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

Comedy rapper Lil Dicky parlayed his celebrity, skills and connections for a starring role in an FX niche signature specialty: the overly-personal, half-hour bio-comedy with elements of magical realism.

https://i.imgur.com/vL8vY3V.jpg
#69 - Dave (FX) - 16 points, 3 votes, 1 top 5 vote
Your Ten Favorite Shows Currently on Television

Trailer
Sample Clip
Sway in the Morning
Website
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/on-television/the-vulgarity-and-vulnerability-of-dave
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/02/arts/television/dave-lil-dicky.html
https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/may/26/lil-dicky-dave-burd-interview-sitcom-jewish-rapper

Sorry ILX, but I am never gonna watch a show starring Lil Dicky

your loss

everyone keeps telling me that it's a good show but yeah it's hard to get past the lil dicky of it all

the linked sway in the morning freestyle prob shouldve placed in 77 top tracks list (2019) also imo

Next up is the eighth official television spin-off of the Star Trek universe (The Orville notwithstanding) and the second to spotlight the beloved Next Generation Captain Jean-Luc Picard.

https://i.imgur.com/nL8lL1q.jpg
#68 - Star Trek: Picard (CBS All Access) - 18 points, 2 votes, 1 top 5 vote
NB: Top CBS All Access
Star Trek: Picard
There's a guy in my office wearing a Jean-Luc Picard Tie. What action should I take?

Trailer
Sample Clip
Website
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/arts/television/star-trek-picard-review.html

20020 was my #2. Unbelievable storytelling and synthesis of fact and speculative fiction. Boot it up on your phone and get scrolling. Jon Bois is the best

I'd call it less interactive fiction than...like...a website that's also...a story? That you scroll through at your own speed?

With video bits and visualisations?

Uh, I'm pretty certain that the Jon Bois thing has been on my 'read this when you've got a spare day' list for, like, multiple years?

Oh okay, never mind, it's the sequel to that, sorry.

I really should get around to watching more than a few episodes of BB at some point since Home Movies is an all-time classic.

Bob's Burgers is one of those shows that's never not enjoyable but also never really feels compulsory. My own feeling is that there's a vital spark in Dr. Katz and Home Movies which isn't really there. But maybe it's just that there's a shtick to Bouchard's work that I'm now on my third time seeing. Certainly the performances in BB are great.

I mean, just from my cursory viewing of BB it seems to be lacking the 'funny people just loosely riffing in the recording booth' vibe of the former two, but I could be wrong.

Ethan Hawke on reading The Good Lord Bird:

The magic trick that author James McBride does by telling the story through 14-year-old Onion's point of view is he lets you laugh about it. He writes the humanness into it, as opposed to kind of a political angle. It's not self-serious, and yet it's full of tremendous heart. ... McBride finds a way to make it a healing experience to look at systematic racism, the wit of his writing is so compelling. And so when I finished it, I just felt hellbent on a mission that getting this story into our culture so that it's easier to talk about some of these things.

https://i.imgur.com/V8KiBnW.jpg
#67 - The Good Lord Bird (HBO) - 18 points, 2 votes, 1 #1 vote, 1 top 5 vote
ethan hawke is john brown and daveed diggs is frederick douglass in the showtime miniseries THE GOOD LORD BIRD

Trailer
Sample Clip
Website
Desus and Mero Interview
https://time.com/5895308/good-lord-bird-showtime-review/

Our second back-to-back book-to-prestige-TV-miniseries adaptation is a too-of-the-moment alt-history Philip Roth novel imagining what 1940’s America would have become if Charles Lindbergh became president. Spoiler: it's fascist.

https://i.imgur.com/p3MirEE.jpg
#65 (Tie) - The Plot Against America (HBO) - 18 points, 3 votes
Philip Roth - Where to begin?
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
Tuturro, Ryder and Boyle discuss antisemitism and eugenics
Website
https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2020/03/plot-against-america-hbo-review

“the sic rule.” As your author is American, the listed provenance and linked website for each show is predominantly going to be for its streaming home in the United States,

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ tbf

Please specify primary network/streamer that it aired on.

― the serious avant-garde universalist right now (forksclovetofu), Friday, December 18, 2020 9:08 AM (one month ago)

loved the good lord bird and hawke's performance. that desus and mero interview is very enjoyable, thanks for linking it.

Last one for today; check out my dope finishing move off the top rope!

https://i.imgur.com/A1SFgSH.jpg
#65 (Tie) - AEW Dynamite (TBS) - 18 points, 3 votes, 1 top 5 vote
AEW 2020: Take Me Home Cody Rhodes

Trailer
Sample Clip
Website
https://www.theringer.com/2019/7/24/20708352/aew-wrestling-half-year-review-cody-rhodes
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/2836546-how-aew-was-born-inside-tony-khan-and-the-elites-attempt-to-disrupt-wrestling

We tried getting into Bob's Burgers after finishing Adventure Time and/or Steven Universe, so while Tina, Gene and Louise as axes for personality types is urgent and key, we were very "Is this still on? Seriously, 21 minutes, what is this?"

That’s all for Monday on an understandably quiet day, given the poll’s low numbers at the outset. We’ll be back tomorrow with a run up to #50 but, until then, I would love to hear defense and recommendations of these shows from their voters!

#65 (Tie) - AEW Dynamite (TBS) - 18 points, 3 votes, 1 top 5 vote
#65 (Tie) - The Plot Against America (HBO) - 18 points, 3 votes
#67 - The Good Lord Bird (HBO) - 18 points, 2 votes, 1 #1 vote, 1 top 5 vote
#68 - Star Trek: Picard (CBS All Access) - 18 points, 2 votes, 1 top 5 vote
#69 - Dave (FX) - 16 points, 3 votes, 1 top 5 vote
#70 - 20020 (SB Nation) - 16 points, 2 votes, 1 top 5 vote
#71 - Bob’s Burgers (FX) - 15 points, 3 votes
#72 (Tie) - Oxventure Dungeons and Dragons! (YouTube) - 15 points, 2 votes, 1 top 5 vote
#72 (Tie) - Seduced: Inside the NXIVM Cult (Starz) - 15 points, 2 votes, 1 top 5 vote
#72 (Tie) - Taskmaster (Channel 4) - 15 points, 2 votes, 1 top 5 vote
#72 (Tie) - Teenage Bounty Hunters (Netflix) - 15 points, 2 votes, 1 top 5 vote
#72 (Tie) - Videogame Dunkey (YouTube) - 15 points, 2 votes, 1 top 5 vote
#77 (Tie) - Bluey (Disney +) - 15 points, 1 vote, 1 #1 vote, 1 top 5 vote
#77 (Tie) - Followers (Netflix) - 15 points, 1 vote, 1 #1 vote, 1 top 5 vote
#77 (Tie) - She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (Netflix) - 15 points, 1 vote, 1 #1 vote, 1 top 5 vote
#77 (Tie) - The Umbrella Academy (Netflix) - 15 points, 1 vote, 1 #1 vote, 1 top 5 vote
#77 (Tie) - We Are Who We Are (HBO) - 15 points, 1 vote, 1 #1 vote, 1 top 5 vote

really wished i'd checked out Plot Against America, sounds like it's right in my wheelhouse.

:D at all the 1 vote, #1 vote ties

I wanted to see that too and was too slow on the draw--believe it played on Prime before I signed up...I'm catching up compared to five years ago, but wow, most of these shows are obscure to me. I'm think I'm just baby-steps removed from 1995.

I had Bob's Burgers pretty high and feel like it's a perfect TV show. it's been on forever and i feel like the quality has held steady; without having to resort to any current affairs or over the top zany new characters or humour that's not suited to the show. i'm kind of amazed they're still doing the same thing and still doing it so well – and as someone who enjoys edgier stuff, I really like their approach to pg-level humour.

xpost - Clem: I'm clearing out a few shows I never got to finish, but maybe we can synchronize our watching in a couple weeks?!

Sounds good, but I think they took it down, no?

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

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.