I wrote pretty short capsules for all the shows in part 1, but the final twelve I wanted to take my time and say more about. Then I ended up writing more than twice as much for those final twelve as I did for the previous 31. So I had to break this article in two. Shows 12-5 today, and the top four tomorrow.
12. King of the Hill
Season 14
Hulu
After fifteen years off the air, Hulu revived King of the Hill by moving the premise a bit forward in time. Eight years have passed for most of Arlen’s motley crew (G.H. seems to have aged a bit further along). And while updating the show and where the characters are at in their lives, I’m pleased to say that it avoids the potential traps of many revivals: a nostalgia for the original that suffocates what this version could be, or the creators’ worldview having been left behind in the meantime and turning them, and the show, into cranks.
Hank and Peggy are returning to Arlen after Hank spent some years working for Saudi Aramco and living on the compound in Dhahran, and while some things have changed in Arlen, some remain the same. (Dale may have been mayor, but that didn’t last and he’s still Dale; Kahn is still a jerk; Bill is still… well, became an even sadder sack without Hank around, etc.) And Hank is still mostly resistant to change, but in some ways is able to adapt better than others. (In the first episode, he struggles with the new bike lanes and limitations on left turns in his own neighborhood, but upon finding out the Girl Scouts changed the name of the Samoa cookies, he welcomes that change.)
The stories are updated a bit for the modern world– Hank dealing with a handyman-for-hire app, or trying to hide his Saudi-bred appreciation for soccer– while still having some classic plots that could’ve happened in the original run– Bill using Hank’s life story as his own to make new friends; Hank and Bobby attending Dallas Cowboys fantasy camp. Bobby, for the record, is now chef and part owner of his own fusion restaurant in Dallas, having decided on that instead of college. Connie is in college in Dallas, and Joseph is Bobby’s roommate, working construction. (Joseph actually might be the funniest character per line / per second he’s on screen in the revival.) Sadly, with Brittany Murphy and Tom Petty having passed, we don’t get to see any of Luanne and Lucky (and scarcely hear them mentioned).
Despite their absences, what’s really remarkable is just how much the show still feels like it maintains the spirit of the original. The show was always a rather nuanced portrayal of people, rather than, say, Hank being a reactionary crank who always ends up being proven right, and he (and the creators) haven’t aged into that in the interim, either. The characters may be older, the modern world may be a little different, but King of the Hill remains a very funny character comedy that is also a rich text of subtlety and detail of the human condition.
11. PLUR1BUS
Season 1
Apple TV+
Vince Gilligan’s long-anticipated return to TV also marked a return to sci-fi, the genre where he originally made his TV name on The X-Files. You may know the premise by now: Earth scientists receive an alien transmission and decode it to be an RNA sequence, which they begin testing. And then an infected rat bites a human, who starts spreading it to other lab workers, and then… well, the virus, which makes anyone infected into part of a pacifist hivemind whose only goals are to infect everybody and send the virus signal out to space, ends up taking over the Earth and infecting… all but a baker’s dozen or so of people who seem to be immune to it.
One of those people is Carol Sturka (Rhea Seehorn), Albuquerque resident, successful author of middlebrow fantasy slop, and resentful of the audience and career that has her trapped churning out that stuff instead of writing something more meaningful to her. The show is really focused on her experience through the whole thing, fueled in part by resentment (her partner died during the mass infection) and in part by, well, the fact that the situation is pretty strange.
This is largely due to the pacifist part. The infected are friendly. They want to try to convince Carol to join them. They want her to be happy. They claim their new existence is bliss and contentment. They’re happy to answer any questions she has. And so, Carol is determined to learn as much about them and how they work as she can, to meet the other uninfected (who are not particularly keen on her), to determine if she can coexist with them or if she is going to have to find a way to fight back and reverse the process before they can figure out how to assimilate her. And will any of the uninfected out there help her?
One thing I observed upon watching the show is that, while Vince Gilligan often moves the story along just as slowly as his acolytes did on Better Call Saul, he has the ineffable gift of genius for making the show entertaining and engaging even in its slow pace. He includes details and humor that make the scenes that are more languid or don’t overtly advance the plot nevertheless engaging. And, you know, if you like all that stuff about his style and the Picturesque Landscapes of Albuquerque, it’s very much here, too.
And, not that it’s a necessity for me, but the concept and the hook behind the show, the situation that it sets up, gave me a lot to chew on and think about long after I was done watching the show. Thought-provoking is always a big plus in a sci-fi show. Maybe it is a necessity for this genre.
10. Invincible
Season 3
Amazon Prime
It never goddamn ends, does it?
That was the overarching thought I had in season 3 of Invincible, newly added to our rotation in 2025. For the unfamiliar, the show is based on Robert Kirkman’s comic series— and Kirkman’s running the show, so he has the chance to correct some mistakes in the original run as well as ensure a proper adaptation to the screen. Invinicble focuses on Mark Grayson, who starts the series as a teenager, son of Debbie (a realtor) and Nolan (a travel writer) Grayson. Well, that’s his civilian identity; Nolan is really Omni-Man, a superhero of essentially Superman-level capabilities from a planet called Viltrum. Mark is half-human, half-Viltrumite, and as he approaches the end of high school and adulthood, Nolan is expecting his son’s own superhero powers to come online… and they finally do in our pilot! From there, Nolan tries to shepherd Mark into developing his powers while keeping a secret of his own; Mark meets quite a few new people, such as Cecil, the head of the Global Defense Alliance, as well as a group of teen superheroes with their own powers; Mark takes the name Invincible for himself, while learning that superhero life has its own challenges… whether that’s the impossibility of maintaining a regular life, the difficulties created by trying to have some kind of moral code, or just the sheer number of people who find a way to blame their problems on you and develop superpowers or doomsday devices to take their revenge.
That’s especially true in season 3, and especially so over the course of the final three episodes, as each time Invincible defeats someone out for revenge, a new threat arrives almost immediately. Oh, and all the while, Mark has to help his half-brother Oliver develop his superhero powers, learn not to put himself at too much risk yet, and learn the importance of having some kind of moral code.
One of the great things about the show is what a deep roster of characters it has, not just because the cast is a total murderer’s row, but because it allows a number of plotlines to slowly bubble until it’s time for one to burst forth. It’s a richly layered show. I haven’t even gotten into many of the characters, like Mark’s high school (and now off in college) friends, other members of the (then-)Teen Team, Cecil’s number two Donald, or Allen, the friendliest (and possibly strongest) alien in the universe.
I also haven’t mentioned what an absolutely stacked cast the show has. Steven Yeun, Sandra Oh, and J.K. Simmons play the Graysons. Beyond that, we have… Walton Goggins! Gillian Jacobs! Jason Mantzoukas! Chris Diamantopoulos! Andrew Rannells! Zazie Beets! Plus a significant number of other well-known guest actors. And Allen is voiced by Seth Rogen.
I’ve really enjoyed this show throughout. I never read the comic, but I’ve dug how much the show is about Mark’s struggle to mature both as a superhero and a person, and how it emphasizes the real cost of being one: Not just any physical and psychological damage Mark might endure, but given how many villains have made him their target and how far they’re willing to go, it seems at times there’s an element of “have no attachments, have nothing in your life… (except for other superheroes).” Just a really well-made show that’s entertaining, dramatically compelling, funny, and delivers great (and spatially coherent) spectacle with its action sequences when the time comes. Well worth your time.
9. Hacks
Season 4
HBO Max
Hacks wasn’t quite as strong as season 3— and, to be fair, it would have been hard to recreate the kind of mic-drop moment of the season 3 finale. But Late Night comes with its own challenges for the working partnership, which certainly are not helped by the, you know, blackmail. Can Deb and Ava learn to work together at all? Can Ava manage a writers room? Can Deb deal with network expectations? Can either of them manage to have any kind of life outside of the show? Can they manage the network’s expectations and demands?
One thing I’ve always appreciated about Hacks is that it understands how the creative process works and how the industry works (or at least could plausibly work). One of the overarching plotlines of the season is the struggle for Deborah to try to build a successful show in what is now a dying format. I feel like many shows would handwave Deborah’s success, but here the writers find a way that makes sense, finding what Deborah can uniquely bring to the format that can’t, like most late-night shows, be rendered obsolete by the internet and social media covering all the news, jokes, and celebrity content you could want well before the show airs.
And there is, of course, a great journey for Deborah and Ava’s relationship, perhaps the furthest they’ve had to go to cross the divide and make up over the course of a season so far. And it’s worth seeing how it culminates; even if the mic-drop ownage of season 3 isn’t here, the climax of the season is a very powerful and effective scene that’s been four years in the making.
The show remains very funny as well; Mayor Jo’s return provides some particular highlights, as does DJ’s, and Robby Hoffman joining Schaefer & LuSaque gives that sideshow another bit of juice. The seemingly odd but fascinating denouement to the season sets up a new angle for the run to the finish line. (While it’s not confirmed that the next season will be the show’s last, the story is nearing its endpoint and almost certainly won’t go longer than six if it doesn’t finish in five.) I’m here for how Hacks so consistently delivers.
8. Digman!
Season 2
Comedy Central
Digman! essentially gives us more of the same that we got from season 1, albeit with the overall plot and situation moved a bit forward form where it was. Rip’s wife Bella is periodically a character in this season, and Rip almost immediately fucks things up with her. Other than that, it’s largely more of the same adventures as season 1: Fast-paced and densely-packed flights of fanciful archeology, full of jokes of every type you can think of. There isn’t much new to report; the show expands into areas both personal (a story involving Saltine’s parents) and conceptual (“The Eligible Arky,” where Rip appears on the titular dating show).
I thought maybe this season was a slight step down from season 1, but only slight, and the drop from #2 in 2023 to #8 this year has more to do with more and stiffer competition. The writeup is short because there isn’t much new to say. On the other hand, there isn’t much new to say because Digman! is still very much on the short list of the funniest shows on television.
7. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Season 17
FX / FXX
Season 17 of Sunny was a real return to form, with the show’s strongest and most consistent season since season 12 back in 2017. That’s almost more remarkable for a season that arguably used 3/8 of its runtime on crossover episodes, the kind of thing that suggests a show is running out of ideas. But all three of those episodes were terrific, starting with the Abbott Elementary crossover that kicked off the season.
In the middle, “Mac and Dennis Become EMTs” was my favorite, a high-energy, wildly escalating farce that combines some of the Gang’s best attributes (scheming, crimes, mistakenly thinking they’re cool, poisons) into an explosively funny episode. “Frank Is in a Coma” gives us some great stuff about how the various members of the Gang will cope when Frank is gone (Dennis and Mac, naturally, move to join Philadelphia’s “business elite”). “Thought Leadership: A Corporate Conversation” gives us another winner in the category of “episodes where the Gang sits around the bar trying to figure something out.” And “Overage Drinking: A National Concern” is the kind of crazy callback episode that it shouldn’t be possible at all to still work after all this time (even just logistically), but it does.
And I didn’t mention the other 2/8 in the opening paragraph because I wanted to save it for the end. The entire Golden Bachelor saga is a hoot; even the very concept of Frank in the titular role is funny, but the show doesn’t stop there. The entire penultimate episode involves Dennis trying to run focus-grouped dinners with the Gang to improve their image on national television (where, of course, the results get worse and more horrifying the harder they try). And in the finale, Frank is a wildly inappropriate contestant for all the reasons you can imagine, including a demand the show get Legally Not Hawk Tuah as one of the suitors, but even through all the comedy, the show does something really unexpected that genuinely works and hits hard. The show can still wring real emotion when it wants to, an astounding thing to say about this group of demented lunatics. And assuming the events of the finale hold, we may have our latest twist on the premise coming up for season 18.
I have no idea how the team behind Sunny stays this inspired after all this time, but I’m glad they do.
6. How Are You? It’s Alan (Partridge)
Miniseries
BBC One
After a somewhat dormant period for nearly a decade after series two of I’m Alan Partridge, the second era of Alan kicked off with Mid-Morning Matters in 2010, and since then has brought us three books / audiobooks, four seasons of a podcast, and two new series— first This Time with Alan Partridge, and now this.
After returning from his time in Saudi Arabia (where I’m sure the money he made and the people he associated with were in no way shady), Alan observes there’s a mental health crisis in Britain, especially among men, and hopes making a documentary can convince other men like him to be willing to open up, acknowledge their problems, and get help. Of course, Alan’s observation is based entirely on his own experience, and even that is kicked off in the most self-deceiving and ego-shielding— that is to say, Alan— way possible (he faints during an interview and has to convince himself it was due to some kind of mental health issue).
If you’ve been following the recent Alan Partridge output— not just This Time with Alan Partridge, but perhaps even more importantly, the podcast From the Oasthouse and the book Big Beacon— you’ll have a pretty good idea where Alan’s at in his life. Living at The Oasthouse, dating a local woman named Katrina, and never giving up on his hopes of being a noteworthy name in broadcasting, but more “never giving up” in that way like when Darryl talks Michael off the roof in The Office. (The US one, so a second-order Partridge ripoff.)
Alan’s journey mostly involves, as is so often does, with him either trying to turn his ordinary experiences into something profound, or settling old scores. He tries to revisit This Time, which mostly … and he tries to make amends with Sidekick Simon using some of the techniques he’s learned, which mostly reveals that learning therapyspeak doesn’t actually help you get over your resentments or your massive ego. Alan’s attempts to find mental peace in nature and in solitude end in typical Alan petty misadventures. Ultimately, it’s Katrina and neighbor Darryl Flench who help Alan see what he truly needs to repair his mental health… in, of course, the pettiest Alan fashion of all.
It’s hard to write too much about any new Alan Partridge show without getting into the history of the character or the best of the work. Alan has been in his second era since 2010 and the addition of the Gibbons brothers to the creative team after taking nearly a decade off from any major projects. They’ve moved Alan into middle age very well, mellowing some of his harsher traits after being humbled by his failures, but not losing the essence of his character. The continued success and entertainment value of Alan projects (with Big Beacon having come out recently and four seasons of From the Oasthouse in the can) is a testament to the kind of character comedy you can make when you have several decades to develop a character and can capture him with all his nuances and subtleties, in complete, three-dimensional detail.
5. The Lowdown
Season 1
FX
“There is only one plot: Things are not as they seem.”
So Dale Washberg quotes Jim Thompson to Lee Raybon in The Lowdown‘s season finale. It’s a flashback scene from a year before the events of the show— Raybon is investigating Dale Washberg’s death— but those words must be catnip to Lee Raybon, bookstore owner, muckraker, hellraiser, and most of all, his self-coined word, “truthstorian.” Like he tells Dale, “You know how people always say there’s more to the story? That’s what I try to find out.”
In this case, Raybon (Ethan Hawke) isn’t convinced that the death of Dale Washberg (Tim Blake Nelson), the black-sheep son of a powerful Oklahoma family, was actually a suicide. Raybon suspects something more foul afoot, particularly since Washberg’s brother Donald (Kyle McLachlan) is running for governor. So naturally, he investigates and encounters some colorful characters along the way, like Dale’s widow Betty Jo (Jeanne Tripplehorn), Keith David’s private eye Marty, and an ex-con with possible neo-Nazi ties, Allen Murphy (Scott Shepherd). Plus he already knows some colorful characters, like antiques dealer Ray (Michael Hitchcock) and local alternative-newspaper publisher Cyrus (Killer Mike)… and he’s also balancing an ex-wife (Kaniehtiio Horn) and daughter (Ryan Kiera Armstrong).
Sterlin Harjo’s follow-up to Reservation Dogs takes place in Tulsa, with the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma native applying the keen observational eye he displayed in that show to a really fun neo-noir plot, in a location that shows more of a blending of the white, Black, and Indigenous cultures of the region. Hawke is unsurprisingly great, combining the shaggy, wild-eyed, maybe a touch too self-righteous energy of his John Brown (The Good Lord Bird, and also Brown killed enough slavers to have earned it, at least), with… well, the smart-ass in me wants to say “his pretentious writer in Reality Bites,” but that’s probably not fair.
Mostly, the show is compelling as hell and a fun ride all the way, and it manages to be so in two surprising ways for me: One, even the episodes where the pace of Lee’s investigation slows down still find ways to hold our interest. (Most notable of these is when Peter Dinklage shows up as Wendell, an old friend of Lee’s there to celebrate a particular anniversary with him.) Two, some of the stuff that can feel perfunctory in other shows like this— like, say, grafting on a family life to a character like Lee Raybon to make him seem more “well-rounded”— are integrated into the show well, even essential to it— Lee’s daughter Francis is one of the most important characters in the series.
The cast is a murderer’s row, the feel for setting and vibe is on point, the story itself is gripping and a lot of fun, and it can also be pretty darn funny, in a number of ways. (Lee’s “security” at the bookstore ends up being a very consistent source of comic relief.) Great season of TV, and I don’t know what’s next, but it’s been officially renewed for another.
Next time: The top four, all of which might have contended for #1 in a different year.