There is simply too much TV, folks. This is a fact. Catching up on everything is something of an impossible task. At this point, I'm not sure I'll ever learn what a Kominsky Method is no matter how many times my dad tells me to watch it. But that also makes it that much more of a minor miracle when a TV show does break away from the pack, when something so special emerges that you carve out pieces of your precious time just to see what happens next. Here, we've collected every series in 2019 that did just that.

As always, though, a few points before we begin. This list is mostly a road-map through the crowded TV landscape, not an etched-in-stone declaration. If you're asking yourself that age-old question—what should we watch next?—these are the shows that are more than worth your while. There's variety here, too. Mind-melting mystery boxes, madcap comedy, hard-boiled crime dramas, and some that are a mix of all those and more. Heck, there might even be something that's not "good", per se, but you have to watch it if you want to be a part of TV history.

So, without further ado, here are the best TV shows of 2019. And for even more of Collider's Best of 2019 content, click here.

'Watchmen'

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Image via HBO

Season: 1

Creator: Damon Lindelof

Cast: Regina King, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Jean Smart, Jeremy Irons

It goes without saying that Damon Lindelof and the brilliant creative team he assembled for Watchmen did not need to go this hard. It would've been easy to adapt Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' landmark comic series for HBO and call it a day. And yet, here we are, and Watchmen is, all at once, a brilliant treatise on race and class, a tragic love story, a mind-melting sci-fi mystery, and the first piece of art in which Yahya Abdul-Mateen II straight-up hangs dong. It's a gift, is what I'm saying.

Picking up 34 years after the comics, Watchmen mostly follows Angela Abar (Regina King), a masked vigilante whose world is rocked when her long-lost grandfather (Louis Gossett Jr.) comes to Tulsa and hangs her police sheriff (Don Johnson) from a tree. From there we are launched into a vast, insidious conspiracy, interrupted occasionally by Jeremy Irons losing his goddamned mind in a giant castle. Peppered with fantastic performances from the top-down—Jean Smart is brilliantly dry as a hero from the comics, Tim Blake Nelson is wonderfully deadpan as a brand new vigilante—Watchmen was the superhero show to beat in 2019, and it's not even close. --Vinnie Mancuso 

'Fleabag'

[caption id="attachment_795962" align="aligncenter" width="600"] fleabag-season-two-phoebe-waller-bridge Image via Amazon[/caption] Season 2: Creator: Phoebe Waller-Bridge Cast: Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Sian Clifford, Andrew Scott I’ve never loved having my heart broken but there was something extremely beautiful and meaningful and perfect about the heartbreak I experienced while watching Fleabag Season 2. If Season 1 was about seeking forgiveness in all its forms, Season 2 was focused on finding love in all its forms: self-love, family love, romantic love, and beyond. Once again it was down to Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who serves as showrunner, writer, and star, to sell us another achingly glorious chapter of the Fleabag story — and she succeeded with bells on.
Over the course of another cruelly short but extremely bingeable six-episode season, we get even more rich character development for every Fleabag character, with especially brilliant turns for Sian Clifford as Fleabag’s (the go-to name for Waller Bridge’s otherwise unnamed character) sister Claire and recently Oscar-minted Olivia Colman as Claire and Fleabag’s stepmother. Of course, it was Andrew Scott’s Hot Priest that set the internet aflame and really had us talking — and for good reason, too. Through Scott’s sensitive, mature, cheeky take on the character and connection with Fleabag, Season 2 presented us with a relationship with could invest in, fight for, argue about (why couldn’t they have ended up together!?), and mourn for once the credits rolled. Even if we don’t get another season of Fleabag, it doesn’t diminish the fantastic season presented to us this year. --Allie Gemmill

 

'Succession'

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Image via HBO

Season: 2

Creator: Jesse Armstrong

Cast: Brian Cox, Jeremy Strong, Sarah Snook, Kieran Culkin

Few TV shows in 2019 were more entertaining, enticing, and surprising than Succession, which vaulted into the pantheon of “great HBO series” with its impeccable second season. What began as a chronicle of a Murdoch-like family empire has fully evolved into an ensemble dramedy that blends high stakes, emotional tension, and profane zingers into one of the most addictive serialized stories being told on TV right now. It’s kind of insane to think we actually care about these multi-millionaire a-holes, and yet the brilliance of Jesse Armstrong’s writing is that each deeply flawed individual not only has redeeming qualities, but also carries a layer of emotional trauma bubbling just under the surface. The cast is impeccable and their often-hilarious verbal tangles further reveal years of familial dynamics at play. Succession is a gift and we should all be thankful. – Adam Chitwood

'I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson'

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Image via Netflix

Season: 1

Creator: Tim Robinson

Cast: Tim Robinson, Sam Richardson, Brianna Baker, Patti Harrison

2019 was the year about 60% of everything I say was replaced with quotes from I Think You Should Leave. Nothing, besides maybe the Cats trailer, made me laugh harder with its ultra-surreal brand of weirdness than Netflix's sketch show, created by former SNL writer and Detroiters star Tim Robinson. All six episodes clock in at a brief 15-ish minutes, but woo boy the sheer variety of demented comedy within those minutes is breathtaking. You could watch a "Baby of the Year" contest featuring that piece of shit Harley Jarvis. You could see the mortal danger that comes with a sloppy mudpie. You could learn about this rule that the restaurant has where if you're sharing loaded nachos you can't just take the nachos with all the toppings on them. (It's a real rule.) Wildly more hit than miss, I Think You Should Leave should stick around as long as Netflix wants to be in the running for comedy king. --Vinnie Mancuso

'The Mandalorian'

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Image via Disney

Season: 1

Creator: Jon Favreau

Cast: Pedro Pascal, Werner Herzog, Gina Carano

The Mandalorian is my favorite Star Wars property of the past 30 years, if for no other reason than it finally delivers the experience of exploring the farther reaches of the Star Wars universe with smaller stories about regular non-magic people just tryna get by. Not everything has to be lightsabers and Death Stars and the Skywalkers. All those things are fine, but Lucasfilm has spent over forty years worldbuilding Star Wars without ever actually playing around in any of it. I’ve been screaming “Let me see puppet Nick Nolte farming weird lizards in the desert” for years now, and The Mandalorian has finally answered my cries.

The show gives us a small-scale space western and lets it play out without needing to tie it to the main series, something that not a single Star Wars film or show has managed to do yet. This may well change, but for now, it’s refreshing to watch a Star Wars property that doesn’t have the burden of being a direct prequel or sequel to any of the films. It’s free to take it’s time building a brand new story with brand new characters. Plus, we’re finally diving into the Mandalorians, a race of Spartan-esque space warriors that have been fan favorites ever since Lucasfilm tossed a bucket onto the head of a random extra on The Empire Strikes Back and told him to hold a laser rifle and look mysterious. And I hardly need to mention this, but I will take every bullet in the galaxy for Baby Yoda. --Tom Reimann

'When They See Us'

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Image via Netflix

Season: 1

Creator: Craig Mazin

Cast: Asante Blackk, Jharrel Jerome, Caleel Harris, Ethan Herisse, Marquis Rodriguez

Ava DuVernay’s four-part miniseries about The Central Park Five is devastating, but it’s an absolute must-see. The series chronicles how five young men—four black and one Hispanic—were wrongly accused and convicted for the brutal rape of a white female jogger in Central Park in 1981. The miniseries plays like an extension of DuVernay’s incredible documentary 13th by showing how the justice system railroads young, poor men of color to satisfy the needs of white people who crave the illusion of safety. This system not only ruins the lives of these five young men, but also their families, and ultimately society as a whole since these five innocent boys were caged up instead of being allowed to contribute. When They See Us is about more than the crime that happened in Central Park; it’s about the crime of racial injustice we all continue to live with. – Matt Goldberg

'Barry'

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Image via HBO

Season: 2

Creators: Bill Hader and Alec Berg

Cast: Bill Hader, Stephen Root, Sarah Goldberg, Henry Winkler, Anthony Carrigan

Barry's first season was a breakout hit, boosting Bill Hader from comedy fav to heavyweight awards contender, but Season 2 gave Hader and co-creator Alec Berg a chance to stretch their legs even more, and get even weirder, darker and more ridiculous wit their story of a hitman looking for his humanity in acting class. Hader remains remarkable as the title character, anchoring the series in Barry's mess of self-loathing and self-righteousness -- with a streak of unpredictable volatility that Hader impeccably masks with his comedic gifts until the very last second. Which just makes the shocking impact that much more intense.
Co-stars Henry WinklerStephen Root, and Sarah Goldberg got to dig deeper too, plundering through the ugly underbelly of their own character psyches, while Anthony Carrigan, of course, remained a scene-stealing delight as NoHo Hank. And then there's 'ronny/lilly', the absolutely unpredictable bottle episode that spun the series towards sci-fi/action territory, delivering one of the best fight scenes of the year in any medium, and a laugh-out-loud bonkers scenario played with the straightest of faces. No matter, which way you look at it, the second season of the breakout HBO comedy was one of the most original, surprising, and well-crafted series of the year. -- Haleigh Foutch

'Mindhunter'

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Image via Netflix

Season: 2

Creator: Joe Penhall

Cast: Jonathan Groff, Holt McCallany, Anna Torv

In season 2 of Mindhunter, the screws were tightened, the procedures and protocols were bent to their near-breaking point, and constants we thought we knew about the characters were flummoxed -- all amidst the real life tragedy of the Atlanta Child Murders, a case that shoved Mindhunter’s usually subtle didacticism screaming necessarily into the forefront. The show’s more surface-level pleasures continued and evolved from season 1. It continued to be one of the most handsomely shot and constructed shows on TV, continued to ratchet up nearly unbearable levels of suspense and tension with nothing but dialogue, and had sterling performances from its locked-the-hell-in ensemble. But I’ll remember Mindhunter’s second season primarily as a “walls caving in” season, collapsing the central beliefs and tropes of its characters to incisive, enthralling results. Can we please have season 3 already? --Gregory Lawrence

'The Righteous Gemstones'

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Image via HBO

Season: 1

Creator: Danny McBride

Cast: John Goodman, Danny McBride, Adam Devine, Edi Patterson

Thank God for The Righteous Gemstonesthe HBO comedy that unleashes some of Hollywood's most talented on-screen scumbags like Danny McBrideWalton Goggins, and Adam Devine with all the force of the Old Testament. Created by McBride with regular collaborators Jody Hill and David Gordon Green taking on producing and directing roles, the series follows the uber-famous evangelist family the Gemstones, led up by blowhard patriarch Eli Gemstone (John Goodman, a blast as always) and often cast into controversy by siblings Jesse (McBride), Judy (Edi Patterson, fantastic), and Kelvin (Devine). Like most McBride projects, The Righteous Gemstones basks in its own assholery—it's a pretty perfect companion to HBO's Succession—but it's impressive how often it whiplashes into high-tension drama and violence. Crude and unflinching its views on the vastly wealthy megachurch scene, fans of Eastbound & Down and Vice Principals will be in from moment on one. But what those shows do not have is Walton Goggins showing up with an absurdly red face and shock of white hair to get "Misbehavin'" stuck in your head for days on end. Praise be. --Vinnie Mancuso

'The Boys'

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Image via Amazon

Season: 1

Creator: Eric Kripke

Cast: Karl Urban, Jack Quaid, Erin Moriarty, Antony Starr, Elisabeth Shue

The year marked some significant introspection when it came to the superhero genre. As far as movies go, Joker and Avengers: Endgame killed our superheroes, make real threats out of villains, and imbued the genre with an overwhelmingly morose vibe. And when the time came for television to contribute to the discussion, it did so with The Boys, the Amazon Studios live-action adaptation of the Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson comics of the same name.

Beneath all of the gore, cursing, and darkness which permeated The Boys Season 1 was a show deeply interested in investigating our cultural obsession with superhero stories and the near deification through over-commercialization of these figures in our everyday life. The Boys followed Billy Butcher (a delightful, always snarling Karl Urban) and his team of merry misfits — played by Jack Quaid, Laz Alonso, Karen Fukuhara, and Tomer Capon — as they work to keep superheroes from abusing their powers and getting too far out of line. Unfortunately for them, the A-list supes doing superhero work for PR perks (led by a deliciously insidious performance from Antony Starr as Captain America stand-in Homelander) give them more trouble than they could ever expect. The Boys was a raucous, welcome relief from the otherwise pristine landscape of comic book-adapted superhero fare of this year and years past, a much-needed palate cleanser, and an indictment of the genre overall. Cynics, this one was for you and I hope you got a kick out of it.

'Game of Thrones'

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Image via HBO

Season: 8

Creators: David Benioff and D.B. Weiss

Cast: Kit Harington, Sophie Turner, Emilia Clarke, Maisie Williams, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Lena Headey

Game of Thrones is one of those things that only happens once in a lifetime, like celebrating your 21st birthday, or hang gliding into an active volcano. Everyone in the world was into this goddamn show, and this year’s season finally completed the epic story and wrapped up the many mysteries and loose ends. Kind of. Mostly. Ok, it maybe only wrapped up a few of them, but at least it ended, right? That was something!

Look, however you feel about the extremely divisive final season, Game of Thrones managed to grab us all by the throat and refused to let go for nearly an entire decade. The experience of sitting down to watch the next chapter of a story virtually every single person I know was deeply invested in was unique, and honestly even a little profound. Dissecting every episode, trading theories, and making predictions was just something you did whenever you got together with friends and coworkers. We all super gave a shit about Westeros, and Jon Snow’s parents, and Dany’s dragons. And while the finale may have felt a bit like getting tackled out a 400 story window into a city-wide garbage fire by a drunk giant, Game of Thrones was one of the most epic fantasy stories ever told in any medium. The feeling of community around the series was on the level of Harry Potter, Star Wars, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and those are absolutely crazy heights for a cable TV show to reach. Game of Thrones may have banished Jon Snow to the North Pole and left the kingdom in the hands of King Boringturd the Dull, but something like 44 million of us watched that shit go down around the world. You don’t get storytelling that epic on television, it just doesn’t happen. I’m not likely to sit down for a full series rewatch any time soon, but it’s even less likely that I’ll ever again experience anything like watching Game of Thrones unfold over the past 8 years with a mind-boggling chunk of my fellow humans. --Tom Reimann

'Russian Doll'

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Image via Netflix

Season: 1

Creators: Natasha Lyonne, Leslye Headland, and Amy Poehler

Cast: Natasha Lyonne, Greta Lee, Charlie Barnett

Netflix started the year strong with one of the year's best, dropping Russian Doll on February 1, and watch the internet get sucked into yet another classic Netflix binge-watch. And Russian Doll is perfectly bingeable; a tight half-hour dramedy with just eight episodes that send you down a propulsive rabbit hole with constant twists, turns, and cliffhangers -- and yes, many, many shocking deaths.
Co-created by Amy PoehlerLeslye Headland, and Natasha LyonneRussian Doll stars Lyonne as a woman who can't stop dying on the night of her 36th birthday party, forced to repeat the day (and her deaths) over and over until she can figure out what's keeping her there. Witty to boot with sharp-tongued, provocative comedy and (sometimes literally) killer visual gags, Russian Doll is endlessly entertaining -- thanks in no small part from a career-best performance from the fearlessly charismatic Lyonne -- with a script that wisely knows when to mix it up and never loses sight of the beating, breaking heart inside the hilarity. -- Haleigh Foutch

'Chernobyl'

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Image via HBO

Season: 1

Creator: Craig Mazin

Cast: Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgård, Emily Watson

The most surprising thing about Chernobyl is that it comes from the mind of the man who brought us the Hangover films and two entries from the Scary Movie franchise.  But Craig Mazin can be serious, too.  Deadly serious, in fact.  That’s exactly what Chernobyl is from beginning to end, as it recalls the 1986 nuclear disaster that shook the world.  We’ll never get an accurate number of casualties the event wrought, but the show exposes why the plant’s explosion occurred, and the immediate aftermath, as three heroic characters—Professor Valery Legasov (Jared Harris), Council of Ministers vice chairman Boris Shcherbina (Stellan Skarsgård), and the fictitious nuclear physicist Ulana Khomyuk (Emily Watson) work tirelessly to quell the damage and ensure it never happens again.

The limited series reveals to the lay person the sheer potency of radiation, while shining a light on the ongoing calamities left in its wake.  Ultimately Mazin and director Johan Renck are offering a stark condemnation of the state.  While the plant’s chief engineers and its construction manager were negligent in their dangerously aggressive test, Soviet secrecy and communism emerge as the real villains here.  A country in such fear of global humiliation, it will do whatever necessary to protect itself and its way of life.  The characters are strong, the visuals bleak, and the feeling ominous all the way through.  Chernobyl is a horror series masquerading as non-fiction drama, where the monsters you can’t see are just as ferocious as the ones you can. --Brendan Michael

'The OA'

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Image via Netflix

Season: 2

Creators: Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij

Cast: Brit Marling, Jason Isaacs, Emory Cohen, Phyllis Smith

The biggest TV tragedy of 2019 was the loss of The OA, the singularly batshit and beautiful drama from Brit Marling and Zal Batmanglij. Audacious, daring, deeply strange, and flawed in its first season, The OA returned for a sophomore chapter that solidified into one of the most moving sci-fi stories in years. The show ostensibly follows Marling as Prairie Johnson, a woman who learns the secret to traveling between dimensions and must assemble a crew to stop the villainous Dr. Hunter "Hap" Percy (Oscar Isaac) from exploiting it. But it's also...so much more than that, an almost unexplainable amount more than that, honestly. But what you need to know is that season 2 uses all of Marling and Batmanglij's trademark earnest oddness to weave a complex, emotional story about family and faith. A story that, mind you, ends on such a jarring left turn that it's a straight-up crime we'll never see what happens next. (Since I still think The OA is well worth a watch, I won't spoil that ending, but you can read all about it right here afterward.) --Vinnie Mancuso 

'Los Espookys'

Image via HBO

Season: 1

Creator: Ana Fabrega, Fred Armisen, Julio Torres

Cast: Bernardo Velasco, Julio Torres, Cassandra Ciangherotti, Ana Fabrega

The most delightful surprise of the year, the HBO comedy Los Espookys is a vibrant, absurdist, bilingual love letter to horror that unleashes a tidal wave of bizarre charisma with its unforgettable characters and pure-hearted dedication to silliness. The series stars Bernardo Velasco as Juan Carlos, a diehard devotee of all things spooky, who teams up with his best friend (a scene-stealing, etherial Julio Torres), and sisters Ursula (Cassandra Ciangherotti) and Tati (Anna Fabrega) to start a horror service company. What kind of services? Well, if you need to fake a haunted mansion for an inheritance scheme or a local monster to get tourism up, Los Espookys the ones for the job. Created by Torres, Fabrega and Fred ArmisenLos Espookys is just pure, genre-loving joy with a powerhouse comedic ensemble, and a demand for such impeccable writing, they have to make every single joke work in two languages. -- Haleigh Foutch

'Castle Rock'

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Photo by: Dana Starbard/Hulu

Season: 2

Creators: Sam Shaw and Dustin Thomason

Cast: Lizzy Caplan, Elsie Fisher, Paul Sparks, Tim Robbins

It feels like Castle Rock is falling between the cracks a little bit this season, and that’s a shame, because it’s thoroughly, cosmically, goose-shittingly wild and I am here for it. It takes the dimension-hopping craziness of the first season and somehow manages to make everything 110% more out-of-control, while simultaneously anchoring the supernatural antics with a guttingly real performance from Lizzy Caplan as a younger version of the infamous Misery villain Annie Wilkes. Caplan has never played a character like this before, so I was truly blown away to watch her deliver one of the most honest portrayals of mental illness I have ever seen. Her story is a series of compounding tragedies that snowball as the people around her constantly fail to recognize her needs, which makes it all the more heart-wrenching when her world inevitably comes crashing down around her. Annie’s arc would’ve made a fantastic season of television all by itself, but Castle Rock decided to pluck it out and drop it in the center of a nest of sort-of vampires, and I respect the hell out of that completely bonkers decision. Plus, you’ve got Tim Robbins shambling around in there, and every actor he shares a scene with has to pretend he isn’t the size of a professional basketball player. --Tom Reimann

'Rhythm + Flow'

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Image via Netflix

Season: 1

Creators: Jeff Gaspin, Jeff Pollack, Jesse Collins, John Legend

A howling, indignant, inherently American melancholy radiates at the core of Rhythm + Flow, Netflix’s utterly essential hip-hop competition reality show. For the contestants, this isn’t just about rapping well. The stakes between moving on in the competition and staying put are the differences between life and death. “I lost too many people to just be sitting around and waiting,” states one contestant, with equal parts hardened professionalism and uncontrolled vulnerability. Rhythm + Flow highlights the voices of folks who do not normally get voices in America — or worse, whose voices are abruptly cut short. These voices offer such engaging, interesting perspectives — from the gay male rapper Cakes Da Killa who’s fighting against his community’s homophobia, to the female slam poetry-tinged Big Mouf’Bo who raps for her late mother — and it all offers an atypically deep reality TV viewing experience. In other words, Rhythm + Flow offers actual “reality.” --Gregory Lawrence

'Euphoria'

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Image via HBO

Season: 1

Creator: Sam Levinson

Cast: Zendaya, Maude Apatow, Angus Cloud, Eric Dane

The kids aren’t alright but they just might be okay if we’re using HBO’s Euphoria as the metric for which we evaluate the lives of Gen Zers everywhere. Adapted from the Israeli TV series of the same name, the series features Zendaya is the ostensible lead of the series as Rue, an addict struggling to remain in recovery while navigating her junior year of high school. But this is more ensemble than solo journey, with Hunter Schaefer, Barbie Ferreira, Alexa Demie, Sydney Sweeney, Maude Apatow, and Jacob Elordi rounding out the standout cast and each being given time to shine on screen. Through the characters played by each actor, Euphoria is as much a character study in disillusionment and the hormonally-driven dramas of teenagerdom in a tech-savvy world as it is a wrenching drama. Seeing teens forced into extremely adult situations like intimate partner violence, bullying, and drug addiction is distressing but Euphoria reminded us these are necessary issues to explore, regardless of the generation experiencing it. And as odd as it may sound to follow-up with, it’s hard to deny Euphoria’s beauty. It’s shot extremely well, with enough of a stylish flare to feel original without it being distracting.  Euphoria is the kind of show which felt less explosive and more truthful depending on the generation watching it. Boomers may pearl-clutch but younger Millennials and Gen Zers will scoff, touting it as a window into their version of normal life. --Allie Gemmill 

'Sex Education'

Image via Netflix

Season: 1

Creator: Laurie Nunn

Cast: Asa Butterfield, Ncuti Gatwa, Emma Mackey, Gillian Anderson

By now, ya probably the tropes of the high school sex comedy: Doin’ it is kind’ve super awkward! What are you supposed to do with your hands! Boners are weird! But no one ever got mad at a master musician for playing a familiar melody, and Netflix’s Sex Education has such a refreshing handle on the tropes that even they start to feel new. A seamless blend of 80s, John Hughes-ish drama with 90s American Pie raunchiness, the series follows Otis Milburn (a wonderfully jittery Asa Butterfield), a virgin who becomes his school’s top sex advisor. There’s a charming, dreamy quality to the whole thing that brings to mind that warm haziness that comes with being young and confused. Throw in actual treasure Gillian Anderson as Otis’ sex therapist mother, and you’ve got a modern-day coming-of-age curriculum worth signing up for. — Vinnie Mancuso

'True Detective'

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Image via HBO

Season: 3

Creator: Nic Pizzolatto

Cast: Mahershala Ali, Stephen Dorff, Scoot McNairy, Carmen Ejogo

Living up to the first season may forever prove too tall a task for this series, but the bar was lowered following the second season’s letdown.  For the third go-round, creator Nic Pizzolatto went back to a structure similar enough to the original and turned out another tremendous character piece.  The core mystery may not have been as interesting as the people involved, but it keeps you guessing right up until the final episode, or the penultimate one if you catch every detail.  Pizzolatto tells this story in three separate time periods, using his 70-something protagonist, Mahershala Ali’s Wayne Hays, to reflect on the past as he battles what appears to be dementia.  The case of two missing children from 1980, which was closed back then, keeps emerging—in 1990, and in the show’s present timeline, 2015.

Over eight episodes, we explore what really happened then, mostly through the eyes of Wayne, whose relationships with partner Roland West and wife Amelia, played wonderfully by Stephen Dorff and Carmen Ejogo, respectively, take center stage.  It’s the complexity of these three characters—and their affability—that make season three work so well.  Again there are sinister goings on; powerful people are abusing said power, and children are the ones who suffer.  We get to see more of the other side of the crime as well.  Scoot McNair delivers a heartrending performance as the grieving father, the show reminding us that the loss of a child is an emotionally complicated matter.  A satisfying ending—even if it’s been done before—brings it all home.  In a series about darkness, the third season suggests True Detective may have an even brighter future ahead. --Brendan Michael