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

Thought at first that Queen's Gambit was just kinda boilerplate time-killing prestige tv with v good performances but not a lot of heft. It gradually won me over, though, partly on the level that forks delineates. It may be fantasy to an extent but it's engaging to watch high-level competitors ultimately demonstrating kindness and respect towards those they've been trying to savagely destroy.

Speaking of which, this recent NYT piece calls it ”the new nice television”: anti-cynical, reasonably low-stakes dramedy that presents good people being rewarded for their good efforts. That’s a little reductive when applied to Ted Lasso imo. It’s a program that absolutely looks insipid on first glance but, once you’ve knocked out the first episode, you’ll likely see its undercurrent of sadness and loss. For all the cookie-baking and “ding-dong-darn” homilies, Lasso is at heart about the bravery and strength required to meet real hardship and overcome it without irony or disassociation. That requires broad shoulders and a gentle touch, both of which Sudeikis has in spades.

https://i.imgur.com/5oBcp41.jpg
#6 - Ted Lasso (Apple +) - 150 points, 16 votes, 2 #1 votes, 8 top 5 votes
NB: Top Apple +
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

Trailer
Sample Clip
An American Coach in London (2013)
Website
https://www.theringer.com/tv/2020/8/14/21367994/ted-lasso-apple-tv-jason-sudeikis
https://ew.com/tv/tv-reviews/ted-lasso-on-apple-tv/
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/11/arts/television/ted-lasso-great-north-review.html

I just watched Ted Lasso and holy shit, what a show

It's basically "what if Parks and Recreation was a prestige drama"

Was going to say, contrary to the line of thought that suggested the Trump years would lead to a resurgence in gritty, no holds barred horror, the exact opposite thing seems to have happened, at least on TV.

Ted Lasso seems to have picked up the baton directly from Schitt's Creek only you didn't have to wade through like 3 seasons before it actually got really good.

ted lasso was.....fine

Surely when historians look back on this year, it will be remembered as the one in which Rick and Morty fever hit the dubious peak of "Rick and Morty but it's Star Trek."

This is entirely unfair to Lower Decks! I've said this before, but it's easily the Trekkiest of the new batch of Trek series.

I'm three episodes into Mandolorian, when does it get good?

As a Brit I was sceptical of Ted Lasso. I was convinced they'd mess up the nuances about British football culture, but they nailed it and gosh darn it, had one of the most interesting and nuanced characters in comedy in ages.

I think my thing re: 'nice' entertainment is that there was such a long stretch when the majority of our entertainment options were brainlessly 'nice', which was then followed by the slow encroachment of more cynical fare which served as a refreshing antidote, but we're now at a point where lots of things in the real world have just been shitty for a long time and so much of the entertainment landscape is similarly feel-bad (and, I think inarguably, has itself been instrumental in making aspects of the real world shittier). So, despite my perpetual gen-x-ian tendency to sneer at false sentiment and bland niceness, I'm increasingly drawn to depictions of like basic kindness and decency as an antidote to the oversaturation of casual cruelty and grim n' grit even in light entertainment.

Also, we're all getting older.

Also that.

Like (just to meander down this path a bit more) my gf watches all of the bleak crime dramas that come down the pike and some of the shit I see in those things...my god. I'm a huge horror fan and I'll occasionally be walking through the room and will feel compelled to mention that some scene or another was as needlessly, ott graphic as anything I've seen in a horror flick. And this is just run-of-the-mill mainstream entertainment these days. So yes, the shows that are making an effort to move in the completely opposite direction are very welcome imo.

Which is to say: will check out this Ted Lasso chap!

My favourite thing about The Queen's Gambit was the strong implication at the series' end that she was about to defect to the Soviets.

James Poniewozik said something similar about Ted Lasso:

All it took to get me to appreciate “Ted Lasso” was an assault on American democracy.

Plenty of fans and fellow critics had recommended the comedy, based on an NBC Sports promo sketch, about a good-hearted, optimistic Kansas football coach (Jason Sudeikis) who moves to London to manage a soccer team. When its first season arrived on Apple TV+ last summer, I found its early episodes chuckle-worthy, but nothing compelling. It was … sweet, I guess? Nice? Eh. I moved on.

Cut to January. A mob attacked the U.S. Capitol, the MyPillow guy was walking into the White House with notes about martial law, and the once-rote transfer of power became a white-knuckle ride. On Jan. 20, I spent a day writing about the uneasy TV coverage of the inauguration, then a night reviewing the prime-time inauguration special, its notes of hope cut with minor-key reminders of strife and pandemic.

Too wound up to sleep, I needed an antidote for all those days of cable-news doom-watching. I decided to give “Ted Lasso” another shot.

It was … sweet. It was nice. And God, did I need that.

the trailer for ted lasso is so bad that i'm never gonna watch the show. unless i missed that the journalist at the presser was meant to be american( i thought he had an english accent) he would never say 'tie'.

lol i said all i had to say about Ted Lasso above

i mean maybe nicecore isn't just what i look for in TV considering the shows i've watched the most during the pandemic are Seinfeld and Gossip Girl, which are the opposite end of these yay human decency shows

Both have their place, but I can definitely see how the real world has veered so perilously far into boo human cruelty territory that I begrudge no one for overpraising stuff like this.

I don't require TV to be Jean Renoir.

I found Ted Lasso legit inspiring in how it dealt with people's reactions to terrible shit in their lives/relationships

The journalist at the presser is the excellent James Lance who turns out to be the football equivalent of Ratatouille's Anton Ego.

I saw better television this year but nothing ever got me as viscerally excited as a new episode of The Last Dance. Yes, MJ’s involvement somewhat skews the series’ ability to dig too deeply and sure, if you don’t care about basketball (or even just this era of basketball), there may not be much for you here. But I am a basketball fan who grew up in the eighties and nineties in the south before the Grizzlies moved to Memphis so I watched basketball on WGN, the only cable channel we got that regularly carried games. Even now the hairs on the back of my neck stand up when I hear Alan Parsons Project's “Sirius” and Ray Clay’s frenzied growl of “ANNNNNNND NOW! FROM NORTH... CARRRRRROLINA...” so, in many ways, this show was the acme of my 2020.

https://i.imgur.com/OZNJSQx.jpg
#5 - The Last Dance (ESPN, Netflix) - 161 points,16 votes, 2 #1 votes, 10 top 5 votes
NB: Top ESPN,Top Netflix, Top Documentary, Top Sports
The Last Dance: In Praise of One Lone Gold Hoop Earring

Trailer
Game 6
and he took that personal
ANNNND NOW!
Website
https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/28973557/the-last-dance-updates-untold-story-michael-jordan-chicago-bulls
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2020/may/09/the-last-dance-michael-jordan-netflix

#GiveBritneyTenHours

last dance was good tv and a better sports/media moment. nothing revelatory, and i'll likely never watch it again, but it was an easy vote.

while we (or at least I still am) are talking about "nice" TV shows, what i keep coming back to is that How To with John Wilson, a show that i think belongs to the aforementioned category, and how i loved it so much, i keep on trying to articulate why i loved it so much despite my growing annoyance at these type of TV shows and i'm honestly at a loss - is it because it's non-fiction? idk

the best moments for me were probably the highlight sequences that paired jordan highlights with era-appropriate hip-hop. it's a standard thing to do now, but hip-hop and the nba were far less intertwined during jordan's era. jordan himself was dismissive of hip-hop, and preferred adult-contempo r&b (one of my favorite, one of the most-memed, moments of the series comes when he's bopping along to the new kenny lattimore album)

the nyt had a good piece about jordan and the nba's evolving relationship with hip-hop: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/03/arts/music/michael-jordan-last-dance-soundtrack.html

looks like we have a deserving top 4, all of which i voted for in my top 5 lol

I only have one bat left in this fight but it'd best make the top 3

bat-er call saul

i bat destroy you

I've only got one left, and it's the obvious one. No idea what the others will be.

last dance was good tv and a better sports/media moment. nothing revelatory, and i'll likely never watch it again, but it was an easy vote.

― tiwa-nty one savage (voodoo chili), Tuesday, February 16, 2021 11:33 AM (ten minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

one of the few sports things i was able to get my wife to get into with me. and my bro who hates sports.

yeah i know a lot of non-sports fans who loved it. jordan & the bulls were the kind of all-consuming cultural force that's rare in any realm, let alone sports.

I actually forgot that I, at the last minute, swapped my #1 vote from Pen15 to what I'm now hoping is the actual #1...

As long as we’re talking basketball, i think you could reasonably argue that Jordan (or Lebron these days) likely deserved to win MVP every year he played. But people get tired of excellence and want to share the wealth. With that in mind, I would suggest that Better Call Saul has been television’s MVP for the past five years, consistently presenting prestige programming’s best ensemble ably and honestly fumbling in the most harrowing situations imaginable.

Two things I know to be true: season five of Breaking Bad was about as good as the show’s ever been and Rhea Seehorn deserves a goddamn Emmy.

https://i.imgur.com/AAUdTVJ.jpg
#4 - Better Call Saul (AMC) - 190 points, 16 votes, 3 #1 votes, 15 top 5 votes
NB: Top AMC
Better Call Saul

Trailer
Sample Clip
Netflix (s5 on the way)
Website
https://www.reddit.com/r/betterCallSaul/
https://ew.com/tv-reviews/2020/02/17/better-call-saul-season-5-review/
https://www.vulture.com/2020/02/better-call-saul-season-5-review.html

the emmys' ignorance of rhea seehorn is the latest disgrace to add to the pile. i know the emmys are terrible, but even those terrible voters manage to recognize odenkirk and banks every year, and as good as they are, seehorn is much better.

Only one of mine left to place 🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻 i have to work this evening so checking in hoping not to see it every time

don’t think Saul even got a major Emmy nom last year outside of best drama! xp

https://www.cheatsheet.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/AbominableBuddha.jpg

Yeah, my son was watching an animated movie that had a pivotal scene set at that statue.

don’t think Saul even got a major Emmy nom last year outside of best drama! xp

― Clay, Tuesday, February 16, 2021 1:58 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

damn, you're right, banks and odenkirk didn't get noms. esposito did, though.

So I have this weird thing where I've never had any interest whatsoever in sports (watching, playing, talking about, etc.) but I realized at some point that I find sports documentaries deeply compelling (Hoop Dreams is one of my favorite movies, own and have watched a bunch of 30 for 30s, etc.). I think maybe I just need to have it sculpted into a narrative in order for it to click for me. Looking forward to watching The Last Dance at some point, particularly after seeing it place this high (which suggests that it transcends its moment in providing 'well fuck I guess we're gonna be stuck inside our homes for a long time' succor at the beginning of the pandemic).

Top sportspeople are fascinating subjects imo

When I first came to New York City in 2000, I couch-crashed in Chelsea and would sometimes wake up early to explore what the place looked like in the AM. One Tuesday at 5 in the morning, I found a guerrilla photo shoot going on at the intersection of 7th avenue and 10th street with a drag performer sprawled lasciviously over a four foot tall mound of auto tires. That’s the kind of New York that John Wilson captures best and that continuously resonated for me in watching How To, the unlikely and unconsidered and barely glimpsed city. If all Wilson did was shine a spotlight there, his show would have already earned its place in last year’s best television, but that’s only the beginning. Each episode was packed with unlikely connections and amazing oddballs, held together by a shockingly structured agenda that he only reveals deliberately slowly. Wilson didn’t create experimental television or the video collage essay format but what he’s doing here seems entirely sui generis and important. It’s a kind of genius, a filmic kismet.

https://i.imgur.com/PEpniTo.jpg
#3 - How To with John Wilson (HBO) - 203 points, 16 votes, 5 #1 votes, 14 top 5 votes
How To with John Wilson

Trailer
The Importance of Diversifying Your Brand
Mama
Foreskin for the Win
John’s Movies
Website
https://www.theringer.com/tv/2020/11/30/21725673/how-to-with-john-wilson-finale-recap-2020
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/on-television/hbos-how-to-with-john-wilson-captures-the-weird-wondrous-new-york-city-thats-never-on-tv
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/02/arts/television/john-wilson-scaffolding-hbo.html

Rhea Seehorn has most definitely been robbed over and over. The Kim reveal towards the end of this last season was just masterfully done, stripping away so much of what I thought I knew about the character but in a way that was completely consistent with everything that had come before. The show is just as much about her arc as it is about Jimmy's imo.

how have i not heard of this, it looks great, although it also looks like something i will seethe with jealousy that i didn't do myself lol

love How To so much, so glad it got renewed