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

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

will revisit BCS when someone edits out all the mike and gus stuff. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Hahah, I meant my seemingly random post for the terrifying statue thread. Have no idea how it ended up here.

my number 1, unlike anything I’ve ever seen on television. The cross-section of the banal and the avant-garde is immaculate, but also maintains an overwhelming decency. The last episode deserves a Pulitzer.

Shocked How To didn't come #1. I have been watching it off and on, and even though it's not exactly my thing, there is no denying it's a miraculous exemplar of the thing that it is. Cosign "unlike anything I’ve ever seen on television." It wasn't MY #1 but would have been a deserving #1.

The key to really enjoying What We Do in the Shadows is the realization that the show is secretly about Guillermo’s journey. All four of the show’s excellently-performed lead vampires are murderous and unchanging buffoons, so (Jackie Daytona aside) there’s only so much character development to be done there. On the other hand, Guillermo de la Cruz’s arc from schlubby vampire personal assistant to unwilling badass vampire hunter is tremendous fun to watch develop. Season two completely embraced Guillermo as a protagonist and sets the stage for an inevitable confrontation with the Staten Island clan.

https://i.imgur.com/Bx1nYAR.jpg
#2 - What We Do in the Shadows (FX) - 215 points, 24 votes, 14 top 5 votes
NB: Most Votes, Top FX, Top Comedy
What We Do in the Shadows (TV) main character POLL

Trailer
Jackie Daytona
Guillermo Van Helsing
Website
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/04/what-we-do-in-the-shadows-tv-review-season-2
https://www.indiewire.com/2020/04/what-we-do-in-the-shadows-season-2-review-1202225160/
https://www.vulture.com/article/guillermo-what-we-do-in-the-shadows-harvey-guillen.html

too low lol

in which a couple of New Zealanders assemble the funniest sitcom cast and write them the funniest sitcom

Despite the fact that it's rightly beloved on ILX, I'm pretty dumbfounded to realize that That One Show (bat!) is going to show up in the top two (and maybe even win?).

lol xpost

this show is stunningly hilarious, and season 2 was up another notch from the also-great season 1

i'd like to think the discussion went

'we are only doing this if we can have him, and him, and her, and him, and him' and then they went out and got them, the best casting ever

I really enjoyed What We Do in the Shadows and found myself more moved to watch all of it than I did How To, and yet I can't say it's BETTER than How To. It's really a lot like Schitt's Creek; quirky characters who are superficially types out of place but who over time develop into individual characters who we come to see as exactly where they should be. Warm, easy to watch, goes for the easy joke sometimes but one finds it hard to blame it.

just remembered the "greetings owl" sign the gang created in the super bowl episode and started cackling to myself

i was gonna ask btw, how does How To compare to AGNB?

shocked that The Flight Attendant and Industry were completely shut out - mind you, never seen the former and only seen two eps of the latter but they got a fair amount of "buzz" in my online corners

Another praiseworthy aspect of this show is that, like the Onion, you find yourself saying "I can't believe they're still wringing jokes out of this seemingly limited schtick" but they do and it stays funny. (At least, this was true of the Onion for the first 20 years, maybe less so now.)

Sell me on What We Do in the Shadows. A comedy about vampires from one of the Flight of the Conchords guys isn't doing it for me.

It's really funny?

(NB, I have never watched any Flight of the Conchords or really much other Watiti stuff at all.)