A Year in review: a review of 2023
2023 was another great year for television. Among other great shows we watched (and I reviewed) this year were Gen V (outrageous spin-off of The Boys), One Piece (excellent live-action version of a rather dumb anime), a new BBC remake of War of the Worlds, an engaging time-travel yarn called Paper Girls, a serialization based on Willow (same actor 30 years on) and a great Tasmanian murder-mystery called Deadloch. There were also some worthy new shows I’m still working my way through: Foundation (based on the Asimov classics), I’m a Virgo (seemingly goofy story about a 14-foot tall guy that gets as eerie and strange as Repo Man with a strong dash of social commentary), a solid revenge Western called The English, a kick-ass Korean sort-of Western called Song of the Bandits, another good murder mystery in Iceland called A Murder at the End of the World, and a good remake of the cult classic German SF novel, The Swarm. Wolf was a BBC murder/mystery, creepy and very unsettling, starring Iwan Rheon, who US viewers will recognize instantly as Ramsey Bolton from Game of Thrones. Alligators and psychopaths, oh my!
Apple TV+ had several other great shows, including Andor (the most sophisticated and thoughtful Star Wars series to date) and Hijack, with Luther’s Idris Elba, an engrossing and suspenseful plane hijack seven-parter.
Of note was a transition short series of Doctor Who with the 12th Doctor, David Tennant, returning to usher in the premier of the 15th Doctor, played by Ncuti Gatwa. Tennant, always one of the best Doctors, shone, and Gatwa is very promising indeed! Gatwa has the requisite demented grin.
But the very best of the new TV shows this year were The Last of Us, Wolf, and the The Sandman. All three were absolutely stellar! All three were considered to be unfilmable, all have great acting, solid plots, and were memorable. If your viewing time is limited, you could do worse than to start with these three.
But returning shows also presented great entertainment. If I made a top ten list of best TV shows, Good Omens, Star Trek Strange New Worlds, The Bear, and For All Mankind would be on that list. Even without Terry Pratchett, Good Omens was hilarious and irreverent. ST:SNW, closest in spirit to the original of all the ST series, is also one of the most inventive and imaginative in the entire series. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel ended a charming and sophisticated comedy after four glorious seasons. Fargo is presently airing season five, and seems to have regained the creepy strangeness and outrageousness of the original film and the first couple of seasons. Only Murders in the Building has a tone and spirit similar to Mrs Maisel, blessed with an unparalleled chemistry amongst its three lead actors. Carnival Row had its second (and final) season, offering solid lessons in the costs of social oppression. Upload is back (the afterlife, by Microsoft) and is still both goofy and dark. Reacher is back and just as bad-ass as he was in season one. Of the returnees, the three best were The Bear, For All Mankind, and Good Omens.
There were three shows that had stand-alone single episodes that were absolutely transcendent. The Last of Us had ‘Long, Long Time’ written by co-creator Craig Mazin and directed by Peter Hoar. It starred Nick Offerman and Murray Bartless as a gay couple trying to navigate the post-apocalypse. Moving and affecting, a deeply memorable episode. The Bear offered a flash-back episode detailing Carmy’s family five years before the start of the series. The Italian family has gathered for the Feast of the Seven Fishes. You wouldn’t believe how much drama and suspense can come from a simple salad fork. And finally, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds had ‘Subspace Rhapsody.’ Star Trek: The Musical. It should have been an utter disaster. The songs were all original to the show, the cast had, in general, average singing voices, and of course it was based on Trek Technobabble, always problematic. It was the most hilarious ST show ever, and you’ll find yourself laughing and applauding by the end. Following the rules of musicals, the characters emoted their deepest thoughts and desires when singing, making for a surprising level of sophistication. It worked, magnificently.
All three episodes were “stand alone” jobs: you didn’t need to know the overarching plotline, but familiarity with the characters helps in the latter two.
We encountered a host of shows from previous years that we hadn’t seen before. British offerings included Luther (with Idris Elba, and probably the best cop show since Life on Mars), The Bay (a solid, if somewhat unfocussed cop show), Stonehouse (an entertaining docudrama about a Labour politician who got honey-potted into spying for Czechoslovakia during the cold war and then faked his death and fled to Australia), and The Sixth Commandment, another BBC docudrama about a sociopath who preyed upon and murdered elderly victims after gaslighting them. Conor MacNeill is outstanding playing Martyn Smith, the murderer in question.
Midnight Diner is a Japanese series (3 seasons and 30 episodes, followed by a movie, followed by Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories (2 seasons, 20 episodes), followed by another movie) starring Kaoru Kobayashi as “Master” the proprietor, chef and bottle waster for the much-loved (100 rating on Rotten Tomatoes) and award-winning series. In a similar vein, Japan offered the amusing and engaging
Samurai Gourmet, about a retiree who visits various restaurants and imagines himself as a samurai warrior as he does so.
Every documentary by David Attenborough is a treasure, especially since the technical quality keeps improving at an amazing pace, and because England’s national treasure is 97 and we have to assume each new series might be his last. Planet Earth III does not disappoint, and gives Sir David the opportunity to make a clarion call about how we’re very nearly out of time to avoid an environmental catastrophe from global warming. Kennedy is an in-depth look at JFK, and covers a lot I didn’t know.
It was a good year to get caught up on other documentaries from recent years, mostly from the BBC, and included The Great British Winter, Secrets of the London Underground, A Year on Planet Earth,
Blue Planet I & II, Prehistoric Planet, and Abraham Lincoln.
I didn’t get to see as many movies as I might have liked this year, but the ones I did see were of consistently great quality. In no particular order, they were Oppenheimer, Killers of the Flower Moon, Infinity Pool. Avatar The Way of Water, M3gan, Everything Everywhere All At Once, A Quiet Place Part II, White Noise, and Midnight Diner. I recommend all of them. Best animated features included Nimona, Puss ‘N Boots II, The Amazing Maurice, Leo, and Wendell and Wilde.
Animated series/anime had more than its share of good series this year. The best, by far, was Blue-Eye Samurai, but it faced challenges for quality and depth from Pluto and Strange Planet. Others were sillier but still entertaining: Krapopolis, Agent Elvis, Samurai Rabbit, and Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. Returnees included Invincible, Vinland Saga, Star Trek Below Decks, Mystery of Aaveros (formerly The Dragon Prince), Rick and Morty, Freak Brothers, and Vox Machina.
Books: This was the year of Peter Cawdron, who had no less that four excellent SF novels this year alone. The best was ‘The Art of War,’ which referenced the same-titled Chinese classic. ‘Apothecary,’ ‘Ghosts,’ and ‘The Artifact’ comprised the other three. He makes Stephen King look like George R.R. Martin, and while many authors are equally prolific, few manage to do so without turning into hacks. So Cawdron gets the Terry Pratchett award for 2023.
Speaking of Stephen King, he had ‘Holly,’ starring his most engaging and human character in a murder drama. King doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and in refusing to do so in ‘Holly,’ caused MAGA and Qanon to get their widdle feelings hurted.
‘Intrepid: Dawn of the Interstellar Age’ by Arnie Benn was an instant SF classic that will remind readers of Childhood’s End. An older series, dark and disturbing came to my attention, beginning with ‘Starfish.’ Peter Watts makes Harlan Ellison look like Bubbles the Clown, but damn, is he good. ‘Beyond the Burn Line’ by Paul McAuley is another extraordinary hard SF novel, about a future non-human Earth civilization that is trying to puzzle out what became of the once-dominant species, us. Burn line refers to a geological discontinuity clearly caused by flame that marked the sudden end of humans as we know us.
Two of my fantasy favorites, Scott Lynch and Joe Abercrombie, had collections of short stories this year, ‘A Year and a Day in Old Theradane,’ by Scott Lynch, and ‘Six Short Stories’ by Joe Abercrombie. The latter is a rather amazing series of loosely connected stories about items that wend their way through the predatory capitalist system of his early industrial age fantasy world, only to be destroyed by their enhancements. I spend much of the first part of the year reading Lynch’s wonderful ‘The Gentleman Bastard’ series. Swords, sorcery and grifters. Vastly entertaining.
Speaking of which, I also read Duane Lindsey’s six parter, ‘The Grifter’s Daughter.’ Cons and scam stories are always entertaining, and Lindsey’s work is no exception.
On the goofy and hilarious and yet-thought-provoking front, there’s the surreal ‘The Accurate Accounts of Jinni the Cat’ by Clara Szali. An alien, sent to Earth to study the dominant species first hand, becomes a house cat. And discovers humans.
Finally, I’m starting in on Rachel Maddow’s library of written work. One of the best and hardest working journalists in America, Maddow has a half-dozen books on my must-read list.
So: that was what I did to distract myself in 2023. Between rising fascism and increasing weather dislocations, it was a grim year, but at least the human spirit is alive and well in our entertainment. So there’s that, at least.
Will I get to write a satire this year? “Hyere Lies The Donalde; a Grimm Comedic Attempt.”