No soy capaz de saltar el muro de pago.
Pero si bajas muy rápido te da tiempo a ver la lista y reírte. No tiene ni pies ni cabeza, es un clásico intento de "mira qué cultureta soy".
“The American Barbecue Showdown” (Netflix)
For the past few years, reality-TV producers have been tripping over themselves to create an American equivalent of “The Great British Bake Off”: a competition of arrestingly kind eccentrics who display a devotion toward a stress-inducing hobby that verges on the religious. Only “The American Barbecue Showdown” has come close. Officially, it is a grilling contest. Spiritually, it is a gloss of Americana, an atonement for colonial sins, and a platform encouraging obsession with figures such as Grubbs, a “backwood grill-billy”; Shotgun, a mohawked giant; and Boatright, a man who sings love songs to his meats. The show is so charming that you can excuse one dystopian detail: the contestants wear the same clothes throughout its eight episodes.
“Ramy” (Hulu)
“Ramy” had the best sum of performances of any show I watched this year. The second season pulled back from the exploits of its charming fuckboy protagonist (also its co-creator, Ramy Youssef) and became more of an anthology, with some episodes diverging from the main story line to produce vignettes of secondary characters. Graceful performances by Mahershala Ali, Hiam Abbass, and Amr Waked invigorated “Ramy” before it had a chance to become stale. A stunning episode about the closeted life of Uncle Naseem, the churlish owner of a Diamond District jewelry shop, should raise the profile of the underrated actor Laith Nakli.
“I May Destroy You” (BBC/HBO)
What else is there to say about Michaela Coel’s masterpiece?
“Harley Quinn” (Originally DC Universe; now HBO Max)
This pick is really about Kaley Cuoco. Movie stars have colonized the small screen, overwhelming prestige dramas with their meta-recognizability. I miss the blunt, workman magnetism of the career television star, who lives by the ethic of disappearing, body and soul, into the world of the character. Bless network television for giving us Cuoco. Not even the formulaic rhythm of the weekly sitcom (“8 Simple Rules”; “The Big Bang Theory”) has dulled the actor’s natural warmth and wildness, which are on roaring display in her voice acting as a post-breakup Harley Quinn, in the namesake animated series, now in its second season. Check out “The Flight Attendant,” on HBO, which stars Cuoco, too.
“City So Real” (Hulu/National Geographic)
Everyone has something to say about Chicago. In this five-part documentary series covering the 2019 mayoral election, the documentarian Steve James lets the people of Chicago speak for themselves. Its fifth episode, about Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the city’s residents grappling with the pandemic and civil unrest, is a brilliant coda—one that further brings into focus the documentary’s exploration of a complicated city.
“Teenage Bounty Hunters” (Netflix)
Its cancellation is an injustice. Kathleen Jordan’s début series, about wealthy twin sisters living double lives as bounty hunters, took so many surprising and rewarding detours in its ten episodes; the wackiness of the show’s rude premise allowed for sweet explorations of race, Southernness, queerness, and the struggle to be good. Maddie Phillips and Anjelica Bette Fellini form a mesmerizing odd couple. As a friend described it over text message: it’s “a messy bitch” of an adventure.
“Normal People” (BBC/Hulu)
The achievement of this drama—an adaptation of a Sally Rooney novel—is in its depiction of intimacy. Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones twine around each other so believably that the later episodes are almost painful. It was a fitting romance for the quarantined viewer: Irish horniness laced with dread.
“The Plot Against America” (HBO)
The miniseries was a ready-made political allegory, which we needed in the spring, which we still need now. David Simon, the bard of systemic injustice, produces an elegant vision of Philip Roth’s alternate history, inflected with echoes of our current era: the erosion of democracy, the rise of anti-Semitism, the installation of a demagogue.
“P-Valley” (Starz)
There was not enough dancing in “Hustlers.” The Great Recession period piece, directed by Lorene Scafaria, presents the strip club not as the strip club, but as a glittering, artificial metaphor for the American workplace in decline. “P-Valley,” refreshingly, has its legs firmly wrapped around the pole. The drama is set at a club in Mississippi called the Pynk, which is run by a cash-strapped, genderqueer glamour-puss named Uncle Clifford (Nicco Annan). During a performance at the club, the music might drop out, making the real sounds of a pole dance audible: the squeak of flesh against metal; the heavy breathing of the dancer, as she hoists herself upward, out of her dreary circumstance. The series is Katori Hall’s TV adaptation of her stage play, “Pussy Valley,” and it is deliciously in dialogue with the female rap renaissance; think of this outrageous melodrama as an eight-episode-long verse.
“How To with John Wilson” (HBO)
John Wilson’s mosaic of New York City, framed by gentle offerings of advice, is both spare and peculiar. Over six episodes, “How To” reckons with the inherent artifice of its form, the loneliness of its roving narrator, and the gentle comedy in chance encounters. The finale, a heartbreaker, will destroy any lingering cynicism.
“Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!” (Crunchyroll/HBO Max)
This delightful anime, directed by Masaaki Yuasa, is about three girls trying to create an anime of their own. The show’s visual world is zany and gorgeous, and its meditations on creative frustration brought me to tears more than once. It also has the best theme song of 2020, hands down.
“The Good Lord Bird” (Showtime)
Ethan Hawke’s thundering interpretation of the abolitionist John Brown got a lot of attention—funny, because the series is a rebuke to the allure of white saviorism. The show succeeds because of the spirited ambivalence conveyed by its Black cast: Joshua Caleb Johnson as the child narrator Henry, a.k.a “Onion”; Hubert Point-Du Jour as the scowling enslaved man Bob; Daveed Diggs as a bougie Frederick Douglass; and Zainab Jah as a prophetic Harriet Tubman.
“Veneno” (Atresplayer Premium/HBO Max)
A dreamy reconstruction of the life of La Veneno, or Cristina Ortiz, the trans-woman entertainer who enraptured Spain, in the nineteen-nineties, and who died in 2016. In the show, we follow La Veneno as she and an adoring young journalist (Lola Rodríguez), who is transitioning herself, embark on the project of writing a book about the icon’s life. La Veneno is portrayed at the height of her fame, by the actor Daniela Santiago, and she is also depicted past her prime, by Isabel Torres. The storytelling is anarchically lush, just slightly surreal; it feels like we are seeing La Veneno as she saw herself.
“Doc McStuffins” (Disney+)
Here’s to the good doctor Dottie McStuffins, who tended to the sick toys at McStuffinsville Hospital. This children’s show about a little Black girl with dreams of becoming a healer ended this past April, around the time that the pandemic first peaked, after running for eight years. The Doc may have been as revolutionary to children as Annalise Keating was to adults.
Comentarios
No soy capaz de saltar el muro de pago.
Pero si bajas muy rápido te da tiempo a ver la lista y reírte. No tiene ni pies ni cabeza, es un clásico intento de "mira qué cultureta soy".
#1
“The American Barbecue Showdown” (Netflix)
For the past few years, reality-TV producers have been tripping over themselves to create an American equivalent of “The Great British Bake Off”: a competition of arrestingly kind eccentrics who display a devotion toward a stress-inducing hobby that verges on the religious. Only “The American Barbecue Showdown” has come close. Officially, it is a grilling contest. Spiritually, it is a gloss of Americana, an atonement for colonial sins, and a platform encouraging obsession with figures such as Grubbs, a “backwood grill-billy”; Shotgun, a mohawked giant; and Boatright, a man who sings love songs to his meats. The show is so charming that you can excuse one dystopian detail: the contestants wear the same clothes throughout its eight episodes.
“Ramy” (Hulu)
“Ramy” had the best sum of performances of any show I watched this year. The second season pulled back from the exploits of its charming fuckboy protagonist (also its co-creator, Ramy Youssef) and became more of an anthology, with some episodes diverging from the main story line to produce vignettes of secondary characters. Graceful performances by Mahershala Ali, Hiam Abbass, and Amr Waked invigorated “Ramy” before it had a chance to become stale. A stunning episode about the closeted life of Uncle Naseem, the churlish owner of a Diamond District jewelry shop, should raise the profile of the underrated actor Laith Nakli.
“I May Destroy You” (BBC/HBO)
What else is there to say about Michaela Coel’s masterpiece?
“Harley Quinn” (Originally DC Universe; now HBO Max)
This pick is really about Kaley Cuoco. Movie stars have colonized the small screen, overwhelming prestige dramas with their meta-recognizability. I miss the blunt, workman magnetism of the career television star, who lives by the ethic of disappearing, body and soul, into the world of the character. Bless network television for giving us Cuoco. Not even the formulaic rhythm of the weekly sitcom (“8 Simple Rules”; “The Big Bang Theory”) has dulled the actor’s natural warmth and wildness, which are on roaring display in her voice acting as a post-breakup Harley Quinn, in the namesake animated series, now in its second season. Check out “The Flight Attendant,” on HBO, which stars Cuoco, too.
“City So Real” (Hulu/National Geographic)
Everyone has something to say about Chicago. In this five-part documentary series covering the 2019 mayoral election, the documentarian Steve James lets the people of Chicago speak for themselves. Its fifth episode, about Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the city’s residents grappling with the pandemic and civil unrest, is a brilliant coda—one that further brings into focus the documentary’s exploration of a complicated city.
“Teenage Bounty Hunters” (Netflix)
Its cancellation is an injustice. Kathleen Jordan’s début series, about wealthy twin sisters living double lives as bounty hunters, took so many surprising and rewarding detours in its ten episodes; the wackiness of the show’s rude premise allowed for sweet explorations of race, Southernness, queerness, and the struggle to be good. Maddie Phillips and Anjelica Bette Fellini form a mesmerizing odd couple. As a friend described it over text message: it’s “a messy bitch” of an adventure.
“Normal People” (BBC/Hulu)
The achievement of this drama—an adaptation of a Sally Rooney novel—is in its depiction of intimacy. Paul Mescal and Daisy Edgar-Jones twine around each other so believably that the later episodes are almost painful. It was a fitting romance for the quarantined viewer: Irish horniness laced with dread.
“The Plot Against America” (HBO)
The miniseries was a ready-made political allegory, which we needed in the spring, which we still need now. David Simon, the bard of systemic injustice, produces an elegant vision of Philip Roth’s alternate history, inflected with echoes of our current era: the erosion of democracy, the rise of anti-Semitism, the installation of a demagogue.
“P-Valley” (Starz)
There was not enough dancing in “Hustlers.” The Great Recession period piece, directed by Lorene Scafaria, presents the strip club not as the strip club, but as a glittering, artificial metaphor for the American workplace in decline. “P-Valley,” refreshingly, has its legs firmly wrapped around the pole. The drama is set at a club in Mississippi called the Pynk, which is run by a cash-strapped, genderqueer glamour-puss named Uncle Clifford (Nicco Annan). During a performance at the club, the music might drop out, making the real sounds of a pole dance audible: the squeak of flesh against metal; the heavy breathing of the dancer, as she hoists herself upward, out of her dreary circumstance. The series is Katori Hall’s TV adaptation of her stage play, “Pussy Valley,” and it is deliciously in dialogue with the female rap renaissance; think of this outrageous melodrama as an eight-episode-long verse.
“How To with John Wilson” (HBO)
John Wilson’s mosaic of New York City, framed by gentle offerings of advice, is both spare and peculiar. Over six episodes, “How To” reckons with the inherent artifice of its form, the loneliness of its roving narrator, and the gentle comedy in chance encounters. The finale, a heartbreaker, will destroy any lingering cynicism.
“Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!” (Crunchyroll/HBO Max)
This delightful anime, directed by Masaaki Yuasa, is about three girls trying to create an anime of their own. The show’s visual world is zany and gorgeous, and its meditations on creative frustration brought me to tears more than once. It also has the best theme song of 2020, hands down.
“The Good Lord Bird” (Showtime)
Ethan Hawke’s thundering interpretation of the abolitionist John Brown got a lot of attention—funny, because the series is a rebuke to the allure of white saviorism. The show succeeds because of the spirited ambivalence conveyed by its Black cast: Joshua Caleb Johnson as the child narrator Henry, a.k.a “Onion”; Hubert Point-Du Jour as the scowling enslaved man Bob; Daveed Diggs as a bougie Frederick Douglass; and Zainab Jah as a prophetic Harriet Tubman.
“Veneno” (Atresplayer Premium/HBO Max)
A dreamy reconstruction of the life of La Veneno, or Cristina Ortiz, the trans-woman entertainer who enraptured Spain, in the nineteen-nineties, and who died in 2016. In the show, we follow La Veneno as she and an adoring young journalist (Lola Rodríguez), who is transitioning herself, embark on the project of writing a book about the icon’s life. La Veneno is portrayed at the height of her fame, by the actor Daniela Santiago, and she is also depicted past her prime, by Isabel Torres. The storytelling is anarchically lush, just slightly surreal; it feels like we are seeing La Veneno as she saw herself.
“Doc McStuffins” (Disney+)
Here’s to the good doctor Dottie McStuffins, who tended to the sick toys at McStuffinsville Hospital. This children’s show about a little Black girl with dreams of becoming a healer ended this past April, around the time that the pandemic first peaked, after running for eight years. The Doc may have been as revolutionary to children as Annalise Keating was to adults.
#9 Sigue igual?
#7 Recuerdos de Alba.
#8 y de Cete
#5 Era para tener un gold standard de criterio.
#6 De nada
Si "veneno" es una de las mejores series del año según esa lista, entonces la lista es una mierda.
#2 Pon tu lista, expón tu criterio.
#4 No hace falta. Esa lista es un full