Top 10 TV Shows Of 2020

Hello, dear reader!

I hope your 2021 has gotten off to a good start. Last week I shared my ranking of 2020's greatest films, so now it's time for the other side of the coin - the greatest TV shows of the past year. The year featured many great seasons of television, so this list was quite the challenge to make. I've managed to put dramas, comedies and even documentary shows onto the same list - talk shows I had to omit, since they became too hard to compare to the already diverse group of genres on this list. I will mention Last Week Tonight With John Oliver and The Daily Show With Trevor Noah as my two absolute favorite talk shows from the past year.

Here are my honorable mentions: 13 Reasons Why (Season 4), Brave New World (Season 1), Sex Education (Season 2), Star Trek: Discovery (Season 3), The Walking Dead (Second half of season 10).

10. Hollywood

This delightful miniseries was a real treat for a movie buff such as myself. A fictional tale in a historical real-life setting, Hollywood follows a group of aspiring actors, directors and screenwriters in 1940's Hollywood as they try to make it big in the industry. The more you know about cinema history, the more you will enjoy this series, because while the main characters are fictional, a huge amount of real-life figures from that era pop up in the story. Sure, the series is very cheesy and unrealistic at times - but what would you expect from a show called Hollywood?

9. Big Mouth (Season 4)

Nick Kroll & Andrew Goldberg's animated coming-of-age sitcom just keeps getting better. The fourth season of this strange, strange series took a turn to a wider array of topics to deal with; while the previous seasons have focused on puberty and the universal struggles that come with the age, this season took a look at various interconnected issues that different kinds of people experience when growing up.

While the agenda to teach important and wholesome lessons has been a bit more obvious in the last few seasons, the show's raunchy and norm-defying humor has simultaneously gotten crazier and crazier each season. The newest season features creative concept episodes, insane meta humor and some borderline imagery, but the series never lets its central positive lessons out of sight. Also, John Mulaney and company continue to be fantastic with their voice performances.

8. Saturday Night Live (Second half of season 45, First half of season 46)

What a rollercoaster of a year it was for Saturday Night Live (and, you know, everyone and everything else). What started out as a standard run got cut short when the coronavirus pandemic hit the fan, and after a few-week break, SNL finished its forty-fifth season with a run of three remotely filmed episodes with all of the cast members performing from home. They did a great job with the tough situation, and thankfully they have gotten to return to the live format this fall, with a limited audience and strict restrictions for the cast.

The series had some amazing hosts this year, from comedy masterminds like John Mulaney and Dave Chappelle to great actors like Timothée Chalamet and Brad Pitt having a ball with the sketch comedy format. The cast has been fantastic, between Kate McKinnon continuing to prove that there isn't a person on earth who she can't impersonate, Pete Davidson being his hilarious self, and head writers Colin Jost and Michael Che rocking the Weekend Update segment. I can't wait for this year's SNL, with longtime castmember Alex Moffat stepping into the shoes of President-Elect Joe Biden (I hope we get a good swan song from Alec Baldwin's Donald Trump as well).

7. The Queen's Gambit

I'm guessing that you could enjoy the hell out of this Netflix miniseries even if you don't know the first thing about chess - The Queen's Gambit is a complex and engaging character-driven story about Beth, a strong female lead and fascinating protagonist, brilliantly played by Ana Taylor-Joy. Her prodigal chess skill and the struggles she faces on the chess board and in the outside world are heartbreaking at times and inspiring at others.

Of course, for a viewer like me who loves chess, the series is all the better. Watching the intense and well-built chess playing sequences in the series is a real edge-of-your-seat experience more often than not, and following the dialogue as one chess genius speaks to another is very entertaining. Give this series a shot, if you haven't yet - chances are that you have, given the incredible amount of popularity that the series gained upon its release.

6. Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem And Madness

Let's be real - if you're reading a movie/TV blog, and you're not my mom, you've seen Tiger King already. So you know what it's all about. But I still want to talk about it.

Seriously, I still haven't fully recovered from how absolutely batshit insane this documentary series is. It's a freaking documentary, but it's crazier than any of the fictional crime dramas and action flicks out there. And they dodged the most common problem that documentaries have (there isn't footage of everything, so many of the events must be merely described in interviews) by having footage of absolutely everything.

I can't wrap my head around the fact that this is all a true story. There's explosions, presidential campaigns, murder-for-hire plots and whatnot all related to this story about people who are really into tigers. The main guy is a gay, flamboyant, hillbilly gun nut. One of the main characters is a woman who (allegedly) fed her husband to her tigers. One of the main characters has his arm bitten off by a tiger. The drug kingpin who Tony Montana from Scarface (1983) is allegedly based on is a part of the story, because of course he is. If you ever feel like your own life is a mess, watching this series might help put things into perspective.

5. The Good Place (Second half of season 4)

The best TV shows are almost always the ones that are planned from start to finish to have a certain amount of seasons due to a certain amount of story to tell, instead of going the usual route of doing another season and another until you get cancelled. Masterful television dramas like Breaking Bad (2008-2013) and Mr. Robot (2015-2019) have proved this - and in 2020, NBC's surreal comedy hit The Good Place joined the club.

The series was popular enough to keep going, but four seasons was the planned amount for the story at hand, and they bowed out like kings. The final run of episodes was fantastic, with each one being better than the last. The final two-parter is one of the smartest, most closure-filled series finales I've seen from any genre of TV. Michael Schur, mastermind of modern sitcoms (the same guy produced and wrote for The Office (2005-2013) and co-created Brooklyn Nine-Nine (2013-Present)), hit yet another home run with this series.

4. Ramy (Season 2)

Bill Hader's Barry (2018-Present), Donald Glover's Atlanta (2016-Present) and Ramy Youssef's Ramy (2019-Present) have ushered in a definitive golden age for comedy-drama hybrids on television; all three manage to be incredibly serious and absolutely hysterical simultaneously. While both Barry and Atlanta didn't release new seasons in 2020, we thankfully got the second season of Ramy to keep us entertained while also having our thoughts provoked.

Ramy continues to be the most underrated series currently on TV, as the comedy-drama about a Muslim family living in New Jersey improved on its already very impressive debut season last year. The most significant step up was undoubtedly the addition of two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali to the main cast, as his presence was a constant high point throughout the season. Having memorable concept episodes that focused on various individual supporting characters was also a cool touch throughout the season. Keep up the good work, Ramy!

3. Rick And Morty (Second half of season 4)

This one was difficult to rank, since Rick And Morty only aired five 20-minute episodes this year. But the quality of the episodes was insane; three of the five made it to my all-time top 10 Rick And Morty episodes. Whether it's the fifth-wall-breaking meta insanity of Never Ricking Morty, the dark hilarity of The Vat Of Acid Episode or the climactic chaos of the season finale Star Mort Rickturn Of The Jerri, the new batch of episodes from Justin Roiland & Dan Harmon's animated sci-fi sitcom was pure gold. Can't wait for season five!

2. The Last Dance

When I started watching this series, I did so reluctantly - I didn't care about basketball and didn't know the first thing about NBA history, and I mainly watched the first episode because my brother had recommended it and my parents wanted to try the series out while I was at their place. By the fourth episode, I was literally shedding a tear due to being so moved when Michael Jordan lifted the Chicago Bulls' first-ever NBA championship trophy. That's a powerful documentary right there.

The Last Dance is nothing short of breathtaking. It's an incredible true story about talent, persistence, motivation and team spirit, and ESPN did a beautiful job putting the footage together in a tight, dramatic package that is captivating to watch. Nothing needs to be over-dramatized, because the story speaks for itself - between Dennis Rodman's misadventures outside the basketball court, Michael Jordan's stint in baseball, Phil Jackson's unique coaching philosophy and the incredibly tense final games and superior shows of skill from the players, there's a lot of thrilling entertainment value here, in addition to the vast amount of heart that really got me hooked. The Last Dance truly is the Michael Jordan of sports documentaries.

1. The Mandalorian (Season 2)

When I heard they were making a television series set in the Star Wars universe, I was skeptical and I figured we don't need a Star Wars TV show. When the first season came out and got positive reviews, I was intrigued but Disney Plus wasn't available in Finland so I shrugged it off. When Disney Plus came here and I purchased it (mainly in order to watch Hamilton several times), I decided to check out the much-talked-about Star Wars series. The first season was decent - not mind-blowing, not amazing and certainly not the Star Wars franchise at its best, but also definitely not Star Wars at its worst. It was a cool addition to the franchise, and based on the first season, I would've recommended it to completist mega-fans or people who happen to have Disney Plus on their hands.

Then came the second season, and now I compel everyone and anyone who like Star Wars to please watch this series.

In what is one of television's greatest improvements from the last several years, The Mandalorian got a whole lot better with its second season. I don't know how they pulled it off, but the season manages to simultaneously produce more easter eggs and connections to the Star Wars movies than season 1, while also gaining a stronger footing as an independent story that doesn't need to rely on fan service. I love the series for how much it feels like Star Wars atmosphere-wise (the fourth episode of season 2 has a chase sequence that has a 100% original trilogy vibe to it), but also for just being an awesome adventure series with a cool western-ish atmosphere.

The season 2 finale is without a doubt the greatest episode of television from 2020, and it wholeheartedly deserves the 9.9 rating that it boasts on IMDB. It is so much more epic and powerful than I ever expected The Mandalorian to be. Hats off to creator Jon Favreau, writer&producer Dave Filoni, the wonderful cast, and everyone else who brought this masterful spin-off together. Here's hoping that season 3 keeps up the good work!

Thank you for reading! Next week I'll be sharing my list of my most anticipated movies of 2021 - stay tuned!