The best TV shows of 2023… so far!

Summer’s officially underway, the sun has returned and you’re buzzing to get outside. But wait, what’s that? Six months of stellar telly is sitting on your watchlist, just waiting to be binged. Well, we can’t have that. To save you time and make more room for tinnies-in-the-park, we’ve put together this list of 2023’s best shows. Let’s get streaming!

Words: Gary Ryan

Beef

Where to watch: Netflix

A road rage incident triggers a feud that turns more toxic than Andrew Tate’s contacts list in this blistering A24-produced series that pits Ali Wong and Steven Yeun against each other as newfound nemeses who are constantly raising the stakes of their enmity.

Best episode: Nine, The Great Fabricator, ratchets up the tension to exhilarating levels, culminating in a kidnapping and shocking demise.

Black Mirror

Season: six

Where to watch: Netflix

After a less well-received season five in 2019, Charlie Brooker’s prescient dystopian anthology bounced back with a five-episode bang. Highlights included the riotous meta opener Joan Is Awful, where a woman discovers her life is being dramatised on the Netflix-like platform Streamberry (in which she’s portrayed by Salma Hayek); Loch Henry’s bleak skewering of the exploitative true crime genre, and Paapa Essiedu’s memorable turn as a demon who assumes the form of a member of the pop group Boney M in the retro Demon 79.

Best episode: Joan Is Awful showcased Hayek’s comedic prowess, as she delivered self-deprecating zingers like: “I am a dyslexic, talented actress with questionable English!”

Black Ops

Where to watch: BBC iPlayer

Most new British sitcoms would require a police search to find the punchlines, but this knockabout twisty-turny crime caper – starring Famalam alumni Akemnji Ndifornyen and Gbemisola Ikumelo as a loveable-but-hapless pair of community support officers (dubbed “the shit police” by one character) who are forced to go undercover in a drugs gang – is packed full of gags, while offering a timely satire of racism in the Met and society.

Best episode: One, which ends on a death that sees it turn into a kind of One-Liners of Duty.

Colin from Accounts

Where to watch: iPlayer

Created by and starring real-life couple Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer, this Australian series has become a word-of-mouth hit. It’s easy to see why. Starting with the meet-cute of 29-year-old student doctor Ashley (Dyer) causing forty-something microbrewery owner Gordon (Brammall) to hit a dog after flashing her breast at him, it winningly unfolds into a Catastrophe-inspired romcom with realistic characters you enjoy spending time with.

Best episode: Three, Toyota Cressida, where Gordon accidentally messages Ashley an unflattering dick pic, and his quest to retrieve it leads to a deathbed vigil.

Daisy Jones & the Six

Where to watch: Prime Video

Based on Taylor Jenkins Reid’s best-selling 2019 novel, sex, drugs, egos and ambitions collide in this lavish 10-part rock ‘n’ roll mockumentary that chronicles the rise and implosion of a Fleetwood Mac-style band, with Riley Keough starring as Daisy – the eponymous frontwoman of The Six, all set to a no-expense-spared soundtrack of original songs composed by the likes of Phoebe Bridgers and Marcus Mumford.

Best episode: Track 7: She’s Gone in which Simone Jackson (Nabiyah Be) imparts some uncomfortable home truths to Daisy.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba

Season: three

Where to watch: Crunchyroll

This anime, adapted from Koyoharu Gotouge’s manga of the same name, remains phenomenally popular. Following Tanjiro Kamado, who strives to become a demon slayer after his family are slaughtered and his younger sister, Nezuko, is turned into a demon, season three saw us journey to the Swordsmith Village with dazzling results.

Best episode: The introductory Someone’s Dream instantly re-established the show’s reputation as the most visually-eye-popping anime around.

I Think You Should Leave With Tim Robinson

Season: three

Where to watch: Netflix

It’s difficult to describe why ex-Saturday Night Live player Tim Robinson’s deliriously surreal bitesize 15-minute sketch show works, but somehow its sublimely silly carnival of cringe burrows into your brain to the point where you’ll be parroting lines from the show.

Best episode: Four, entitled SO NOW EVERY TIME I’M ABOUT TO DO SOMETHING I REALLY WANT TO DO, I ASK MYSELF, “WAIT A MINUTE, WHAT IS THIS? contains a sketch where Robinson plays a contestant on a The Bachelorette-spoof reality show called Summer Loving, who’s more interested in playing on the zip-line than finding romance. See: on paper, it sounds about as funny as watching a post-mortem of a loved one, but trust us, it’s hilarious.

Jury Duty

Where to watch: Prime Video

A combination of The Office and Punk’d, Jury Duty is a hoax court trial where everybody involved – the lawyers, jury, defendants, judge – are all actors, but one juror (sweet-natured Ronald Gladden) doesn’t know it’s all fiction. Add into the mix James Marsden gamely playing an egocentric parody of himself, and being the target of jokes about the questionable quality of Sonic The Hedgehog and being Not-Ryan-Gosling in The Notebook, and you have one of the silliest, quirkiest and most heartwarming comedies of the year.

Best episode: Field Trip, where the jurors take a hijinks-filled sojourn to the scene of the incident.

Poker Face

Where to watch: Sky Max or NOW

This is Knives Out creator Rian Johnson’s homage to old-school case-of-the-week dramas like Columbo. Gravel-larynxed Natasha Lyonne plays a human lie detector, Charlie Cale, who’s forced onto the run, after her best friend is killed. In each town she stops off in, she encounters a new mystery, ranging from vengeance-crazed pensioners in a retirement home, to feuding racing car drivers. It’s joyful watching her (literally) call “Bullshit!” in the face of a procession of guest stars that includes Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Ellen Barkin. It’s so much fun, it may have usurped the time NME interviewed Lyonne and she pretended to talk to the ghost of Michael Jackson throughout as our favourite thing she’s ever done.

Best episode: The casino-set opening episode, Dead Man’s Hand, lined up everything before paying out like three cherries on a slot machine.

Secret Invasion

Where to watch: Disney+

Marvel’s return to the small screen sees Samuel L. Jackson reprise his role as grizzled Nick Fury who’s working with Talos – Ben Mendelsohn back as the shapeshifting Skrull alien – to unearth a high-stakes conspiracy by a group of renegades from his species who are intent on taking control of Earth by posing as different key figures around the worl… look, forget the dirty bombs in Moscow and car chases, all you really need to know is that Secret Invasion has national treasure Olivia Colman stealing every scene she’s in as MI6 agent Sonya Falsworth. Sold!

Best episode: Too soon to tell as it hasn’t finished airing yet.

Succession

Season: four

Where to watch: Sky Atlantic or NOW

The hype was high for the dynastic drama’s final season, and fortunately creator Jesse Armstrong pulled it out of the (ludicrously capacious) bag, delivering a stunning sour sayonara that saw the warring Roy siblings’ clamour for power intensify when – SPOILER ALERT! – patriarch Logan Roy (Brian Cox in full Shakespearean splendour) – THIS IS NOT A DRILL! IF YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED IT YET, THEN TURN BACK NOW! – died unexpectedly in episode three. From its quip-fire quotable dialogue to universally outstanding cast performances that screamed: ‘Clear a gangway to the awards podium!’, Succession remained unmissable prestige TV until its final fuck-off.

Best episode: In a hotly contested field, which includes Roman Roy’s (Kieran Culkin) ‘Grim Weeper’ emotional meltdown at his father’s funeral and a nail-biting election-night instalment, Logan’s unexpected passing away on a private jet was a dramatic masterstroke, realistically showing waves of confusion give way to an undertow of grief.

Taskmaster

Season: 15

Where to watch: Channel 4/All4

More legendary larks from Greg Davies and Alex Horne’s gameshow, as stand-ups Frankie Boyle, Ivo Graham, and Jenny Éclair as well as writer/actors Kiell Smith-Bynoe and Mae Martin pitted their wits against each other. Casting is key in this series, and from the moment that Graham sabotaged the first live final task, we knew it was going to be a vintage crop of contestants.

Best episode: Four, which descended into a hugely entertaining friendly-fire of banter as arguments abounded over the definition of a ‘throw’ and what a banana is.

The Bear

Season: two

Where to watch: Disney +

After The Bear – a tense drama worthy of a Michelin star starring Jeremy Allen White as fine dining chef Carmy who takes over a cramped Chicago restaurant following the death of his brother – became an unexpected breakout drama in 2022, the pressure was on for the second course. Instead, the writers switched up the recipe, allowing a greater focus on every member of the kitchen. In doing so, it became a more tender, richer and satisfying experience faster than you can say: “Enough with the laboured restaurant metaphors!”.

Best episode: Standout sixth instalment Fishes offers a flashback to a fraught family Christmas Eve in which Carmy, Mikey and Sugar Berzatto dine with their unpinned-grenade of an alcoholic mother, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, heading up a talent-strewn episode that also features Sarah Paulson, John Mulaney, Bob Odenkirk, a returning Jon Bernthal, and Gillian Jacobs.

The Last of Us

Where to watch: Sky Atlantic or NOW

To describe The Last of Us as the best video game adaption ever may be damning it with faint praise, but you need never have owned the original title to have been moved by Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie’s (Bella Ramsey) survivalist road trip through a pandemic-ravaged America. Hauntingly beautiful, emotional, and life-affirming: it also breathed new life into the saturated post-apocalyptic genre.

Best episode: While the show remained true to its roots, episode three took the time to flesh out two minor characters in the game – prepper Bill (a revelatory Nick Offerman) and Frank (Murray Bartlett) – in a near-standalone love story that proved so devastatingly poignant that people filmed themselves sobbing to it on TikTok. A masterpiece.

YOU

Season: four

Where to watch: Netflix

YOU is the definition of schlocky so-bad-it’s-good TV and in season four, they relocated the action to London, where Penn Badgley’s serial killer has assumed the guise of Jonathan Moore, a reserved literature professor replete with beard and tweed blazer, who becomes embroiled in a class-warfare Cluedo caper. Brilliantly though, this is a London that even Dick Van Dyke from Mary Poppins would exclaim is “Bloody unrealistic, Mary!”, peppered with upper-class Debrett’s douches boasting names like Lady Phoebe Borehall-Blaxworth. It’s trashier than Oscar The Grouch browsing Rightmove, but weirdly addictive.

Best episode: Eight, Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, where the wacky truth about Ed Speleers’ ‘Eat The Rich’ murderer Rhys Montrose is revealed.

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