2019 was a great year for mainstream cinema. Which means it’s a boring year for lists. Maybe it’s me but I feel like in lesser years cinephiles go more out of their way to unearth those under-appreciated documentaries and hidden art house gems. I’m not talking about Uncut Gems either.

The second more likely scenario is that I was lazy. I found a group of films I liked and I called it a day. The true answer is likely somewhere in-between. That being said I had a lot of fun at the movies in 2019 and will try to make this list my own.

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I’ve made my peace with the fact that Top Ten TV Shows is the list I spend the least amount of time pouring over. Possibly because I don’t feel like I’ve watched 10 shows I really love until I’ve binge-watched one final show right before constructing my list. Still, I felt a bit more on top of TV this year than usual, and yet because there are just so many darn shows out there, before I get to the list, I present you once again with… Continue reading →

While writing my list I noticed something. Out of the ten shows I picked for my favorites of 2019, only one is over an hour long. I remember a time when all the GOOD shows were an hour long. Like The Sopranos. It just goes to show how the evolution of the TV and all the ways to consume TV have broken down a lot of conventions. Shows can be as long as they need to be when they don’t need to worry about commercial time.

Which also explains why a majority of my selections are streaming-based. I don’t know if any of this is good or bad for the medium or if we need to cool it on the number of shows available, but as of now, I feel good about it. After all, you don’t have to watch all of it.

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Man, I really need to watch Succession, huh? 2019 was the end of the decade and it felt like it everything I loved had to end with it. In the last year, I said goodbye to the likes of Steven Universe, Broad City, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Catastrophe, Veep, Wyatt Cenac’s Problem Areas, The Tick, Jessica Jones (and all Marvel Netflix), Game of Thrones, Fleabag, Legion, Bajillion Dollar Propertie$, Silicon Valley, and Mr. Robot. That list doesn’t even include shows that are returning for brief final stretches this year, like Bojack Horseman and The Good Place. So yeah, that Succession is looking pretty good.

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