The 10 Best TV Shows of 2023
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Hear that? No, it's not Carmy pounding on the fridge door, begging for an escape just so he can trade fists with Richie. Or the whack! of a gavel, so we can all crowd around and dupe an unsuspecting—yet very sweet!—Ronald Gladden. It's definitely not the mutated growls of a Last of Us fungus monster. (I hope.) No. It's the sweet sound of yours truly and my colleague, Adrienne Westenfeld, having our yearly throwdown over the best television shows of the year, whittling down our running list into a lean, mean top 10. Though I have to say, this year was... disconcertingly cordial?
Maybe it's due to this year's thin slate of shows, with many release dates shifted because of the SAG-AFTRA strike. More likely, it’s because we found common ground in 2023's greatest small-screen strength: the comedy. Early in the year, Jury Duty snuck up on us (on Amazon Freevee, of all places!) and gave an Emmy-nominated James Marsden performance—where James Marsden played James Marsden. Later in the year, What We Do in the Shadows delighted us mortals, and The Great capped its phenomenal three-season run. The year's best dramedies—The Bear, Succession, and Barry—entered the mix, too. As the great, befallen Logan Roy would say, we suddenly had a list that was... not serious.
That's not a bad thing, of course—who doesn't need a laugh these days? But you tell us. These are Esquire's top 10 television series of the year.—Brady Langmann
The Great
Season Three of Hulu’s “occasionally true” comedy about Catherine the Great finds the empress in a sticky situation: having wrestled the throne from her incompetent husband Peter, she’s determined to improve life for working class Russians, but her vision of progress might just cause class warfare. Oh, and there are a few additional problems: she neglected to kill Peter, she’s pregnant with the heir to the throne, and much to her frustration, she can’t help but love Peter against her better judgment.
In its third (and tragically final) season, The Great clobbers Catherine with personal challenges—but through it all, the show remains as delightfully violent and vulgar as ever. Then, midway through the season, a shattering loss turns Catherine’s world upside down, revealing the show’s most tender and earnest face yet. When showrunner Tony McNamara penned the bravura season finale, he had no way of knowing it would be the series finale—and yet, in an episode dense with hard-won victories and character catharsis, he lands the plane with a true sense of arrival. Join me in one last “huzzah!” for The Great, a scandalously good show that never stopped reinventing itself.—A.W.
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Foundation
How is Apple TV+’s Foundation, a visually spectacular adaptation of one of the most famous science fiction series of all time, somehow one of the most criminally overlooked shows of the year? A refresher course: Foundation is set in a distant future where the Galactic Empire is ruled by a Genetic Dynasty of cloned emperors. When mathematician Hari Seldon develops a complex algorithm to predict the future, he and his “Foundation” are banished to a remote planet. Season Two picks up 138 years later: Lee Pace’s Brother Day seeks to shore up the Empire’s power (and shake up the Genetic Dynasty) by making a strategic marriage, while the Foundation, now the subject of an emerging religion, faces new threats.
Foundation’s best scenes involve Pace as the Empire’s egotistical tyrant and Laura Birn as Demerzel, his steely android majordomo. In this season, the true reach of Demerzel’s power is revealed—and as ever, the push and pull between this soulful android and her soulless master make for some of television’s best sci-fi. It’s not too late to start tuning into Foundation: sure, it’s a vast, talky, complex epic, but for the patient viewer, it’s endlessly rewarding.—A.W.
What We Do In the Shadows
After a century of living and loafing on Staten Island, our favorite vampire roommates are finally putting down roots. In its gut-busting fifth season, What We Do In the Shadows sends the vampires out into the community as Nadja reconnects with her heritage in Staten Island’s “Little Antipaxos” and Colin Robinson runs for local office. Meanwhile, the fallout from Season Four’s cliffhanger finale shakes up the household dynamic: after a vampiric transformation gone sideways, Guillermo and Laszlo become unlikely allies in secret-keeping. What’s a jealous Nandor to do? Why, fly to outer space, of course (one of the season’s funniest gags). At five seasons in, plenty of sitcoms go soft, but What We Do in the Shadows never dulls its fangs. Come for the outrageous sequences where the vampires take over the nightly news and the local Pride parade; stay for Matt Berry’s legendary line readings (this season’s best: “Too much of the chilaquiles!”).—A.W.
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Barry
Like so many of its characters, Barry drew the short end of the stick. Throughout its fourth and final season, on every Sunday night, Bill Hader's labor of love had to follow Succession. All too often, the who will be the CEO?! noise drowned out the downright extraordinary things that happened in Barry—especially in its last few episodes. Mainly? Emmy-worthy performances from the likes of Sarah Goldberg and Anthony Carrigan, Hader's emergence as a great director, and a fitting, yet divisive finale. But Barry should—and will, I hope—be forever canonized in the HBO Hall of Fame.—B.L.
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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
Disney+'s Star Wars television universe flailing, while Star Trek reigns supreme on Paramount+? A strange new world indeed! June saw the return of the stellar Strange New Worlds, which doubled down on its multitudes of magic tricks with a bold homage to The Original Series, a thrilling Lower Decks crossover, and even—gasp!—a musical episode. In its second season, Strange New Worlds took some bold swings while still delivering on beloved episodic conceits, like “away mission gone sideways” and “Starfleet court martial.” Through it all, the series remained laser-focused on what makes Star Trek sing: its thoughtful exploration of what these intergalactic dust-ups signify about our culture, our morality, and our humanity. As I wrote in my review of the new season: "All told, Strange New Worlds is a labor of love by writers who live and breathe Star Trek, sure, but also just get what it is: a way of using the future to tell gripping stories about who we are now." If you’re not watching yet, beam yourself up to the Enterprise immediately. Captain’s orders.—A.W.
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The Last of Us
Video game adaptation curse, blah, blah, blah. If you've played even an hour of The Last of Us, you'll know that the writers of the HBO series weren't exactly working with Uncharted as source material. (Of course, only a tiny bit of offense to Uncharted—and absolutely none to Tom Holland.) The Last of Us always felt more like a miniseries than a video game in the first place. Add Pedro Pascal to the mix, and this survival road trip dominated television in January and February for good reason. But what made The Last of Us survive the damn near post-apocalyptic year of 2023? It’s the adaptation’s swerves from its source material—especially the Murray Bartlett and Nick Offerman-starring Episode Three, “Long, Long Time,” which may very well be the best 60 minutes we saw on television this year. Pedro: we'll let you protect us from rabid monsters during the apocalypse any day.—B.L.
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Jury Duty
Oh, did you think the cutesy, heartwarming, mockumentary-style sitcom (a la Parks & Recreation) was dead? Well, I thought so too, until Jury Duty shocked the world. If you somehow missed 2023’s most delightful television surprise, the eight-episode series follows, yes, a ragtag group of jurors—colorful characters abound!—as they deliberate on a case. The twist? One of the jurors doesn't know they're on a TV show. Enter Ronald Gladden, who thinks that fellow juror, James Marsden (who plays himself), is an honest-to-god asshole.
But this isn't a prank show—and we're not meant to laugh at Ronald. As the shenanigans unfold over the course of Jury Duty, what emerges is a surprisingly humane portrait of the man you'd think is the butt of the joke here. Cheers to Jury Duty for restoring, at the very least, an ounce of our faith in humanity.—B.L.
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Succession
Television’s best-crafted drama officially came to an end with Season Four. Say it ain’t so! But Succession went out in top form. Season Four found the adult children of media mogul Logan Roy united in a tenuous alliance against their father, who arranged to sell the family business—and their inheritance. After years of sniping and backstabbing, the Roys tried to stick together to get the better of the father, who tormented them. As Succession approached the finish line, it remained characteristically excellent—snappy, smart, and devastating. Stuff that in your ludicrously capacious handbag.—A.W.
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Reservation Dogs
Where does a television show go after giving its leads exactly what they always wanted? Leave it to Reservation Dogs to rise to the challenge—and with such bittersweet beauty, no less. The outstanding swan song of FX’s groundbreaking comedy sees its crew of Indigenous teens achieve a long-held goal: after two seasons spent scheming to realize their late friend’s dream of moving to California, Season Three finds them at last on a Santa Monica beach. But before too long, they’ve lost their car and their cash—and soon enough, a series of detours leads them back to their sleepy reservation hometown of Okern, Oklahoma.
But as T.S. Eliot once wrote, “The end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” In these extraordinary final episodes, Willie Jack, Elora, Bear, and Cheese develop a maturing appreciation for the community they’ve fought so hard to leave. As ever, Reservation Dogs is unflinching about the painful injustices of life on the reservation, but tender in its depiction of community bonds. As Wille Jack’s aunt (played by Lily Gladstone) tells her, “That’s how community works. It’s sprawling. It spreads. What do you think they came for when they tried to get rid of us? Our community. You break that, and you break the individual.” I could’ve hung out with the Rez Dogs forever, but as they ascend into television history, I can only hope that their breakthrough leads to an outpouring of Native storytelling.—A.W.
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The Bear
Say it one more time: Yes, Chef. Just a year after its dazzling debut, The Bear returned for another go-round in the Windy City. And, you know, Season Two could have been exactly that: another few shifts on the line with Jeremy Allen White and co. Stress, food, a guest star or two, more stress, and we would've liked it just fine.
But that's not what happened. Instead, The Bear opted for a (mostly!) slowed-down, meditative 10 episodes. The result is breathtaking. By stripping down the shouting matches, The Bear allows far more room to explore each and every member of the kitchen, right down to the kind-hearted pastry chef, Marcus. Beyond its deeper look at Carmy and co., The Bear asked bigger (and often, unanswerable) questions about what it means to pursue a life in the arts—and the joys and pains that come with it, right down to the moment you’re locked in a fridge. Or maybe that’s just Carmy. Oh, and it doesn't hurt that—right in the middle of Season Two—The Bear served up one of the year's best episodes.—B.L.
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