The 10 Best Shows of 2018
This year brought a flood of Peak TV, but these series rose above the rest
This year brought a flood of Peak TV with exciting debuts like Killing Eve and knockout veteran returns like Atlanta and Better Call Saul.
1. Atlanta
FX
Donald Glover’s hip-hop comedy was so strange and surprising in its first season that a sophomore slump seemed inevitable. Instead, Year Two was even better than the first, weaving a subtle narrative thread about trouble in Paper Boi and Earn’s partnership around each episode’s formal experimentation. One week, Atlanta could be a riotous illustration of the difficulties a black man will endure to hang on to a good barber. The next — as in 2018’s single best episode, “Teddy Perkins” — it was a surreal, horrific meditation on the intersection of abuse, genius and racial self-loathing among some of the 20th century’s greatest black musical stars. Atlanta can be whatever it wants to be: the funniest, scariest and/or most thoughtful show on TV.
2. The Americans
FX
They stuck the landing. That’s harder than it seems, even for one of this decade’s most consistently taut, melancholic and beautifully acted dramas. The series about deep-cover Soviet agents in Reagan’s America had always been equal parts character study and spy thriller, and both halves demanded an ending worthy of all that Keri Russell, Matthew Rhys and friends had accomplished over the previous six years. The finale more than lived up to the task — and delivered devastating effects in unexpected moments. Good luck hearing “With or Without You” on the radio anytime soon without freaking out.
3. BOJACK Horseman
NETFLIX
The animated title character spent this year starring in the kind of cliché-ridden, thematically hollow, antihero drama that modern TV offers up in spades. But where show-within-a-show Philbert was a ruthless parody of all those series that celebrate toxic masculinity, BOJACK Season Five was a smart and sad interrogation of the problem (for both television and humanity). The show’s ability to toggle between the ridiculous and the tragic remains unparalleled. One moment Todd will be caught in a slapstick fight involving barrels of lube; the next, Princess Carolyn will be painfully revisiting the choices that led to her being childless in middle age, or BOJACK’s drug addiction will spiral out of control again. Philbert is a joke; BOJACK Horseman is the goods.
4. Killing Eve
BBC AMERICA
The year’s unexpected hot new trend: seriocomedies about eccentric assassins and the women obsessed with them. Killing Eve, a cat-and-mouse game starring Jodie Comer as a fashion-forward hitwoman and Sandra Oh as the messy spy obsessed with her, had a high degree of difficulty from the get-go: It had to feel real and exciting and scary while making room for the quippy dialogue and smart observations about how women interact that typified creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s previous series, Fleabag. Thanks to the sharp writing and two dazzling lead performances, it was all of those things at once. A fabulous debut.
5. Better Call Saul AMC
The Breaking Bad spinoff has long been two shows in one. This year, the show about Jimmy McGill’s moral descent into Saul Goodman was sharper and more powerful than it’s ever been, particularly in how Bob Odenkirk and Rhea Seehorn played the emotional tug of war between Jimmy and his girlfriend, Kim.
(And no program on television does montages better.) The show’s more straightforward prequel material, however, began to have the feel of boxes being checked, as Mike helped Gus build Walter White’s future drug lab. Still, even that endeavor had a brutal payoff. When Saul is at its best, as it frequently was this season, it’s much closer in quality to its iconic parent show than it has any business being.
6. Big Mouth NETFLIX
This animated comedy about middle-school boys and girls wrestling with their own hormones — and the so-called Hormone Monsters and Shame Wizards that control them — remains as empathetic as it is filthy. Big Mouth has enormous pity for these kids suffering the mortifications of puberty even as it takes joy in finding bizarre and graphic ways to illustrate their many confusing thoughts and desires. In a voice cast loaded with talent (including co-creator Nick Kroll, Jenny Slate, John Mulaney, Jordan Peele and others), Maya Rudolph is a special treat as the overwrought Hormone Monstress, whose elaborate pronunciations of things like “bubble bath” and “pharmacist” are dripping with the pain, indignation and sheer inappropriateness of an adolescent girl barely in control of herself. Big Mouth could so easily be a dumb, crude show, but it’s so damn smart and sweet.
7. Barry HBO
The story of a hitman working through his depression by taking an acting class employed a more direct approach to assassins than Killing Eve. But Bill Hader was a revelation in an intense and vulnerable mode that felt far removed from how we’ve seen him on SNL and in movies. Henry Winkler was magnificent as Hader’s new teacher, and the series threaded the needle between light showbiz spoof and something darker that understood the full consequences of Barry’s day job.
8. Sharp Objects HBO
Oh, great. Another grim drama about murdered girls. Not so fast! We’d never seen this topic tackled this way: Amy Adams pushes herself to the emotional limit as a reporter confronting the childhood that made her into a self-harming adult; writers Marti Noxon and Gillian Flynn strip Flynn’s novel to its sparest and most relentless form; and director Jean-Marc Vallée plays with time so we feel trapped in Adams’ character’s past along with her. Gripping, startling, unforgettable.
9. Pose FX
Ryan Murphy’s latest co-creation takes an understated approach to an outsize subject: New York’s drag-ball culture in the Eighties. A cast combining unknown trans actors such as Indya Moore with familiar faces like Kate Mara (plus wonderful Broadway ringers MJ Rodriguez and Billy Porter) found humanity in almost every character. In an age that hails the antihero, watching good things sometimes happen to the Pose regulars who deserve it feels almost revolutionary.
10. The Good Place NBC
The philosophical comedy spent part of its 2018 run in the afterlife, part of it in the real world, as Eleanor (Kristen Bell) and friends got one last shot at heaven. The earthbound episodes were a bit of a comedown compared with the delirious imagination of the stories in the Bad Place, but the show soon rediscovered its comic voice. Ted Danson remains a national treasure, and his co-stars aren’t far behind. The most ethically minded show on television is still one of the most hilarious.