From “The Last of Us” to “Beef”: These were the best series of 2023.
1. The Bear (Season 2)
Déjà-vu. Last year’s favorite series is also this year’s favorite series, familiar and yet completely different, once reinvented. Because it reunites everything you liked the first time around, especially the wonderful characters, and then goes one better with each episode and breaks new ground. Climax? Every episode. But you haven’t lived if you haven’t listened to the fat Fak talk about the Replacements for minutes. You cry with joy for minutes.
2. Daisy Jones And The Six
In general, a good year for rock music in series. Nowhere better than in this story about the rise and fall of a fictional rock band in the 1970s that is unmistakably Fleetwood Mac in this all-round refinement of the functional novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Riley Keough and Sam Claflin are not rock stars. But the world would be better if they were.
3. Succession (Season 4)
Probably the series event of the year, the final season of one of the great HBO flagship series of recent years, which knew exactly when was the best time to say goodbye with a grand gesture. The story of the Roy clan benefited considerably from this: after the audience was pulled out from under their feet in episode 3, the rest was must-see TV at its finest.