Lists like this are highly subjective, and I cannot pretend to have my finger on the pulse of the zeitgeist (to mix a metaphor or two). Even more so when it comes to a list of the best of TV and film because, frankly, I have seen too little of both to claim to have a broad perspective.
So, here goes, first of all, with TV.
First, the honourable mentions. BBC's This is Going to Hurt was an almost too painfully honest comedy-drama about the life of a junior doctor. This is mainly because it is based on the diaries of a former doctor, Adam Kay. Having spoken to others I know in the profession, the grim honesty is not a great exaggeration of the lived experiences of many working in the NHS today - if anything, it downplays the horrors and sanitises the dark humour. Not an easy watch, but brilliantly done.
I should also give a shout-out to the hilarious Derry Girls, arguably the funniest sitcom in decades, and yet one set against the background of the troubles in Northern Ireland in the nineties. Teen angst, sectarian politics and Ulster humour. The final season, which came out in 2022, is arguably its best - which is set against an already very high bar.
An unexpected delight was Wednesday, Netflix's updating of the Addams Family, focusing on the family's darkly deadpan daughter, Wednesday Addams, and her complex educational problems. It has an opening scene with a school locker, Pugsley Addams, a water polo team, a swimming pool, and some piranha fish that will either put you off or have you signing up to see the rest of the season on the spot. There are some great one-liners delivered with deadpan comedy timing by Jenna Ortega, but the plot is flimsy and forgettable. Nevertheless, there are some fun digressions and cameos that make this an instant classic. Watch out for the school disco in episode four in particular. And how they manage to give so much character to Thing, who is literally just a disembodied hand, is beyond me. Great fun, but don't look for anything profound.
Finally (but not least) is The Expanse season 6. To say it was the perfect finale for what has been the best space opera ever on TV (I am looking at you, Star Trek and Babylon 5) would not be hype. It was a slow burner of a season that gave all the characters room to breathe, so when the action came, it came with a gut punch. Sad to think the actual finale won't get made, as there are still three more novels and a whole new set of issues to confront. But having dealt with colonialism, racism, terrorism, environmental catastrophe and post-truth gaslighting, maybe the final three books' focus on imperialism and its resistance were too much for the producers.
But the three that really grabbed me this year were those that stepped out of the everyday horrors of life and into the darker worlds surrounding our everyday experiences.
I have to group the first two because they are cut from very similar cloth.
Midnight Mass
Set on a small fishing island off the US Atlantic Coast, this is a story about faith and its abuses. Starting with a fatal car crash caused by the drunk driving of one of the island's prodigal sons, the story picks up three years later on his release from gaol and his reluctant return to the bosom of his deeply Catholic family on the island. The Catholic Church is the fading hub of the fading island community. A handful of the faithful attend daily mass, but with the island's priest away on pilgrimage, it is in a hiatus. Then a younger priest arrives, with news that the priest has been taken ill and won't return for a while. He will stand in for now.
We see the tensions and relationships between the different individuals on the island, not least between the Muslim sheriff and Bev Keane, who I can only describe as the church warden from hell (almost literally!).
Then miracles start to happen, and a religious revival begins. The charismatic Father Hill seems to be leading the small community towards some massive religious renewal movement, and God appears to be at work. But is all as it seems?
I won't say more, but stick with it - episodes one and two are slow builds, it takes till episode three for the story to really get going, and then it goes bonkers!
The standout scenes are those between Father Hill and the returned prodigal, Riley Flynn, as they hold the mandatory AA meetings that Flynn must attend as a condition of his parole. Hill challenges Flynn to look beyond his disillusionment with the world and his loss of faith to see that God is doing something amazing. Flynn challenges the easy assumption that God does good things through bad situations. These are authentic, faithful explorations of faith, doubt, grace, and despair.
The conclusion suggests that all religion is prone to evil and corruption, with Bev Keane leading the evil and Father Hill realising too late that he has unleashed something that is very definitely not of God. It suggests that a rather pantheistic, monistic understanding of our place in the universe is better than a theistic (or stark atheistic) one. I find it hard to argue with the first point - religion can very easily be exploited for evil ends, and the faithful can be turned to evil by charismatic leaders all too often. The second conclusion is more problematic to my mind,
Midnight Mass is a fascinating exploration of deep themes with complex characters. The first three episodes have a growing sense of unease, which is helped by some excellent, eerie scoring. As things become more and more full-throated horror, the tension never lets up. Not one for the faint-hearted, though.
His Dark Materials Season 3
Picking up where season 2 ended, Will is hunting Lyra across multiple universes while her wicked mother, Marissa Coulter, hides her in a drugged sleep. Lyra dreams of her dead friend Roger and believes he is calling her from the land of the dead.
If you have never entered Philip Pullman's universe of steampunk fantasy, worlds where the human soul exists as a physical animal companion called a daemon and where a knife can cut between different universes, including our own, then here is a quick primer. It's wide, wonderful, profoundly anti-organised religion, and pro a pantheistic, monistic idea of our place in the universe.
Hang on that sounds familiar!?
All the baddies are priests or agents of the Magisterium (in other words, the Roman Catholic Church) who serve The Authority (God, only not actually God, but the first Angel who conned the others into believing he was the Creator). Witches, armoured bears, and scientists like Lyra's father, Lord Asriel, who have no truck with religious nonsense, all fight on the side of the good.
In season three, Lyra visits the land of the dead (a kind of concentration camp for ghosts) and sets the ghosts free to become one with the universe. The priests create a bomb to kill her because she is the New Eve, destined to cause a second fall. However, this fall is no more than her kissing her bestie, Will and falling in love. Apparently, that saves all of Creation.
Yes, crazy, but emotionally engaging, rip-roaring action, and some fantastic design and characterisation, not least from Dafne Keene, who totally holds the screen as Lyra in every scene she's in. Also excellent is Ruth Wilson as Lyra's evil mother, Marissa Coulter - former agent of the Magisterium but now fighting on the side of the angels (well, the good ones) for reasons she does not entirely understand. I could have watched scenes between these two actors and done away with 90% of the rest of the plot and been happy!
But at its heart, the enemy Pullman is trying to tear down a straw man. Religion is seen as life-denying, joy-sapping, and ultimately constrictive while losing faith means we can fall in love and live happy, creative lives. Hmmm.
While faith may often be all of these things, they are not intrinsic to religion. Many sects of the Protestant and Catholic faith are precisely the sort of thing that Pullman takes a swing at, but the opposite is also true. Some of the most significant social engagement, joy, creativity, community life, and striving for justice and freedom are to be found in faith communities. Meanwhile, this sort of amorphous spirituality that both HDM and Midnight Mass seem to promote sounds attractive but ultimately lacks depth and demands on the believer.
Dramas like these two certainly initiate a conversation about faith, but neither has the final word to say.
The Sandman
The long-awaited screen adaptation of Neil Gaiman's ground-breaking graphic novel series of the nineties finally dropped in August. And it was worth the wait. Beautifully filmed, well acted, and adapted faithfully (but not slavishly) from the graphic novels, much of it by Gaiman himself. It was a thing of beauty throughout.
Dealing with the big ideas - the nature of story, morality, death, and so forth - it also manages to be a lot of fun and occasionally even funny. Hang on for episode 6 - The Sound of Her Wings - it is a simple, beautiful, and thoughtful pause between the horrors of the first set of stories and the epic finale of the last four-parter. It is possibly my favourite single episode of TV this year.
I may not share all of Gaiman's ideas about life and death, but one thing he understands, and one thing of which he is a consummate master, is storytelling. The power of stories to change people, to shape our choices and values is very clear throughout his work. The Sandman, who is himself the master of dreams and stories, personifies this throughout this widely rich and imaginative series.
This is fantasy TV of the highest order.
