I watch way too much TV sometimes binge-watching a show all the way through the night. Thanks to the blessing and curse of a multitude of streaming options there is always a wealth of content.
The rules of what gets into each monthly list are simple. It needs to be a TV show, limited or otherwise, any particular season and I have to have finished watching it in the month. This does mean for shows that are doing weekly releases I may have started watching some time ago.
Warning: I make no guarantee this is spoiler free, it almost certainly isn’t.
The List
The list of shows ranked for June 2023 (and effectively May since half of it was spent in Alaska) are: –
The idea is to rank what I’ve watched per month and then do some sort of ranking at the end of the year.
Succession
I watched Succession series one while I was on a cruise. I tend not to be a late-night social event person so I would end my day by watching an episode or binge a few when I hit a few sea days towards the end of the cruise. I really enjoyed it so binged the remaining available seasons when I got back.
I don’t normally say this about TV shows as I consider them fictional constructs that I don’t readily transfer to real life – but I do think I have a dysfunctional relationship with Succession. You’re essentially watching a show about trauma, abuse, damaged people and, to put it bluntly, people who are not very nice. This makes it a strange watch, even a show like Breaking Bad feels very different to Succession.
Succession series four is very good because it’s the conclusion if this was just another series of the show I’d probably be talking about it going passed its welcome which I felt a bit about series three. How often can these things go on with the various characters being outmanoeuvred at the end? Since it was it’s last I could happily watch it and be totally engaged by it with some really stand-out episodes that represent some of the best writing on TV.
The funny thing about the finale of Succession is how it parallels Game of Thrones in some of the post-season commentary. The ‘children’ were on the edge of getting everything they wanted and then in the final moments, Shiv brings it all crashing down. Apparently, some people were disappointed because they saw Shiv as ‘the good one’ of the three. I find this fascinating as it speaks to audiences naturally finding altruistic and caring attitudes in female characters that literally are not there (the same happened with Daenerys Targaryen). Shiv, like both her brothers, is an appalling human being yet people were shocked by her bringing down the three in the final moments.
Always fascinating.
Silo
I was dubious about Silo. It sounded like one of those shows that would set up a load of conspiratorial questions and then never suitably answer any of them. I was glad this wasn’t the case. Silo is brilliant it kept me enthralled with the characters, the setting and the mystery and is another phenomenal show for Apple.
I never got bored with any of the episodes and it was a show that worked on a weekly release. I was always engaged right to the end and the ending itself was also worth it going in a direction I wasn’t expecting. While the nature of Silo means she won’t get a nomination, Rebecca Fergusson deserves an Emmy nod for her performance in Silo. It is understated but is continuously magnetic.
Silo is a grand premise science fiction show that delivers and never forgets its focus should be on the characters, not the setting or the mystery which are just methods to take the characters forward.
It’s got a series two and I am looking forward to it.
Ted Lasso
Was Ted Lasso series three a letdown? Apparently, a lot of people waxing lyrical about it on the Internet think so. Was it not as well-written as series one and two? I can see how that is true to a degree. I don’t think it was badly written as such I just think some of the choices it made in what it spent its time on were a bit odd. If is diminished in its writing it is a problem of structure and focus.
The biggest example is some of the stuff they choose to focus on while not giving Nate’s return to the folder the time, attention and scenes it needed to be as powerful as his betrayal.
Despite being able to agree with some of the complaints I found Ted Lasso series three an emotional wrecking ball all the way through. I literally cried numerous times throughout the run of series three and thoroughly enjoyed it.
I think it is the series I enjoyed the most out of all three of them.
12 Monkeys
12 Monkeys is an old TV show that I wouldn’t have even bothered to watch if the showrunner, Terry Matalis, hadn’t been behind Star Trek: Picard series three. Its first season was released back in 2015 but the first season, since I’ve not watched any more at this point, is a slice of television everyone should watch.
I can go on about how you should watch it because of the characters, story and the fact it’s the most enthralling and meticulously constructed time travel TV series that has ever been put to screen. It never misses a beat and gets it all right. At least as far I’ve watched.
I actually want to concentrate on something else. You should watch 12 Monkeys if you’re remotely interested in TV production and the challenges it faces today because this shows exemplifies how it used to be done versus what is probably a model that cannot be sustained today.
12 Monkeys series one is not an expensive show. The genius is if you step back you realise this but while watching it you don’t care. The shows is filmed in everyday contemporary locations. The future parts of the shows are filmed either in desolate real-world locations that involve little, if any, special effects or a single set featuring the time machine which is where the money has been spent. The key thing is that one standing set with the time machine can be amortised over the entire series run.
You don’t care that, by modern standards, this is cost-cutting and cheap because the characters are good, the story is good, the effort has been put in to break the story down in detail and it remains focused on a series of core themes.
Do we make sacrifices to save billions or individuals? Is what will save humanity in the future or the past? What are you willing to do if your actions are wiped out on success?
The protagonists are constantly challenged to ask themselves the answers to these questions in the choices they make. This elevates the material as that is where the story is at. The events and what happens are the plot, the truth of the story is in characters searching for answers to such questions and 12 Monkeys nails it.
This is what a lot of modern TV shows are missing, especially as they crank them out on streaming, we have banal plots, but no real story, we get money thrown into projects yet they feel hollow and we get writers who don’t have the experience to write to the exam question or how to break down and construct a show cost-effectively.
Will I keep watching 12 Monkeys passed series one? It’s under debate, I’m a number of episodes in and while what is happening in series two was telegraphed in series one, I care considerably less about things now the series has ‘opened up’.
Black Mirror
As it ages into season six Black Mirror isn’t what it used to be. It still has interesting stories each season but with each season the stories have less impact and aren’t as on the nose. This season is the one with the last profound episodes in its batch. They may be great, but they’re less a mirror to the darker elements of us as human beings than they used to be.
I feel once it hit Netflix Black Mirror transitioned from being a harsh and brutal commentary on the dark mirror of ourselves to something more like The Twilight Zone.
The episode that had the most to say was Joan is Awful. I’m surprised Netflix even commissioned that as the show is literally trolling streaming services and the wish to use AI more in content production. The episode is fantastic from beginning to end and goes in all sorts of interesting ways that does make you think about the future.
The rest of the episodes fall into that Twilight Zone feel, which isn’t a bad thing but feels less like the original Black Mirror with each passing season. I enjoyed four of the five episodes while one of them just didn’t really connect with me.
I tend to view Black Mirror as a bundle of individual stories and as long as one of them is interesting and really delivers the show as a whole is worth continuing to exist. I’m sure Netflix metrics don’t come to the same conclusion.
Yellowjackets
I got to the end of series two of Yellowjackets and I was a bit perplexed as to why I was continuing to watch it. It’s a show I find interesting but feel it could be so much better. I also think it’s one of those shows that should be telling its story slightly differently.
The idea of Yellowjackets is brilliant. A girls’ High School soccer team crash lands during a plane fight and doesn’t get rescued for months and in the process, they descend into cannibalism, superstition and religion as well as factions. The story is told in the present day with the survivors as adults and teenagers back during those months surviving in the mountains.
The best parts of the show are the descent in the mountains and how the individual characters come to evolve into different positions and how they wrap themselves in certain beliefs to justify their actions. It has a very minor horror film feel. In truth, it probably would have been a better show for me if some of these elements proved to be true and carried over into the future. Maybe they will, but at this point, I’m not so sure. The weaker part is the contemporary part of the story which is held together by the magnetism of the actors.
I enjoyed series two but not as much as series one and I have big concerns about its current structure and the fact it’s supposed to be five series long. I think the show would have been better being shorter and somehow telling its stories in 2-4 episode arcs that focused on particular outcomes and progressions in the past and how they’ve impacted the future. Then tried to close it out in two or three seasons. I’m not saying I could write that but I could nebulously imagine it and that seems better to me than five seasons of traditionally rolling serialised TV episodes.
Will I continue to watch Yellowjackets? Probably, but I do think it’s going to lose itself over its five-season run assuming it even gets them. It is on Paramount+ after all.
Rise of the Pink Ladies
I’d recommend you watch Rise of the Pink Ladies but I know you won’t and in the not-too-distant future it will be removed from Paramount+ and lost to history. This is a pity because, as far as I’m concerned, as a TV series that aspires to be a weekly musical Rise of the Pink Ladies is very good.
Not only is the show one of the best ‘TV series as musical’ endeavours we’ve had in a long while it uses fifties structures and norms combined with some modern sensibilities (as the issues existed back then) to deliver one of the best High School dramas we’ve had in a while.
It’s not surprising I like it: good High School drama and musical theatre all rolled up in a stylised period piece? Right on target.
And yes the musical sequences are so strong I debated for a good while which one to embed in this post. I ultimately went with the reprise from the opening episodes but I also recommend you check out Pointing Fingers for a great track and bleachers sequence.
And, Finally…
It’s been a fascinating couple of months not least because I went to Alaska but got to watch some great TV mostly in June. Three of the shows in this post are currently in the top five of the year. There is half of the year to go so we’ll see if they stay there as there have been shows I’ve really enjoyed that have got pushed out of the top ten in the first six months.
What is shocking this month is the rising number of shows being scrubbed from streaming services. In some ways, it’s weird that I care about this as I rarely go back and watch things again these days. I think it feels like some sort of erasure of creative history to me, which resonates as some sort of abstract loss.
If there is one thing I’ve joined the club of in the first half of 2023 it’s that streaming has moved from being this brilliant and awesome thing to another dystopian silicon valley nightmare that will eventually have adverse outcomes we have to burn through.