The Best TV Shows of 2019

In the larger scheme of things, this is very much not a problem. But what if there’s too much good TV? Last year alone, nearly 500 scripted shows were released, 85 percent more TV than aired in 2011. And that’s not even counting reality TV. Given the fact that we’ve got literally hundreds of options to choose from, it’s hard to decide what shows to award our limited TV watching time. So here’s a list that will help you narrow the field. Two of the best shows of the year were Netflix’s true crime limited series Unbelievable and When They See Us, important and harrowing tales each taking a deep dive into a real-life miscarriage of justice. They’re not easy watching, but each tells a complete story in no more than eight episodes, so they’re ideal for anyone who’s not looking to make a multi-season commitment.
But if you’ve got the time to dive into a long running series, two era-defining shows, Game of Thrones and Orange is the New Black, sang their swan songs in 2019, after eight and seven seasons respectively. Sure, Game of Thrones’ final episodes weren’t the show’s best—but if you got through the first seven seasons, you pretty much have to see how it all ends. And while prestige dramas have gotten so much attention, 2019 was pretty great for sitcoms, too. Hulu’s Pen15 brought junior high to life in all of its horror and hilarity and Schitt’s Creek remains one of the best shows on TV, period. And cult gem like What We Do in the Shadows is so bizarrely funny and sweet that it deserves a much wider audience.

When They See Us

 

Ava DuVernay’s Netflix miniseries When They See Us was unquestionably one of the biggest television events of the year—the famously tight-lipped streaming service announced that it was watched by more than 23 million accounts, and it was nominated for 16 Emmy Awards, eventually winning two. It tells the story of the boys who would be first known as the Central Park Five and then, after spending years in jail for the 1989 rape of a young banker, the Exonerated Five, when the real rapist finally confessed. It’s harrowing and heartbreaking, but a must-watch, especially for Jharrel Jerome’s Emmy-winning performance as Korey Wise.


 
 

BoJack Horseman




In BoJack Horseman’s standout sixth and final season, we pick up right where the previous season left off: with everyone’s favorite equine sitcom star checking into seaside rehab, determined to kick his alcoholism and mend fences with the loved ones he wronged. What follows is a singular season where the typically inward-facing show turns outward, widening the lens to ask what we owe one another. Though the characters are mostly isolated from one another, set forward on propulsive paths of individual growth, their journeys make for a thematically cohesive story. Together they ask how we can get our heads out of our own asses—how we can build lives of accountability and service to others. To see these characters consider a more selfless, outward-facing way through life is to see them grow monumentally, and to see the show move toward an ending that feels leagues away from where it started.


 
 

Euphoria

 
 
 
Before HBO’s Euphoria—which follows a group of Gen-Zers in a no-named, vaguely tropical teenage romper-room-world—found its voice as a funny-but-trippy, heartfelt-but-brutal look at relationships and growing up, it was a pretty labor-intensive watch. You can’t exactly follow ketamine-dripping teens and rogue locker room dicks for more than an hour at a time. But after a couple episodes, Euphoria stopped trying to shock the olds, and instead focused on its protagonist, Rue—played by a brilliant Zendaya. This gave us these inventive, surreal moments—like an ingenious spin on Rue’s manic-depressive episode as an old-school detective thriller (“I’m Morgan fuckin’ Freeman and this is the beginning of the third act”), or the dick pic seminar to end all dick pic seminars. The result? The best look at the generation born after 9/11 we’ve seen on TV yet.

Mindhunter

 

 

Save for playing into our current true-crime-obsessed culture, it’s a little bit of a surprise that Netflix’s Mindhunter became the hit it did. It’s everything that blink-and-you’ll-miss-it streaming binges aren’t: Often slow, plodding, think-y, takes time to kick back and smell the cigarette smoke. But it’s the creeping pace that makes Mindhunter, which follows the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit as they interview serial killers around the country, so damn engrossing. David Fincher’s big TV splash—which features an incredible (but never-not-anxious) Jonathan Groff as special agent Holden Ford—if anything, only improved in Season Two, where we finally met one of the big bads, Charles Manson.

Chernobyl

 

This joint BBC and HBO production isn’t just one of the best TV show’s of 2019, it’s potentially one of the best TV shows ever. It’s IMDb’s top-rated series of all time, and cleaned up at the Emmys with 10 wins and 19 nominations. The true story of the 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant created life in 1980s Soviet Union to painstaking detail, all to demonstrate (with at times stomach-churningly realistic gore) the ways in which one local accident became a global disaster.

Jane the Virgin

 

If you’re in the market for a show that’s smart, infectiously warm, and just plain fun, Jane the Virgin is that show. Based on a Venezuelan telenovela, Jane is a love letter to the form, with a very telenovela premise. 23-year-old Jane Villaneuva is a teacher and aspiring writer waitressing at a hotel restaurant to make ends meet, but her hyper-planned life is thrown off track when her gynecologist accidentally inseminates her at a routine check-up. To complicate matters, Jane becomes pregnant without ever experiencing sex, as she’s saving herself for marriage to her police officer fiance—and the sperm donor is her married boss, with whom she once shared a torrid, fleeting kiss. In an age when prestige TV too often means moody, navel-gazing drama, Jane the Virgin proves that excellent television needn’t be dark, self-serious, or humorless. In fact, it can be an explosion of whimsy, pure delight, and kisses that literally lift your feet off the ground. Jane herself describes the story best: “a big, multigenerational story with romance, and drama, and heartache, and crime, even—all of the lightness and all of the darkness.”

The Mandalorian

 

 

The whole internet loves Baby Yoda. Even if they haven't seen a single episode of Disney+'s The Mandalorian, they know about the little, green 50-year-old child. They've seen him drink his broth, they've seen him coo in his little crib. Sure, he's the star, but somehow his adorableness doesn't overshadow what's a truly impressive, and beautifully made Star Wars series. While sometimes the story can be rather formulaic, The Mandalorian does exactly what it needs to do: Engross viewers in the gritty side of Star Wars, placing them in the planets and towns and stories that the films just don't have the time to expand upon. But more importantly: Baby Yoda. — Matt Miller

Watchmen

 

Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's Watchmen comics revolutionized the medium. The transgressive series upended our idea of superhero stories and has been debated by fans and scholars since its first publication in the mid-'80s. To continue this beloved, challenging series as an HBO series is a daunting task. Yet, Damon Lindelof pulled off the impossible—creating a show that's not a carbon copy, but channels the punk rock spirit of the original source material. With incredible acting from leads like Regina King and Jean Smart, this is the series that fans deserve, even if they didn't know it was the one they wanted

Succession

 

 

In its second season, Succession continued the Shakespearean story of the Roy family—one that's hilarious and emotional as it is prescient. Touching on everything from politics to media, the inner workings of the billionaires with a vice-grip on our country, Succession makes our real-life villains into tragic, human figures. Superbly acted and brilliantly written, Succession is shaping up to be one of the most important dramas of the next decade. — Matt Miller

Big Mouth

 

 

Nick Kroll’s animated creation is as good (if not better) in Season Three than it has ever been before. Mixing humor with incredibly difficult topics (#MeToo, gaslighting, homophobia, racism), Big Mouth never crosses into preachy territory. Yet somehow, the series manages to tell a story of being a teenager more effectively than anyone else on television right now. If you’re going to watch a single episode of this season, “Disclosure the Movie: The Musical” is the most ridiculous, hilarious offering of the bunch.

Unbelievable

 

Unbelievable opens with a gut punch of a first episode that follows a girl named Marie (played to perfection by Katilyn Dever) through a rape and the subsequent, impossible task of recounting the details of it over and over to authorities. In Marie’s case, the officers don’t believe her, kicking off an investigation that spans across state lines, departments, and years. If you can get past that devastating premise, Merritt Wever and Toni Collette take over from there, leading an incredible miniseries based on the real life ProPublica story from a few years prior. The journey, while painful, is some of the best acting and most powerful storytelling on TV this year.

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