Category: TV

Best TV Shows of 2020 So Far...

5/15/2020

It’s an extraordinarily busy time in TV land, which continues to expand its borders at a pace that’s impossible for the average viewer to keep up with. But fear not, because we are here to help guide the way, pointing out the best shows as we journey through the landscape that is television in the year 2020.

Dare Me (USA) the novelist Megan Abbott, whose novel provides the basis for the series, is an exploration of female friendship, small-town America, and the glory and pitfalls of choosing desire above all else. Told through a noir lens, Dare Me involves the lives of a group of cheerleaders who are disrupted by a new coach, Colette French (Willa Fitzgerald). This is especially true for head cheerleader Beth Cassidy (Marlo Kelly) and Addy Hanlon (Herizen Guardiola), whose story anchors the series. The show has excellent writing and bold performances from Kelly and Guardiola that further illustrate the complex dynamics of race and sisterhood.
Cheer (Netflix) Netflix’s documentary series about the cheerleaders of Navarro College has become a phenomenon. Cheer follows several young college athletes as they prepare for their annual national championship, weaving together an arc that includes their life stories, their relationships, the mentorship of their coach, and the specific punishing details of being the absolute best at what they do. As a look at a highly specialized sport, it’s a great show.
Little America (Apple TV +) With this episodic anthology series, some installments of the show about American immigration stories are stronger than others. But many of the individual stories are moving, lovely, and carefully observed. It’s easy for this kind of show to feel saccharine or blunt. Little America succeeds because, for the most part, it refuses to simplify itself for the sake of an easy, feel-good story. Instead, its stories often land with sharp, bittersweet notes. It’s a show that reaches toward hope, but it also makes room for hope and trauma to exist at the same time.
High Fidelity (Hulu) A story we’ve read before and seen on film before is infused with fresh oxygen thanks to the decision to cast Zoë Kravitz in the role of Rob, the record-store-owning, music-obsessed, commitment-phobic protagonist of this laid-back character study. High Fidelity borrows the same structure, plot, and even some of the same dialogue from Nick Hornby’s original novel. As in previous versions, High Fidelity remains immensely entertaining and it changes everything by making this romantic dramedy more universal and contemporary.
Better Call Saul The fifth and final season of the Breaking Bad prequel continued to produce at a high level in terms of writing, directing, and acting. But it also joined together the storylines that have run on semi-separate tracks for much of the series, one involving Mike, Gus, the Salamancas, and drug cartel politics, the other involving Jimmy, Kim, and their professional and personal relationships. By the end of the season, not only was the stage set for a tense final act, but the antihero drama was given new life.
Babylon Berlin (Netflix) The German-language series Babylon Berlin is a show about the Weimar period in German history. The looming awareness of economic catastrophe and the rise of the Nazi party inches closer as the show progresses. Part noir, part psychological examination, and part Cabaret-esque musical performance, Babylon Berlin is hands down one of the best and most beautiful shows this year.
The Plot Against America (HBO) This adaptation of the Philip Roth novel is a bracing, increasingly intense alternative history that imagines an America in the World War II era completely uninvolved in World War II, with Charles Lindbergh as president. The HBO limited series features an exceptional cast and raises relevant questions about how much family members are willing to forgive when political divisions turn into matters of life and death.
Unorthodox (Netflix) This beautiful four-episode series follows a young woman in a Hasidic Jewish community in Brooklyn who escapes to Berlin in an attempt to build a new life. The Netflix drama reveals via flashbacks and present-day storytelling, all the factors that made Esty (Shira Haas) want to flee the life she has known. In the process, Unorthodox shows us what it’s like to strive for rebirth, at a time when Americans crave rejuvenation.
Run (HBO) The action in this HBO rom-com/thriller begins as soon as Ruby (Merritt Wever) receives a text from her college boyfriend Billy (Domhnall Gleeson) that simply says, “RUN.” Honoring a pact between the two, Ruby flies to New York, heads to Grand Central station, and embarks on a cross-country train ride with Billy where various kinds of chaos ensue. This show is all forward momentum with lots of tension between its two leads. It’s the kind of series that makes quarantine melt away and makes it seem that a life of motion, travel, and wild adventure is possible again.
Normal People (Hulu) Sally Rooney’s novel gets a limited series interpretation on Hulu that is intimate and honest. Warning - it does contain explicit content. It’s a window into the natural bond that develops between Marianne (Daisy Edgar-Jones) and Connell (Paul Mescal). The show follows them from secondary school and into adulthood. What stands out most about Normal People is the tenderness and empathy it shows for its characters and for the indelible imprint that first love makes upon the soul.

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Best TV Shows of 2020 So Far...

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