So I didn’t have every single streaming service and I didn’t watch every well-regarded show of 2023, but I did watch a lot of TV. Here are the honorable mentions and then my top ten favorites in alphabetical order
Honorable Mentions – Never Have I Ever, Night Court, Poker Face, the Other Two, Starstruck, That 90s Show, Welcome to Wrexham
Archer (FXX, Hulu)
In the final two seasons, Archer finally regained the form it had before its disastrous coma seasons. Quick-witted jokes (with multiple references to obscure 19th and 20th-century historical figures), over-the-top action, and Archer and the team just being the worst and messing up multiple spy missions. There was a zip to each episode that had been missing in the first post-coma seasons. And potentially some actual personal growth for Archer and the team? While the series finale was the weakest entry of the season it was a fitting wrap-up to the entire show.
Frasier (2023) (Paramount+)
Okay, so admittedly this show got off to a bad start. The pilot was full of groaners, just jokes that weren’t funny. And the premise of the entire show – that Frasier returns to Boston to be near his now adult son, Freddy, and yet seemingly never interacts with his best friend and brother Niles or any of his old friends from Cheers strains credulity. Not to mention Freddy’s seemingly completely different personality. It was such a bad start that Cracked created a series “The New ‘Frasier’ Recap, So You Can Skip It” (another Media Franchise that doesn’t have the luster it used to).
But by Episode Four it was actually starting to be funny and I was starting to enjoy the dynamics between Frasier and the new set of characters. Of course, the two party episodes – one at Freddy’s birthday and one where Frasier attempts to host a Christmas party were good enough that they wouldn’t have seemed out of place in the original Frasier‘s run.
Harley Quinn (Max)
Harley Quinn continues to be a very funny and NSFW animated series that feels much more faithful to the actual comic-book villain/anti-hero. And despite how silly it is, the characters have great depth and are impeccably voice-acted. The best way to encapsulate this particular brand of humor is this – Brett Goldstein plays himself who performs a very pretentious poetry reading on Valentine’s Day. Later in the episode, Clayface impersonates a giant naked Brett Goldstein for plot reasons. Either that’s funny to you or it’s not.
Miracle Workers (TBS)
This show just isn’t afraid to be silly. The latest and final season is set in a Mad-Max-like apocalyptic world. In this world, there are still HOAs, high-school reunions, community plays, and guys who are just way too into their cars. And it’s just so funny how the show just isn’t afraid to make silly jokes about them. In this wasteland future, the famous artist whose work lives on is apparently Jim Carrey? And you can have a high school reunion with just skeletons because everyone else in your graduating class is now dead? And your dog is actually a man, and your best friend is a murder robot? Miracle Workers just doesn’t care if something is stupid, if it’s funny it’s funny.
Only Murders in the Building (Hulu)
Somehow the third season of this comedy whodunnit show is the best so far. Bringing in both Paul Rudd and Meryl Streep helped, but making the play within the show a musical is the best joke. Multiple memes went off in 2023 about how no one really cares about how the murderer is in Season 3, but when the world it’s set in is so much fun it doesn’t really matter.
the Righteous Gemstones (Max)
In Season 3, the Gemstones family is once again revisited by the sins of their past. Somehow the audience is rooting for the Gemstones now – despite still being awful people they’re at least trying to atone for their past mistakes this season. The show is still a satire of showy religious people but it’s veering more and more into being just a prestige drama and that’s somehow working. But it’s still funny, “Baby Billy’s Bible Bonkers” might be the instant catchphrase of 2023.
Schmigadoon! (Apple+)
The second season is bigger and funnier than the first season of Apple Plus’s satire of Broadway and Movie Musicals. The second season is funnier and more accessible. The first season had its moments, but a lot of its jokes depended on having an encyclopedic knowledge of American Musicals. The “dark, brooding” second chapter is just an easier parody for everyone to get. Yes, there are direct correlations to Chicago, Sweeney Todd, and more classic musicals, but unlike Season 1 you still get almost every joke even if you don’t know exactly what they’re parodying.
Shrinking (Apple+)
This is a comedy about dealing with loss, growing old, adult friendships, and how to be a single parent to a teenager becoming an adult. It really wouldn’t work if it wasn’t cast perfectly with Jason Segel, Harrison Ford, and Jessica Williams as partners at a Psychiatry Practice that are all too involved in each other’s lives.
Spy x Family (Hulu, Crunch Roll)
Spy x Family continued to be a great show in its second season and it’s easy to see why it has so much cross-over success. It’s funny, well-drawn, and has great action sequences. And the characters were all instantly iconic. This season expanded out of the core family with more focus on the secondary characters which was a gamble, but it ended up fleshing out the setting even more.
Ted Lasso (Apple+)
Ted Lasso wrapped up after 3 runaway successful seasons in 2023. Truthfully, this was a much more up-and-down season episode to episode. However, it was still funny in a “nice” way. And the third season nicely wrapped up nearly every main character’s story.
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia/South Park (FXX, Hulu/Comedy Central,Max, Paramount+)
After all these years both It’s Always Sunny and South Park are still going strong. And they’ve now become the best satires of American life currently on TV. South Park contains is the best parodier of American Pop Culture, which was helped by their good, if not great Streaming Specials. Somehow after being about just a group of awful Philadelphians for years, since returning from the pandemic, It’s Always Sunny has become the most incisive commentary on contemporary American life.