The TV Advent Calendar- Day 25

1. Community

So here we are. 25 days of writing about my favourite TV shows of all time, and it's all come down to this. my all time, number one, no doubt about it, favourite show ever made. And for me, TV doesn't get much better than Dan Harmon's Community. So what, I talk about some of the biggest, most acclaimed prestige dramas of all time and then place a wacky sitcom above them all? Yeah, but it's my list, and no show has ever given me as rewarding of a viewing experience as Community has. I started it on a whim, off a recommendation from a friend, before falling so deeply in love with the characters and the world of Greendale. And that to me is what TV is about. The best TV for me creates a connection between the viewer and the world of the show, where we're encouraged to invest in that connection and watch how it develops over time. Community might be notorious for dipping in quality in its second half (although I quite like seasons four and five) but those first three seasons are borderline perfect for me, and effortless blend of tight, intelligent meta-comedy and carefully doled out heart that serves one of the most lovable central casts in all of TV

The comedy here is so flexible, robust and rhythmic. It takes a while for the show to get into that groove, but once it does, it nearly becomes its own comedic language. Every joke, whether it's a running gag or just a one-and-done, is just so full of personality, and the show always knows exactly where to place them in an episode to ensure that each one builds on the last to hilarious effect. This combines perfectly with the show's total commitment to its concepts. Nothing is done by half here, whether its a paintball-centric riff on action movies or a war documentary about a school-wide pillow fight, and the show is great and believing in these ridiculous conceits and making them feel organic. It puts real effort and thought into even the silliest of jokes, and the payoffs nearly always hit the mark

And when the show hits onto a dud concept, you could never accuse Community of playing it safe. Even the fourth season and its attempt to recreate the first three works for the most part; say what you want about the controversial puppet episode, but it works because even when it plays it safe, it's still breaking from sitcom norms. The show is rightfully lauded for its meta elements, which not only massively enhance the comedy, but help to craft an incredibly satisfying viewing experience, too. Community understands what it means to sit on the other side of that screen and give yourself over to a story better than any other show I've seen. This is where Abed becomes the heart and soul of the show, acting as the glue between the characters and the audience by reminding both groups why any of this matters in the first place. Maybe these tropes seem ridiculous or overplayed, but if we're still using them and celebrating them, they must mean something to someone. I'm just going to leave his speech about why TV matters from the last episode here, because it sums up so much of what I've been saying about my love of the medium for the last month:

"There is skill to it. More importantly, it has to be joyful, effortless, fun. TV defeats its own purpose when it’s pushing an agenda, or trying to defeat other TV or being proud or ashamed of itself for existing. It’s TV; it’s comfort. It’s a friend you’ve known so well, and for so long you just let it be with you, and it needs to be okay for it to have a bad day or phone in a day, and it needs to be okay for it to get on a boat with Levar Burton and never come back. Because eventually, it all will"

Pretty good, right? That's the kind of innate understanding of television as a way of connecting with people that fuels every episode of Community and makes it so special. I've watched the show countless times because it's such a comfort to invite these weirdos back into my life and follow their bizarre stories, even just for a little while. The show's handle on its character is insanely strong, with each one being such a massive personality that that tap into a wide variety of gags, but I think what I love most about them is that they're all losers. They're screw-ups and failures united by a shared attempt at a second chance, which the show tells us time and time again is possible. Jeff can become a better person, Britta can become more comfortable being herself, Troy can find who he's meant to be. As long as they have each other, they can make each other better, and it's that incredible optimism that the show espouses under the snarky pop-culture riffing that makes it just such an eternal source of joy for me

And even those pop-culture riffs bleed with real love and passion: they come from a place of total sincerity. Even as the show becomes darker and more caustic in its final season, it all comes from a place of love and wanting to do right by the people that this story has come to mean something to. It doesn't hold itself to fan expectations but it knows that good TV leaves you with something real, even if that's only a laugh or a feeling of brief satisfaction. I've dove deep on specific aspects of this show before, deeper than most of the shows on this list, so forgive me if this entry isn't as analytical as the ones that preceded it. The truth is that Community is the show that made me love TV as much as I do. It reminds me why I love TV every time I watch it, and I could go as specific or as general in listing all of the things I love about it but for now, at the end of this post explaining why it's my favourite show ever made, I'm just happy that I live in a world where Community exists

Merry Christmas folks, and thank you for reading this list of my favourite shows of all time. It's been an absolute blast, and I hope you've enjoyed reading it as much as I have writing it

The TV Advent Calendar- Day 24

2. The Sopranos

How can I talk about The Sopranos in 2021? It's a show that really needs no introduction at this point, enjoying huge amounts of acclaim for the entirety of its original run, as well as a resurgence in popularity over the last year or so, but I suppose I can start off by talking about where I came in with the show. Like a lot of people, I didn't watch The Sopranos until last year, so I was well aware of its mighty reputation. I'm no hipster or contrarian -just look at the amount of awards-botherers on my list- but something about just how heavy the acclaim for The Sopranos was made me a little... hesitant. Could it really be that good? Yes, and then some. There's a constant debate around a handful of the prestige shows (namely Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Wire, and of course this), about which one deserves the label of the greatest of all time. And while there's one other show I prefer over it, it's hard to think of any drama series that packs the same amount of heft or punch as David Chase's monolithic gangster saga

So what makes it such a great crime show? Well, for starters, it's not really about the crime. The Sopranos is a character study of Tony Soprano: father, husband, son and head of one of the major crime families in New Jersey. The show never frames Tony's criminal exploits as the main source of the action, instead just painting all of the robbery, extortion and murder as another part of his daily grind. It's a lot more domestic than its flashy gangster contemporaries, and because it's set in a world where The Godfather and Goodfellas exist, it's extremely self-aware in how it uses mafia tropes, spending most of its run dissecting and subverting them wherever possible. Not that the show doesn't play any of it straight-the interconnecting politics of the mob are frequently fascinating- but the main focus is squarely on the character drama, and Tony's struggles with severe anxiety and depression

It's a portrait of what it means to be a man in the 21st century, set in the most hyper-masculine of worlds, where Tony's duties deny him of any vulnerability, constantly requiring him to perform the role of a cold, stoic crime boss, when really, he's just a man trying to make up for a lack of love in his life. The show never excuses any of Tony's many, many sins, but it makes use of a fascinating duality to show how a man like this contains multitudes. His hardships are real, and occasionally recognisable, and the show finds space to empathise with him even when he's crossing the line. He kills, steals and cheats, but does that make his pain any less real? This is where the therapy scenes come in and make the show something really special, a place where Tony can be completely open and reveal a side of himself that doesn't really have a place in any of the spaces he occupies. The dialogue in these scenes lay out Tony's inner monologues, but it's not just exposition- this is where the show gives itself time to fully develop the drama and process how it's affecting Tony. Melfi is a great character here because in many ways, she's us: listening to this man and his most honest and emotional and trying to understand what makes him tick

It's a vital part of the show that I just can't fathom skipping, especially with how frequently electric the back-and-forth between James Gandolfini and Lorraine Bracco is. This is one of the best casts on television, make no mistake about that, and every actor is putting in a practically perfect performance. Because the show is essentially orbiting around Tony and his many crises, every character represents another thorn in his side, but it's how dynamic and full each performance is that prevents them from ever feeling like one-dimensional inconveniences. All of them are nuanced and layered enough to support individual analysis, but I would like to single out Paulie Walnuts for a second as an example of how well the show understands how to develop a character

Paulie is perhaps the simplest character in The Sopranos. He doesn't have much of an arc; he's practically the exact same person in the last episode as he is when we first meet him, and yet he's one of the greatest creations in the history of television. He's a man who's sole existence is to either aggravate or be aggravated, and yet he never feels anything less than human, even at his most animated. It's a perfect combination of performance, writing, and a little bit of alchemy that I'm not sure I fully understand, and it's a testament to how well the show understands its world and all of the players in it that this literal cartoon character becomes one of the most enduring and bizarrely likable in the entirety of the medium

A huge part of that also comes from the incredibly specific tone. This is an uber-heavy mob show about a man with serious mental health issues, but Chase excels at finding the comedy in just how ridiculous the world of the mafia can be. There's no sole source of comic relief here. All of it is over-the-top and a natural source of humour, but the show always knows how to balance the light and the dark, effortlessly transitioning from the gut-wrenching sight of an embittered mob boss succumbing to a terminal illness to the high farce of two hapless wiseguys lost in the woods. The strength in this ensemble lie in how much personality each of them bring to their respective characters. They're heightened and larger-than-life but that's precisely what makes each of them so unforgettable. Even the minor characters make an impression, and the strength of all of these clashing personalities makes this show so much richer than practically any other show of its kind

But in terms of performances, I have to give special kudos to James Gandolfini. His is the greatest performance I've ever seen, in anything, hands down. Every expression, every little gesture and mannerism is perfectly tooled to paint a detailed an complex portrait of a man in constant freefall. This is the show credited with starting our collective fascination with the difficult man archetype, but none of the characters he inspired are quite on Tony's level in terms of sheer depth and complexity. The show explores his inner life in such forensic detail, from the dueling aspects of his home life to his surreal, often strangely beautiful dream sequences, and all of it is tied together by the absolute masterclass from Gandolfini

It's every bit as good as its reputation suggests, and there's a reason it's endured as well as it has. The epic saga of Tony Soprano is as close to perfection as TV gets, and its a testament to how well David Chase and team told his story that the audience is constantly growing even 14 years after the show finished. Speaking of the finale, it might have been controversial at the time, but now, it's harder to think of a show with a better ending. The cut heard around the world may have brought the narrative to a crushing halt, but that's sort of the point. By leaving Tony on a candidly observed high, Chase leaves his immediate future unknown, but his ultimate fate all but confirmed by the grim endings that so many of the characters have faced up to this point. This isn't the end of his story, but it's where we as an audience bow out and leave him to it. We were, after all, just passengers on his chaotic journey through life. But it's crucially open to interpretation; whatever your theory is of where Tony ended up, it's important that you don't stop believin'

The TV Advent Calendar- Day 23

3. The Leftovers

October 14th, 2011. 2% of the world's population vanish, seemingly for no reason at all, leaving everyone who remains to try to make sense of something so tragically random. That's where The Leftovers starts, and it only gets stranger from there. I've said it countless times over the course of this list, but TV's great advantage is longform storytelling. The best television isn't immediate. It trusts its audience to be patient, to invest in it with the promise of the great reward of lasting emotional resonance. One thing I love about Damon Lindelof is that he understands that it's not what we get out of something that matters, but what we put into it, and that's exactly what The Leftovers is. There are no answers, no easy explanations, and if you read the synopsis of the last episode and spoil the ending for yourself, it wouldn't really affect the experience of watching it all that much. This is a show that needs to be seen, to be experienced. Lindelof is writing purely from the heart here; he knows that great stories deal in feeling, not logic

I'm not the first to say that this isn't a show about answers, but questions. And that's the very thing that makes The Leftovers stand out, not just among the dystopia genre, but for TV in general. Lindelof knows that the journey is always going to be more satisfying than the destination, so he denies his characters conclusive answers and forces them to navigate what comes next. Right from the start, this is a show about the ways in which people cope. Police chief Kevin Garvey is tasked with dealing with the Guilty Remnant- a chain-smoking cult who style themselves as living reminders of the countless lives lost- but is what they're doing actually wrong, or just a response to mass grief? Nora Durst lost her husband and kids in the departure and is desperately seeking something that can help her move on, but is that even possible after such a total loss? Nora's brother Matt is a priest who is constantly experiencing obstacles and hardship; are these tests from God or is he just massively unfortunate? And then there's Holy Wayne, who can take people's pain away from hugging them. He could be the real thing, or maybe he's a fraud, but if it makes people feel better, does it matter if it's real?

All of these are questions that don't necessarily need to be answered for them to mean something. Instead, the show has the characters navigate life in the wake of a tragedy that doesn't have any easy explanations; if you're frustrated by a lack of answers, how do you think they feel? The Leftovers is one of the greatest depictions of what it is to grieve ever put to screen. That world-shaking loss that's impossible to undo, that's the feeling that this show homes in on, and over the course of the first season, Lindelof really masters these huge expressions of gut-wrenching anguish that makes such a strange premise feel eerily plausible. It's a study in how we respond to catastrophe, and how that affects our ability to connect with each other. None of the Garvey family departed, but they all lost each other because in processing this tragedy, they all became entirely different people, because that's what disaster does. The Leftovers isn't interested in those who departed because Lindelof knows that the real pain is felt by those who were left behind

And if this is all starting to sound a little hopeless, then consider the show's second season. A soft-reboot of sorts that sees the characters relocate to Miracle, Texas: a town where nobody departed. The first season was a study of grief and pain but the second completely shifts gears to tell a much looser story about a community struggling to make sense of a series of mysteries. This time, the narrative focus is on three girls who go missing, but thematically, this is a season about the importance of keeping hope. Without spoiling anything, this is where the show starts to tease out its more mystical elements, from a miracle that strengthens Matt's faith to the increasingly supernatural situations that Kevin finds himself in, and it's when the show starts to lean into the spiritual and surreal that it goes from being a good show to being one of the greatest ever made

The second and third seasons are just such a massive improvement on the show's first run. Not that it was bad, it's pretty excellent in its own right, but by loosening the show's tone and opening itself up to the supernatural, The Leftovers is able to cover so much more ground and really let Lindelof's singular sensibilities shine. The show hits onto moments of real profundity while still being full of bizarre, strangely funny and oddly moving plot beats. Justin Theroux singing bad karaoke to escape from an otherworldly hotel doesn't sound like it should be heartbreaking but Lindelof excels at finding so much meaning in the seemingly ridiculous that it ends up as one of the standout sequences in the show. There's just so much creativity on display here, each individual episode packed with so many ideas and images that drip with thematic heft, and it's consistently awe-inspiring how casually Lindelof throws out these moments of insane genius to expand on the story and themes in entirely unpredictable ways

Conceptually, it's just a goldmine, with so many episodes that display how thoughtfully the show has developed each of its ideas. Personally I'm a sucker for the trilogy of episodes that see Matt's faith tested in frustrating and massively unfortunate ways, as well as the penultimate stunner that sees Kevin on an insane quest to prevent further catastrophe, but if we're talking about individual episodes of The Leftovers, then it has to be said that this show features two of the greatest hours of television ever made. The first is International Assassin, a massively bold artistic gamble that sends Kevin barreling through a thematically stuffed world, the true nature of which won't be spoiled here. It's the kind of risky conceptual storytelling that most shows wouldn't dare commit to, but it works because it's no gimmick. It introduces ideas that become fundamental to the show, shaping what's to come while redefining everything that came before it, particularly in how it reframes a crucial character, turning what could have been a one-dimensional villain into a person motivated by fear and trauma, and the result is a singular and beautiful hour of storytelling

The second episode that I think really defines how excellent this show is would be the show's finale, The Book of Nora. Whereas most final outings wrap up a show's story and provide satisfying endings for each of the characters, The Leftovers parks the narrative in the second-last episode and dedicates its final lap to serving the ideas, and most importantly, the emotions, that Lindelof has been playing with since the pilot. It's a completely stripped back and somewhat uneventful ending on one level, but it's a perfect finish for the show precisely because of how low-key it is. The Leftovers is a show that proudly wears its cerebral and creative uses of concept on its sleeve, but like most great stories, it's not what it does to your mind that matters, but how it touches your heart, and The Book of Nora cuts straight to what's been motivating the show since the word go: love. It sheds any clear explanations of what has happened in its ten-year time jump in favour of characters talking about how it made them feel. Again, this isn't a show about answers, but about how chasing questions turns us into the people we're meant to be, for better or worse, and there's a quiet beauty in how it delivers that

It's just a beautiful, unforgettable run of TV and it's only 28 episodes long, which turns it into a real advertisement for the power of brevity. Lindelof is wise enough to never wear out any of his ideas, instead making the most out of each one of them with perfect pacing and story structure. It's a huge exploration of the spiritual concepts that we'll never fully understand, but by keeping the stakes of the story rooting in feeling rather than logic, The Leftovers is able to become a hugely universal story about grief and love and faith without sacrificing any of its gorgeous complexity, a reminder that against the overwhelming uncertainty of life, sometimes the best we can do is just let the mystery be

The TV Advent Calendar- Day 22

4. Better Call Saul

When Better Call Saul was first announced, I was slightly skeptical, and I don't think I'm alone in that. Saul was always my favourite character in Breaking Bad, but something about the idea of a prequel series just didn't appeal to me for some reason. I don't know, maybe it was painful flashes of Joey and other failed spin-offs, or maybe it was the fact that, great as Saul was, he wasn't a character with an awful lot of substance, mainly just being an incredibly likable and frequently hilarious piecemover capable of getting Walt and Jesse to parts of the underworld they couldn't really navigate themselves. He was a dependable standout in the ensemble, but could Saul Goodman really support his own series? No, but Jimmy McGill could. Right from the start, there's something really special about Better Call Saul, initially a show about how Jimmy's conscience (emphasis on the con) totally dissolved to make him the criminal lawyer we came to love, but the real thrill of watching this show comes from how it gradually begins to blossom into something totally different- and in my opinion, slightly better- than its mighty predecessor. Something funnier, warmer and possibly even more tragic. Something that, at its best, has established itself as the best thing on TV right now

High praise, I know, but I'm just incredibly impressed at what BCS was able to do right from the start of its run. It begins as a sort of origin story, but the truth is that it's actually about much more than Jimmy McGill. If Breaking Bad was about a seemingly mild-mannered man sinking into the Albuquerque underworld, then Better Call Saul shows how that network of criminals and psychopaths became the way it was when Heisenberg arrived on the scene. As well as Jimmy's descent, the show also follows hard-nosed fixer Mike, put-upon gangster Nacho, the utterly unhinged Lalo and Jimmy's straight-laced brother Chuck. All of them are great, a nice mix of returning players and new faces that make the two worlds that Jimmy bridges feel so much more alive and organic. It never feels like Vince Gilligan and Saul's co-creator Peter Gould, are narrowing their focus to just tell one story, instead keeping their eye for epic storytelling and turning back the clock to really just study the world they created further and spend more time filling in some of the intricate details. 

As expansions go, it feels a lot more organic than most; Gilligan's love for his weird, wild world is stronger than ever and I think that's really what makes Saul work as well as it does. There's so much more warmth and love this time around, and I think part of that comes from the kind of character Jimmy is vs. the cold psychopathy of Walter White. Jimmy's not a good person, nor is he necessarily a bad person. He's whatever the situation needs him to be, but under the flexible morality is a wounded heart and a set of values that keep bubbling up to the surface whenever he's at his most nefarious. This is where the show plays its absolute ace, the new addition that really gives an edge over Breaking Bad: Kim Wexler

Kim is the heart and soul of this show, the thing that keeps Jimmy tethered to the world of right and wrong as he gradually begins to shift into Saul. Rhea Seehorn consistently gives one of the greatest performances on television (though not great enough for the Emmys apparently), effortlessly matching reliably strong work from Odenkirk and Banks and turning Kim into so much more than just a love interest for Jimmy. She's what reminds him that there's value in staying good, in resisting the poison within and staying on the righteous path. The show toys with the audience with constant reminders that Jimmy's story doesn't end in salvation and that Saul wins in the end, but part of what makes Kim so compelling is how ardently she fights that losing battle. She's constantly trying to appeal to the better parts of him, and he wants to be better for her... but the seductive corruption of the Saul persona is always that little bit stronger. This gets especially interesting in the later seasons, where it becomes clear that Kim's no angel either, and the show begins to tease out the dark side that Jimmy will inevitably bring out in her. Her fate may be terrifyingly ambiguous, and she might yet break bad herself, but it's that push and pull between two people who simultaneously make each other better and worse that makes Saul such a consistently exciting show

I'm just in constant awe of Jimmy's arc here. It's not a straight line like Walt's was, and he isn't just slippin' down into corruption, at least not all of the time. Instead, the world is constantly ripping chunks out of Jimmy and letting the poison of Saul leak into the resulting gaps. And unlike with Heisenberg, the show lets us root for Jimmy too- some of the time at least. His "stick it to the man" approach to justice and occasional ability to do good are constant reminders that Jimmy's heart is sometimes in the right place, and that makes each of his lapses into darkness that much more devastating. His relationship with Chuck is the clearest indicator that despite how likable Jimmy is, he's capable of unspeakable cruelty too, and the show pits the brothers against each other constantly and brutally, culminating in a courtroom clash that's completely bloodless but still as devastating as anything Tuco or Fring could have devised

Stylistically, the show uses most of the same techniques as Breaking Bad, but tonally and generically, they're totally different beasts; if the ballad of Heisenberg was Gilligan's darkly funny tragedy, then this is his deeply sad comedy. The show drops the neo-western leanings in favour of a sort of sticky Southern noir, a perfect fit for the moral greys and deep shadows that The Slippin' One operates in. The show uses the audience's knowledge of how this story ends to absolutely inspired effect, constantly toying with the characters when they think they can best fate. It knows when to invoke what awaits them in the future, but the writers also excel at using the unknown quantities that Breaking Bad never had a chance to establish. Nacho and Kim's fates are still totally up in the air, and the flashes to Jimmy's dreary future are constant reminders that his story isn't quite finished yet. How fitting that a man who lived in ambiguity is ultimately trapped in a black and white future

It's gotten to the point where you could voice a preference for either show and I'd totally understand it. Better Call Saul is an add-on in the purest sense, taking what was already excellent and building on it, using the genius of Breaking Bad to give itself a strong foundation and eventually enhancing what came before it by giving old stories new meaning. It's funnier and quirkier and that's where Gilligan and Gould usher in the Trojan horse, billing it as a fun and enjoyable spin-off before driving the knife in again and again to create another truly intoxicating crime epic. This wider universe has now spanned 13 years and has knocked it out of the park again and again, each installment improving on the one before it and building a legacy that will endure in television forever. Breaking Bad is excellent, El Camino is incredible, and Better Call Saul is, in my estimation, the best of them all, a work of comedy and tragedy that is constantly deepening and twisting and growing better and better. Wherever the show ends up, this is one con that I'm happy to have fallen for

The TV Advent Calendar- Day 21

5. Fleabag

Every so often, there's a show that becomes an all-consuming phenomenon that actually lives up to the hype and is every bit as special as the tidal wave of acclaim suggests. I had watched some of the first season of Fleabag before and really enjoyed it, but it wasn't until that second season that I went back to see what all the fuss was about and fell into the infinite rabbithole of Phoebe Waller-Bridge's genius. Sometimes it can be hard to navigate hype and see the wood for the trees, but I also believe that it's easy to recognise a generation defining storyteller when you see one, which is exactly what PWB established herself as here. What else can you call someone who condenses so much comedy, tragedy, smut, pain and genuine insight on the human condition into12 chapters that barely even adds up to 6 hours but hits on just about every emotion there is?

I guess the best way to start is by talking about how thematically loaded Fleabag is. There's been no shortage of "sadcoms" on the British comedy scene, but most of those shows fall short of greatness for me because they tend to call it a day when they get to the emotional sting under the jokes. It's a tense and release tactic, where comedy cuts tragedy and tragedy grounds the comedy, and it really works for something like After Life, but it also means that by its nature, that show is entirely bound by its twin aims to make you laugh and cry. Fleabag makes no such promise, instead immediately establishing that jokes and feeling exist side by side because that's just how life is. Neither of them exist to balance the other or to serve the tone, and the show is free to cover so much more ground as a result. There's a lot going on in Fleabag, a story about depression and grief and womanhood and sex and faith and redemption and failure and love and self-love and sisterly love and seeing and being seen and slowly regaining hope in both yourself and the world at large, and the way Waller-Bridge crams all of this into two six-episode seasons is frankly just mind-blowing

It sounds like a lot, and that's because it is, but the genius of Fleabag is that it knows how to dole out its insights and its laughs at the same time. Waller-Bridge knows that she's tackling well-worn themes that are going to be immediately familiar to anyone who's seen enough dramedies to know the classic beats that they hit, but she manages to provide something different by refusing to ever commit to being wholly funny or emotional. There's no setpiece here that fully grounds itself in either levity or tragedy, so the show never really feels like its maneuvering itself to switch between them, and the result is a totally seamless mastery of tone that makes Fleabag undoubtedly the best show of its kind at balancing and blending light and heavy thematic content

This is aided immeasurably by the show's style. It boils characters down to stock archetypal figures who are barely even named most of the time, and this is massively useful in grounding the audience firmly in Fleabag's perspective on the people around her. It's just us and her in this story as she guides us through a world where she struggles to really feel seen, and as a result, she struggles to truly see anyone either. Perspective is a crucial tool in this show, constantly reminding us as viewers that this story is being told by one person with a viewpoint that is specific to them, and through communicating that, the show really makes use of the technique its become most known for, that being the fourth-wall breaks. At first, it seems like a great extension of the comedy and a smart reference to the show's roots as a one-woman play, and while it absolutely is both of those things, there's a little more to it this time around. Fleabag constantly struggles to understand people or be understood, so she keeps turning to us, a captive audience who are tuning in hopes that we can make something out of this story, too. She relies on us to engage with the story as much as we do on her to tell it, and as the show goes on, Waller-Bridge allows our heroine to rely less and less on what's on the other side of the screen until she's outgrown us completely as a sign of her growth

And then there's the Hot Priest. Fleabag's first season was like a bolt of lightning, but the sophomore run did just about everything it could to improve on it; it was tighter, sharper, angrier, more tragic, more heartfelt and funnier. It added a couple of new players including Fiona Shaw and Kristen Scott-Thomas (both excellent), but if anything justified this show getting a second season and allowed the show to grow and mature into something really special, it was Andrew Scott's miraculous turn as a sexy, soulful preacher. He takes to the comedy like its second nature and his chemistry with PWB is palpable, but the real genius of adding a man of the cloth to the story was that it gave Fleabag so much more thematic ground to cover

By essentially putting the title character in a love-triangle with God, the show can break down massive concepts of redemption and purpose and the power of love to provide salvation. And if there was ever any doubt that the fourth-wall breaking was a stylistic gimmick, just look at how smoothly the priest is integrated into it. The moment where he catches her to-camera glances is small but it says so much about what it truly means to open up to another person and let them in to the carefully-controlled world you've built. It doubles down on probably the most simple but devastatingly effective point the show puts forward, that loving, and being loved, feels like an absolute miracle

Because this is, after all, a love story. It's such a bold, borderline cocky move to open a season by spelling out the main theme of the show, but it works because it's absolutely true. Fleabag is about love. Not necessarily romantic love, although again, her tryst with the Hot Priest is utterly swoon-inducing, but the idea that everyone loves and gives love. Waller-Bridge defines all of her characters by this, and even the unlikable characters are only framed as such because they lack that natural ability to convey real warmth or tenderness. It's a show about someone learning to let love in, about two sisters who love each other more than anything but don't fully understand why, about a man trapped between a blossoming romance and his total devotion to God, about a father who loves too deeply to fully be able to articulate it. She sums up in 12 episodes what most shows couldn't even do in half as many seasons, and she does it all with brutal and beautiful honesty. The Priest's homily is a celebrated scene for a reason, perfectly articulating that love is messy and painful and turns us into the worst versions of ourselves, but it matters because there's nothing more beautiful than connecting with another person

And while I've spent most of this month banging on about long-form storytelling and shows taking their time, the truth is that Fleabag is a masterpiece precisely because it does the total opposite. It prioritises speed and efficiency over slowly establishing a world of characters, but that's why it works. It has to strike fast to make an impression because otherwise the rawness of its emotional beats would totally lose their impact. It's much more cutting and immediate than the bulk of sadcoms or tragicomedies about the burdens of adulthood because it's never generous to its characters, instead forcing them to create real connections with each other because, just like in real life, that's really all we have. I love Fleabag, and I can't see that love passing anytime soon 

The TV Advent Calendar- Day 20

6. Breaking Bad

What can I say about Breaking Bad that hasn't already? Vince Gilligan's hard-edged neo-western about a terminally ill chemistry teacher turning to a life of crime is a work of legend and a well-documented masterpiece, and I really can't disagree with that. I watched the whole thing a few months after it finished, and that was a time where I was really getting into film and television properly and exploring my love for both mediums. As such, Breaking Bad is a piece of TV with huge significance for, and it quickly became a touchstone for why I fell so in love with the moving image as I did. Vince Gilligan is and always will be one of my favourite artists in any medium, and the world he built here is just such a perfect vision of what television can be: taking a fairly straightforward concept and using longform storytelling to broaden it out into something huge and deeply engrossing

You all know the story by now. Walter White gets a terminal cancer diagnosis and begins cooking meth with a former student of his to make sure his family will be taken care of once he goes. From there, it's a woozy dive into the Albuquerque underworld as Walt and Jesse find that this endeavor might not be as straightforward as they anticipated. The first season of this show is a little slight compared to what comes later, but push through and you'll be rewarded with one of the largest and most deeply compelling pieces of TV ever made, a modern tragedy that speaks to the unspeakable darkness inside us all. Personally I don't think it's about Walt's corruption as much as it is his awakening, where the story is about a bad man unlocking the distressing depths he's capable of sinking to

It built on the difficult main characters that TV was progressively presenting us with, the difference here being that unlike your Tony Sopranos or your Dexter Morgans, Walt isn't presented as a bad man straight away. No, that's something we discover gradually, as he's confronted with the dark forces of the underworld and consistently outdoes all of them by becoming colder and more evil than any of the gangsters he encounters. It makes us sympathise with him before carrying that empathy through his descent into villainy, and the results are striking and routinely shocking. Just when you think Walt hits his lowest ebb, he does something even more deplorable and the stakes become much higher, and often a whole lot bloodier. Of course, none of it would mean a damn without Bryan Cranston. The "whould've thought the dad from Malcom in the Middle had it in him" jokes are easy to make, but Cranston gives an absolute masterclass in every single scene. It's rightfully lauded as a perfect performance and you'll hear no argument from me. His transition from bumbling milquetoast to sickeningly evil kingpin is nothing short of stunning. All hail the king indeed

But every performance here is just as good, and every character is fantastically integrated. I love Jesse's transformation from slack-jawed scumbag to a victim of tragic circumstance, as well as the polarizing but entirely in character hardening of Skyler's heart. Anyone that sees her as anything other than a broken woman suffering from the cold machinations of her abusive husband is clearly missing what the show is going for, and she's really the audience's main link to the humanity of the story for most of the show's run. But my three favourite characters by some distance are Gus, Mike, and especially Saul. The show really comes alive when they enter the fray, mainly because they lend so much more depth and personality to an underworld previously occupied by generic stone-faced gangsters. Giancarlo Esposito is sociopathic perfection, Jonathan Banks nails Mike's eternal dead-eyed exasperation, but it's Bob Odenkirk who steals the show as TV's greatest comic relief. Saul Goodman is obviously a character with a bigger life outside of Breaking Bad, but as a recurring imp flitting out of Walt and Jesse's lives as they float further up shit's creek, it's hard to think of an actor more capable of embodying him than Odenkirk. And to think he was only supposed to appear in three episodes...

It's epic TV, keeping the world on the edge of its collective seat with those legendary final episodes. I've talked about Mad Men, The Wire and Twin Peaks as seminal landmarks in making television what it is, but for me, the golden age officially started with Breaking Bad, with the word of mouth spread and the Netflix streaming boost, as well as the way the show just perfected long form storytelling, making its slowly unfurling narrative as addictive as the product Walt and Jesse were cooking up. The plot progression is forceful and exhilarating; Gilligan excels at a slow-burn so intense that, when things do explode, they do so in a breathtaking and often entirely literal way. All the while, the show is stewing away and asking seriously hard hitting questions about moral decay, social decline and familial obligation. It satisfies both sides of the brain in perfect tandem, a intellectual and thematically rich character study that also happens to be perfect roller coaster television, too

Stylistically it's a total thrill, too. From its giddily borrowed, blood-soaked western influences and the incredible soundtrack to Gilligan's highly distinctive style of shooting from inside barrels and boxes and the highly symbolic reoccurring images that add to the show's mythological feel, the ballad of Heisenberg is rich with exciting creative choices. Again, it really does feel like modern legend, incorporating elements of Greek epics, Shakespearean tragedy, American folk stories and antihero crime cinema to create this really specific narrative voice. It's also got an incredibly deep emotional core, lamenting Walter's descent into darkness and pondering the poison that needs to exist in a man to drive him to this low of a moral ebb. The visual storytelling is obviously striking, but it conveys some devastating truths, too. Gilligan doesn't just know how to tell a story, but to present it visually and match its ideological heft with a delivery of emotion and information that borders on the poetic

Its a show that you can find somewhere near the top of every list of the best shows ever, and for good reason. Breaking Bad really doesn't need any more praise at this point, but the fact that it's so routinely celebrated all the same is proof that it really is the game-changing classic that it's always billed as. And that's the best thing that I can say about it for people who haven't seen it before: it really is that good. It's a show that I think television, and pop culture in general, will eternally be in debt to. It really changed the way I look at how stories are told on screen and invited me to deeper interrogate the media I consumed, and for that I'll always be grateful. Breaking Bad, I'll never forget the special love I have for you

The TV Advent Calendar- Day 19

 

7. The Bridge

When the lights come up on the Øresund Bridge after a sudden blackout, a body is found directly in-between the two countries it connects, and thus begins The Bridge, my favourite Scandi-noir and favourite non-English language show in general. Soon after, we're introduced to Saga Norén and Martin Rohde, two detectives haunted by past tragedies and united by some strange kinship neither of them fully understand. It's got everything I love about Scandanavian crime shows- troubled protagonists, twisted crime plots, a thick atmosphere- but the beauty of The Bridge comes from how it takes all of these elements and weaves them together to create a deeply affecting parable about the lengths we go to fight monsters, and the affect that has on the human spirit

It came out when Scandi-noir was at its absolute peak, with The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo remake arriving shortly after to bring the style to the mainstream, but I've never seen a purer or more passionate take on the conventions of this kind of story than this one. The plots are intricate, dark and devastating, rooting themselves in the poison of the human heart and doling out some serious tragedy. The mysteries are wicked and compelling, and each one of them buries its reveals perfectly. It's impossible to ever call any of the stories here until the very last minute, and The Bridge excels in delivering some of the most shocking twists in all of television. Even when the mystery has been solved and everything looks to be winding down, the shows knows how to twist the knife and make sure that nothing is ever entirely clean or painless. If you think there's ever going to be an entirely happy ending here, think again

It's quite possibly the darkest show on this list, with a foreboding, nearly suffocating atmosphere that threatens to swallow the characters at any moment, and an unflinching look at the horrors of the human mind that borders on total nihilism. The evils of the world are laid bare, and every psychopath faced by Saga and Martin- and his eventual replacement Henrik- shows us a part of the human psyche that revels in doling out a twisted and amoral version of how the world should be. It's frequently disturbing watching some of the properly nasty and horrific things that these characters do to shape the world into what they feel like it should be, whether it's using murder to draw attention to society's ills, unleashing a plague, turning horrific acts of cruelty into grisly works of art or recreating executions to mirror the evils of the system that failed them. The violence is extreme, but it always drives the main idea of the show: the world is chaos and impossible to control, and those who try to enact some sort of order on it are the exact force that will usher in our eventual destruction

It borders on the apocalyptic, as the world's values are eroded and every line is crossed. It's often exhausting to watch, but never impossible, because as warped and fucked up as the evils of the world are, by pushing back and fighting against them, we have to be doing something right. Cruelty and evil are dominating, all-consuming forces that are constantly encouraging us to give in, to let them reign so that the world can go to hell, but by showing that these things aren't unstoppable and can end, The Bridge is doling out hope slowly and carefully. It's not an optimistic show by any stretch of the imagination, but it knows that showing us the world at its worst is the best way to argue why any of it is worth protecting at all. The nihilism is constant, but when love or warmth struggles out from under it, there are few shows that are more profoundly emotional. Good doesn't always win in this show, but when it does, it really feels like the endless winter is a little closer to ending

The chaos even extends to the heroes: Martin's a mild-mannered family man who progressively starts to struggle with the animal within, Henrik is haunted by the ghosts of his past, and not always in a metaphorical way, and Saga's cool, controlled demeanor belies deep seeded pain that constantly threatens to rise to the surface. They're all damaged in some way, bent out of shape and unable to make themselves understood to anyone except for each other. They fight to uphold a system that is constantly ripping chunks out of them, but they fight all the same because the alternative is so much worse. They're incredibly flawed characters, but each one could have a claim to being among the best put to TV, especially Saga. Sofia Helin's performance borders on transcendent as an autistic detective, constantly facing down the worst of the human race. It's a nuanced, compassionate portrayal, refusing to define Saga by her disorder or treat it as either an obstacle or a superpower, instead painting it as what it really is: just another part of her life. It's a breath of fresh air in a sea of misrepresentation

And while they're all great individually, the real strength of The Bridge is how it plays them off each other. Saga and Martin's friendship is pure perfection as she brings stability to his steadily unravelling life, while he keeps her connected to a world that's trying its damndest to exclude her. It's a friendship built on mutual trauma but its no less affecting for it, and the chemistry that Kim Bodnia and Sofia Helin have together sells the warmth, humour and tragedy that their overlapping arcs are governed by. It's such a good dynamic that I really started to dread Martin's departure in the third season. Could Henrik really be a fitting replacement? The answer is obviously not, so the writer's didn't even try. Where Martin was Saga's tether against the chaos of the world, Henrik is kind of like her partner in self-inflicted destruction. They've both been through absolute hell by the time they meet each other, and the connection they forge through the pain is precisely what makes them capable of saving a society that is increasingly trying to give up on them. The change in partners reflects the shift in the show's worldview, where trying to maintain control gives into embracing and negotiating chaos, and so the show never jumps the shark, instead tying it into a weary jadedness that is progressively beginning to give in to growing hope

Of all of the shows on this list, its the one that's probably the least-talked about, and that's a damn shame. There's been no shortage of cop thrillers on TV but none of them match Hans Rosenfelt's punchy and poetic tale of a world going to hell and the unlikely heroes who are just disturbed enough to stop it. It's frequently draining and devastating but always knows when to reveal its wounded heart to keep the audience onside and remind us that there's enough good in the world to keep fighting for. It's tragic and disturbing and cyncial and teeming with real horror, but it knows that as long as there's evil in the world, there's always going to be good that can rise to meet it. Amen to that