Bill Hader’s hitman dramedy grew bleaker and more ambitious with each passing season. The final episodes expanded the scope of Barry’s destruction beyond his loved ones, beyond Hollywood and even beyond L.A.’s criminal underworld into the next generation, as embodied by his wide-eyed son. Meanwhile, the series also broadened its cultural critique to implicate not only the showbiz industry it so knowingly skewered, but the larger population of viewers like us, weaned on the sorts of antihero dramas Barry aimed to deconstruct. — ANGIE HAN
BEEF (Netflix)
Beef‘s surgical eye for detail elevated what could have just been a playful comedy about two feuding strangers into one of the year’s most outrageously twisty, screamingly funny thrillers — while its curiosity and empathy turned it into one of the year’s most moving dramas. Here was a show that saw the ugliness in its characters and the enormity of their despair, and made the case for extending them grace and compassion all the same. (If only the series had taken its own wisdom to heart and avoided the controversy that’s dulled its shine.) — A.H.
DAVE (FXX)
If you initially wrote off Dave Burd’s FXX comedy as “that show about the white rapper with the misshapen penis,” you’re not entirely wrong. But Dave carved out a third season as wild and emotionally varied as any on TV. This run of 10 episodes featured a star-studded look at the fashion and ridiculousness of the Met Gala, a treatise on the pros and cons of faking your own death, and a great stretch of guest stars led by Jane Levy, Chloe Bennet and Rachel McAdams as three women who become part of Lil Dicky’s ongoing search for love. — DANIEL FIENBERG
HAPPY VALLEY (BBC America/Acorn TV/AMC+)
Sally Wainwright’s three-season exploration of crime, punishment and trauma in West Yorkshire, England, came to a harrowing end that closed the book on the fraught connection between police sergeant Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire) and the psychopath (James Norton’s Tommy Lee Royce) who upended her life more than two decades ago. Lancashire’s world-weary, tragedy-rocked and even funny performance is one of the medium’s all-time greats, so when I say that the charismatic, skin-crawling Norton is nearly her equal, that’s saying a lot. — D.F.
Boots Riley doesn’t make subtle art. He makes art that pummels you with its anti-capitalist rage, searing contemporary satire and ambitious detours into surrealism. His seven-episode Amazon comedy is part whimsical allegory and part superhero origin story, featuring an endearingly innocent Jharrel Jerome as a 13-foot-tall Black teen making his way through a world that isn’t ready for any of his identities. The fun premise is held together by resourceful visual effects and Riley’s simmering take on race and economic inequality. — D.F.
Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann’s series is probably the best big- or small-screen video game adaptation ever, but that’s reductive. Depending on the week, the episodic horror odyssey was a tragic love story (all the awards for Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett) or a mushroom zombie-filled urban nightmare (some awards for Melanie Lynskey) or a different tragic love story (many of the awards for Storm Reid) or just a buddy dramedy anchored by the great Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey. — D.F.
In its third season, the comedy pushed Cary (Drew Tarver) and Brooke (Heléne Yorke) to new heights of success and new depths of awfulness — and itself to delightful, delirious new extremes of absurdity. Along the way, it also delivered some of the sharpest showbiz satire to be found anywhere on TV. With note-perfect cameos, impeccable pop culture references and the occasional musical number, the season takes merciless aim at everything from celebrity-couple news cycles to performative philanthropy to the spineless queer “representation” of studio blockbusters. — A.H.
Here’s a show with a singular knack for finding great stores of meaning — joy, poignancy, love, hilarity — in unassuming places. A nondescript town can become home. Small talk can blossom into romance. An impromptu song can serve as a love letter, or an apology. Even a bout of food poisoning can turn into a bizarre bonding exercise given the right company. And a gentle half-hour comedy about ordinary folk in an ordinary place can yield some of the funniest, warmest, loveliest moments to be found anywhere in the TV landscape. — A.H.
The Roy saga was never destined for a happy ending (it’s hard to imagine what one might have looked like amid so much corporate cruelty, political chicanery and familial abuse). But it did land on a masterful one. Logan’s death early in the season gave rise to perhaps the series’ most thrilling run yet, pushing the already excellent cast to new depths of despair, humor and (occasional) vulnerability — before dumping the characters out no better off than they were at the start, and much worse for the wear. — A.H.
TASTE THE NATION WITH PADMA LAKSHMI (Hulu)
As we brace for a Top Chef world without Padma Lakshmi, let us not forget that her Hulu series is every bit as good as her Bravo smash. In Taste the Nation, Lakshmi travels the country visiting ethnic enclaves in different cities, learning about the intersections between food and the American immigrant experience. It’s a funny and vitally of-the-moment journey, in which the game host is equally eager to learn about Puerto Rican sovereignty, different versions of borscht and how to butcher a pig’s head. — D.F.
This story first appeared in the June 21 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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June 27, 2023 at 08:46PM
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Hollywood Reporter Critics Pick the 10 Best TV Shows of 2023 So Far - Hollywood Reporter
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