The Top 10 TV Shows of 2025

21:58Andy Greenwald:Yes. But they otherwise don't really compete with the endless churn of vertical videos, which is how people watch and engage with the world now. Yeah, I think it's like what we're going to see is that you know, you have people who don't know life without the internet and then you have people who don't know life without smartphones. And soon we'll have people who don't know life without binge watching and without that kind of personalized, curated, algorithmic relationship to what is quote unquote on TV. The idea, I don't even know if your daughters could operate a cable guide button. would they even know would they just be like what do you mean I have to wait a half an hour to watch this movie what do you mean I have to press down down down down down to get to the next screen that's asking a lot if we're doing this pod 10 years from now I mean if we are I can't wait Kai has 8 golden globes it's not just Kai she's beaming in from Kawhi but Kai is going to have a Pulitzer Prize Like everyone who touches this goes on to greatness.

23:08Andy Greenwald:The coaching tree of this pod is amazing, but we don't do it for the glory. That's right. We're just waiting for Lizzo to drop part 98 of Telos. Lizzo or Lizzo? Lizzo. Okay. I misheard you. I thought we were joking about those wacky kids. I don't joke about the fourth estate. I take it very seriously. One other thing I would note that is, for as much as you and I loved a lot of the same stuff, I think it's worth interrogating whether or not not liking things is contagious. So there were a few shows this year that, and this is actually born out of a chat I was having with Joanna Robinson about end of the year lists.

23:47And she pointed out quite rightly and not at all pointedly, like she was just like, I think I was a little bit higher on some of the big tent stuff than you guys were. And that would obviously be say like Severance, you know, or Last of Us, or in, she didn't specifically name these, but White Lotus, Alien Earth. I think that we're always open to loving any of that stuff. You know what I mean? And there's various reasons for why we didn't for each one of those shows. But those are all pretty successful shows that we liked or disliked to varying degrees that probably won't wind up on our top tens maybe in our honorable mentions.

24:29Try to think of what else was really interesting about it. You mentioned actually something. Oh, and I would actually throw The Bear in there as a show that I think is a little bit stuck between stations right now of what it used to be and what it might surprisingly become with the fifth season. I was pretty, I think I was like a little bit of an outlier on, not an outlier, I was a little bit on an island with the fourth season, third season. And then the fourth season, I think I found a bit challenging in places, but ended, I thought, on a quite searing note. you mentioned Helen Harper and some of the disparate far-flung places you can find television I'd say the same thing goes for the international pipeline which is always really interesting we have some stuff on our top 10 but there continues to be discoveries especially on Netflix all the time you know where you just find out that Stefano Salima made a mafia show set in Florence and I was like I didn't even get a note Like, you know, like it's like these things don't get publicized as much, but they are out there.

25:34They are in the they are in the stacks. You just got to look for them.

25:36Andy Greenwald:Also, there's things like a Channel 4 sitcom called Big Boys that is beloved by people that I that I've become friendly with in the UK. And I've checked it out. It's really, really good. It I think it appeared on maybe it's on the New Yorker top 10 list. It's interesting to me that like you would think with so many streaming services desperate for anything that it would have found a more consistent home to get some promotion. but it hasn't. Like, there are just shows that still don't get here somehow. And the state of the medium worldwide is fairly strong. Yeah, and the Hall and Harper thing is really interesting.

26:10I mean, we talked a while ago about whether it was possible to have an independent television scene. Yeah. And I think Hall and Harper was pitched all over town. I mean, Lily Reinhart, who's the co-star of the show, has talked about this, about just being mystified as to why, like, nobody seemed interested in a show that dealt with this. It was just like, it's not like Reinventing the Wheel. It's a very straightforward like family drama show. Mark Ruffalo's on it. And Mark Ruffalo and Betty Gilpin's in it as well. And it's very good, but I can't remember exactly how it wound up on Mubi or how they went about shooting that, but Rafe is like an accomplished independent filmmaker who knows how to make things cheaply.

26:48But, you know, I don't know necessarily whether like we're going to be here in three years from now and then the consolidation is either wiped out, the nascent idea of like, hey, maybe we can fund this cheaply and then sell it. Yeah. Or whether or not there will actually be a little bit of a thriving independent television scene because of that consolidation because people are going to choose to like, hey, if I can get$3 million to do it like this, maybe I can then sell it upstream somewhere.

27:17Andy Greenwald:I genuinely don't know and this is probably a better conversation to punt into the new year just in terms of like industry stuff. But like, I don't have an answer for you in terms of scripted television because it is so expensive to make and the margins are so specifically what they are. But I have just been trying to pay more attention to the ways that vertical video churn has changed expectations for comedy and specifically because of the natures of my algorithm for like food television, which I'm passionate about. And, you know, as someone who got really into the food network in like the late 90s and has been watching like Iron Chef and then into Top Chef and all this stuff.

27:54Andy Greenwald:That was pretty cool. You were at bars. But I was like, oh, damn. Mario really cooks that live. I'm sure he's great in his personal life as well. The spotted pig. I wish I could go upstairs. Yeah, the just how just without almost effortlessly people have made cooking look completely different and super appealing in 90 seconds with like a GoPro attached to their forehead versus all of the bells and whistles that are required on television. Or even just like on a more specific level, like the way, like the Topjaw content, which is very on brand for me, it's very British and restaurant based. But I love watching that stuff.

28:40Andy Greenwald:I think the guy Jesse is incredibly charming. Have you watched his Apple show? And I watched some of the Apple show, which he is a very charming host. It's very well made. I like food content. But it does feel... You want him standing on the street being like, yeah. The framing of that show is that Michelin stars are the most important thing in the world for diners or restaurateurs or whatever. And they do matter for a certain 1 % of the 1 % class of both diners and people putting up money for restaurants. But it just feels so completely detached, A, from most people's lives or interactions with food, such as the kind that we see on Top Jaw.

29:18Andy Greenwald:but also just detached from what the relatability and the pleasure of the food content of just like, here's someone making a soup as opposed to manufactured drama of like, I need to like - Will he or won't he get this star, right? Yeah, we need to tweezer this more quickly so an anonymous person can say, oh, I noticed that that was a sore relief and thus - Has Topshop come here? To LA? Yeah. Why would they come here? I don't know. They would go to Houston's and Pasadena. Interview me about my favorite slop bowls. I mean, genuinely. There's CR outside a goop kitchen. Glub, glub, glub. That was$70.

29:53Andy Greenwald:That's the thing. Don't come here. Like, there isn't anything good here. This place is a wasteland. Anything else? Top notes about the year? No, I think we should get into it. I feel like we can have, I think we can express ourselves through the beauty of shows. Five to one on our honorable mention list. And I'm going to start a little spicy. Okay. A little controversially. Sure. English Teacher on FX, English Teacher Season 2. Do you want to speak to the controversy and spiciness? I do. Okay. So, English Teacher Season 1, one of the best new shows of 2024. One of the best new comedies to emerge in a long time.

30:33Andy Greenwald:And Season 2, a very, very confusing narrative and experience. I'll say that on screen, just in terms of the television show, I continue to love this show. I think it is, pound for pound, one of the funniest things on TV. I think that like the performances from Stephanie Koenig and Carmen Christopher and Enrico Colatoni, the entire ensemble, Jordan Firstman this year, especially in a bigger role, just in the kind of ensemble you dream about getting in a comedy with a very, very specific and unique to itself rhythm of jokes. and like the season premiere, especially where the kids don't want to do Angels in America because they don't get it, but they want to do a COVID musical is so, so funny.

31:15Andy Greenwald:It's just like the sweet spot of what this show is. Yeah. I think the season petered out a little bit, although it rebounded in the finale. What I genuinely want to present is I loved the show and I do not understand what happened. So big picture of what we can speak to is that last year when the season one was airing, New York Magazine ran an expose on reported bad behavior Brian Jordan Alvarez, while working as a sort of before his glow up into mainstream entertainment when he was making web series and YouTube. It was a very deeply reported and passionately reported piece that was essentially could be boiled down to a he said, he said about whether some bad behavior on set was consensual or was it ever okay.

31:57Andy Greenwald:Unclear, right? Actually, I don't want to say unclear because the behavior does not seem great. Sure. There was a comment from Brian Jordan Alvarez in response to it. And then the show, I believe, had already been renewed or then was officially renewed, went into production on the second season. The second season was dropped into a absolute black hole press silence. Yeah, there was no press for it. There was no press for it. I wasn't able to ascertain exactly why I did not catch up on the show because I was traveling most of the fall and I only just finished it in the last few weeks. I feel like this show deserved better.

32:32Andy Greenwald:I can't say because I don't know what happened, but I do feel like it is a great injustice that the show is gone, that no one spoke to why it is gone. No one spoke to what actually happened. It seems like an enormous disservice to, like I was saying, Sean Patton, Stephanie Koenig, the great cast of the show that all of their work seems to have been washed away. Is it because Brian didn't want to do press for it? Is it because FX didn't want him doing press for it? Is it because they couldn't agree on a press strategy for it and they just wanted it all to go away? Was there ever a fair shot for this show in the second season?

33:07Andy Greenwald:Should it have gotten one? I don't know. I'm not here to adjudicate the moral behavior of the people who make the arc that we like. I just feel like this is a great... It's just greatly unfair that we don't have a full understanding of what happened here. Right. beyond that, it's a bummer because the show is fucking funny and I liked having it in my life. I thought the second season had maybe not the highs of the first season, but it had a consistency for me and also maybe settled into what it could have been for years to come. It kind of was like, okay, we don't need to have a crisis or will the school close kind of thing.

33:45In fact, the second season often made fun of the sort of big swings sometimes shows make where everybody thinks like the principal is going to be retiring yes or or even like in 15 years what's the name

33:56Andy Greenwald:of the kid who's like a youtube kid who's in the class who's one of the funniest you know background players and there's a sense in the finale of like you're graduating and he's like actually i failed so i'll be here next year right so i it's a shame because it's like obviously got legs i really honestly i gotta admit like i i don't even understand i i don't even want to get into like what that article was about and like what he did or didn't do the thing that i think that i struggle with, and there are things that are more important than us liking comedies that we have on our TV. I'm not trying, I don't want to get aggregated for coming down too hard on one side of what could be sexual malfeasance on the set of something.

34:32Andy Greenwald:Sure, sure. My understanding of it, though, and again, no one's talking, so let me know if I'm wrong here, but my understanding is nothing was, nothing, no bad behavior was related to this production with all of these people working on it and giving it their best, and it's a bummer. it's just a bummer. I'll miss the show. I will go for my number five now. And this is a show that we briefly talked about that you tapped out on, but that I found myself pretty gripped by. And we'll say was for me, the class of a pretty popular genre right now, which is trash prestige. And that is the beast in me. Oh, that made your list.

35:09Yeah, I would not call it trash. I mean, I thought it was quite well done. Yeah. And features two like really towering performances. although Claire Danes' lip quiver has now become fully memed. I think they're onto her. Women on their peloton are doing Claire Danes' lip quiver. This is just a really well-done, gripping New York thriller. I thought that Antonio Campos offered a really cool visual sensibility to this show. As a director, I like a lot. and it had for as much as it was like, it just took me back to some of the like heyday of the prestige thriller, prestige whodunit stuff that we were kind of really enjoying.

35:58Up through Presumed Innocent last year, All Her Fall obviously is like a huge hit this year. There's been a bunch of shows this year, some having to do with the Murdaugh murders and some having to do with like plastic surgeons run amok. But this was mine. This is one that I really found like at the end of every episode, I was like, I kind of want to start the next episode. And had the mechanics of pulp, but the prestige of two of the best actors you will see on any kind of screen in Clarity and Samatthew Reese.

36:28Andy Greenwald:And our shared fantasy that New Yorker writers are celebrities. And have sick houses and, yeah, and oyster. It's really nice for us for that. Maybe they do.

36:37Andy Greenwald:I don't begrudge this choice at all. I think that even in my limited sampling of it, like this is an example of something done, something elevated. Yeah. It doesn't, it didn't need to be this stylish. It didn't need to have these performances going off like this. And anecdotally, in conversations with civilians who watch television the way normals do, probably no one listening to this podcast, people loved the show. Yeah. Like this was something that people were excited about. Even with the, like, even at a little Hanukkah get together last night, a cousin was like, this was the perfect show for me to watch with my mom.

37:12Andy Greenwald:And that is not a small phrase. I think this was a show my wife and I loved watching together and would like parcel it out so that it was like, okay, we're going to watch one. Then we're going to watch it. Like, you know, like we're going to watch, we're going to like make this last two weeks, but we, you know, we could have finished it in one night. Well, speaking of love, my number four is a show that I cannot really sit here and make a strident argument for on just like the aesthetic merits. But I love platonic on Apple TV. You do not have to argue with me. I think that there is probably a part of me that would like to give a long and winding impassioned speech about how it is in the public interest, the public trust of these giant corporations to like give Cooper Ray for whomever the opportunity to make shows and make art within, you know like to be the new de medicis that said if they just want to like set if apple just wants to set aside a couple hundred million every year for seth rogan to make two television shows forever and this is one of them great yeah great this was this was my comfort food show this year i didn't binge through it i just had it when i wanted to and uh i love rogan in this i love rogan in this period of his life and his career we're going to get to him i think uh on our shared list i love Rose Byrne as a comedian and the show made me very, very happy, even though it is the least honest about Los Angeles or Southern California driving entertainment products since Collateral.

38:43Well, it doesn't, towards the end of the season, like LA traffic really hinders people getting to and from certain places, right?

38:51Andy Greenwald:It hinders people when necessary. But there are moments in the show that would make anyone who has spent any time here gasp. Like when Seth Rogen says, I guess you're right. I guess I have to go confront my ex-fiance in San Diego. Do you want to come with me? And Rose Byrne's like, I have a large event tonight. My career is dependent on it here in the city that I live in Los Angeles, but sure, let's hop on the five. Do you know what I mean? Like that, so the show is a comedy slash fantasy, but I just, I really love platonic as well. It's really, I'm glad that they're going to continue to make that.

39:23Andy Greenwald:Yeah. Please keep making it. I would like to be able to acknowledge that there's been a costume change in this last cut and I am wearing a hat that says, ask me about my Lord and Savior, Conrad Fisher. I'm not going to get too deep into the summer I turned pretty, which is an honorable, honorable mention. So I will have six on my honorable mentions, but I did want to mention... Oh, we're just changing the rules now. Oh, okay. That's fun. But I just want to just briefly mention that of all the shows that were kind of like water cooler shows or sensations this year, the one I got the biggest kick out of was the summer I turned pretty, which wound up coming out, I think it was over from like July to September, mid-September or something like that.

40:03And really did become kind of like hysterical kind of thing to wrap the week around and be like excited about like, is she going to choose this guy or is she going to choose that guy and those crazy kids and cousins and Paris. And I just really enjoyed it. So I wanted to say also because I have the hat.

40:19Andy Greenwald:But you didn't enjoy it enough to put it on your actual list. No, I just wanted to say that the hat is, you know, I'm not faking it. I did watch the summer I turned pretty. This is how you stay popular. You know what I mean? You just, you are attending to every single demographic group. My real number four, and I guess I'm going to. I started this podcast by being like, I'm here to defend a potentially indefensible show. And you're like, who here likes candy? I sure do. God damn, that Conrad, man. God, I just do all of this wrong. Like, I really need to rebrand for 26. My number four this year was Slow Horses.

40:57I'm a little bit boxed in because I kept saying Slow Horses was going to be on my top 10 but I stand by this it would probably be pretty high on an individual list I don't know if it would get top 6 or 7 but it would be on my top 10 I thought this season was awesome and I've talked before about how I maybe made the mistake of watching this together bunched up as a binge on its screeners rather than the week to week release schedule that it was parceled out at but that is I only did that because I found it so damn addictive and so exciting to watch. This is a much more London-based group hang-up season after a somewhat more far-flung one or a separated one from this previous season.

41:38I thought Oldman's best moments in this season were among the best of the series in its entirety. I agree with that. And I don't want to take its consistency and high level of quality for granted. And so I have this season, which was season five, I believe, of Slow Horses as my number four pick of the year.

41:58Andy Greenwald:Not on any part of my list, but I agree with you that I'm grateful for the show and Oldman's speech was a top 10 TV moment of the year. Okay. Speaking of taking things for granted, I have to put White Lotus on my list. Yeah, for sure. Shout out to your favorite podcaster, Ezra Klein. Like, this is abundance. It is an abundance. It is a sign of abundance. Did you just come up with that? Yes. if we get White Lotus on our TV and everyone's just like, oh, it's not good enough. Yeah. Or nitpicking it. It didn't land every single part of its storyline. The fact that the show not only exists, but is now one of the more beloved and probably profitable franchises in modern TV is shocking to me.

42:47Andy Greenwald:It's stunning to me. and I we could do a whole podcast and we did multiple podcasts of all the nits one could pick with season three and we could if we did a ranking of the seasons I don't know if this would be higher than three but the highs were remarkable whether it's Parker Posey, Jason Isaac's performance, the Walden Goggins renaissance that we saw the Sam Rockwell speech the Carrie Coons speech but like I think it is no small thing to have an all-star game basically every year of some of the best actors of our time exploring the stuff that one interesting, creative filmmaker wants to explore.

43:29Andy Greenwald:And I found it, I enjoy this job of covering TV more when The White Lotus is on. I thought it was a really exciting season. It is definitely, regardless of whether I felt like this was a weaker season than the first two or not, it still has so much to think about and so much to talk about on every episode. Every episode of the show has got something to really consider. And if anything, I'm judging Mike White harshly because I'm like, I didn't necessarily know if the three separate plot lines ever kind of tied into a knot. I think it had interesting ideas in each one. But they totally felt a little bit disparate for me in terms of previous seasons.

44:11Andy Greenwald:Yeah, I agree. And I'm very curious to see that he's returning to more comfortable ground, literally. I think they're filming in the French, I don't know if it's the south of France, but they're filming in France in a beautiful location. And there may be, because I think a lot of people bumped on the kind of exoticism 101 of what it would mean to be in Thailand, which I enjoyed because it was a show about people who don't leave a resort in Thailand and get some spa treatments. so it'll be interesting if this upcoming season is considered a return to form or just kind of a retreat but either way the rumors that Helena Bonham Carter is the first person the rumor is that she's the first person cast in it and it's just like he doesn't miss with people who like if there was if he just has like a little like you know moneyball scout sheet of like the people who should be on the show and like what if I could recreate Jennifer Coolidge did you see that video of the guy trying to recreate the Boyd Holbrook he's like We could sign this guy for$10 million, and we could use Boyd Holbrook and recreate it in the aggregate.

45:13That's it.

45:14Andy Greenwald:That's what I'm saying. All right. Okay, so number three for you is White Lotus. Number three for me is a show that we did not really talk about this year, which is Blue Lights, a BBC show that you can watch on BritBox. And I just thought I would shout out as probably the best cop show going right now. The most long running or running cop show going. Not about cops who run, but just it's not a limited series. Got it. How does it feel about athletic cops? You know what? In Belfast, sometimes you gotta run. Sometimes you do. This is a show about three probationary officers navigating the current day, the present day of Belfast and the drugs, the organized crime, the secretarianism that is still present in that day.

46:01I think it pairs very interestingly with Say Nothing as a series to watch together. but this is from Declan Law and Adam Patterson. Each season, it's on its third season this year, is six episodes, and it is incredibly digestible, thrilling. I'd say it has a little bit of Homicide Life in the Streets, character study, observational qualities, and a little bit of the more taught thriller British procedurals-like line of duty. Nice. And so it's really great. You can watch it on BritBox. I highly recommend it. I think the third season is probably my favorite, and I really wanted to highlight it in this list.

46:42Andy Greenwald:Okay, my next one would absolutely, these top two on my list would be on my top 10, without doubt. I have to shout out The Chair Company. Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin's absolutely unhinged. It's not even a comedy anymore. It's just a portal into a completely different upside-down universe in which the most banal Midwestern mall developer, played by Tim Robinson, can just slide into a shadow world that is David Lynchian in the best possible way. No one else is making art or entertainment like Tim Robinson is right now. We spoke about it just a few weeks ago, so I don't want to repeat myself, But it's so much more than let's just do another comedy series.

47:34Andy Greenwald:It is absolutely a very, very odd, dramatic conspiracy thriller that is also minute to minute one of the most surreal and funny things that's been on TV in a long time. And it makes me really happy that the show's been renewed. And it makes me really happy that from everything I've gathered, that the HBO team, whether it's Amy Gravett, who's head of comedy, or Casey, who's head of the network, understand that this isn't just like, let's take a flyer on a guy who's buzzy right now because we also like the 11-minute friendship outtakes with Tim and Connor. This is them doing what HBO does best, which is we are going to invest in a very, very unique voice who is ready to level up.

48:16Do you think that your affection for this show makes you reconsider your aversion to Nathan Fielder or do you consider them like completely different flavors?

48:27Andy Greenwald:I genuinely think that my, I think I need to get over my allergy to Nathan Fielder mostly because I just can't stand the fact that people have approached me in front of my children and asked for pictures with me. That does leave a mark. Sure. But that doesn't mean that I can't take responsibility for falling down on the job and not engaging with what Sam Esmail says is the best show of the year. I have that problem, but it's Nate from Landman. They're like... 100%. You seem like a great lawyer on Landman. You seem like a great housebound lawyer. My number two, is that what we're up to? Yeah. My number two is Death by Lightning.

49:03A show that we touched on earlier in the year is historical television done at the highest, highest level. And two central performances from Michael Shannon and Matthew McFadden that I thought were among the best of the year. This is another Netflix series. This one comes from Mike Mikowski. and is executive produced by Benioff and Weiss. The series is directed by Matt Ross. I thought that, you know, while some of the, you know, there are moments where I'm like, I know that this isn't like shot in Washington, D.C. or Philadelphia or whatever. You know what I mean? Like there are some parts of it that feel.

49:43Shot in Budapest. Yes. There's an Eastern European air to some of it. Like me. but uh the performances and some of the ideas that they kick around and the idea of obsession and the idea of political ambition and the idea of using politics as this kind of stepping stone to fame i think there's a bunch of shows this year that dealt with politics and tried to make commentary on our contemporary moment by using either genre or history but i thought this one was probably the one that worked best for me i think i think i would recommend it to anyone who's even passingly curious about like dad TV, uh, just because it's not that big of a commitment, just a few episodes and, uh, an excellent, excellent active adaptation.

50:28Andy Greenwald:Apparently too much for some dads because I loved the show. I still haven't finished it. Yeah. Uh, which is probably the only reason it's not on my list. Also, I think we were trying not to step on each other's toes here, but I completely agree with you. And I think it is a remarkable blueprint for how to make period pieces feel electric. Yeah, and I also, getting through the fourth episode, I was just like, I don't know how many shows need to be longer than this. It's a lesson, isn't it? Well, because when I'm watching Blue Lights, I'm like, this is perfect. These six episodes are perfect. You know, like I don't really have, I wasn't sitting there being like, really, really, what could have been eight?

51:06You know?

51:07Andy Greenwald:I mean, it would be, if, it would be great to see a move towards, broadly speaking in television, an understanding by the various streamers and by the creators who, for many reasons, often want more episodes. To get paid. To get paid more. Yeah, of course. It's just such a... I get it. The industry is much more difficult to navigate on a professional level now, so that does make sense. But it would be great if we could fix this up in the new year and let shows be what they need to be. Yeah, it's interesting because coming out of the merger talks and acquisition talks in the last couple weeks, there's been a lot of emphasis on what the customer wants.

51:44Yeah. And I do sometimes think that that is not exactly right. You know? Yeah. I think what it is is like you want more minutes spent on the platform. Right. And so, you know, you might take a six-episode show and be like, let's make it nine, let's make it 11, whatever.

51:59Andy Greenwald:And we'll get to it. Nobody is like, the pit is too long. No. The pit was a perfect length. And that's 15 episodes. Yes, we'll get to that. Your number one honorable mention. So my number one honorable mention a few weeks ago, I mentioned revisiting something that we had touched on briefly and really, really getting drawn into it. That show is Families Like Ours, which is Thomas Vinterberg, the Dogma Filmmakers television show. It's on Netflix, a very big international co-production that filmed all over Europe. This would have probably crashed my top five. Yeah. Or is in my personal top five. I found it so haunting, so compelling.

52:36Andy Greenwald:I thought about it nonstop for people who don't know what it's about or remember. Or remember it is a Danish language, original television series about a moment when Denmark has looked at the, looked at the data, looked at the rising sea level. And it's like living in this peninsula nation is no longer sustainable. Thus, we will be shutting down the country and everything that comes afterwards. and it is the most human dystopia I've seen in a long time. It is a horror show in which there is almost nothing surreal. I say almost because goddammit Thomas Vinterberg, I know you're an auteur and I know you're a European auteur, but you got so close to making something without a magic boy who could see sadness in the future.

53:22Andy Greenwald:Like you got so close, but he couldn't resist. It was right there for him. Basically, unsupernatural series about something that felt so plausible that it is deeply, deeply uncomfortable to watch at times. And I think that you watch the first two episodes and you see this like perfect Scandinavian life and the only hint that things are going wrong is the camera lingers on bodies of water sometimes. It never showcases, there is no like 2012 like tsunami crashing. It's just that inevitably this is going to happen and they're trying to be responsive to it. It's engaging because, you know, Even today, we're like, well, the Scandinavians have it figured out.

54:00Andy Greenwald:They're very reasonable. This is a problem that is not going to be reasonable. And I think the other thing, and making it a very, very human-based family drama, which it is. It basically follows the extended members of one family as they try to make sense of this and then rebuild their lives in a diaspora of Danes. It is not an environmental catastrophe show. it is an immigration catastrophe show, and those two issues are very connected. But the idea of being stateless, of being paperless, of trying to be with the people that you love or even what it would mean to be from a place is extremely relevant to everyone.

54:37Andy Greenwald:And the show can be clumsy at times, but I just really, really admired The Swing and found it really, really engaging in a way to our actual lives in a way that a lot of what we watch to escape into does not manage to measure up to. I thought it was a wonderful series. Again, we decided no same picks, but it probably would have been on mine. My number one is Shorzy. The fourth season of Jared Kiso's honestly hysterical hockey comedy. I've talked about it in the past. Manzoukas has come on to talk about it. This is about the titular character, Shorzy, trying to figure out his life off the ice. uh it's the the first three seasons of this series captured the kind of uh fall and rise of a small semi-professional um sudbury canada um hockey team and follows a sports movie script pretty well and would be an excellent long sports film this has all of the deadpan comedy that letter kenny had but it is much more much more of a like journey than letter kenny sometimes seem frozen in time.

55:44And I went and saw the cast of Shorzy play hockey against a bunch of retired LA Kings for charity yesterday at the Crypto Arena.

55:55Andy Greenwald:That's wild to me. And there were 7 ,500 people there. Yeah. On a Sunday afternoon. You were all wearing vests. Most of us were wearing, well, most people were wearing Shorzy jerseys. Okay. Or Shorzy sweatshirts. But I was really, really struck by, I don't think I've ever done anything like that outside of like a comic con where I've like gone to an event where just like fans are there. And there is also this weird on Kenny Valley where like the cast is playing, they're just playing hockey like pretty well. I mean, I'll take your word for it. But it was, I was just like, you start to lose like, I know it's a TV show, but it almost seemed like this team from Canada was like barnstorming kind of.

56:37And they did a couple of bits, but it was just really a really fun event. And I don't think I've ever seen anything like that. And I've never really quite seen anything like every time I say Shorzy on this podcast, people like DM me, set the tone. This is so sweet. Yeah.

56:51Andy Greenwald:This is the closest I've ever seen you to being a Disney adult for something. Yeah, for hockey. You keep it pretty 100. Like you never get too high or too low, but like you're pretty into this. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Tremphaya offers self-injection or intravenous infusion from the start. Tremphaya is administered as injections under the skin or infusions through a vein every four weeks, followed by injections under the skin every four or eight weeks. If your doctor decides that you can self-inject Tremphaya, proper training is required.

57:28Tremphaya is a prescription medicine used to treat adults with moderately to severely active Crohn's disease and adults with moderately to severely active ulcerative colitis. serious allergic reactions, increased risk of infections or lower ability to fight them, and liver problems may occur. Before treatment, get checked for infections and tuberculosis. Tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms, or need a vaccine. Explore what's possible. Ask your doctor about Trimphia today. Call 1-800-526-7736 to learn more or visit trimphiaradio.com. This episode is brought to you by WeatherTech.

58:05Buying something for dad usually goes the same way every year. Guessing, second guessing, ending up with something that collects dust on a shelf. Here's a better idea. WeatherTech. It's the kind of gift he'll actually use. WeatherTech offers unmatched vehicle protection from floor liners and seat protectors to the cup phone and cargo liner. And no, a gift card isn't a cop out. It's just practical like WeatherTech. Skip the guesswork this year. Visit weathertech.com to get your Father's Day gift today. This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast, reliable internet means everything for your business and even this podcast.

58:38That's why I trust Spectrum Business. They keep companies of all sizes connected with internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services, plus 24-7 US-based support. Millions of business owners already trust Spectrum Business. So visit spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. This podcast is brought to you by Carvana. Selling your car should feel like one less thing on your list, not one more. With Carvana, it is. Just go to Carvana.com, enter your license plate or VIN, and get a real offer down to the penny. No back and forth, no surprises, just an experience you can trust.

59:16Like your offer? Accept it. Schedule a pickup, and we'll come to you with a check in hand. Your car, your timeline, your terms. Visit Carvana.com to sell your car today.

59:27Andy Greenwald:Carvana. Pick up fees may apply. So that's our fives, right? Okay, let's start with 10 here, and we'll try and move briefly through some of these, because we've talked about these a lot. But at number 10, I had us with Department Q. This is Scott Frank's detective series that debuted on Netflix. I don't know whether it's going to have a second season. It is having a second season. It is. Weirdly, it, and I'm sure Scott is nothing if not forthcoming with us. He can explain why it took so long. But yes, it was officially renewed. Okay, so Department Q is the detective show set in Scotland starring Matthew Goode as an English detective living in Scotland who gets his own department in a Scottish police department to do cold cases.

1:00:13It is what Scott does best, which is take tropes and cliches and stories and push on through to the other side with them. So you have your complicated detective who must heal thyself. He in and of itself has got, like, he's Sherlock. He has his Watson. He has his group of people working with him. There is, you know, a missing woman who would normally be just off screen in most detective shows that she has given almost to a sort of painful amount. She's given a lot of screen time. What did you think of Department Q in retrospect?

1:00:53Andy Greenwald:I mean, I think it was a fantastic watch. I think it is exceptional and like a hallmark of this era where we can have a certain type of entertainment, which is a Scandi noir, of which there are dozens, both in their native languages. This is based on a very popular Danish book series, but also like Britbox and Acorn, like that's what they do. But then to have one of our great screenwriters and filmmakers like, you know, who we obviously stand for these guys. these are our guys, but this generation, and they're all friends, I believe, of like Scott Frank, Tony Gilroy, who we'll talk about in a second, Steve Zalian, who came up as the preeminent screenwriters of their day.

1:01:30Andy Greenwald:Under William Goldman, yeah. And then, yes, and the direct line, and then have started directing. And of all of them, I mean, I think you can make the case that Scott has become one of the better directors as well. Sure. And seeing him take a turn on something that is established and being like, I love this. I'm not going to mess it up. I'm going to do my version of it. It's thrilling. I think the case against Department Q, which makes it fun to talk about, is what we were just saying a moment ago about let things be the right size. Let them be the best version of themselves in this bifurcated, stratified, challenging streaming economy.

1:02:04Andy Greenwald:Department Q should be already—we should already have a trailer for season two. Sure. The best version of Department Q is a detective series version of The Pit that's on Netflix, and Netflix is grinding them. and we're thrilled because there's tons of books but it is also an auteur-ish type show from the last 10 years. He likes telling old stories. And it takes time for him to get it right and he figures it out on set as he told us in interviews on the pod. He likes to figure it out in the edit. It's not wired that way. So I totally get it if there are people who are like that didn't click for me because reasons because it was too heady.

1:02:38Andy Greenwald:It was too cerebral. It went too far into literally into the chamber of secrets if you will. Yeah. Or because I want more of it. But it's a really interesting case study in what TV was for the last 10 years and what it might be again. And ultimately, it's successful because of Matthew Good's performance and Kelly McDonald's performance. And especially, shout out Alexei Manvalov, who plays Akram, who's one of the... If we were doing a new character draft, he would be in the running for the top spot. Yeah, absolutely. Let's go up to our number nine, the studio. So this is our second Seth Rogen shout out.

1:03:12he has got a case to be for being one of the most important producers of television of this decade, I think.

1:03:20Andy Greenwald:You're still caping up for Preacher. But, you know, between the boys and the several Apple shows that he's made. But, man, the studio winds up being a fantasy and a cringe comedy and a seat of your pants drama. And I think, you know, there are different fans of different parts of this show, but as the series went on and we got into the last four episodes, I think it really kind of, I personally really love the pilot in the second episode, but I don't know if that would have been sustainable if the Matt character who Seth Rogen plays was just constantly on the verge of absolutely like destroying, you know, his production.

1:04:04And, and, you know, you can make the argument that he was still like that, But I thought as it kind of opened the aperture, spent more time with the ensemble, some very obviously delightful cameos, and just an amazing snapshot of this city and this industry, even if it was satirized and even if it was like, well, we're going to turn this up to 11. Shout out to Rob Reiner and Spinal Tap to kind of make the joke work a little bit better. so what do you want to say about this?

1:04:31Andy Greenwald:I just think I love the show for all the reasons you said for its criticism but melancholic love of an industry that is in transition for the deep Rolodex of celebrities willing to have fun with themselves and play amplified versions of themselves like Zoe Kravitz or Dave Franco or Bryan Cranston second number two in the new character draft Matt Bellany playing Matt Bellany this show is on my list no matter what because of just the sheer joy of its creation from the fact that Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg created it with a bunch of people, all of whom got created by credit, all of whom shared in the success of the show at the Emmys in a really lovely way.

1:05:11Andy Greenwald:But also the fact that, like, aesthetically they directed every episode. They just went for it. They wanted to make a noir. They wanted to make an entire episode that was a one-er. The score, the style, the pleated pants, like, the editing by Eric Kisak. The old-school Hollywood buffet. It was a joyful act of creation that translated to the audience. Yeah. Our number eight is The Eternaut. Hell yeah, dog. You cook on this one. This is Bruno Stagnaro's adaptation of the acclaimed Argentinian graphic novel. Yeah, look, sometimes things just fall from the sky, and sometimes it's poison snow that wipes out most of the globe.

1:05:47Andy Greenwald:Other times, it is a six-episode adaptation of a beloved Argentine graphic novel that you and I had absolutely no fucking prior knowledge of. And the show was just sick. It was, it hit at the right time for us when there was like a little bit of a soft period in the schedule. And it just was incredibly compelling, incredibly entertaining, very, very surprising. I would say the weakest moment of an incredibly strong first season was the moment that it tipped the most into like sci-fi genre and had to like put alien bugs on screen. Okay, so that was like sort of more midway through the season, not the end of the season.

1:06:22Andy Greenwald:No, no, no. By the end, I was like, this show just knows what it is, and it has such an incredible performance, starring performance by Ricardo Doreen. We love shit like this. We love to be surprised, we love to be entertained, and we love when planet Earth reflects something back to us. Yeah. We have our own stories here, and Netflix, again, to its credit, was like, we will empower Argentine filmmakers and actors to tell this story. Yeah. Great show. Just phenomenal. And second season coming. And felt so lived in. And it's one of the great things about the last 10 years of television for me, and just over the course of doing this podcast, the emergence of international TV and our accessibility to it is it's cheap travel.

1:07:07So that we can go to places. Yeah, I've never been to Buenos Aires, but I have a tremendous amount of fascination. Bring an umbrella and a gas mask. Well, I have a tremendous amount of fascination for the culture there, especially because of my interest in football. and like I think just getting those first opening episodes and especially that first episode of the Night of the Blackout and those guys sitting around playing cards and the stores and the bicycles and just the way the city is sort of laid out. You really just do get a sense of place in this show that is unrivaled in a lot of ways and you never would have gotten this in like the early 2000s.

1:07:42You know, like you never would have been able to see something like this. I love the Eternaut.

1:07:46Andy Greenwald:And they did it at a price point. like by necessity but it was a reminder that like if you want to try to get lost vibes you don't need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars like Three Body Problem ended up doing I mean obviously it's apples to oranges but it is Netflix and I really like when they turn up gems like this me too number seven is another international show and I on a personal list you gotta go might have been pretty high for me. This is Eastern Gate, which is my thriller of the year. My thriller of the year. HBO Max. Yeah, HBO Max is a Polish spy show about a spy played by Eva, played by an actress named Lena Gora, who was one of my favorite performances of the year.

1:08:35Somewhere between... God, I mean, who are her... I'm trying to think of who her... I mean, it's like half Jason Bourne and then half... Carrie Matheson. Carrie Matheson. This is about a Polish spy working in Poland's embassy in Belarus trying to root out a mole working in this embassy. And set hyper-specifically at a moment when all the chatter

1:09:03Andy Greenwald:and also international performance, basically, in the geopolitical theater is suggesting that Russia is going to make a move on something, is going to make a statement by reclaiming something that it feels belongs to Russia. And in the moment of the show, it could be Ukraine or it could be a disputed portion of Poland called the Swalky Gap. Yes, Swalky Gap. And it's an incredible solve for making a show of the moment, but not wanting headlines to eclipse the show by the time it gets out. So you basically do recent history. I thought that the thing I love about this and one of the reasons why I'm so fascinated by Spies is because it's fictional Spies is because you watch people have to put on these masks and this character literally does not like a mask like Jim Carrey mask but changes her eyes, changes her hair, changes the way she dresses and changes the way she behaves and acts depending on who she's pretending to be and who she's with whether it's her lover, whether she's working in the embassy pretending to be a consulate, whether she's pretending to be somebody's consort, whether she's hanging out with her sister.

1:10:11She's a completely different person. Mina Gore gives an astonishing performance. I thought this was the most gripping, tense piece of TV I saw this year in some ways and has a phenomenal conclusion. I don't know if they're going to do another season of this. I think they are.

1:10:26Andy Greenwald:They are. But Eastern Gate was awesome. We love spies always. It's one of our favorite genres of storytelling. and we continue to reference Le Carre all the time in the classic kind of Cold War spycraft or shows that are like, ah, in this fallen world, post-Le Carre, Cold War spycraft, of which Le Carre wrote quite brilliantly. Eastern Gate, coupled with an author you put me onto, Oliver Harris, who's written three absolutely eye-meltingly good contemporary spy books. Did you read the third one yet? I'm halfway through it. Okay. Point towards what this genre can be in the world we have now. It is so contemporary and so bracing and exciting and horrifying in a way that, you know, to be our age and fall in love with like the spy who came in from the cold is a little bit of, it's a period.

1:11:17Andy Greenwald:I mean, it's literally a period piece, but also one's emotions are measured by the fact that it is of a different world. Eastern Gate and I don't need to pair them, but I do want to shout out those books again. A Shadow Intelligence is the first of those. and no gatekeeping. You put me onto those. I think Zach, our buddy Zach Barron read them first. Zach gets the credit. Ascension, the second one is mind-blowing. Like these are not bloodless espionage entertainments. They are terrifying but incredibly entertaining as well. Yes. We'll have a lot of book recommendations for folks in our mailbag at the end of the year.

1:11:51For number six, I have the lowdown. Okay. I think you had the lowdown a little bit higher. Yeah, but I'll allow it. But we can debate it a little bit as we go further. this is Sterling Harjo's love letter to Tulsa and Robert Altman's adaptation of Raymond Chandler's The Long Goodbye and it's a shaggy mystery that kind of feels like it's like written left handed by a right hander you know what I mean like it has like a kind of looseness and curiosity that shows don't often have and it's about vaping and coffee shops and junior Kimber records and being a girl dad and use bookstores and being a girl dad and

1:12:35Andy Greenwald:femme fatales and you know it is and ultimately what we owe each other yeah and what we've inherited and what we need to reject I mean it is look all capital letters this is extremely our shit um I feel really lucky that we got this season I think you and I were both because of the age that we are in the world that we live in we were like Dayenu a little bit like I can't believe he got to make this. I feel pretty confident that there's going to be more, which is really exciting. Yeah, it's really cool. Unless Ethan Hawke gets elected president, because the run he's on right now. Did you listen to him on Fresh Air?

1:13:12I was like, he's got my vote. Did you see him on Rogan? No, he went on Rogan? He had Rogan kind of like eating out of the palm of his hand. Wow. It was pretty amazing.

1:13:19Andy Greenwald:In terms of Spotify podcasts, he did us first. Sure. So that's good to know for my next renegoti. But this show is a celebration of filmmaking in the classic sense of sterling being a great not just a great writer and great director but being a great reader and a great watcher and a great fan of you know uh jim thompson books and as you said altman movies and you know shaggy dog stuff from the 70s uh like like the great gene hackman film night moves but also of actors yeah um one of the all-time great cast and just giving these beautiful opportunities, not just to Ethan Hawke, but to Keith David and Kyle McLaughlin and our buddy, Tracy Letts, um, Killer Mike, uh, Josh Fadham, like these people who are his friends in real life who show up and populate this world, a Macon Blair, who's phenomenal in these small little moments of the show.

1:14:15Andy Greenwald:Um, I don't want to overstate it because it's, you know, it's, I think it's correctly ranked in terms of our big picture top 10, but this is why we get up in the morning. Sure. It's to have stuff like this. Extraordinary stuff. Extraordinary stuff. Good job. Okay, so you would have had the lowdown a little higher, I think, in your personal preference. Would you agree? So that was six. Do you have task at five? In my personal preference, yes, but I had something that you have higher or lower. Oh, interesting. It doesn't really matter. Okay. We love all these shows. I have task at five. We have task at five.

1:14:48We talked extensively about task this year. I think this was probably the show that hit me the hardest this year when I think about it on a personal level but that I completely I'm candid I'm upfront about the fact that that has a lot to do with geography but it also was the most sincere and vulnerable show that I think got made in America this year in some ways and I say that specifically because I think there are international shows that might pop up later but this is Brad Engelsby's follow-up to Mayor of Easttown, starring Tom Palfrey and Mark Ruffalo, and an incredible ensemble working around them, made in and around Philadelphia and Delaware County, about essentially a heat-style cop versus robber on a collision course, but then it kind of becomes about a lot of other things, about forgiveness and about God and about fatherhood again, and just an incredibly deep and meaningful show to me.

1:15:49Andy Greenwald:I think that there's an argument to be made that this is the best show of the year. I think that we're at the point of our list where catch us on a certain day or a couple of yinglings deep. Or catch us after a certain episode. Or catch us after a 31-0 overdue get-right game against the Raiders. Like, we might swing this higher. This is the most Philly show, and Brad Inglesby is the most Philly creator, not because of his deep knowledge of the Blue Route and, you know, all the roads around Broomall, but because of the way the show effortlessly communicates the lingua franca of where we're from.

1:16:24Andy Greenwald:Not in terms of accents and the performances of the accents, Emilia Jones especially, un-fucking-real, but this very, I think, regionally unique mix of just heart on your sleeve, emotion, deep, deep bruising. Yeah. Culturally, economically, socially, psychologically and then just a savage wit like the show is really funny and it doesn't work if it's not funny just like it doesn't work if it's not pulling your heart strings and the performances in it are God tier and I'm excited and curious where it's going to go as an ongoing series for sure at number four yeah for you no go on I have Pluribus see I had Pluribus like at seven okay on my list interesting but I support you in your journey here.

1:17:13Well, okay, so you had... Well, we can talk about it once we get done.

1:17:17Andy Greenwald:I had task lowdown in families like ours higher on my personal list, but I do not. We are the collective here. We are all Zosia, and we agree with this. I have noted with interest that there seems to be a more vocal contingent of pluribus deniers. Yes, I've noticed that too. I think that there is an interesting... And frankly, they're starting to get to me. Their campaign. Well, it's an interesting conversation to be had about... Pacing and tempo in television shows and whether or not, you know, what entertainment looks like to any given person. And I think that there is, I kind of fully support people being like, I'm bored by this.

1:17:56Because I don't think that there's any sort of privilege to like, just because we have microphones, we don't know more about TV than anybody else. If you don't like the show, you don't like the show. I think it is a miracle. I think that what it's doing in terms of asking a pretty addled society that probably watches a lot of TV with their phones in their hands or doing other things to watch someone do very simple things in a very complicated environment is one of the best tests I've had to take in a long time. and I have fully come under its spell. I was watching the most recent episode and thinking to myself, how much actual, how many pages was this?

1:18:44Because you could write the script to an episode of Pluribus in probably 30 pages, but the episodes themselves are 55 minutes or something like that. So how does it, I hope we get to talk to Vince again about how that translates from the page to the visual execution and the performances.

1:19:01Andy Greenwald:And you can only do that in an operation that has been so successful for so long. An operation that is seamless in terms of like the writer's room and the realities of production, whether they're in the Canary Islands where they filmed some of it or they're in their beloved Albuquerque. Like, you can't start a show and pitch it and sell it and get into production and say, yeah, I know this is a pretty terse script, but don't worry. I'm going to deliver on a very gripping 55 minutes of television. You can't do it. Yes. Only they can do this. And it's kind of the reverse of another show that I think both of us were very affectionate about called Paradise.

1:19:32Yeah. Where Paradise is also about an apocalyptic level event that happens or a kind of world-changing event that happens. And what Paradise chooses to do is burn a season of story in every episode. And it's like going seven seconds or less the entire time. I don't think Pluribus is slow to watch, but I think it's taking its time getting where it's going and it's very intuitive and I think what it likes is revealing layers of this character Carol and now I think this character Manusos over the course of this season about how they are feeling and thinking about what's going on through what they are doing about it.

1:20:18Andy Greenwald:I find it incredibly pleasurable to watch and if there have been moments that have dragged or have been slow or I've doubted, like I'm not doubting this creative team. Sure. There were seasons of Better Call Saul where I was like, yeah, I don't know. Me too. And I was wrong. Me too. Because cumulatively, when you look back at what has been built and the edifice that you're standing on and what you're on the precipice of is masterful. And I love that experience. And I love the performances. I do think that it might be worth noting that I think some of the resistance to the show is the discomforting experience of watching something that exists separate and apart from the economy that we are all living in.

1:20:57Andy Greenwald:And I don't mean like that somehow this production for Apple TV is like anti-capitalist. That is not what I mean. I just mean that yesterday I went down to scenic downtown Los Angeles, a great place to hang out, great families. I was there too. And you were at a hockey match. Yeah. I was just on the streets. I was on the streets spending$19 for a coffee. and there was like a pop-up bazaar of like shops and people with like vintage racks and stuff and at the end of it there was a store that was just like the apotheosis of everything. It was a storefront with beautiful blonde wood. Inside of it was a vintage red BMW convertible taking up 80 % of the store and then there was a rack with five sweatshirts.

1:21:41Andy Greenwald:BMW sweatshirts or? No. Shorsi sweatshirts? Nope. And I was like, oh, this is the store where people who have rich dads work. But beyond that, I was like, I don't even know how to engage with the storefront because I don't know what they're doing. They are not bound to the exigencies of like making a living or communicating a product or making rent. Like it's beyond that. And thus I am confused and a little bit resentful by it. I don't feel that way about Pluribus because it's a beautiful show, but I do think that it's very challenging to rank Pluribus with other television shows that have come out of a more traditional, 2020's development process and creative process because Vince Gilligan makes TV shows in a completely unique way that seems like a beautifully successful kind humming machine of creativity but you can't knock it for that I'm not knocking it I was suggesting that there may be some resistance to it because you're watching it and you're like well how are they getting away with this yeah well I think that the guy on Twitter with an anime avatar who's like this shit is boring is probably not knocking it because of like the seamless development process and blank checking God.

1:22:47Well,

1:22:48Andy Greenwald:let's ask him because I think that he'll be very vocal in my menchies. Guys got him, come right outside. Number three, I Have the Pit as our number three show. Okay. You agree with that? I do. Okay. Old School Pleasures, New School Package. Nice. And a show that is using the hook of a medical procedure and the tension of real time and also packing in two seasons worth of disasters and crises into one day of these peoples, these characters, these medical professionals, their lives, and makes it into an extraordinary portrait of an industry under immense pressure in a post-COVID nation. Central Performance by Noah Wiley is phenomenal, but obviously an incredible ensemble and also one of the great pleasures of TV is getting attached to a half a dozen characters and a half a dozen actors that you had no familiarity with before and it you know it does everything that uh that other show did the other john wells hospital show did um while also just feeling very for legal reasons you're not going to name it yeah exactly um yeah i just i just think and the fact that it's three weeks away from coming out again is goes to your point about like we got to get back on the tracks here yeah it's important i mean it is an important show for its content, for the way that it's delivering the content, for what it's doing for jobs in Los Angeles, for the industry, for reminding viewers what television can and should be.

1:24:24Andy Greenwald:I just think at this moment, we are lucky with like an abundance of riches of like reasons to tune into television. We can be challenged, we can be provoked, we can be just kind of zero out with something. Um, but really one of the greatest things TV has ever been able to provide is, is love to love people, to root for people, to feel connected to human struggle in ways that are shut up pluribus, like communal and uplifting and joining and like gluing us together. And man, the pit just understands that in its bones. Um, it was so, it's so great to have a show like this. I still want the pit PM shift, the night shift, the night shift of the pit, the Hadassi pit after pit PM.

1:25:13I mean, I, it, look, it seems like it gets pretty weird at that hospital, no matter what time of day it is. But, uh, number two, we arrived at this juncture and I think that there is actually like an interesting disagreement. So, you know, we've talked about both of these shows so much. Let's talk about them together.

1:25:30Andy Greenwald:Okay. I have my personal preference is number two is adolescence. Number one is Andor. Okay. I think you have the reverse. I do have the reverse, but only in the spirit of, I don't know, maybe I'm putting too much nobility into like the structure of these lists. For me, Andor season two is essentially flawless and one of the more incredible accomplishments in entertainment of our time. I think one of the reasons why it is so outstanding and feels so accomplished and feel so monumental and significant is because of the nature of it as a two-season statement. Proof of what we can do with this medium if we rewire our brains and we're not trying to just put Star Wars on TV.

1:26:20Not just trying to put a BMW in a storefront.

1:26:22Andy Greenwald:Not trying to put a BMW in a storefront. But like, what can we do that's different? What can we, and how can we accomplish it? And adolescence is, I mean, look, it's one in 1A regardless. For me, adolescence is a singular statement of such incredible technical achievement, but also such emotional devastation and power. Because this one season is what we're getting, and because it stands alone, to me that went that's the number one because that is the most definitive statement of incredibly talented people um you know on on both sides of the camera coming together to say look what's possible yeah look what's possible um in a absolutely um painfully relevant only right now type of way yeah it's also um it's challenging in the most it's it's challenging in a way that i i love you know it challenges you to have empathy for the villain of the show and as challenge it challenges you to have empathy and love for the man who raised that villain and it has you know you cannot watch owen cooper and not be like i don't want this to be true you know and you you watch Aaron Doherty act with him and you're like, I want her to fix him.

1:27:44I want her to let him out of jail. I want her to see that he's okay. And I remember, I have recall for adolescence in a way that I don't usually for TV shows. I have a little bit of a onto the next one and then if you're like, what happened in the third episode of White Lotus this year? I'd be like, no idea. You're the Bill Belichick of binge. This is where it gets like when you throw a random game at LeBron and he's like, oh yeah, of course. We were down 88-94 and there was a timeout and then we ran horns and I got fouled and then we went on a 16-0 run. Like, I kind of feel that way about adolescence.

1:28:18It's like seared in my memory and that has to stand for something. For me, Andor is a little bit of a recency pick because I re-watched the second half of the season pretty casually and I was like, there's nothing better than this.

1:28:31Andy Greenwald:Yeah, I think that's probably true. I don't know what to say beyond that. I was re-watching things like Luthan and Lonnie on the bench or Krennic and Partagaz's last interaction or Krennic and Dedra. Yeah. And, or when Cassian first appears in the second season and he's like taking, he's going to take the shuttle from the Imperial base. Yeah, he talks to that. Yeah, he's like, you're coming home to yourself. We talked to Tony a couple of times for this. That was definitely a very rewarding and enlightening experience. but look, like this allows me to be in touch with my six-year-old self and also my guy-went-to-college-once self and that's really like a pretty special combination of things.

1:29:19Andy Greenwald:I don't, it's not even an argument. It's like if you take the third episode of Adolescence and you take Welcome to the Rebellion late in the season of Andor and you think about Genevieve O 'Reilly's performance and you think about Stellan Skarsgård's performance and I think We are lucky to have these two hours, and we are lucky that both of them are engaging with our most creative selves, whether it's, you know, the way that that adolescence episode is shot, or the fact that Andor is, you know, in the galactic senate in a moment that, like, the real dorks, and I say that with love and with looking in a mirror, like, that's a moment that people have probably thought about or understood.

1:30:01Andy Greenwald:Yeah. It must have happened. And if you've watched the cartoons, it does happen in a different way or you catch the flip side of it as they're escaping. But both of them are also deeply political and deeply moving to have experienced this year. When you can hit that sweet spot of entertainment, relevance, and emotion, you are playing in rarefied air. And at this point of the list, I like all of these shows. It's not an argument I want to make. I think that 1-2 was a really interesting argument. I think it's interesting that you probably had low down higher and pluribus lower. But again, at that point, it's just a question of head versus heart.

1:30:38Right.

1:30:39Andy Greenwald:And also, I'm ranking pluribus where it is. I have not finished the season. That's right. Which will finish this year, so it's relevant. It could move around a little bit. Wait till you see who Carol's lawyer is. Is it Clea? Who's actually Leia? I'll recap here what we had. So for the Watches, top 10 of the year. Andor, number one. Adolescence, number two. The Pit, number three. Pluribus, number four. But not for both of us. I'm not going to yuck your yum here. Task, number five. The Lowdown, number six. Eastern Gate, number seven. The Eternaut, number eight. The Studio, number nine. Department Q, number 10.

1:31:21Andy, what were your five honorable mentions? One through five.

1:31:23Andy Greenwald:Families Like Ours on Netflix, Chair Company on HBO, White Lotus on HBO, Platonic on Apple, English Teacher on FX. I had Shorzy, number one. It's on Hulu. Death by Lightning, number two, on Netflix. Blue Lights, which is on BritBox, number three. Slow Horses on Apple TV, number four. And The Beast in Me, which is on Netflix, is number five. Kaya, are there any shows that we didn't talk about that you would like to just say a shout out to? I've been really enjoying I Love LA. Yeah. I think it's really fun. And in the slew of TV shows that came out this year about... people in their early to mid-20s, I think that one is the best.

1:32:02And I love to pit. There you go. I love LA and the pit. You can't pin her down.

1:32:08Andy Greenwald:You can't pin her down. I was going to say, Kai, will you hang with the cast of the pit at the Golden Globes? I really hope so. I think just you and Dr. Robbie. I love you, Noah Wiley. Let's end on that. I love you, Noah Wiley. I love you, Andy Greenwald. Thank you so much for doing the pod with me for another year. We have a couple more episodes in 25, Pluribus Finale, etc. Thank you to Kaya and Kaya and John. We will be back on Thursday.

1:32:40Ryan Reynolds here from Mint Mobile. I don't know if you knew this, but anyone can get the same premium wireless for$15 a month plan that I've been enjoying. It's not just for celebrities. So do like I did and have one of your assistant's assistants switch you to Mint Mobile today. I'm told it's super easy to do at mintmobile.com slash switch.

1:33:00Andy Greenwald:Upfront payment of$45 for three-month plan, equivalent to$15 per month required. Intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available. Taxes and fees extra. Default terms at mintmobile.com.