Our 20 favourite shows of 2023 – and where to watch them

Join us for this countdown of our favourite 2023 shows, and find something to add to your watchlist.

It’s been a huge year for TV, something that’s reflected in this list of our 2023 faves. Big shows returned—with some destined to never be seen again—while elsewhere, brand new worlds were created for us to explore, and both true and fictional yarns were spun for our entertainment. 2023 was a year rich in comedy, drama, action, science fiction (plus some stuff that’s much harder to categorise), and our top 20 illustrates the spectrum of great viewing we’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy this year.

A big thanks to everyone at Flicks who submitted lists: Dominic Corry, Lillian Crawford, Adam Fresco, Steve Newall, Amanda Jane Robinson, Stephen A Russell, Daniel Rutledge and Sarah Thomson.

Where possible, each entry quotes from Flicks coverage published at the time of release.

20. Beef

Ali Wong and Steven Yeun play strangers caught up in a petty rivalry in Beef, one that escalates into utterly excessive, life-ruining territory. With a foundation built on Lee Sung Jin’s diasporic experience, its soundtrack was too, leading to the achingly honest/hilarious moment of Steven Yeun covering Incubus.

Calling Beef “a genius show founded on a humiliating truth” in her Show of the Week column, Clarisse Loughrey praised its “half-hour episodes that veer seamlessly from subtle human psychology to hallucinations ripped straight from the pages of a fairytale”.

19. Robbie Williams

This four-part documentary uses a tried-and-true technique—filming its subject as they watch archival footage of themselves—although the likes of Mick Jagger, put in the same position by Albert and David Maysles in 1970’s Gimme Shelter, didn’t do this from bed in his undies like Williams here.

As Williams narrates, telling his story alongside an array of footage from handycam to news coverage, what we see here is both nostalgic and tragic. There’s huge success, but there’s also cries for help seen right from the Take That era, as well as plenty of regret. As it has done time and again, Williams’ endearing personality proves a winner (even the less varnished bits).

18. For All Mankind

In one of the year’s best cliffhangers, a late season episode of For All Mankind ended with a tantalising line: “Do you wanna help me steal [spoiler]?”  From that moment, the final eps can’t come quick enough, building on what’s already been a strong fourth season that’s taken the alternate history space drama into a bold new decade—the 2000s.

“The fun factor doesn’t really go away”, showrunner Ronald D. Moore told Steve Newall in their interview, and that’s clear in a season focused on expanded Martian settlement, asteroid mining, and (in a strange coincidence with the screen industry) a labour dispute.

17. Reacher

Jack Reacher (Prime Video’s hulking, built-like-a-brick-shithouse version as opposed to the one played by the megastar actor whose real-life initials are T and C) returned for another season of brutal-looking mayhem.

Season two of Reacher sees someone torturing and killing members of the 110th, an elite group of Army Special Investigators that was Jack’s former unit. Cue fistfights, gunfire, a rocket launcher, drowning someone in concrete, and Reacher kicking a car (Street Fighter 2, eat your heart out).

16. Slow Horses

Perhaps less athletic than Reacher but certainly no less formidable, Gary Oldman’s Jackson Lamb also returned for a new season—accompanied, of course, by his chain smoking, disgusting diet, poor hygiene, disintegrating socks and rank farts.

Three seasons in, this British spy drama has perfected its blend of le Carré intrigue and character-driven comedy, full of twists, turns, and acerbic putdowns. Slow Horses’ intelligence agents may have been banished to the losers’ office, but once again show they’re not the bungling idiots they have been painted as by their colleagues—dealing with a rogue operation keen on exposing the Government’s most outrageous, conspiracy-laden secrets.

15. Scavengers Reign

A gem of a sci-fi series, echoing the animation style of Mœbius, Miyazaki and Æon Flux at various times, Scavengers Reign follows the human survivors of a crashed space freighter on a strange planet populated by bizarre creatures who form an intriguingly interlocked ecosystem.

Smart, surreal science fiction, it’s a buzzy delight—all the more so as the narrative arc of its season solidifies. What may start as a compelling show to bask in the aesthetic of, becomes an increasingly intense journey to see how its various characters and storylines will converge. And when they do, they do so explosively.

14. Barry

Bill Hader’s Hollywood hitman came back for a fourth and final season, one that justly attracted enthusiastic acclaim as it unfolded (including its arrestingly strong finale). Barry had become increasingly bleak across its preceding seasons, but it also became more confident and more challenging. Its most recent batch of episodes didn’t divert from that path, and Hader impressed in taking the director’s reins for the whole season.

As Tony Stamp wrote, the actor-director “repeatedly deploys visual language that’s as complex as the show’s characters or its tone, weaving between comedy and tragedy with an uncommonly steady hand.”

13. How to With John Wilson

“Don’t be sad that it’s over, just be glad that you felt anything at all,” John Wilson told us in the trailer for this final season of his unique, brilliant show. Obsessively filmed and edited documentary comedy, I guess you could call it—a wry, observational and exceptionally singular look at topics that include the likes of how to find a public restroom, how to work out, and how to clean your ears.

While it might have some similarities with the work of Nathan Fielder (also an exec producer here), as Tony Stamp writes, “on the whole, [Wilson’s] show has a much more generous approach and worldview”. That hardly does justice to the moving, comic effects of Wilson’s show, one that finds unexpected synchronicities in life, and often heads in unanticipated directions.

12. Deadloch

Comedy-mystery series Deadloch sees two vastly different detectives—Kate Box and an amazingly OTT Madeleine Sami—thrown together to solve a murder in a sleepy seaside Australian hamlet. Luxuriating in the tropes of the small town mystery genre, and allegedly conceived as “funny Broadchurch“, the show takes the look of a premium Scandi drama, but one packed full of gags and biting Antipodean social commentary.

As Amelia Berry’s review observes: Deadloch “delivers on a compelling mystery, genuinely funny black comedy, pristine cinematography, and an overwhelmingly brilliant ensemble cast”. One of whom Berry also interviewed, with Sami sharing more about her hilariously hardcase cop with us.

11. I Think You Should Leave

Tim Robinson came back with a third season of meme-generating comedy, once again featuring a gamut of guest stars. “Yes, your favourite Robinson obsessions are still present: poop/farts; bad game shows; hair/baldness; cigars; medical advertisements,” wrote Sarah Thomson.

“But there’s a softness to the edges of Season Three which reads like a deliberate reaction to the world around us, two years after the premiere of Season Two. No spoilers but: these new characters lose less; they find something like understanding and validation far more.”

10. Poker Face

With his murder mystery credentials firmly established with Knives Out, a case-of-the-week detective show from director Rian Johnson was a tantalising concept—and Poker Face really delivered, relishing in its episodic format to indulge in a range of murderous scenarios and styles.

Like Columbo (a big influence here from the title font onwards), this is less a whodunnit than a howcatchem, with each episode revealing its killer early. As Dominic Corry wrote, “by removing the mystery element, the emphasis, as in Columbo, is placed on the characters and the performances, which are very solid in both shows”.

9. Only Murders in the Building

Meryl Streep and Paul Rudd joined the cast of this comedy series about true crime podcasters (Steve Martin, Martin Short, Selena Gomez) who live in the same gorgeous New York apartment building.

The guest stars’ addition to the cast didn’t overwhelm the central trio, wrote Clarisse Loughey in their Show of the Week column: “Streep and Rudd have been granted every A-lister’s dream—to poke fun of themselves and reassure fans that the fame hasn’t gone to their heads—but Only Murders in the Building is too smart to settle for straight parody.”

8. Fargo

Minnesota and North Dakota of 2019 provide the backdrop for this fifth instalment of Noah Hawley’s anthology crime series, inspired by the Coens’ film of the same name. The new season centres around a seemingly typical Midwestern housewife (Juno Temple), who proves surprisingly resourceful when a shady past threatens to catch up with her. Jon Hamm’s the sheriff on her tail, while the rest of this season’s superb cast includes the likes of Jennifer Jason Leigh, Joe Keery, and Dave Foley.

This season feels like Fargo‘s most mature, wrote Tony Stamp: “There are thrills, and comedy, but the ironic detachment is dialled down a bit, and the results are all the more satisfying.”

7. Paul T. Goldman

Right back at the beginning of the year, we called this “one of 2023’s craziest shows,” and that holds true when reflecting on the year to date. A bizarre blend of documentary and comedy, this is a true story like no other.

For over ten years, director Jason Woliner (Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Nathan For You) fought to bring Paul T. Goldman’s vision to the screen, based on Goldman’s book about his life and divorce, and featuring the author playing himself (in scenes from a screenplay he also wrote himself). In a beautiful twist, Paul T Goldman is also a documentary detailing the show’s own production—uncomfortable, hilarious and shocking, often at the same time.

6. The Righteous Gemstones

Danny McBride’s megachurch comedy cemented its credentials as one of the best comedies around in its third season. The show dialled down the life-or-death stakes of season two (not to overlook a crew of Gemstone-kidnapping, monster truck-stealing survivalists led by Steve Zahn) in favour of more character-focused storylines, and lost none of its superb sharpness/stupidness combo in the process. If anything, this season showed it could pack an emotional punch we wouldn’t have expected from these flawed, absurd, self-involved characters with funny haircuts.

“There is simply nothing else on television like The Righteous Gemstones,” wrote Dominic Corry, “and every time I watch it, I’m so grateful that it exists. I thank God.”

5. The Bear

There was a lot riding on drama series sensation The Bear‘s sophomore season—but as anyone acquainted with the show would tell you, extreme pressure is in its DNA. Where survival had been the name of the game in 2022, the focus this year moved from keeping the doors of a sandwich joint open to counting down to its reinvention as a fine dining restaurant (with all manner of obstacles predictably in the way).

“It’s also allowed the series to slow down and to contemplate,” wrote Clarisse Loughrey, “as its characters each pause to consider why they’re bothering to do any of this in the first place.” The results were thrilling, emotional and often heartbreaking, with the show relishing both its bursts of high intensity and the detours it welcomely permitted itself to take (including a much-praised Christmas flashback ep).

4. Doctor Who 60th Anniversary Specials

In commemoration of the iconic Time Lord’s 60th (Earth) birthday, a trio of Doctor Who specials saw David Tennant reunite with writer Russell T Davies, alongside a number of former sidekicks and villains. As Adam Fresco observed: “Regular fans might be surprised to see Tennant back in his former role, but so’s The Doctor, asking as he reappears at the start of this new adventure: ‘But now this face has come back—why?’”

It’s a welcome return as Tennant temporarily bridges previous Doctor Jodie Whittaker and Who apparent Ncuti Gatwa, these specials serving a delicious mix of nostalgic warmth and tense dread, injected with Davies’ delightful humour.

3. The Curse

Nathan Fielder (Nathan For You, The Rehearsal) teams up with Emma Stone and Benny Safdie (Uncut Gems) for this new genre-bending show that’s impressed its way close to the top of this list (even before the first season has ended). Hopefully for our sake, this series about a couple (Fielder, Stone) making a house-flipping TV show sticks the landing…

The deathly black comedy has unsettled viewers as it skewers insecurity, privilege, and the white saviour complex, its acting trio all outstanding (including Fielder in a rare scripted role). “Awkward, complicated, and much, much weirder than you might imagine, it’s the sort of show you’ll want to discuss with friends as soon as it’s finished,” said Tony Stamp, reviewing episode one.

2. The Last of Us

The appalling track record of video game adaptations, combined with how beloved The Last of Us games are, meant the stakes were high for this HBO adaptation—but boy, did this deliver. The brilliant storytelling and emotional depth of the games provided a strong foundation, with its world brought to life with familiar details wonderfully rendered. Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey gifted us rich performances as Joel and Ellie, while showrunners Craig Mazin and Neil Druckmann made shrewd decisions about when they should faithfully follow the source material, and when their adaptation could be better served differently.

“They did it,” wrote Daniel Rutledge. “Somehow, they pulled off a live-action adaptation of The Last of Us that is as good as the game, with a TV show that adds a considerable amount of meaningfulness to the series overall.”

1. Succession

In a year with a few notable final seasons, this was the biggie. Hit show finales can be a mixed bag, but Succession lived up to expectations with a closing episode that proved satisfying (if a little maddening). Season four felt like an authentic, inevitable end to this saga of familial jostling and its last run of eps showed it was the right move by showrunner Jesse Armstrong to call time on the series. Typically, the cast was uniformly superb, with performances that will live on in future rewatches as well as millions of GIFs.

“In this last chapter of the Roy story, Succession seals its deal as the great tragicomedy of our time,” wrote Eliza Janssen (who also highlights Greg’s bewildered description of Logan: “it’s like Jaws, if everyone in Jaws worked for Jaws”).

What a fuckin’ show. And what a fuckin’ year.

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