The Best Series of 2023, #20-11

It bothers me that top 10 lists from major publications every year contain 9 series from the U.S. and one thing from the U.K. A “Squid Game” might make it in now and then when it’s undeniable enough, but mainstream U.S. critics are watching television very differently from U.S. audiences that have embraced K-dramas, not to mention “Lupin”, “Money Heist”, “La Reina del Sur”, “Demon Slayer”…the list goes on.

The viewership numbers are right there with U.S. work, and that should’ve pushed a shift in mainstream coverage and criticism long ago, but it hasn’t. Even this year, when the U.S. had both writers’ and actors’ strikes that meant there were materially fewer American series, I read list after list that features only English-language work. We’re really so exceptional that we make the 10 best shows in the world even when we’re not actively making shows? That’s a neat trick.

U.S. productions tapered out toward the end of the year, and the gold rush for K-dramas has expanded with Hulu/Disney and Amazon both racing to catch up to Netflix’s strong production partnerships in Korea.

We’ve also had the strongest year for American viewership of Japanese titles, as measured by the record-setting box office of “Godzilla Minus One” and “The Boy and the Heron”, as well as the strong performance of “Suzume”. That’s on film, but it’s reflected in the viewership numbers of anime series and increasing access to Japanese live-action TV.

Look, 9 of my top 20 are U.S. series. That’s still more than from any other country, with another from Australia and the U.K. each. So 55% of this list is still English-language, and I honestly feel like that overrepresents – let alone the 100% or 90% of other places.

If you’re wondering why there’s so much from outside the U.S. on this list, the answer’s simple: because other cultures are also making some of the best series we get to watch. Why wouldn’t we recognize that?

One more thing I can’t stress enough: the difference between #15 and #11 doesn’t matter. Someone else might reverse them and be no less right than I am. Take any two numbers and shuffle them around and that holds true. Top [your favorite number here] lists should not be read objectively. They serve as a way to help you find new shows and reconsider ones you’ve seen. They may strike conversation about what a series does well, or about what a series could do better to become something even greater. I could wake up a month from now and think I should’ve placed #17 higher, or lament that I didn’t include #21. The numbers are largely arbitrary on every top-whatever-list that anybody makes. The writing and discussion those rankings enable is what should be important.

20. Insomniacs After School

(HiDive) This could be the best year we’ve had for anime that falls outside of shonen (battle) series. “Insomniacs After School” may be the most low-stakes of the bunch, and I mean that as a compliment. Two students with insomnia sneak into their disused school observatory to rest. They’re caught and end up shielding themselves by starting an astronomy club. At first, it’s an excuse to catch up on sleep, but the pair get guidance from an alum and quickly become wrapped up in learning astrophotography.

One of my favorite sequences of the year is simply following that alum as she packs up her camera, cat, a tupperware of batter, and a skillet in the dead of night. At a remote park, she leashes her cat, sets up her camera, and begins cooking pancakes. Pictures of the night sky take time, and we share this little bit of calm, this magical, quiet, private ritual, the kind of moment in this world no one notices about the next person. It stands as the single most realistic portrayal of a private moment I’ve seen this year, and “Insomniacs After School” is filled with such moments.

The series finds a deep magic in the ordinary, interstitial spaces when people get to rest and breathe, a peace we often neglect and forget to yearn for, sometimes so long we don’t even remember what the yearning feels like. Art can capture it, and it does so here. (Read the review.)

19. Copenhagen Cowboy

(Netflix) Nicolas Winding Refn’s experimental Danish actioner follows a spirit named Miu. She’s sold to a brothel in hopes of bringing good luck to the owner’s sister. The women there are trafficked, their papers withheld as they’re forced to work. The owners can’t imagine that bringing a supernatural being into that mix and making ultimatums could go wrong. Whoops.

Miu begins a journey that’s part exploration, part protection of others, part vengeance, and part inexplicable. A half-vampire sex predator becomes obsessed with her, she gets involved with the Chinese mob, she’s briefly a drug dealer, there’s a guy who tours the world giving lectures to people about how great his penis is. It’s…unique.

If you get into the extremely slow pace of its craft and its self-consciously Freudian obsessions (which are very big ‘ifs’), “Copenhagen Cowboy” is amazingly shot and experimentally told. Long takes, wordless slow zooms, and 720-degree panning shots abound with a tantalizingly slow choreography to it all. There’s always something interesting happening, if you’re OK with ratcheting back your internal clock as a viewer to something this deliberate. There’s nothing else like “Copenhagen Cowboy”. I don’t know if it belongs on this list at all, or if it belongs much higher on it. Suffice to say, I’ve found myself thinking back to it often this year. (Read the review.)

18. Ahsoka

(Disney+) I made no bones about the first episode of “Ahsoka” having some major pacing issues, but the potential in the Rosario Dawson-led Star Wars series was still apparent through that murk. Lovable jank quickly turned into a commanding Arthurian-style legend of witches, lost heroes in distant lands, and a burgeoning evil drawing closer.

Most importantly, it returns the sense of the unknowable to Star Wars. The franchise has delivered some quality shows, but with clear flaws. The once-backwater planet of Tatooine appears everywhere. Getting across the galaxy to ridiculously distant worlds feels like a hop and a skip. “Far, far away” started to feel strangely claustrophobic.

“Ahsoka” returns the vast and mysterious to a space fantasy that should rely on that sense of awe. It does so by distance traveled, but that’s not what I mean. In “Ahsoka” and last year’s “Andor”, Star Wars finally seems to have re-embraced the sense that its universe is vaster than we can imagine and than its characters can handle. Every new planet can promise hope, fear, and adventure again, but it starts as a mystery to learn. (Read the review.)

17. The Diplomat

(Netflix) Debora Cahn’s “The Diplomat” is a riveting political thriller about, well, diplomacy. Ambassador to the U.K. is often a comfortable position awaiting a campaign donor who knows how to act at royal dinner parties. It’s not usually given to nose-to-the-grindstone, career Foreign Service experts. That’s why it’s so surprising when Kate Wyler (Keri Russell) is pulled from her new assignment as ambassador to Afghanistan and reassigned to the U.K.

A British aircraft carrier has just been attacked and the Prime Minister is on the warpath before anyone even knows the culprit. Wyler has to talk him down while using her expertise and working across departments and governments to determine the real attacker. Her husband was once a much more popular ambassador with a heroic mythology that’s come at the expense of others. He doesn’t behave well as the ‘trophy wife’ in the relationship – he has a habit of subverting Kate, in ways that both help and hinder.

Russell and Rufus Sewell’s on-the-rocks relationship sparks of a Katherine Hepburn-Spencer Tracy quality of contention, creating both drama and some surprising comedy. The series’ writing focuses on hard nosed, practical diplomatic work, feeling very akin to “The West Wing” (where Cahn once wrote and produced). If you like political thrillers, this is a standout. (Read the review.)

16. Sugar Apple Fairy Tale

(Crunchyroll) This isn’t going to be found on many top 10 anime of the year lists, and that’s a shame. I watched because I was looking for something extremely light and noncommittal. How could something titled “Sugar Apple Fairy Tale” be anything else? Yet only a few episodes in and we’re already deep into a story about generational slavery, men taking credit for women’s work, a stalker, attempted murder, and the balance between an artist’s desire to create and the impostor syndrome that makes her consider not trying.

The adaptation of Mikawa Miri’s light novel reminds me of “The Last Unicorn” in the way it investigates the mythic – not as violent confrontation, but as an insistent, indomitable endurance. Both recognize that kindness can also house its own type of anger.

The chaste romance of the piece centers on 15-year-old sugar glass artist Anne and the fairy she frees from slavery, Challe. As there often is with supernatural romances, one’s a teenager and one’s lived more than 100 years, and at the same time they’re coded within the story somewhat differently. There are arguments against this narrative and for reclaiming it. I’ll just tackle this show alone: the emphasis is thankfully on the chaste in chaste romance and the series doesn’t ignore the imbalance. It uses it to engage the power dynamics that play between the two. Challe is all but immortal. Anne owned and used him for a few days before freeing him. Even the best person in the series was willing to sacrifice her ideals for convenience, and the series uses this to open up on intersectional themes, such as how one disempowered party can victimize another in turn.

A later character has been denied all her dreams and opportunities, forced into an arranged engagement, and to cope is obsessed with owning Challe – rather than fighting her cage, the woman seeks to cage another. How “Sugar Apple Fairy Tale” engages social narratives within the framework of a medieval-renaissance-mashup world is often surprising and remarkable. It uses its messiness with accountability to explore some very layered themes. That doesn’t even talk about its beautiful art, or its clear-eyed moments of portraying an artist’s resolve. At one point, Anne keeps working on a piece, the beginning of a war that threatens to burst into her very room at that moment be damned. “Sugar Apple Fairy Tale” is somehow the sweet, light, sugary series I was looking for, but those qualities open into a world that’s portrayed with complexity in ways that glare back at our own. (Read the review.)

15. Abbott Elementary

(ABC) One of only two entries on this list I’d refer to as sitcoms, “Abbott Elementary” keeps the mockumentary era of TV comedy alive. In a format once highlighted by the schadenfreude of “The Office”, “Abbott Elementary” takes a different tack. It follows a group of teachers making do with what they have in a Philadelphia elementary school. The show is often kind and understanding, finding ways for its characters to work together and solve each others’ problems rather than create them. It’s not about dysfunction, it’s about making things work in an underfunded, under-resourced environment.

Much of the second season is about the looming threat of a charter school that would help some children, but leave many with even fewer educational resources than before. The themes are spot-on and gently elucidate topics like these in ways that demonstrate their impact on a community. It helps us understand both the broad consequences and the personal ones.

On top of this, the will-they/won’t-they romance between Quinta Brunson’s Janine and Tyler James Williams’ Gregory is taken in a direction that isn’t often tackled. It’s a much more considered, mature, and thoughtful approach to relationships and romance than we typically get to see in TV series.

14. The Bear

(Hulu) This landed on a lot of top 10 lists this year, so the question about “The Bear” might not be why it’s on this list, but why it’s not in the top 10. The series about a near-disastrous restaurant launch is often genius and can deliver beautiful and magical tone poems. It captures the energy of Chicago like no other show I’ve seen.

Yet the second season bends over backwards to justify its premise, requiring every decision maker involved to be foolish – to put it lightly. That’s fine, it’s just a premise to get our suddenly out-of-debt chefs back into debt so the show’s bread and butter – chaotic panic – can be further explored.

Yet it just doesn’t know when to stop sometimes, when it’s shown us enough to let its writing and gorgeous performances sing. It often sits on moments well past the point of their impact so that they begin to poke at the line of a parody feel. Couple this with a clearer telegraphing of some (but not all) of its physical comedy, and the series can start to feel like a shaky diorama for its performers.

But oh those performances. “The Bear” boasts one of the top handful of ensembles going today, and many of its episodes do know when to stop before getting in their own way. Like its subjects, the result is messy, but often captivating. Some episodes are awe-striking, some need a little better scene selection and tighter editing, but the overall result is still one of the better shows going. (Read the review.)

13. Spy x Family

(Crunchyroll) Who said the sitcom is dead? Sure, its premise and its animation mean “Spy x Family” can be a lot more imaginative and wide ranging than 99% of sitcoms that’ve come along, but that doesn’t change the fact that its fundamental premise is as an anime sitcom.

You’ve got your handsome spy, who’s got to find a family to keep his cover in a hostile country. He adopts Anya, a girl who passes his tests not because she’s the genius child he’s looking for, but because she happens to be able to read minds. Then there’s Yor, who needs a husband in order to maintain her own cover as one of her country’s premiere assassins. And they adopt a dog who can see the future because: why not? Anya’s the only one who knows of anyone else’s secret, but never reveals them out of worry that those revelations would break her newfound family apart.

What “Spy x Family” so brilliantly turns on its head is the sitcom’s need for lies that drive anxiety and produce the format’s comedy. I grate at so many traditional sitcoms because these families who should trust each other are constantly lying to each other. Here are these people who supposedly love and support each other, but who are always a sentence away from lying to each other out of fear of judgment. Why would I want to watch and laugh at a bunch of abusive people? Sounds horrible.

In “Spy x Family”, however, the lies are expressions of care and growing commitment. The lies are so they can stay together and increasingly rely on and care for each other. They inhabit their lies to protect a world that Anya and other children will grow up in – even though their ideas of that world are different. They learn to bring each others’ strengths out and work to be considerate to each other, to give Anya a fiercely supportive family. It’s a gorgeous inversion of the sitcom format.

The second season covers some darker territory, even including one of the better action sequences this year, but it never forgets the glorious, joyous chaos it does better than any other show going.

12. Bloodhounds

(Netflix) Set during the height of COVID, two boxers team up to protect a woman who’s investigating the loan industry. The friendship between the protective Geon Woo and the chaotic Woo Jin is an electric bromance. It’s the best example of close male friendship I’ve seen this year as two very different people with extremely different histories learn to admire, trust, and protect one another.

The series sharply critiques the loan industry and how it targets people during disasters to trap them in permanent debt. Its portrayal of COVID is exceptional, too, with streets eerily empty and events held in auditoriums without crowds. There are multiple strains of humor here, too. The two boxers and the woman to whom they’re assigned tease each other in non-toxic ways. There’s a far darker comedy at play as well, best exemplified by a remarkably desperate chase scene centered on ludicrous priorities midway through the show.

The most captivating aspect of “Bloodhounds” is its fight choreography. Geon Woo fights close in, absorbing punishment as he locks others up and creates opportunities for heavy strikes. Woo Jin dances and weaves, relying on maneuverability and quick strikes but opening himself up in a riskier style. There’s a 30-on-2 fight scene that manages to pull the feat off without opponents waiting to attack one-by-one, and the choreo of “Bloodhounds” sells you on the idea that it’s still an even fight.

This would be far higher, perhaps even one of the top 5 shows of the year, but for a cast exit late in the season. One of the supporting cast members was caught drunk driving, which is a much bigger deal for a celebrity in Korea than it is in the U.S. That meant an actor and their character leaving and being replaced with another. Both are successful in their roles, but that initial role was important and its loss – and the introduction of a new character – both feel awkwardly shoehorned. It’s the only weakness in what is otherwise the best action series of the year. (Read the review.)

11. The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart

(Amazon) This Australian series may be the most visually stunning of the year. The thick, cinematic melodrama has atmosphere to spare and so many of its shots are lit like paintings that carry deep into the background. Nine-year-old Alice grows up under an abusive father, until her parents are lost in a fire. She’s adopted by her harsh grandmother June, played by Sigourney Weaver. She runs a flower farm where survivors of domestic abuse are kept safe through her own unique methods.

The series is a mystery of codes: social codes, the language of flower arrangement, record-keeping, metaphors that tell us truths before we know how to fully recognize them. It’s a gorgeously layered series with towering performances.

It is tough to watch because of its focus on domestic violence, but showrunner Sarah Lambert’s adaptation of the Holly Ringland novel handles its subject matter with an unblinking and forthright sense of responsibility. Weaver’s performance has an argument as her very best, and she’s surrounded by one of the best ensembles of the year. (Read the review.)

What are my top 10 series of the year? Which is the best? I don’t want to cause any evil beef beyond this journey by being unreasonable, so hold your reservation, dog, and skip by later for what I’m cooking up to crown as the last of them. I couldn’t fit apothecaries in that sentence, I’m not perfect.

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The Most Joyous Series of 2023 — “One Piece”

You know those old mansions you see in British period pieces where there’s one wall full of beautiful decorative plates? In “One Piece”, there’s a mansion where they’re layered up the wall, stretching into the hallways, and festooned up the ceiling. Don’t worry, it doesn’t take away from the sword fight against the cat maid and a…cook who wears a combination Batman/Phantom of the Opera mask. I’m still not sure whether she was a cat maid or just wearing cat ears, but I thought one guy was just wearing a headpiece until I realized he was actually a sheep man, so anything’s possible. Look, the internal logic of whether something goes into “One Piece” seems to be whether it’s fun. If it’s fun, it’s in. Plates up the ceiling? Cat maid? Sheep dude? Phantom of the Batman? It’s all on the table.

That might seem like it would undermine a consistent plot or lore, but it’s the opposite. So long as that logic is reliable, it’s easy to get on board. Get into it enough and you stop questioning things like why they have snail telephones and start wondering, why don’t we? I’ve never read the manga nor seen the anime, but creator Oda Eiichiro’s “because it’s fun” logic looks from the outside in. It places us in the shoes of its cast of idealistic outsiders so that we’re right there with them. If you can’t chase dreams in a world as zany and freewheeling as this one, where can you?

We follow Monkey D. Luffy, a wannabe pirate captain without a ship or a crew. He’s far too honest, earnest, and good-natured for anyone – pirate or pirate hunter – to believe he can be a pirate captain, but that’s OK. He believes so much in himself he’s got enough to spare for everyone around him, too. He’s also made of rubber, which is…you’ll get used to it.

Luffy soon has a tentative band of co-conspirators that includes a swordsman and a thief. They steal a closely guarded map and set out to find the All Blue, in pursuit of a treasure known as the One Piece and being pursued in turn by an admiral and his marines.

In their travels, Luffy’s crew happens upon people who need help, and makes new enemies determined to steal the map. Every two episodes offers its own mini-arc, so you essentially get four distinct stories inside the eight episode season.

It’s not so far off from the work of Terry Pratchett or some of Neil Gaiman’s more YA-oriented storytelling, although it embraces its nonsense side even more openly. It’s all lavishly realized, with over-the-top set design, enough stylized costuming to send cosplayers’ hearts thrumming, and a phenomenal musical score by Sonya Belousova and Giona Ostinelli.

“One Piece” is campy, which we expect to be low-budget and winking, but that campy world is taken with a serious eye toward world building and what it would be like if dreams could still be realized or dashed within it.

Everything in “One Piece” is overly earnest. I’ve said for a few years now that the strength of “The Mandalorian” is its earnest supporting ensemble – it casts some great actors, but it also populates its worlds with a blend of more niche actors who simply feel like their characters.

In that show, the initial casting of Carl Weathers, Amy Sedaris, Katee Sackhoff, and Gina Carano worked not because of their talent as actors, but because their roles were already so close to what each of those actors do. (Carano had some issues since and was justifiably dropped.) I’m not saying they don’t work hard or that they lack talent to go beyond this. I’m saying that even the greatest actor can’t be Carl Weathers nearly as well as Carl Weathers can. When a story travels from place to place swiftly, we don’t have the same anchors in terms of place – we need them in terms of character. That’s what this approach allows.

“One Piece” exemplifies this, finding a way to make every character this type of anchor – even our leads. Everyone plays their role earnestly, to the point where it feels like the actors are having fun as much as they’re ever acting. That’s not a knock on them – it’s exactly what the show asks, and TV history is littered with series where casts never got this right. “One Piece” is the best casting of the year because sure, you could have hired actors who delivered it more dramatically or dynamically, but I don’t think you could have found a cast who would walk into these roles with as much earnestness and belief.

That alone makes the show feel like a comfort. Some will bounce off that, or its cartoonish approach to action, or its nonsense-literature minded world building logic…but if these things sound interesting or exciting to you, “One Piece” is a relief and a joy.

It’s still capable of compelling drama when it wants – a flashback in its sixth episode exists as its own beautifully realized short story. But “One Piece” never wants to dwell in that drama – it wants to see its characters find in each other a way to continue moving forward, existing with their often tragic backstories as a piece of themselves they sit alongside rather than as something that dominates them. That isn’t just joyous, that’s what enables us to find joy in the first place.

That we don’t see its cast act that out, but rather exist their way into it…it feels like a reminder that we can, too.

Is it renewed? Yep. Netflix has fast-tracked the second season.

What I Said Last Year

Arguably the best sitcom going, I named “Spy x Family” my most joyous series last year. The anime’s about a spy father and assassin mother engaging in a marriage of convenience without knowing the other’s secret, and falling for each other anyway. Their telepathic daughter Anya knows everything, but can’t tell anyone, leaving the 5 year-old to fumble through (sometimes) saving the day. Also, her dog can predict the future. “Spy x Family” ran a new season this year, so what happened?

“Spy x Family” stretched its wings. It’s no less joyous, but that joy has to share screen time with some darker moments that better paint the risks of its world and the threat the secret police pose to the family. The first season focused more on Loid and his spycraft often seemed like a game to Anya. The second season focuses on Yor, where her talent for killing is more cut and dry. The season’s major arc is a stretch of cat-and-mouse on a cruise ship that culminates in one of the best action set pieces of the year. The series still encompasses that original joy, even as it folds in other genres and an increasing sense of consequence. “Spy x Family” is on Crunchyroll and Hulu.

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Most Anticipated Shows of Fall 2023

2023 isn’t done yet, we’ve got at least 14 months of Christmas advertising left. But if you want to stay home, avoid that, and your bookshelf is more decorative in nature, we’ve got shows. So many shows.

What’s my metric for Most Anticipated? How much I anticipate it. Let’s not pretend something like this is objective. Smack Kurt Russell and some kaiju into a show together? That’s top 5. Let’s get into it:

The Apothecary Diaries

Maomao is a young pharmacist who’s kidnapped and sold into servitude. She’s determined to keep her head down until she’s freed, but when the emperor’s children grow ill, she can’t help but investigate the cause. This gets her noticed, for better and worse. Her quick wit, curiosity, and medicinal knowledge aid her in investigating a series of mysteries at the imperial court.

The big draw here is the emotive, colorful visuals. Its kingdom is based on Chinese dynasties and…it looks a visual splendor. If the characters and mysteries can hold par, we might be looking at something genuinely captivating.

“The Apothecary Diaries” premieres on Crunchyroll on Oct. 22.

The Worst of Evil

Anything Ji Chang Wook is in is watch-on-arrival. His role as an undercover narcotics officer is a far cry from last year’s singing magician in “The Sound of Magic”, but it’s hardly the first hard-nosed crime role he’s played. Here, his Detective Park Jun Mu is assigned to infiltrate a cartel, only to discover his wife Eui Jung – also a detective – is part of the same operation and seems to have a history with the drug kingpin.

It’s a little weird to see Disney+ getting into violent Korean crime series, but with Netflix’s success and head start bringing Korean productions over to the U.S., every major streaming service is chasing high-profile K-dramas.

“The Worst of Evil” premieres on Disney+ on Sep. 27.

Doctor Who (specials)

Jodie Whittaker’s stint as Doctor Who is the best modern example of a great actor who’s perfect for the role being wasted by an utterly disastrous showrunner. Chris Chibnall gives way to the series original rebooter, Russell T. Davies, who in turn brings back fan favorite David Tennant.

I have opinions on all that, but we’d be here all day. Suffice to say, the series November specials start by correcting Chibnall’s worst mistake and bringing back the best director the show’s ever had in Rachel Talalay. She helmed two of the greatest two hour chunks of series sci-fi in “Heaven Sent/Hell Bent” and “World Enough and Time/The Doctor Falls”. If she’s on board, I’m on board.

Regardless of how fans feel about all those names involved, I think we’re all rooting for the show to succeed and nobody minds a few more hours of David Tennant. At its best, “Doctor Who” is a series that helps us recognize strength in kindness, and kindness as complex and multi-faceted. Hopefully, that rises to the fore again.

“Doctor Who” is cagey with its details. We know the specials premiere in November, assumedly on BBC America here in the states and…possibly on Disney+ at some point. I hope they clear it up soon given, you know, it’s only a month away.

Castaway Diva

An aspiring singer named Mok Ha becomes stranded on an island for 15 years. Even after she’s found, she hasn’t given up on her dream of singing, but the transition from isolation into a modern and rapidly changing society is challenging.

This is Park Eun Bin’s follow-up to her lead role in “Extraordinary Attorney Woo”. She’s on a streak of leading some of South Korea’s best reviewed series – “Hot Stove League”, “Do You Like Brahms?”, and “The King’s Affection”, not to mention “Woo”.

“Castaway Diva” is supposed to premiere on Netflix on Oct. 21…but not in South Korea until Oct. 28? That’d be a surprise, so let’s say it premieres in late October. World of information, everybody.

A Murder at the End of the World

It’s been popular to dismiss this sight unseen as “Glass Onion” with Daniel Craig replaced by Gen Z, to which I’m like: Word. It’s supposed to be an insult but…what, Gen Z isn’t supposed to act in anything now? Good luck with that. “Oh no, a new generation is making Agatha Christie-style mysteries! Fetch me yon fainting couch!” Go tell it to Richard Attenborough and Oliver Reed.

This new take finds a murder in an isolated, frozen tundra, with all the suspects trapped for about the length of time it takes to solve the mystery. You’ve got Clive Owen and Alice Braga co-starring, but the real draw for many is showrunners Brit Marling (who also co-stars) and Zal Batmanglij. That’s right, it wasn’t Gen Z. It was Millennials and uh, that generation before them, I always forget – they were behind this the whole time!

Marling and Batmanglij are the minds behind “The OA” and “The East” – the latter still an overlooked (and unfortunately still ahead-of-its-time) masterpiece about the inherent conflicts between organized resistance and egoist movementism.

Marling and Batmanglij make challenging, unexpected work that relies more on picking apart norms and narratives than it does on any particular twist. This tends to make their work unique. Those moments when you realize something as a viewer always feel earned with them. The marketing for “A Murder at the End of the World” makes it look pretty straightforward. Perhaps it is, but the track record of the showrunners says expect something unsettling and subversive.

“A Murder at the End of the World” premieres on Hulu on Nov. 14.

Monarch: Legacy of Monsters

I’m an enormous fan of the MonsterVerse. It helps that there are only three films instead of 30, but they’ve each gone large in embracing a love of kaiju wrecking the place. But after Godzilla and King Kong have had their bout, what’s left to do?

A family tries to figure out the role they’ve had in Monarch, the secret organization that’s studied and attempted to understand these monsters. Kurt Russell and son Wyatt Russell play versions of the same character during different eras. The stacked cast also features standouts like Christopher Heyerdahl and Mari Yamamoto.

“Monarch: Legacy of Monsters” premieres on Apple TV+ on Nov. 17.

Spy x Family (season 2)

(The trailer only just released, so no English option yet.)

Loid is a spy who’s trying to keep the peace during a cold war. He needs a family to help maintain his cover. He’s lucky enough to meet Yor, who needs a husband to keep her coworkers from gossiping to the secret police. He’s already adopted a daughter named Anya, with the hope she’ll enroll at an elite private academy a minister’s son attends.

Loid keeps his spycraft a secret. Yor is secretly an assassin. And Anya, secretly being a psychic, is the only one who knows who everyone is. Oh, and they also adopt a dog who can see the future. It all works because we see so much through Anya’s lens, of a child who is alternately in awe of her parents and frightened of their capabilities. She gets embroiled in international espionage but can barely control her careening social life at school. She uses her knowledge like a kid would: to get what she wants, often hilariously ineffectively. And she also feels the pressure of knowing her academic performance is the key to keeping world peace. At the end of the day, every one of these people who must use each other for their own ends to survive – they also deeply yearn for family, for the false act they play out with each other day after day to be real.

I named “Spy x Family” the Most Joyous series of last year. Even if it’s got some competition this year, it’s going to be tough to beat. Many shows are satisfying; this one is fulfilling. Oh, and in addition to its second season, it’s also getting a movie this December (though it’s hard to tell when the film will make it stateside).

“Spy x Family” season 2 premieres on Crunchyroll on Oct. 7. If it follows the first season’s example, Hulu will get it the day after.

Our Flag Means Death (season 2)

One of last year’s surprise hits returns. The pirate comedy adventure tells the star-crossed love story of captains Stede Bonnet and Blackbeard. The first season took a few episodes to find its center, but immediately improved with a director switch and the increasing focus on its romantic core.

The second season has a lot of lines already in the water. We know most of its cast of characters already, so it should hit the ground running much faster. With a three episode premiere and two episodes a week, we’ll also end up getting the entire 8-episode season in a three-week period – perfect for a Halloween binge.

“Our Flag Means Death” season 2 premieres on Max (formerly HBO Max) on Oct. 5.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End

The elven mage Frieren spends 10 years defeating a Demon King and restoring peace in the world. For her, it’s the blink of an eye. For her human and dwarven compatriots, the adventure defines their lives. She returns 50 years later to see her friends, only to witness the end of their days. Regretting missed time she can’t get back, she takes the adopted daughter of one of her friends on an adventure to the resting place of souls, where she might see a close friend one last time.

The trailer already hits pretty hard and I don’t even know these characters yet. With recent series like “Sonny Boy” and “My Love Story with Yamada-kun”, Madhouse is a studio that’s proven itself willing to create patient, cinematic stories that take real time understanding and empathizing with their characters.

“Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End” premieres on Crunchyroll on Sep. 29.

Gyeongseong Creature

Han So Hee’s been on my radar since her jaw dropping work on “My Name”. She gave one of the best dramatic performances of 2021, and ably performed some of the most creative fight choreography of the past several years. In “Gyeongseong Creature”, she plays a todugun, someone who searches for missing people. Set in 1945, she’s had ample work doing this during the Japanese occupation of Korea. When a string of stranger disappearances start taking place, she teams up with a wealthy benefactor to investigate.

A period mystery with some fight choreo is already intriguing enough, but “Gyeongseong Creature” promises something even darker. Its English description drops the most beautiful three-word phrase we’ve got: historical sci-fi horror.

“Gyeongseong Creature” premieres on Netflix on Dec. 22.

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The Most Joyous Series of the Year — “Spy x Family”

“Spy x Family” is one of the reasons I’m looking back at 2022 this way instead of just pushing a top 10 list. I’m not sure that I’d put the hit anime on a top 10 list. For all its unbridled enthusiasm and sense of joy, it has some pacing and focus issues and one or two subplots fall flat for me. Yet I’m going to remember it way better than anything I’d stick at #6 or #7 for the year. It’s going to mean more to me going forward than most things on a top 10 list would. So what’s the point of that list? We don’t watch series so we can organize lists. We watch series for how they bring out the human parts of ourselves that we don’t always get to feel in other moments of our days.

“Spy x Family” appears to land as the most popular anime of 2022 by far, and for good reason. In a land that’s based on the Cold War between West and East Germany, the spy Twilight is assigned to befriend a high-ranking government official who plans to restart an active war. The best way to do this is through the official’s son, who attends a prestigious private academy. Under the cover of Loid Forger, Twilight will have to adopt a child, find a fake wife, get his new child enrolled at the academy, and ensure that she performs well enough to join the social club of upper echelon students.

Things go off the rails pretty quickly. The child he adopts is Anya, who hides that she’s a telepath discarded from a state experiment. She’s not the age Loid needs to enroll her, and she’s not the academic standout that would get her in, but she can read his mind and fake exactly what he’s looking for.

Anya tells no one she’s a telepath – she’s scared she’ll be hunted and rejected. She does use her powers to help connect Loid with a potential new mom – a woman named Yor who’s an elite assassin. Yor’s fearful she’ll be investigated for the unofficial crime of not being married. Loid needs someone to play a wife. Yor needs someone to play a boyfriend. Anya takes care of the rest.

The pair agree to play out a fake marriage. Loid is unaware that Yor is an assassin, Yor is unaware that Loid is a spy, they’re both unaware that Anya is a telepath, and Anya knows everything about them to the detriment of anything academic. And that’s all way before they get the dog who can see the future.

What follows would usually be a comedy of strangeness, of hiding truths and miscommunicating with each other. Instead, it’s something rarer – a comedy of normality. Yor’s strength and martial prowess come off as normal to Loid because those are the kind of people he’s always been surrounded by. When they put on a massive role-playing game for Anya and a drunk Yor plays a witch who fights Loid, he doesn’t wonder why she’s a better fighter than the most legendary spy in the world. He wonders about the role-playing, “Why is she using physical attacks when she’s a witch?”

Raising her younger brother without parents, Yor imagines she has no clue how to parent despite being immensely caring, attentive, and fiercely protective. She’s never had anyone to affirm that she’s doing things right, and even if he can be slow on the uptake, this is what Loid can ultimately give her.

Anya has meant nothing to anyone, and has never had the opportunity to make anyone proud, but here has a chance to participate in an operation that can save the world – even if she misinterprets what’s going on half the time. What’s strange to the world around them is the greatest amount of normal and comfort any of the three has ever experienced.

We get to see spy missions, some with Anya and some without. These are routinely good and often ridiculous – finding microfilm swallowed by a penguin, winning a brutal underground tennis tournament. One of my favorite moments in the series is a brief vignette, only minutes long, where Loid meets with his handler, petals falling from a nearby flower. Loid quietly recognizes that his handler has overlooked a fine detail in her disguise, and when she asks him about the mission, he brags about Anya like any parent would – a gorgeous moment of two spies losing their edge for different reasons.

Anya is the series’ motivator, though. She’s a below-average student, but when her parents try to help her, she can only read their thoughts about spying and assassination. She’s not a savant or phenom, but a kid who knows she’s saddled with the fate of the world, something she understands by reading Loid’s mind, but can’t share with anyone lest she reveal her secret.

What connects about her is that her parents do everything they can to shield her from their burdens, but because of who Anya is they never have any chance of doing so. All they can do is support her through them. In between dodgeball tournaments, craft fairs, and dog adoptions, there’s something about this that speaks to our modern moment. Anya’s played as the cutest thing on television, as a character who exudes ‘must be protected at all costs’, but her attempts to befriend a politician’s son and help Loid succeed in his mission are nearly all remarkable misfires because kids aren’t tactical. They’re unpredictable, pushing boundaries, fearing the lack of them, and just getting a sense of how the world works. In its own way, amid dozens of unrealistic events and satires, “Spy x Family” gives us one of the most accurate depictions of how a kid acts.

Anya stands up for others and what she witnesses as the truth, but she’s also a huge troll who’s naturally curious and likes seeing what she can get away with. She tests out empathy and ego, lying and self-sacrifice. She’s a kid who barely knows anything, except the reality that the future of the world hinges on her accomplishing a mission way beyond her capabilities. Even if it’s desperate, doing something is better than not taking any action.

That’s why “Spy x Family” is a joy. It has a couple subplots that I’m not big on, such as Yor’s brother who works for the secret police and harbors an obsession for his sister, or Loid’s protege who wants to take Yor’s place. The series is a remarkable, quick-witted comedy, sure, but it’s also one where Loid repeats his mantra of creating “a world where children won’t have to cry anymore”, something Anya believes in and takes to heart because she’s never known a world like that before.

We root for Anya partly because she’s an innocent kid with a streak of gremlin, but mainly because this is her chance to live a life where she has hope and is protected. The fate of the world is abstract and hard to grapple with. The fate of one kid is something we can feel in our bones and fight for. We need to see this family work, and as it messily comes closer together, it’s a joy to have it reaffirmed for us that yes, this is a family that cares for each other more and more by the day.

“Spy x Family” is a cleverly over-the-top spy anime, a savvy comedy, a solid actioner, a beautiful story about adoptive family, but what works best about it is that it’s a story of a child finally having the opportunity to be happy and loved.

And its theme songs are absolute bops.

You can watch “Spy x Family” on Hulu or Crunchyroll.

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