The shows, movies and music that entertained an entertainment editor in 2023

Dec. 30—When you talk about the year in entertainment for 2023, the conversation begins — and probably ends — with Taylor Swift.

However, because I had no daughters of the tween, teen or other varietals to pile into a car for a trek to a stadium in Pittsburgh, Detroit or Cincinnati to experience "The Eras Tour" — seeing as how T-Swizzle didn't see the need to grace Cleveland with one of her event-of-the-year concerts — or for a jaunt to a nearby theater to see the concert film of said tour, she didn't have a big impact on me this year.

And what follows is a look back at what did impact me, an entertainment editor, this year. I've listed 12 releases from the realms of TV, movies and music in chronological order. (I was hoping to come up with one item per month, but, like the world around us, it ended up being a little messier than that. Thanks for nothing, September and November.)

January: "The Last of Us" >> Based on a video game long due for an adaptation, the nine-episode first season of the HBO/Max series truly lived up to expectations. Anchored by the fine work of its stars, Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey, "The Last of Us" succeeded in the way any good zombie-based fiction does: by prioritizing human drama over cheap scares and gore. That said, my one disappointment is that we didn't get more of the horrifying "clickers," "runners" and "stalkers" — as these zombie types unique to the 2013 game for the Sony Playstation platform from Naughty Dog are called — in the show. Still, I can't wait for the second season, due in 2025 and said to be the first of two seasons to be adapted from 2020's unforgettable if divisive "The Last of Us Part II." Also, Naughty Dog, can you PLEASE announce a "Part III" in 2024? We need a proper ending to this saga ... and it's been a while since I've had the pleasure of terminating a clicker with extreme prejudice.

February: "Severance" >> After "Ted Lasso," this wildly creative series is the main reason you hear folks imploring friends to subscribe to Apple TV+. In the Dan Erickson-created show, Adam Scott stars as Mark Scout, one of the many "severed" workers at Lumon Industries. After undergoing the medical procedure known as "severance," folks can enter a space at the office and forget their personal lives, not even knowing if they're married, have kids, etc. Mark, we find out, is using it to help escape the pain of loss he feels throughout the rest of his waking moments. However, with the help of new coworker Helly (Britt Lower), he begins to investigate whether something nefarious is afoot at Lumon. There's no official word from Apple, but it's reasonable to expect we will get the already-announced second season of "Severance" in 2024.

March: "Extrapolations" >> Every time I ask someone if they watched this star-studded eight-episode limited series available to stream via Apple TV+, the answer is no. They haven't even heard of it, they say. That disappoints me — not only because it features talented actors ranging from Kit Harington, Daveed Diggs, Eiza Gonzalez, Matthew Rys and Sienna Miller to Marion Cotillard, Edward Norton, Diane Lane, Keri Russell and Meryl Streep but also because it tells a compelling (and downright terrifying) narrative about where climate change may lead us in the coming years. I greatly enjoyed picking the brain of showrunner Scott Z. Burns ("Contagion") shortly before the series' debut, and I ask you to resolve to watch it in 2024.

(Later in) March: "Dark Side of the Moon" 50th-anniversary remaster >> One of the greatest rock albums ever received the best Dolby Atmos mix I've heard so far on Apple Music. If you're one of my close friends, you've likely had to hear me complain about how lousy I think so many spatial audio mixes have been since Apple Music started making them available in mid-2021. (I'm sorry about that.) Treatments of rock music I know well have been especially disappointing, so much so that I wondered if my home system — as much as I love it for movies, it's more bang-for-the-buck than high-end — just wasn't up to the task. The caring work done to this 1973 classic from Pink Floyd changed all that, as sitting in the sweet spot in my living room and listening to the album's complex components float around me is a feast for the ears.

April: "Air" (the music from the film) >> I enjoyed a viewing of the 1980s-set movie directed by Ben Affleck and starring his longtime pal Matt Damon a little bit ahead of its release in theaters — it's now available to stream on Prime Video — but it was its onslaught of music from that era that stuck with me. Not being able to wait for the release of its hits-filled soundtrack, I made an Apple Music playlist, "1980s Delight" — consisting of songs featured in the movie and others — with which I spent A LOT of time in the months to come. I know this in part because my Apple-made "Replay" playlist for 2023 — Apple's answer to Spotify's "Wrapped" — features many of those tunes. Honestly, I would have been OK not knowing just how many times I spun The Bangles' "Walk Like an Egyptian" and John Parr's "St. Elmos Fire (Man in Motion)" in 2023. (I'm resolving to listen to more new music in 2024.)

(Later in) April: "The Diplomat" >> Created by Debora Cahn ("Homeland"), this romance-infused political drama was the closest thing we've had to "The West Wing" since that terrific show concluded its run and was my favorite show of the year. As Katherine "Kate" Wyler, the just-appointed US ambassador to the UK, the aforementioned Keri Russell was fantastic over the series' eight-episode debut season. The supporting cast is topnotch, too, but I thought Rufus Sewell was an absolute treasure as the seemingly Bill Clinton-inspired Hal Wyler, Kate's husband and former US ambassador to Lebanon, who is always getting his hands dirty despite Kate (usually) pleading with him not to get involved with this and that. The season ended with a cliffhanger, so I can't wait for the announced second season, which is expected to hit Netflix sometime in 2024.

May: "The Great" >> And now on to my favorite series of the last several years. I will admit that this third — and, tragically, final — season of Hulu's "occasionally true," always irreverent and regularly sexually charged tale of Russia's Empress Catherine the Great (a sensational Elle Fanning) and her husband and the country's former ruler, Peter (an endlessly wonderful Nicholas Hoult), was not its finest. (It was still better than almost everything else on TV, however.) By the end of this batch of 10 episodes, however, I was looking forward to a new era for "The Great." Alas, it was axed. Even as it rests in peace, long live "The Great." ("Huzzah!!!")

June: "The Bear" >> The 10-episode second season of this FX on Hulu comedy-drama was an absolute corker. As in-his-own-head chef Carmen "Carmy" Berzatto (Jeremy Allen White) endeavors to get his new Chicago restaurant, The Bear, to its opening night, he also tries to cook up something meaningful with childhood friend-turned-girlfriend Claire (Molly Gordon). We got the returning cast of characters from 2022's eight-episode first season, with Ebon Moss-Bachrach shining as Richard "Richie" Jerimovich, aka "Cousin," who's always butting heads with Carmy. The real fireworks, though, were reserved for "Fishes," a super-sized episode boasting recurring players and guest stars including Jamie Lee Curtis, Jon Bernthal, Bob Odenkirk and John Mulaney. Now, THAT was a Christmas dinner to remember. The sure-to-be-savory third season is expected to come out of the oven in June.

July: "Barbenheimer" >> It's rare we get a weekend at movie theaters like the one that arrived in mid-summer with the simultaneous release of "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer," thanks to neither Warner Bros. Pictures nor Universal Pictures being willing to move off a July 21 release date with its respective highly anticipated film. Both the Greta Gerwig-directed celebration and critique of the Barbie toyline, which also had a little something for the patriarchy, and the experiential Christopher Nolan-helmed biopic about the father of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, delivered — earning 3.5- and 4-star reviews from me and keeping box offices very busy.

August: "Invasion" >> If it seems as though there are a lot of Apple TV+ on this list, that's because the service is the best thing going in streaming, with tons of high-quality content, especially when it comes to science-fiction series such as this one. Its first season, which brought a hostile race to Earth in 2021, was a slow burn building to a highly satisfying conclusion at the end of its 10 installments. With this second batch of 10 episodes, the Simon Kinberg-and-David Weil-created show stepped on the gas a bit, with more action and a brisker pace. Finally, all of its key human characters — from different places around the world and, relatedly, of different ethnic backgrounds — are coming together to face their common foe, so here's hoping Apple greenlights a third season.

October: "Lahai" by Sampha >> The best new music I heard this year came from an album I've been waiting for since "Process," the unforgettable 2017 debut collection from English singer-songwriter Sampha, a brilliant musical mind who also works as a producer and has collaborated with the likes of Drake, Kendric Lamar, Kanye West, Alicia Keys, Frank Ocean and more. From the moment he dropped the captivating lead single, "Spirit 2.0," I knew the album was going to be worth the wait. Sampha knows how to write to accentuate his talents, also evident on tracks such as "Dancing Circles" and "Only."

December: "Poor Things" >> Of the 2023 films I've seen, "Oppenheimer" is the strongest, but this second collaboration from "The Favourite" trio of director Yorgos Lanthimos, writer Tony McNamara and actress Emma Stone is a close second. Based on the 1992 novel "Poor Things: Episodes from the Early Life of Archibald McCandless M.D., Scottish Public Health Officer" by Alasdair Gray," the movie is the most unusual journey into womanhood you've ever seen. Stone is unforgettable as Emma Baxter, and I'm looking forward to seeing how she and the film do during Hollywood's awards season.