indian boarding school system that left its scars on generations of Indigenous kids – and the adults they became.

There has never been a show quite like Reservation Dogs. But it might just be the first of many to come.

After The Party (TVNZ+)

Robyn Malcolm and screen-writer Dianne Taylor created this six-part series about a divorced highschool teacher whose past just won't stay behind her.

The ex-husband, who she accused of sexually assaulting a student, is back in Wellington and apparently welcome back at his old job. Her ageing mother is going into care and her teenage daughter is drifting towards open contempt. Local critics – me included – wore out their thesauruses hunting for new superlatives for After the Party. It was just so damned good to finally have a local show that could foot