The Best TV Series of 2023: Between Confirmations and Big Surprises

Here in this post, we are going to discuss about The Best TV Series of 2023. What we left behind was by no means a quiet year for the entertainment world. From the actors’ strike, which for weeks held every single American production in check in the name of workers’ rights, to the courageous move by Netflix which prevented sharing the account with people outside of one’s family unit, the ones just concluded have been months of turbulence and controversy. Despite the communication and financial obstacles, some authors have still managed to make their creativity count.

The Best TV Series of 2023

Although they are now small oases in a desert of mediocre and recycled products, even in 2023 we have enjoyed great TV series. Between platforms that are now omnipresent in every end-of-year ranking – HBO is always a guarantee of television – and pearls that came out of nowhere, once again it was not easy to put together the list of the best shows: the following is a list, in order strictly scattered, which aims to embrace the entire panorama of international TV, without fearing excellent exclusions or mentions open to disagreement.

Gen V Season 1

We want to start from the disagreement, inserting a series that has managed to earn as many detractors as passionate fans: the young adult spin-off of The Boys brings with it all the light-heartedness of its young protagonists, without forgetting the unscrupulous attitude of the mother series. With our review of Gen V, although enthusiastic about the overall picture of the work, we told you about a show frustrated by some banal features (characters and main plot above all), yet it is necessary to go beyond a predictable appearance to find a heart pulsating made of immediacy and ability to tell the story of new teenagers.

Between splatter scenes and the usual disillusionment in the superhero dream, Gen V paints a youthful world dominated by competition, appearance, and the loss of all values, but it does so with the lightness and sarcasm of someone aware of being a mere product of entertainment. The show entertains and dares without risking excessive controversy, managing the arduous task of freeing itself from a parent series whose shadow seemed so thick that it could have obscured it.

Ted Lasso Season 3

A very similar shadow ended up clouding Richmond FC’s last championship, because Ted Lasso’s third and final time on our televisions stumbled due to the mammoth expectations of the day before, proving not to be the epochal closing of the circle that we had been waiting for months but simply a great final season. The creation of Bill Lawrence and Jason Sudeikis is a compendium of comedy that dares to explore every facet of the broad genre of reference, offers a narrative arc full of good feelings and just satisfactions, but creaks due to some incomprehensible plot choices, so as for themes that have only been touched upon although intriguing (please refer to the review of Ted Lasso Season 3 for further information).

Despite the flaws, it is impossible not to love the conclusion of the sporting, but above all human, journey, which was Ted Lasso‘s epic on the bench of an unlikely underdog of the Premier League: among obvious parodies of real footballers and commentators, a look at the ruthless consumerist world that swirls around football, and many beautiful emotions, the show ends as it began, with a big smile on my face and the awareness that nothing will ever be the same again.

This World Can’t Tear Me Down

Michele Rech, aka Zerocalcare, also decides to talk about chosen truths, embroidered and held tightly at the center of the entire personal world, in his latest work produced by Netflix. After the sad and ephemeral individualisms of Tear Along the Dotted Line, this time the Roman cartoonist questions himself on those ideological pillars that we believe to be fundamental, until new information comes to shake our foundations, leaving us defenseless against an existence so complicated that it does not admit certainties.

Still moving against the backdrop of his beloved Rebibbia neighborhood, Zerocalcare this time takes the risk of dealing with thorny social topics, letting his political side shine through without losing sight of the comic (and sometimes satirical) vein that has always distinguished his works. There is a bit of everything in the author’s pencils, excellently animated by Netflix, laughter, anger, and disillusionment, for a series that is more personal than we expected but no less impactful (find our review of This World Can’t Tear Me Down).

Ahsoka Season 1

As absurd as it may seem, even the latest series dedicated to the world of Star Wars was much more personal than we expected. In a narrative universe where the sense of adventure and magnificence dominate the scenes, the painstaking care that the screenwriters have dedicated to the protagonists of Ahsoka could clash, leaving the plot in the background in the name of a character construction of great depth. Once you have overcome the obstacles that could prove insurmountable for some – you are warned if you do not know the previous chapters of the genre by heart, including various spin-offs.

As we warned you in the review of Ahsoka – you are rewarded with a very simple, but extremely spectacular and well-structured plot. The protagonist’s search is interspersed with grandiose action sequences, but above all the evolution of characters who would not have looked out of place in one of the numbered chapters of the film saga. An excellent screenplay and strong performances have made Disney’s latest product an unmissable work for Star Wars fans, who have been waiting for years for a show worthy of the very heavy name of the saga.

The Last of Us Season 1

The wait also paid off for those fans who, without ever losing hope, were waiting for a cinematic adaptation worthy of any video game. After decades of disappointments and cowardly attempts to strip away the medium’s historic franchises, HBO and Craig Mazin have crafted the perfect adaptation of one of the most awarded stories from the PlayStation stable: The Last of Us was a tragic and emotional experience with the controller between hands, and it is equally so in a television remake that has overcome all the controversies by going beyond the events told by Neil Druckmann and his associates in 2013.

Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey become Joel and Ellie on a journey where the fungal apocalypse has exploded humanity’s resentments, moving between characters of rare depth and fascinating places until a final episode as unexpected as it is shocking. The show made everyone agree thanks to the respect with which it handled the original work, igniting spirits in anticipation of a second season that already promises sparks, and opening up a new world of possibilities for future videogame transpositions.

The Bear Season 2

Talking about unexpected endings naturally drags Christopher Storer’s creation into the discussion, because the discovery of a pile of dollars hidden in tomato cans – without warning or research – was the final act of a series that amazed the global public. The second season of The Bear was therefore awaited with an enormous load of expectations, finding itself in the complicated situation of those who are forced to be perfect once again so as not to prove to be a simple flash in the pan.

Just take a look at our review of The Bear Season 2 to understand how the mission was accomplished: the usual neurotic, obsessive, and foul-mouthed load of this dysfunctional Italian American family hits the mark again and drags viewers into the lightning-fast works towards the opening of a high-class restaurant. The obsession with cooking, seen as a punitive art that arises from affection but ends up in a pool of resentment, becomes the ideal pretext to tell the story of complicated characters struggling with themselves, with the past, and with betrayed ambitions of their potential.

BEEF Season 1

Anger and bitterness for the choices made in life are not the prerogatives of cooks, as the absurd story of drinking revenge between Amy and Daniel in BEEF reminded us. In this case, however, the protagonists cancel any consideration of the responsibility for their failures and launch themselves into a continuous alternation of personal spite, from pranks to actual physical assaults, entering a spiral of reprisals that sucks in the spectator’s incapable of diverting the look after yet another sensational cliffhanger.

A24, the independent label that brought the American majors to their knees with stellar successes, allows itself the luxury of a serial parenthesis with one of the most popular shows of the last year on Netflix: a look at the review of BEEF is enough to make you feel The idea of ​​the incomparable work of Lee Sung Jin, the author of an unmissable show that expertly mixes the social drama of American careerism with a hilarious and never banal comic streak.

The Fall of the House of Usher

Netflix is ​​once again taking center stage with an original product, even if this time it does so with a touch of bitterness for what will be a serious loss: Mike Flanagan has gone to replenish the vast authorial arsenal of Amazon Prime Video, but before moving on to the competition he gave the big N and its subscriber audience a series that can be defined as a summation of his entire artistic vision.

Drawing from the seductive imagery born from the mind of Edgar Allan Poe, The Fall of the House of Usher places the family drama within a simply irresistible horror setting, full of quotes and moments of reflection that do not fail to denounce even the whirlwind of modern times. After The Haunting of Hill House and Midnight Mass (as well as other sadly subdued works), Usher Flanagan closes a trilogy of terror in a commendable manner, confirming himself as one of the best showrunners of recent years (find here our review of The Fall of the House of Usher).

Succession Season 4

However, the “family” topic covered within a TV series has one great master, that monument to screenwriting, interpersonal analysis, and the disgusting world of business that goes by the name of Succession. Jesse Armstrong’s timeless masterpiece is not only one of the best series of 2023, but in its entirety it appears as a fundamental pillar of the entire television medium: the stellar rating that closes our review of Succession Season 4 is not enough to expose the power of an epochal work, you have to delve into its sharp brambles, among the coils of those snakes we call familiar, to understand the cult status earned by the HBO series.

The farewell to the Roy family is perfect in its cruel simplicity, it dares to subtract the fixed point of its narrative universe and let us admire the predictable collapse that follows. Backstabs, petty backroom deals, and polite smiles are the foundations of a dysfunctional family like many others, incredibly easy to understand even though the topics discussed throughout four seasons may seem so far from our daily lives.