ILX’s Top 77 Television and Streaming Video Series of 2020

plot against america is worthwhile, i was one of the voters;

i'm a big roth fan but him doing alternative history did not grab me when i tried the novel ten or so yrs ago, maybe i'd be more into it now; the miniseries felt p tone perfect in establishing that era and the fear and powerlessness of sociopolitical occurrances/movements

i enjoyed Man in the High Castle and feel like it might be along those lines?

Clem - if they did, I'll find it elsewhere and can share with you, if you like.

I was the other Oxventure vote. Learned about the show from the 2019 list. Lots of fun.

Aw, nice! Have you watched their new Blades in the Dark campaigns? The first has been the only one with the whole group (the subsequent ones have featured only two players), but Mike's role-playing for Barnaby has been exquisite.

xpost, Blades in the Dark goes to the top of the need to watch list...

add me to the "Dave is actually good, I promise" chorus

Nothing I voted for has showed up yet. Have a feeling most of my ballot will be high consensus picks, and the other two or three won't make the list

Seen enough of two of these to know they aint for me (disclosure they were annoying and bad) but ill check out the plot against america

I was the one voter for We Are Who We Are, so was glad I submitted a ballot. I liked that it meandered and was open-ended and mostly plotless, it seemed fitting for the two teenage characters it followed, bonding over realizing they were both queer and dealing with the resulting alienation

I also like that the first character it focuses on, played by Jack Dylan Grazer, is strange and sulky and kind of off-putting, and his counterpoint, Jordan Kristine Seamón is the opposite

OK so as noted in the noms thread Idve voted for Umbrella Academy and prob in top 5, so it would have been way up the list could I have done so :( oh well.

I've only now seen Seduced, mightve voted for it too, its pretty full on.

with we are who we are: the immensely fucked up relationships of Sevigny and everyone in her sphere got downright comical eventually

she was completely in charge as a commander but such a mess as a mother and wife, it was interesting

Given Followers was my strategic number 1, put in so other people should take notice, I should out myself. This is a really interesting show about women on different stages of the fame/hype cycle and more fundamentally about what it is to be a woman in Japan today. It's a really great piece of social commentary. It's also really beautifully shot, the use of colour is really good with the saturation and intensity rising with the character's fortunes and then washing out as they fall. It makes Tokyo look so good.

xp
the bit where jack slaps his mother around and then kinda fake nurses her was very uh.
and the very corny and tone deaf seduction of kid cudi's wife by the military doctor.
and OF COURSE the extremely wrong attempt by the thirtysomething to initiate a threesome with a fifteen year old.
lots of weird shit in that show. i wish it was attempted with a less gauzy softcore eye... or maybe just not done at all?
Still not sure if many of the choices in that show are camp or self consciously perverse or just utterly tone deaf.

yes to all of those points, there was a lot of questionable stuff along the way

the teenagers ultimately had insight and made the right choices, though

I don't feel like I see many tv show that are very interesting. this was interesting I thought, despite being self-consciously perverse

i thought the first three, maybe four episodes did a good job of keeping me in but i think right around the wedding party the show took a hard turn and lost me

like the wedding party almost worked but not quite? and everything after that started feeling more and more removed from wherever the story was going before and getting more interested in shipping the characters like the director was playing with his barbies.

I was reminded of Transparent, which was a show where not much happened except real life, and I was always surprised by how at the beginning of each episode I never could imagine where it was going to end up

maybe a fair comparison as transparent also lost me at a certain point! I'm big on maintaining a narrative thread, otherwise it's free verse.

hbo seems really invested in having at least one teenagers-who-are-fucking show in rotation at any given moment and i think this was that. among the next up:
https://deadline.com/2019/12/hbo-max-orders-lena-dunham-produced-generation-to-series-1202801586/
(tangentially, dunham has not had much luck as a producer lately)

btw if you liked this show I strongly recommend Mercier as a kid from Israel who wants to become Parisian in Synonyms, where he does some outrageously good acting. Tons of full frontal nudity from him too if that's your thing.

Obit for S. Clay Wilson: http://www.tcj.com/s-clay-wilson-the-most-influential-artist-of-his-generation/

rong thread, sorry!

Taskmaster was very good this season. Daisy May Cooper in the live words task is probably the most I laughed at TV last year.

A bit predictable, heavy on network sitcom formula and lacking some of the acid and cleverness that made Always Sunny a must-watch, I found Mythic Quest nonetheless to be a pleasant enough low-commitment binge-watch that offered the promise of a more interesting second season now that all the characters and rulesets are fully defined.

https://i.imgur.com/mp7b0de.jpg
#64 - Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet (Apple +) - 18 points, 5 votes
But Is It on Netflix? - Streaming Video Service Thread: Hulu, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Disney+, Peacock, YouTube TV, AT+T Watch, Philo, Playstation Vue, HBO Max, HBO Now, Facebook Live and many more

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https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/mythic-quest-ravens-banquet-1276341

The main arguments for buying into Netflix's hour-long good-family-gone-bad-drama Ozark are a stellar cast and a defined arc that ends in the coming year. The arguments against are its knottiness and bleak worldview.

https://i.imgur.com/SL9Vxsw.jpg
#62 (Tie) - Ozark (Netflix) - 19 points, 4 votes, 1 top 5 vote
Ozark

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https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/03/ozark-season-3-review

We had terrible trouble trying to get Mythic Quest because the Apple TV kept trying to stream the 4k version, no matter how many times we told it not to do that. Bloody Apple.

And then when it did work, it wasn't as good as it would've needed to be to overcome that initial annoyance. So I dislike it out of all proportion to its actual flaws as a programme.

The very definition of prestige television: REO Speedwagon.

only seen the first couple of episodes but ozark has to have the dullest aesthetic of any show i’ve seen. everything is drab muted blues, and that lack of visual spark hurts even more when you compare the show to breaking bad, its obvious inspiration

I haven't even sampled Ozark because, yeah, it seems like Breaking Bad Redux minus any sense of fun its antecedent had. Which I don't really need. Am I far off the mark?

The criticisms of it being visually uninteresting and wearing its BB influence on its sleeve definitely hold water and the pilot episode is offputtingly rotten, but the story and characters are increasingly compelling as the series progresses (esp Ruth).

And it's a lot more fun that its colour palette would suggest!

it seems like Breaking Bad Redux minus any sense of fun its antecedent had

Art, it isn't, but I think it's so junky, fun is the one thing it has going for it.

The cancellation of High Fidelity after one season caused a fair amount of social media tutting but it was hard not to notice that most of the complaints concerned the quick introduction and removal of a reboot headlined by a woman of color (a valid concern!) and not the lost quality of the program. Will our four voters (especially the top five voter) please let us know what the rest of us are missing?

https://i.imgur.com/UlUtqsp.jpg
#62 (Tie) - High Fidelity (Hulu) - 19 points, 4 votes, 1 top 5 vote
STUFF ON HULU

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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/arts/television/review-high-fidelity-zoe-kravitz.html

sepinwall loved it *shrug*

haven’t seen

xxxxpost Eh, junkiness is just as much a turnoff. I assumed if anything it took itself way too seriously. I watch more than enough junk already.

And I promise that I know what the word 'antecedent' means and that I used it completely wrong. I promise.

We must be near maximum true crime media saturation at this point but at least two of us found room in our heart for this portrait of a director investigating the death of his mother. No spoilers, but tell us more?

https://i.imgur.com/R91b9Tb.jpg
#60 (Tie) - Murder on Middle Beach (HBO) - 20 points, 2 votes, 1 top 5 vote
Police Line Do (Not) Cross: True Crime TV & Podcasts

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https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a34865015/madison-hamburg-father-now-case-murder-on-middle-beach-finale/

Haven't seen HF as thought the consensus was that it was rubbish so surprised to see it get 4 votes here - is it worth seeking out then?

Kipo is a post-apocalyptic Dreamworks fantasy anime for kids with a bright palette and a liberal social agenda. It contains the following linked musical collaboration with the GZA and John Hodgman, which should give you a sense of the intended audience.

https://i.imgur.com/pyw1U5l.jpg
#60 (Tie) - Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts (Netflix) - 20 points, 2 votes, 1 top 5 vote
Netflix Watch Instantly Recommendation Thread

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https://www.polygon.com/animation-cartoons/2020/10/12/21509753/kipo-and-the-age-of-wonderbeasts-season-3-netflix-release-review
https://collider.com/kipo-season-4-cancelled-rad-sechris-bill-wolkoff-interview/

GeoWizard is a YouTuber who assiduously documents his long-distance journeys on rigorously arbitrary straight-line and alternate-travel pathways across Europe and the UK. He has two fairly avid fans here who may want to tell us more about what makes this must-see stuff.

https://i.imgur.com/iKpNaxp.jpg
#59 - GeoWizard Missions (YouTube) - 20 points, 2 votes, 2 top 5 votes
thread of youtubers whomst are not terrible

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https://www.reddit.com/r/GeoWizard/

In retrospect I'm not sure why I didn't have Bob's Burgers on my ballot.