The 15 Best TV Shows of 2023
Editor’s Note: Find all of The Atlantic’s “Best of 2023” coverage here.
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 . 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 , 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. 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
