The year’s most essential series

Television suffered some setbacks in 2023. Soulless reboots seemed to pop up or get announced every few weeks. Distinguishing reality from reality TV became harder to do. And the dual actors’ and writers’ strikes in Hollywood shut down productions while exposing the problems diminishing the quality of the shows being made.

Still, the list below exemplifies the small screen’s creative breadth this year. New programs caught our attention even amid the enormous libraries of projects already available to watch. Returning titles challenged our assumptions about where their plots would lead and how they’d end; other shows pushed the boundaries of episodic storytelling. All proved to be worthwhile viewing—and kept us convinced that we should stay tuned to whatever the medium brings us next. — Shirley Li

Succession (HBO)

How do you end a series that spent its entire run questioning the likelihood of its premise? Up until the fourth and final season of Succession, the media magnate Logan Roy (played by Brian Cox) never truly stepped down from his post, perennially thwarting his four adult children’s attempts to jockey for power. In the gulf between Logan’s unrelenting control and the futures that his kids envisioned for their family’s company, the show forced the Roy siblings to confront one another’s depravities again and again.

Season 4, by contrast, brought them together in the face of tragedy. Watching them rally around one another in grief rather than greed boggled the mind, but the show succeeded in puncturing some of their characteristic narcissism. Still, their post-mourning solidarity could last only so long: As the series drew toward its epic conclusion, it became clear that the Roy siblings would always return to their trademark nastiness and caustic wit—even without their father as an obvious adversary. Once again, Succession managed, in offensively lavish environments, to extract new meaning and heightened drama from its cyclical character studies. The rot, as ever, came from within. — Hannah Giorgis

Beef (Netflix)

Anger courses through Beef, a searing half-hour comedy about a road-rage incident that escalates into an apparently unstoppable feud. But the show wasn’t just episode after episode of shocking set pieces and characters screaming at one another. Anchored by a pair of fine-tuned performances, it was a rather thoughtful exploration of our instinct—and even need—for outrage. Danny (Steven Yeun), a contractor caring for his younger brother, lives paycheck to paycheck and has cultivated a tough front to survive. Amy (Ali Wong), a wealthy entrepreneur with a nuclear family, is terrified of ruining her sterling reputation as a girlboss who has it all. Both had nowhere to release their pent-up bitterness until they met in traffic, and though their efforts to ruin each other’s lives could be unpleasant to watch, Beef offered a nasty truth: Sometimes, there’s no better motivation than raw fury. — S.L.

The Bear (FX)

If The Bear were just a tense restaurant comedy with abundant Chicago in-jokes, it would still be on this list. But the show’s humanistic ethos—its insistence that life is enriched by care, and that food encapsulates care better than virtually anything else—made it unmissable. The second season of Christopher Storer’s FX show contained so much: Olivia Colman peeling mushrooms during an astonishing scene about second chances, Jamie Lee Curtis harnessing all of the holiday rage of all the moms into one colossal eruption, a dreamlike episode set in Copenhagen that tempered the excruciating tension of head chef Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) and his protégée Syd’s (Ayo Edebiri) attempt to finally open their restaurant. And this year, the most perfect moment on television, for me, was Richie (Ebon Moss-Bachrach) taking a pop quiz on elements of service in the kitchen of a three-Michelin-star restaurant, offhandedly referring to a sauce as a “velouté derivative,” screaming “Up your ass!” in triumph upon getting every question right, and then shout-singing the words to Taylor Swift’s “Love Story” on his drive home, vaulting over a speed bump in pure emotional catharsis. For this alone, I would give The Bear anything. — Sophie Gilbert

Abbott Elementary (ABC)

The students who attend Abbott Elementary aren’t the only ones experiencing growing pains; the teachers are too. That was the secret to the breakout sitcom’s continued success: Its second season avoided the sophomore slump not only by juggling silly workplace hijinks with the serious........

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