15. “Rick and Morty” / “Rick & Morty”
It’s been nine years (what? When did that happen?) and six seasons that Justin Roiland and Dan Herman’s series mocks all the clichés of the genre, but at the same time manages to function as a sci-fi comedy in its own right. how? Well, they really, really invest in the MDB side, breaking down the internal logic in each of the clichés they grill, and often also offering their own solutions to the problems they discovered. Time travel? Let’s laugh at the paradox. Parallel universes? Let’s explore them all, but All of them. An advanced species of aliens is attacking us? Let’s shoot them in the rectum. In the nineties they would have called it the maddob, but today it’s just an instant cult.
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14. “Cyberpunk: Edgerunners” / “Cyberpunk: Edgerunners”
By what right does a cartoon series based on a computer game brand manage to be so good? “Cyberpunk: Edgerunners” is one of the most successful Netflix anime releases to date (made by the prestigious Japanese studio Studio Trigger), which was successful enough to bring back millions of players (no less) to “Cyberpunk 2077”, the game on which it is based and which came out two years earlier so. The plot here is quite minimalistic, and reminds of “Akira” style genre classics, but this is not a series you watch for the story. We’re here for the crazy visuals, with heavy use of slow-motion, psychedelic typography, freeze-frames and other tricks, a perfect color palette and tons of atmosphere. And yet, with each episode the feeling that our heroes are not going anywhere good gets stronger, and when the series finally grabs and pulls hard on the emotional strings towards its end – it works at 200%.
13. “The Mandalorian”
The truth must be told: at this stage, nine episodes in, it appears that “Endor” is about to replace “The Mandalorian” as the major television release of “Star Wars”. But with all due respect, “Endor” has not yet finished a season, and at least for now the place of “The Mandalorian” is guaranteed: if the original “Star Wars” was a legend of knights in space, then “The Mandalorian” highlights the western elements that were always there. The story of a tough-gunner-who-has-to-guard-a-child is a well-known Western cliché (“True Courage” is a good example from recent years, or not so recent), but when that child is actually Baby Yoda, the cutest thing on the screen It’s been a long time, so obviously there’s something special here. While the last few Star Wars movies (and the prequels we don’t even want to talk about) felt too compressed, too busy, The Mandalorian shows just how much this franchise, forever the #1 cinematic universe, can benefit from a television format. In “The Mandalorian” there is action, and there is drama, but it also knows how to take its time.
12. “Love, Death and Robots” / “Love, Death & Robots”
One of the most fun sweets that Netflix has showered on its subscribers: an anthology animated series, each season contains a number of short videos of varying lengths from different animation and film makers, and the only thing they have in common is the use of one of the words in the title against the background of some futuristic world. The result is a creative explosion that is overwhelming and uneven in its level, and the lack of uniformity is somehow part of the fun. The creator of the series, Tim Miller (who is also the director of “Deadpool”), worked together with his producer, one David Fincher, with the aim of producing a TV series that would be an update of the legendary eighties hit “Heavy Metal”, and in the end they came up with something completely different and not unusual . Everyone benefited.
11. “Star Trek: Strange New Worlds”
“Star Trek” fans have indeed been blessed in recent years with the revival of the beloved franchise, and with the breadth of canvas that characterizes huge brands these days: not one series, but five (and there are more on the way). The problem was quality: “Discovery”, the first of them, started well and lost direction very quickly; “Picard” started off great and lost direction even faster; “Lower Decks” is very cute, but it is a light cartoon comedy that does not really satisfy the hunger for a new “Star Trek”. Then came “Strange New Worlds”, which actually serves as a prequel to the original “Star Trek” – and at the same time succeeds in bringing back its spirit, with everything that was missing from the new series (the endless sense of discovery in each episode, mainly) and updating it for our time. Besides, Anson Mount/Christopher Pike is simply the best captain this brand has had since the days of Benjamin Cisco.
10. “Arcain” / “Arcane”
We say again: by what right does a cartoon series based on a brand of computer games manage to be so good? After all, for years we have been accustomed to the fact that game adaptations are simply not that, and that they are only intended to sell merchandize. But “League of Legends,” one of the biggest games in the world, really doesn’t need help selling merchandise, and maybe that’s why “Arcane” has done so well: instead of trying to add size to the brand, it’s trying to add depth and appreciation to it. “Arcane” (which requires no prior knowledge of the game) is built, apparently, as a classic top-down story: an upper city of cut-off rich and a lower city of screwed-up poor. But she is smart enough not to necessarily slander the whole “up” nor to praise the “down”. What we do have here is a story about two sisters from “downstairs” who specialize in stealing from “upstairs”, until this time they steal something they are not sure they are mature enough to handle. There is a rich and interesting steampunk world that combines magic and technology, a classic story that manages to be non-banal, spectacular character design and excellent direction (note that, contrary to what is common in the genre, here in moments of violence the camera actually likes to run away and leave work to the imagination, Quentin Tarantino style).
9. “Westworld” / “Westworld”
In its first season, “Westworld” was considered a high-quality TV series dealing with philosophical issues of human existence and bursting with pretensions with coverage in all directions. Since then, we have already learned and internalized that the sole and exclusive goal of its creators, Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, is to play with our minds and have relationships Unlike nature’s way with our brains, and we must admit that in the recently concluded fourth season it was quite delightful. You already know the drill: robots and artificial intelligences, humans who might be robots and robots who might be humans, questionable reality, simulations within simulations, timelines separate, riddles wrapped in enigma wrapped in mystery, every trick in the book to stun and confuse the viewer and force him to think. A series that is basically a kind of amusement park torture facility, just like the sick amusement park where it starts.
8. “For All Mankind”
The world we know would be very different if the Soviet Union had landed on the moon first. “For All Mankind”, the impressive alternative-history series of Apple TV+ starts from this starting point and reaches in its third season to 1992, in a world where the space race continues, the technology is significantly more developed than ours and the astronauts of Russia, America and some private spaceship of some Elon Musk A wannabe in the race to establish the first human settlement on Mars. Beyond the perfect production, the look into this alternate reality raises difficult questions about the world’s priorities in our reality, and the focus on the lives of the astronauts and NASA personnel within this imagined history gives “For All Mankind” all the baggage The emotional-human that her name promises. We would move to live in this reality.
7. “Made For Love”
“Black Mirror” may have turned the whole Madba approach of “this is our world but with one small technological change” into a cliché, but “A Chip of Love” succeeds in this exercise of magic, and not necessarily because of the Madba element, but rather because of how That feels close to reality. An eccentric billionaire a la Elon Musk creates a chip that allows him to see, hear and measure every bit of humanity in his wife, who in response, quite logically, tries to run away. From here the story spirals, and the chip remains only a single element in a great comedy that includes, among other things, Ray Romano in a relationship with a sex doll. And it’s much sweeter than it sounds. Sometimes all it takes is a tiny MDB exercise to breathe life into an entire series.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvWgNSLIULw
6. “Russian Doll”
In recent years, everyone wants to do time loop stories (you know, because of an excess of screenwriters who are still stuck in a time loop for “getting up yesterday morning”). Few have managed to do it as well, cool, creative and accurate as Natasha Lyonne in “Russian Doll”, as a game designer (and the choice of profession is not accidental) with a magnificent mane of red hair and many bad habits who discovers one evening that she just can’t die , whether she tries or not. The series is indeed called “Russian doll” (what we know as a Babushka doll and the Russians as a matryoshka), but it is more reminiscent of a Hungarian cube – when its parts slide into exactly the right place, it is so satisfying that you can actually hear the click.
5. “Station Eleven”
In January, the last episode of “Station Eleven” aired on HBO and we haven’t calmed down since. how much beauty. How magical. The plot is drowsy and dreamlike, and it focuses on a group of survivors who band together as a traveling theater group and seek out other survivors to perform for them, and it’s all strange and beautiful and poetic. Like an ancient shamanic spell reborn, “Station Eleven” emerged from Emily St. John Mandel’s 2014 bestseller, showing How do you ever make a series about a post-apocalyptic future full of horror and pain without degenerating into dystopian clichés and without losing the scope of human emotion. The creator Patrick Somerville (who is also responsible for the scripts of “The Leftovers” and “Maniac” and acts as a showrunner in “A Chip of Love”) presents here a work of science-free MDB, in a world that has lost most of its technological capabilities after a flu-like epidemic that wiped out most of humanity A unique piece of television that used all the source material of the graphic novel and it is highly doubtful that it will return for another season. Some things are too beautiful to last.
4. “Undone”
The psychedelic fantasy of Raphael Bob-Waksberg, the creator of the huge “Bojack Horseman”, goes the farthest from his previous series (he proves here, and pardon the terrible pun, that he is really not a one trick horse). It is also a cartoon series, but in a completely different style (rotoscoping – subtle coloring of video, which creates a realistic and dreamy look at the same time), it is slow, thoughtful and relatively heavy – perhaps the only thing it has in common with “Bojack” is the liberal attitude very timely. Rosa Salazar is a virgin, a young and rather lost girl who, following a car accident, begins to see her dead father everywhere, and her attempt to understand whether she is really on the edge between existence and non-existence or whether she is simply suffering from brain damage is the main theme of the first season.
3. “The Expanse”
Simply the best space opera that’s been made in years and the series we wanted “Battlesutter Galactica” (remember? Remember how fun it was in its first two seasons and how terrible it was afterwards?) to be. Six perfect seasons of political intrigue in space, against the backdrop of a cold (and sometimes heated) war between Earth and Mars, a destructive molecule and one crew of a ship stuck in the middle of all this mess. The series ended last January, and for those who have never watched it, we have good news: the ending is completely satisfying and you can start it with a calm heart.
2. “The Boys”
Just try to tell us that “The Boys” is more of a superhero series than a TV show, and we’ll tell you we don’t care (besides, the origin of the heroes is in a secret solution made by a huge corporation. That’s enough TV for us). A parody of superheroes, a satire of the socio-political reality, a really stressful drama about the fate of our heroes and enough disgusting fools/perverts to satisfy the fans from the Internet. “The Sons” is not only one of the best TV series today, it is also one of the best series of the decade, despite some instability in the last stages. What to do, when you present a character like Homelander perfectly, plot holes feel like a rather insignificant matter.
1. “Severance”
The elevator pitch of “Detachment” could easily have become another deplorable act of late capitalism: employees of a giant corporation undergo an invasive medical procedure that allows them to live completely separate lives at work and at home, without remembering work at home or home at work. Obviously, it soon turns into a nightmare.
The idea is original, but “Detachment” leads this list not because of the concept but because of the execution, and also because time after time it avoids anything that even vaguely resembles a cliché. Did you think you got social satire? You got a lot more than that. The script, built precisely around the fact that the viewer always knows exactly twice as much as his heroes (at least those who have passed the cut-off). The disturbed claustrophobic photography (mainly in the underground corridors of Lumon, the cult-like corporation where the heroes work) that recalls Terry Gilliam’s “Brazil” and Jacques Tati’s classic “Playtime”. The wonderful acting of Adam Scott, John Turturro, Patricia Arquette and the rest of the cast (Christopher Walken!), actually. And of course, the catchiest theme tune on TV. Even more than “heirs”.