Top 77 Television and Streaming Video Series of 2019

Sometimes kid content is great on its own terms. I'm going to be voting (quite high) for the latest Shaun The Sheep in our movie poll for example

Would be nice if a few fans of these shows turned up and talked about why they like them though. Do your job ILX!

(I don't have kids. I am a kid.)

Paw Patrol's gotten pretty repetitive in its later seasons which is why I didn't vote for it

dang this is going fast

totally forgot about the new veronica mars episodes, gotta check those out.

i watched and guiltily enjoyed all seasons of bosch but couldn't bring myself to vote for it since i had no memory of what the most recent season was

Paw Patrol With Five Little Buses Pregnant Elsa Scares Pikachu

would you say it's in... TURBO MODE

To Be Filed Under: Oh How the Mighty Have Fallen

https://i.imgur.com/g7PqUe7.jpg
#48 (Tie) - Game of Thrones (HBO) - 30 points, 4 votes

HBO's adaptation of Game of Thrones - Thread 2. There are a lot of nerds.

Game of Thrones on HBO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlR4PJn8b8I

I'm still waiting for a single one of my poll selections to show up! I gather at this point that I must like shows that are either very popular or universally hated.

Paw Patrol With Five Little Buses Pregnant Elsa Scares Pikachu

these vids are thankfully mostly gone from YouTube but still when you search "Paw Patrol" the first few results are not of the show but rather of grown-ass men playing with Paw Patrol stuffed animals. they have like 50 million views each.

Sometimes kid content is great on its own terms.

I love Horrible Histories, better than GOT tbh

https://i.imgur.com/F4Egnij.jpg
#46 (Tie) - Stath Lets Flats (Channel 4) - 33 points, 4 votes

Rolling UK Comedy Thread - "Ricky Don't Lose Larry David's Number

Stath Lets Flats on Channel 4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yOc_2z34CUc

There's my #1. Jamie Demetriou has saved British comedy

It's covered in...brack

So far 2 things I've watched and 0 that I voted for.

Obviously you don't have to be a Londoner of Greek Cypriot extraction to love this, but everything - the gleeful nonsense dialogue, the pinpoint characterisation, the mounting physical absurdity - is both reminiscent of the absolute heights of UK sitcoms past and something rather syncretic and new. It feels absolutely attuned to the cultural backgrounds of all of its characters while allowing them to stretch out and be wonderfully idiosyncratic. Above all, it's hilarious. S1 was great but S2 is a masterpiece and will take less than 3 hours of your time to devour. Do so if you've ever giggled at Alan Partridge or Fawlty Towers.

https://i.imgur.com/rJXHdiq.jpg
#46 (Tie) - Kingdom (Netflix) - 33 points, 4 votes

Netflix Watch Instantly Recommendation Thread

Kingdom on Netflix

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4l-yByZpaaM

Two of my four votes, 63 Up and Kingdom, have already placed. Gonna privilege my own taste here and say they're this low because they weren't widely seen. 63 Up, in particular, is the best thing about death and its approach I've seen this year and maybe ever. (Kingdom, of course, is also about death but in a very different way....)

Kingdom: I really like zombie stuff and have watched a lot of such shows, many of which take the form "it's zombies + [genre x]" but "zombies + court intrigue" is the best such combo I've seen.

Checking from my phone but hope that’s not a remake of LvT’s Kingdom.

Stath Lets Flats is so wonderfully observed that you are almost instantly invested in the lives of each character. It also has the best uses for absurdity in contemporary UK TV. Everyone should watch it now.

It also has the best uses for absurdity in contemporary UK TV.

tbf we are currently watching something else that will place later, and which runs it pretty close in this regard (and would have done for my #1 slot too if I'd seen it a week earlier)

but yeah

https://i.imgur.com/aatf5mI.jpg
#45 - The Good Place (NBC) - 35 points, 5 votes

The Good Place on NBC

The Good Place on Hulu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bnq6IRgt4yE

too low!

Man, if we'd done this poll last year

I mean, final season was still good I guess, but...the wheels were idling a bit

Still haven't watched the final episode for some reason

oh, i guess most of this would've been the beginning of s4

even a weak season of TGP should still be higher

As I say, last year it would have been unthinkable to not put it in my top ten but this time I couldn't even be bothered to vote for it. I wonder what changed. Maybe I did, man

GOT too high!

Dragon Prince keeps getting better, it's not quite as good as Avatar or Korra at their best but this last season did some challenging things that the other two shows haven't.

yeah, fess up GOT voters

Kingdom: I really like zombie stuff and have watched a lot of such shows, many of which take the form "it's zombies + [genre x]" but "zombies + court intrigue" is the best such combo I've seen.

zombies + court intrigue + hats is an even better combo

I kind of miss the MMA series by the same name

Someone should make a show called Kingdom that mashes up all preceding shows called Kingdom

I am down so long as every episode ends with someone giving birth to Udo Kier.

couldn't possibly bring myself to vote for Game of Thrones, which imo was not only one of the most disappointing shows i've ever seen but in the final seasons one of the most inept, despite the considerable production values and impressive visuals. the first several seasons took place in a deeply lived-in world, it was cleverly and almost remorselessly plotted, it was very sharp and frightening, and it had a key characteristic it lost in later seasons: the characters were generally smart and behaved in logical ways, even if their choices were ultimately wrong or tragic. that was all thrown over once they went off book, in favor of the lead-up to what was basically an amateurishly done version of Avengers: Endgame, minus the earned pathos and tragedy and crafty structure and good jokes. i mean it was a show that was a huge success and nonetheless poor enough that it cost Benioff and Weiss future jobs because they clearly had no idea how to finish the story. i wasn't bored exactly but it was fantasy on the level of In the Name of the King, with better FX and better actors and grandfathered-in goodwill from previous (distantly previous) seasons.

https://i.imgur.com/GFIEwzg.jpg
#44 - Silicon Valley (HBO) - 38 points, 5 votes

Mike Judge's "Silicon Valley" (HBO Show)

Silicon Valley on HBO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYHp-5h1y5o

I voted for Game of Thrones. The last season was so flawed and aggravating (in a bad way). However, there were some good parts. And honestly, the social media moment that was everyone watching that epic battle episode that was too dark and comparing their tv setups and trying to "fix it so they can see better" and/or complaining -- was actually this sociologically amazing thing! .. .

Here's another show that fell off without it being easy to see why. Latest season opener wasn't so bad I guess. Just don't really look forward to it as much. Sad how great shows often burn out

I maybe should have voted for The Good Place. I certainly made a point of watching it and as a whole it's one of the best series in years, certainly the best traditional network show. But I was rating purely on 2019 and the first half of S4 was the weakest material they've done. If I'd voted in 10 shows I would have included it, and 2019 Bojack too, but both were sufficiently off their peak to kick them out of the top four (and both at least partially returned to form in their 2020 concluding episodes!)

As I won the first two (as-yet-unwatched) seasons of GoT, how many more would I be advised to snap up before pretending that the show was tragically and prematurely cancelled?

won = own

you're safe through the end of season 4, it's exceptionally good up to that point.

seasons 5-8 have their moments and standalone episodes which are thrilling but what's interesting i guess is that the best episodes from the latter half of the show's run are the ones which are largely single-location, without a lot of heavy plotting. the battle episodes, basically.

last season of GOT was no worse than previous few seasons, in some ways it was actually better. I think the real problem was one of expectations, also there was a very very vocal contingent who were against their favourite character's heel turn, their views should be discounted entirely. I would suggest you swatch s1-s4 but you'll most likely want to watch the rest after that, and why not? it's an ok show.

The new Veronica Mars -- well, I'm super-glad it existed because these are characters I'm always motivated to spend time with. Halfway through the season I would have rated it highly. Felt it didn't wrap up the plot threads with the satisfying, startling neatness I have come to expect from VM. Would have been in my top 10 for sure.

Like for years I resisted the entreaties to watch GoT because, post-L O S T, my tendency wrt these epic televisual endeavors is to wait until the bow has been tied to see if the gift box contains a steaming turd. Which, based on most of the post-finale responses I've heard, seems to have been a wise choice in this case. I'd probably have much fonder feelings about L O S T if I'd waited to have someone tell me 'just pretend that the final season doesn't exist and you'll have fun'.

i watched and guiltily enjoyed all seasons of bosch but couldn't bring myself to vote for it since i had no memory of what the most recent season was

most recent season did plenty of extra-textual fanservice!! idk, maybe I'm that much of a nerd, but I suspect Ms. Veg is also with me on this. Opie from Sons of Anarchy as a biker PI, J. Edgar doing surveillance on scumbags and then meeting them in a club -- which made me yell, "Dudes, you know that is Marlo, right? You don't fuck with that guy. You will end up skeletal in a boarded-up vacant!"

the heel turn was perfectly fine, it just betrayed everything that the character had shown and happened so abruptly that it was clear they had no real idea of how to arrive at that heel turn in a manner that made sense. also the problem w/that twist and many other big moments was that it was all vv predictable, i've never seen a show which was so accurately forecasted by so many people. vs that big thing from the end of season 3, which was both completely logical and yet unpredictable if you hadn't read the novels.

every time Jay Edgar plays golf in Bosch feels like Wire fanservice to me tho