Year in Review: The Best TV Shows of 2020

January: 'BoJack Horseman' (Netflix)

It’s incredible now to remember that this year began with the series finale of “BoJack Horseman,” one of Netflix’s flagship shows and one of the smartest on television, period. Since 2014, “BoJack” delivered great jokes, devastating gut-punches and screwball wit in the most unlikely form: an acidic animated comedy in a world populated by depressed anthropomorphic animals. Every season saw the creative team — led by creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg and producers Lisa Hanawalt and Mike Hollingsworth — pushing the show to dizzying new creative heights. It was genuinely nerve-wracking to imagine what the end might look like, but the final batch of episodes, particularly “Good Damage” and “The View From Halfway Down,” showed exactly how “BoJack” became the force that it did, and why it will be missed. (Read my post-finale interview with Bob-Waksberg here.)

Honorable mention: “Dare Me” (USA)

February: 'Mythic Quest: Raven's Banquet' (Apple TV Plus)

Before the pandemic hit the United States and time lost all meaning, I spent a solid week in the bonkers world of “Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet.” From Rob McElhenney, Charlie Day and Megan Ganz of “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia,” the show follows a booming video game company that began with just ambitious nerd Ian (McElhenney), his neurotic righthand man (David Hornsby) and the brilliant programmer who brings Ian’s visions to life (a fantastic Charlotte Nicdao). Dysfunctional workplace comedies have been done to death and back, but “Mythic Quest” benefits from a unique setting (video games don’t get nearly as much attention as they’re due given their enormous cultural capital) and whipsmart cast (which also includes “Community” standout Danny Pudi and Oscar winner F. Murray Abraham — yes, seriously, and he’s perfect). Halfway through the season, the show breaks format with a flashback episode about two entirely different video game enthusiasts (the charismatic pair of Jake Johnson and Cristin Milioti) that’s as insightful as it is bittersweet. Months later, “Mythic Quest” switched things up again with a quarantine FaceTime episode that actually works both technologically and narratively, thus capturing what makes the show so good. I have no idea where TV will be next year, but I have little doubt “Mythic Quest” can handle it. (Read my review here.)

Honorable mentions: “High Fidelity” (Hulu), “Feel Good” (Netflix) 

March: 'Steven Universe: Future' (Cartoon Network)

For many of us, March marked the true point of no return. Even if the pandemic wasn’t officially a “pandemic” yet, the creeping unease of what was to come was unmistakable; sure enough, by mid-month, half the country was hastily shutting down. As such, picking a representative television show for this period felt like an impossible task — until I remembered that this was also the month in which “Steven Universe” ended its incredible run by exploring the joys and heartbreaks of trying to figure out how to live while staring down an uncertain future.

Over the course of its 7-year run, Rebecca Sugar’s “Steven Universe” redefined the supposed boundaries of children’s entertainment and dug deep to explore complex themes and heartfelt lessons in empathy. Then, after a thrilling climax that seemed to tie up all its loose ends and then some, “Steven Universe: Future” went a daring step further. The epilogue series picks up with Steven (Zach Callison) after he’s saved the world (again) and finds himself in an existential crisis about who he is, what he’s “good for,” and what he actually wants. “Steven Universe: Future” asks its characters and audience alike to live their lives with full intention and hope whether or not the planet seems on the edge of collapse — which, in retrospect, made it the perfect show to have during the month when our own world seemed ready to fall off its axis. (Read my review of the finale here.)

Honorable mention: “My Brilliant Friend: The Story of a New Name” (HBO) 

April: 'Harley Quinn' (DC Universe/HBO Max)

In the grand scheme of 2020 things, losing my mind (in a good way!) over an animated Batman spinoff show wasn’t the biggest surprise of the year. But I was still happily shocked by just how much I loved the second season of “Harley Quinn,” a DC Universe original now branded as an HBO Max original. (Gotta love the ever-morphing realities of streaming.) It’s probably not a coincidence that I dove into its wild new world right as ours was getting particularly grim; at the very least, my subconscious maybe reasoned at the time, things couldn’t get worse than they always seem to be in Gotham.

In its first season, “Harley Quinn” turned the origin of Gotham’s candy-colored villain on its head, letting Harley (Kaley Cuoco) become the anti-heroine of her own story. In season 2, it got even more ambitious, hilarious, and even genuinely moving. Harley knocked down Gotham’s biggest bad guys — including the Riddler (Jim Rash), Penguin (Wayne Knight), Mr. Freeze (Alfred Molina) and earnest scene-stealer Bane (James Adomian) — while coming to terms with her own wants and needs. Much to my delight, this also included Harley realizing that she has romantic feelings for her best friend Poison Ivy (Lake Bell), thus turning longstanding queer subtext into poignant text. With detours to Wonder Woman’s Amazonian island, the depths of the ocean with King Shark (Ron Funches), Bane’s underground self-improvement camp and a terrifying hell dimension, “Harley Quinn” season 2 made the most of its time. I can’t wait to see where it goes next. (Read my review here.)

Honorable mention: “Normal People” (Hulu) 

May: 'Betty' (HBO)

Once upon an ill-informed time, I thought that All This might be over by Memorial Day. The moment when I realized just how wrong I was came while watching “Betty.”

Adapted from Crystal Moselle’s film “Skate Kitchen,” the lyrical HBO series follows a group of skater girls (mockingly called “Bettys” by the teen boys crowding the skate parks) as they bob and weave through New York City with defiant elasticity. “Skate Kitchen” stars Nina Moran, Dede Lovelace, Ajani Russell, Rachelle Vinberg and Kabrina Adams return in this iteration as slightly different characters, all excellent and painfully recognizable in all their teenage joy and angst. “Betty” is as grimy and beautiful as the New York City summer it depicts: a freewheeling tangle of fun and lust and chaos that, I suddenly knew in a rush of pained nostalgia, would be impossible to achieve in 2020. Even if “Betty” made for a bittersweet viewing experience this year, it also remains one of the most memorable. (Read my review here.)

Honorable mention: “The Great,” Hulu 

June: 'I May Destroy You' (HBO)

By June, the country came to a crucial crossroads it’s seen time and time again — but this time, with a more single-minded focus worthy of its gravity. George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police in late May, filmed and posted online for all to see, galvanized anti-racist protests on a massive scale. Combined with the arrival of summer and precious little government assistance with the ongoing pandemic, June quickly became a live wire of a month pulsing with visceral anger and pain.

It’s no wonder, then, that Michaela Coel was nervous about her new show “I May Destroy You” premiering at this time. “I just feel like we are more traumatized than we were last year for very understandable reasons,” she told me later, “and I was not making it necessarily for an audience that would be dealing with the world events that we’re dealing with.” But when “I May Destroy You” did premiere on June 7, its brilliance and timely resonance was undeniable. Over ten episodes, Coel turns her own trauma and fraught relationship with fame into crystalline investigations of modern life. Every episode is spectacular in its own way, but the finale — in which Arabella (Coel) confronts several versions of her rapist in order to make some kind of peace with her trauma — is a particular triumph. I’m generally relieved to not be ranking TV shows this year, but if I were, know that “I May Destroy You” would be number one. (Read my interview with Coel here.)

Honorable mention: “Taste the Nation with Padma Lakshmi” (Hulu) 

July: 'Immigration Nation' (Netflix)

As the summer continued, the stark inequities laid bare by the pandemic became ever more obvious and infuriating. The rich got richer and worked around the rules; the poor got poorer and scraped by on meager assistance; and so it goes. When it came time for me to watch “Immigration Nation,” Netflix’s searing docuseries about the myriad ways ICE has ramped up its invasive operations under the Trump administration, I frankly dreaded having to sit through it. And yes, granted, each of the four episodes is indeed extraordinarily tough to watch. Still, directors Shaul Schwarz and Christina Clusiau do such an excellent job illustrating the human cost of the United States’ deliberately labyrinthine laws that “Immigration Nation” quickly proves its necessity. With unprecedented access to ICE’s inner operations, careful consideration for those trying to make new lives in this country, and a gimlet-eyed approach, “Immigration Nation” is an invaluable document of people and issues that rarely get this revealing a spotlight. (Read my review here.)

Honorable mention: “P-Valley,” Starz

August: 'Ted Lasso' (Apple TV Plus)

By August, the exhaustion of white-knuckling it through this year was inescapable, and the hope of getting back to “normal” had long since disappeared. So it’s not altogether surprising that “Ted Lasso,” a sweet comedy about a British football team learning to work together, has become such a word-of-mouth phenomenon. From stars Jason Sudeikis and Brendan Hunt, Joe Kelly and Bill Lawrence, “Ted Lasso” is a warm hug of a show that uses the classic underdog sports movie template to tell stories about friendship, decency and respect. Call it the “Schitt’s Creek” effect: in times of trouble, sometimes all people want is comfort food.

Given its roots in a one-off character Sudeikis played years ago to promote NBC Sports (this is true), this show could have been too silly to take seriously. Instead, it established smart relationship dynamics, treated adults like adults, and told stories about people trying to be better versions of themselves with just the right amount of corny sincerity. There might have been more ambitious shows this year, but “Ted Lasso” remains the only one I’ve watched three (or more…?) times through. (Read my review here.)

September: 'Pen15' (Hulu)

Not even 2020 could rob September of its traditional “Back to School” vibes, which made it the perfect month for “Pen15” to come back in a blaze of cringe comedy glory. Even though the show didn’t get to film its full second season before having to shut down production, the 7-episode version that dropped this year nonetheless confirmed that “Pen15” is indeed one of the strangest, smartest shows around. With best friends Maya and Anna (co-creators Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle) now in eighth grade, they have to deal with heartbreak, jerk boys spreading sexist lies, nightmare sleepovers and in Anna’s case, her parents’ slow-motion car wreck of a divorce. All the while, the show also follows the quietly devastating story of shy boy Gabe (Dylan Gage) as he tries to avoid acknowledging that he’s gay to himself or anyone else.

Seeing women in their thirties play 13 year-olds should be weirder than it ultimately is; Erskine and Konkle are fantastic actors who physically embody their characters so well that it’s easy to forget they’re not, in fact, still teens. And while I liked the first season a whole lot, this second season — which includes two of TV’s flat-out best episodes of the year (“Vendy Wiccany” and “Opening Night”) — is remarkable.

Honorable mention: “Tottenham Hotspur: All or Nothing” (Amazon Prime) 

October: 'The Amber Ruffin Show' (Peacock)

As TV scrambled to adjust to the pandemic, late night underwent a visible tectonic shift. Trevor Noah took the opportunity of filming “The Daily Show” from home to swap his suit for a sweatshirt, for example, while “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee” relocated to the host’s house upstate. But “The Amber Ruffin Show,” starring “Late Night with Seth Meyers” standout Ruffin, had to build itself from the ground up with COVID-19 restrictions in mind. With no studio audience and staff writers Shantira Jackson, Dewayne Perkins and Demi Adejuyigbe living across the country from their host, “The Amber Ruffin Show” was fighting an uphill battle from the start.

You wouldn’t know it from the result. Dropping Fridays on Peacock, “The Amber Ruffin Show” is sharp, offbeat and extremely funny. Part late night and part surreal sketch comedy show, it feels like a pointed, distinctly Black version of “Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood.” Ruffin, alongside friend slash sidekick Tarik Davis, delivers jokes about the news and her exhaustion about it all with expert ease. Even when alone at her desk, Ruffin injects every monologue and piece of physical comedy with compassion and righteous indignation, depending on the topic. And her more sincere monologues — especially a recent one about Kamala Harris and the pain of watching white people flub Black people’s names for lack of effort — are already all-timers. If you haven’t given “The Amber Ruffin Show” a chance, consider this the enthusiastic nudge you need. (Read my interview with Ruffin here.)

Honorable mention: “The Queen’s Gambit” (Netflix) 

November: 'City So Real' (National Geographic) and 'How To With John Wilson' (HBO)

In November, years of election anxiety collided into a supernova of national stress. Coping with the constant deluge of morphing news was (is) a daily struggle, and yet two very different shows managed to lend some clarity on the way we live today without ever resorting to preachy nonsense.

“City So Real,” a 5-episode docuseries from “Hoop Dreams” director Steve James, follows the contentious 2019 Chicago mayoral election in detail, illustrating all the ways in which local government matters and makes huge impacts on communities, for better and for worse. As the Trump administration continues to throw doubt on the electoral process, the empathetic and diligent civil servants depicted in “City So Real” have stayed with me far beyond the series’ closing credits. In a similar way, HBO’s “How To With John Wilson” combines thousands of hours of footage to create unique, empathetic portraits of people and their esoteric interests. The tone of each docuseries couldn’t be more different: “City So Real” is matter-of-fact and deliberately keeps the filmmakers out of the narrative, while “How to With John Wilson” features constant voiceover from Wilson, a curious and wry observer of his strange surroundings. Both, however, provide thorough looks at people who rarely get much mainstream consideration, and as such, deserve more recognition of their own in turn. (Read my column on “City So Real” here and my column on “How To With John Wilson” here.)

Honorable mention: “The Crown” (Netflix) 

December: 'I Hate Suzie' (Sky UK/HBO Max)

It took some time for me to find “I Hate Suzie,” Billie Piper and Lucy Prebble’s new comedy which premiered in August in the UK on Sky and November in the US on HBO Max. Part of my delay was down to basic lack of time; mostly it was hearing that watching the show feels like watching an eight-episode panic attack and deciding that might be the last thing I needed. When I finally did sit down to watch an episode, though, I ended up blazing through six (6) episodes in one breathless go.

The series stars Piper as an actor with a career trajectory much like her own, except that Suzie’s life explodes when a hack exposes compromising photos of her with a man who’s decidedly not her frustrated husband (Daniel Ings). Each of the eight episodes is named and framed around a different stage of grief and processing, like “Shock,” “Denial,” “Anger,” and finally, “Acceptance.” Piper delivers a career best performance as the unraveling Suzie, though Ings and Leila Farzad as Suzie’s blunt best friend and manager still manage to steal plenty of scenes as they all slowly but surely fall apart. So yes, as promised: watching “I Hate Suzie” can be very stressful. But in Piper and Prebble’s hands, it’s also insightful and hilarious, with inventive plays on format and structure that keep the show from weighing itself down. And, well…if this isn’t the year to go out on a televised panic attack, what is?

Honorable mention: “Euphoria” special episode, “Trouble Don’t Last Always” (which, here’s hoping…)