The humor of everyday life, the pressure of modern life, messianic mothers, nearby dystopias and the resurrection with a hunting voice of Jessica Fletcher. Taking stock of what was issued in 2023, it can be safely said that it was a very good harvest. Fiction knew how to move in opposite directions: from testing the extent to which television serves to hybridize genres and challenging the viewer with the tone to elevating the most classic spirit of the series. And, after weighing the pros and cons, these are the ten series that you cannot end the year without having seen:
Writer Taylor Jenkins Reid said, “What must it be like to write love stories with a person of the opposite sex who is not your partner? And having to perform them first in the privacy of the studio and then in front of hundreds of people?” Scott Neudstadter and Michael H. Weber then took the resulting best-seller and adapted it into a television series, set in the ’70s, when Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin), the leader of a rock band, is forced to work with Daisy Jones (Riley Keough), a songwriter as promising as she is personally chaotic.
Everybody Loves Daisy Jones begins as a faux biopic of Fleetwood Mac and, as the episodes progress, it becomes an emotional drama that surely moves away from simplicity when analyzing romantic relationships. The final section is to frame with Camila Morrone as the unexpected heart of the series and original music that contributes to the television spell with songs like Let me down easy, Look at us now, Kill you to try and The river.
In an interview, screenwriters Pepón Montero and Carlos Maidagán warned that it was better not to be condescending to the characters in Poquita fe because they had been written with respect and, in reality, represented us. It is a comedy with fifteen-minute episodes that focuses on José Ramón (Raúl Cimas) and Berta (Esperanza Pedreño), a working-class couple (he is a security guard, she is a kindergarten teacher) without great passions.
There are two reasons why comedy is one of the best of 2023. The first is that it understands how to reflect the mundaneness of ordinary lives through anecdotes that allow us to identify with it. It is no coincidence that one of his gags spread like wildfire on social networks. The other is that it is hilarious with jokes as inspired as the appearance of a portrait of Franco in the family home or the decision to take in a demented grandfather practically like someone adopting a dog, without falling into the temptation of turning José Ramón and Berta into caricatures or parodies.
Madeleine Larouche (Anne Dorval) is about to die. She had been the mayor of her Quebec town but she fell from grace due to the accumulation of family misfortunes, as if she had been cursed. When Mireille (Julie Lebreton), the daughter who had been estranged from her for decades, returns to embalm her body, the Larouches must confront an uncomfortable past that dates back to their adolescence, where the original sin that twisted their lives is hidden.
Xavier Dolan, after becoming a respected filmmaker with titles like Mommy and Matthias and Maxime, offers a master class in television drama with The Night Logan Woke Up. He uses thriller tools to build suspense around conflicts and traumas, both individual and collective, placing the dramatic explosions with the professionalism of an emotional artificer.
Between Dolan and Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo, also present on the list, perhaps it should be analyzed or simply applauded how these homosexual authors approach drama: from fascination, pain, mystery and a sometimes extreme bombast that does not detract one bit from truth and sincerity to the story they want to tell, but simply elevate it.
In the first season, Sam (Bridget Everett) tried to find her place in her Manhattan of deep America after the death of her sister. She did it with the help of Joel (Jeff Hiller), whom she had ignored at her high school but who welcomed her with open arms into her queer community. In the second, Sam’s reconstruction process continues from the humility of Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen as scriptwriters, who find emotion in everyday life and in the most recognizable personal relationships.
Somebody somewhere is intimacy, it is touch, it is comedy, it is tears, it is the vindication of non-normative physicists, it is a miracle.
Ana (Macarena Sanz) has started to disappear. One of her toes is now invisible. “I thought this only happened to older people,” she admits to the doctor, who offers her advice: change your life. Thus begins this conceptual and dystopian comedy by Álvaro Carmona (People Speaking), which perfectly denounces the times in which we live, where the portrayal and communication of our experiences on social networks is often more important than the experiences themselves. being shadows 2.0 instead of human beings.
Carmona is not satisfied with writing and directing a nice comedy. Each absurd anecdote in Déjate ver portrays us, each dystopian element leads us to jokes but also to reflection. And, among the topics he touches on, there is posturing, yes, but above all the need for human beings to be seen and the existential anguish of artists.
A series with Rachel Weisz twice, to begin with, already has an incentive. She is Elliot and Beverly Mantle, two gynecologist sisters who want to revolutionize medicine with a new way of approaching women’s health. Elliot is self-assured, possibly a functioning psychopath, who finds pleasure in experimenting in the laboratory. Beverly is more fragile and feels a sense of duty toward her patients. The sickest thing, however, is the toxic dynamic of dependency they have, which transforms into envy when Beverly finds a partner.
Alice Birch takes the literary material of Bari Wood and Jack Geasland that David Cronenberg had already brought to the cinema and transforms it into a stimulating and total psychological thriller: there are no loose ends, no random wardrobe choices, nor common scenarios to talk about. a feminine universe where they also reserve the most disturbing roles. Inseparables is suffocating, sharp, fun, meaty. Not since Hannibal has a series been presented on television so calculated, so aesthetic, so provocative and so murky, without losing sight of a discourse that can easily be undone.
María (Ana Rujas) did not fit into society but, thanks to her hedonistic flight forward, an attractive physique and a past as an actress and model, she had been able to disguise herself with alcohol and stripes. In the second season of Cardo, after leaving prison, this illusion of normality can no longer shelter her. Under these circumstances, how can she cope with the anxiety that she hid from any drug that was placed in front of her?
Claudia Costafreda and Rujas herself, authors of Cardo, far surpassed the challenge of the second season. This time, Mary’s journey starts from a thirst for Catholic redemption, emphasizing the way in which society causes anxiety, to enter a fall into hell where the narrative pulse never fails, always adapting to the mental state of her memorable and worrying protagonist.
Cardo feels as if Costafreda and Rujas carry out their work with their foot on the accelerator, quick-witted, reckless, always on the verge of an accident while they scream with adrenaline through the vehicle windows, but emerging unscathed from the daring artistic experiment. What control.
The interesting thing about Poker face is how televisual it is. It’s as if Columbo and Murder Wrote had had offspring: a modern and respectful version of the most classic murder series. Charlie (Natasha Lyonne) has the gift of detecting lies and, as she finds dead bodies every now and then, her sense of smell forces her to understand why the people she meets lie.
Each episode begins with the viewer learning who dies and who the killer is. After a few minutes, Poker face goes back in time to understand what role the cheeky Charlie plays in the investigation. And, as each episode has new settings, victims and murderers, the series allows itself to change tone, extreme characters, themes and tributes, reserving real surprises.
It is respect for television made a series.
Have you ever felt cornered by the obligations of adult life? Have you felt cheated by the cards you have been dealt or the impossibility of enjoying what you have fought so hard for? Danny (Steven Yeun), who is broke, feels this way, as does Amy (Ali Wong), who has an a priori ideal life but is mentally exhausted. When they almost collide in a parking lot, they decide to transform all that frustration into hatred towards each other, even though they don’t even know each other.
In Bronca, Lee Sung Jin offers a tense comedy, well constructed from the characters, with three heart-stopping initial episodes, due to that frustration so recognizable by any functional adult. And, after some deceptively conventional episodes, an unleashed, coherent final stretch is marked, which confronts us with who we are and our mistakes. The door scene is also one of the great PQCs (but what the hell) of the year.
And, finally, Javier Calvo and Javier Ambrossi did not disappoint by mutating their DNA as authors with the story of Enric (Bruno Núñez, Biel Rossell and Roger Casamajor in their different stages) and Irene (Carla Moral, Irene Balmes and Macarena García), two brothers who must face their past when they discover a Catholic pop band that has gone viral: they are the sisters with whom they stopped having contact when they moved away from Montserrat (Ana Rujas, Lola dueñas and Carmen Machi), their mother who He said to talk to God.
His dynamic, kitsch and respectful vision of popular culture intersects in The Messiah with a stark naturalism. It is a bold artistic sophistication. They let the settings and characters breathe, transform the tone of the work (from toxic customs to psychological terror to close with a disconcerting luminosity) and destroy narrative expectations.
Emotion continues at the center of their work but this time moving away from complacency: they have so much confidence in themselves that they no longer need to treat the viewer with cotton wool and they take their ghosts out for a walk without preambles, without the need to comfort their audience. To follow the evolution of the Javis as authors (as well as as directors of actors) is to have the conviction of being faced with something historic in cultural terms.
As not all the great series of 2023 can be recommended, many have had to be left out. Selftape (Filmin), Murder at the End of the World (Disney), Fleishman’s Trouble (Disney), Platonic (Apple TV), Just Murders in the Building (Disney), For All Mankind (Apple TV), Silo (Apple TV ), God’s Drops (Apple TV), The bear (Disney), Moving (Disney), Power Play (Filmin), Extraordinary, Blue lights (Movistar Plus), Això no és Suècia (TV3), 1883 (SkyShowtime) o All the times we fell in love (Netflix) are other good choices.
