Hannah, Hanna and Hampshire: The Best of 2019

My annual year in review, following overviews of 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018.

2019 was a ridiculously good year for television. After 2018, when I had trouble finding ten shows I wanted to write about, 2019 left me struggling to trim down my “best of” list to a manageable size. There were too many shows I wanted to praise or — at the very least — acknowledge. (Not that there weren’t disappointments: several series that had topped my year-in-review lists in the past — Grantchester, Elementary, Mindhunter — are noticeably absent here.) So seeing how this entry is coming on the heels of my “10 Best Mary Tyler Moore Show Episodes,” which gave me as much pleasure as any piece I’ve written, I’m adopting a similar approach: I’m counting down my ten favorite shows of 2019, but after each, noting another (vaguely related) show I quite liked. So you're getting twenty recommendations for the length of ten.

10. The Act (Hulu), a dramatization of the life of Dee Dee Blanchard, who controlled her daughter Gypsy through physical and psychological abuse: subjecting her to unnecessary surgeries and medications, and fabricating illnesses and disabilities. Michelle Dean and Nick Antosca’s adaptation of this celebrated case of Münchausen syndrome by proxy could easily have been all sensationalism and little substance. (They based it on a BuzzFeed article by Dean with the clickbait-y headline “Dee Dee Wanted Her Daughter to Be Sick, Gypsy Wanted Her Mom to Be Murdered.”) But Dean and Antosca examine the story from all angles: Dee Dee’s abuse at the hands of her own mother and her resulting terror at losing the one thing that matters to her; Gypsy’s slow realization of her mother’s duplicity and her subsequent efforts to secure a measure of freedom; the doctors so negligent, gullible or intimidated by Dee Dee that they acquiesce to her demands (even to the point of fitting Gypsy with a medically unnecessary feeding tube); and the philanthropic organizations that, by rewarding the Blanchards, enable and encourage their behavior. The Act dragged a bit in the first few episodes, but it picked up steam once Gypsy began to engage in a con as complex and dangerous as her mother’s — and ultimately conspired with her online boyfriend to gain her independence. (The real-life Gypsy Rose Blanchard is currently serving a 10-year sentence for second-degree murder.) As Gypsy, trapped in an eternal childhood of princess costumes and stuffed animals, Joey King — her head shaved and her mouth fitted with false teeth — served up a masterful transformation, letting us see how much Gypsy's spirit, youthful curiosity and purposefulness had been stifled by her desire to please her mother. But Patricia Arquette, as Dee Dee, was no less revelatory. Clad in oversized smocks and frizzy wigs, her voice dripping with the excesses of Southern martyrdom, she resisted the temptation to lean into the monstrosity of the role, playing Dee Dee instead as a woman whose worst behavior was governed by fear and mental illness. She was (rightly) rewarded a 2019 Emmy Award, for Supporting Actress in a Limited Series. Also worth a look: another Hulu limited series, this one offering a much-needed boost of California sunshine, Veronica Mars. Panic spreads through the town of Neptune when a bomb goes off during spring break, and it falls to Veronica to bring a killer to justice. Even if you never saw the original series (and I myself stalled somewhere in Season 2), this new miniseries — brimming with breezy dialogue and punctuated by explosions — made it easy to jump in. It found Kristen Bell and Enrico Colantoni in fine form, and Jason Dohring — as evidenced by his slo-mo emergence from the Pacific Ocean in a pair of tiny blue trunks — in extremely fine form.

9. Hanna (Amazon), the story of a 15-year-old girl who's been genetically enhanced by a covert CIA operation. Critics slagged this one for not being true in spirit to its source material, the 2011 film directed by Joe Wright and (like the TV series) scripted by David Farr; they felt its captivating fusion of fairy-tale and high-tech thriller had been abandoned in favor of a more traditional action-adventure. Not having seen the film, I can’t speak to what was lost; I can only say that I found the TV series absorbing and enormously entertaining, and among the elements I enjoyed the most — from what I’ve since read — are the ones that veered furthest from the screenplay. Farr was able to return to his story, broaden its scope, redefine its tone and deepen its characters. Esme Creed-Miles did creditable and often impressive work in the title role, but for me, the chief attraction was the chance to see Mireille Enos and Joel Kinnaman together again for the first time since The Killing. It was apparently Enos who recognized this as a perfect vehicle for a reunion, and indeed, Hanna afforded them showy roles, with Kinnaman as Erik Heller, who rescued baby Hanna from a covert Romanian facility and raised her deep in the Polish forest, and Enos as CIA agent Marissa Wiegler, who has been hunting Hanna since birth. Enos, in particular, was remarkable, her character switching moods and strategies with impressive clarity. Although it might have lacked the full-on fairy-tale atmosphere of the original film, much of the TV adaptation — both in its coming-of-age subplots and in Hanna’s skirmishes with CIA operatives — had an hallucinatory quality, and Enos’s character was cut from the same magical cloth. In episode 6, when she appeared unexpectedly on the doorstep of the family with whom Hanna had taken refuge and offered to bring her home — flashing a smile both maternal and malevolent — you gasped in horror and anticipation. It was indeed the stuff of fairy tales: the wicked queen brandishing the poison apple. Enos was too often relegated to a supporting player in Season 1; presuming she reappears in Season 2, I hope they’ll redress the balance. Also worth a look: another outstanding Amazon offering — and a double act as good as it gets — in Neil Gaiman’s adaptation of his 1990 novel (with Terry Pratchett), Good Omens. David Tennant and Michael Sheen were such convivial hosts — and had such convincing rapport — that it was easy to overlook the blandness of a couple of key supporting players and to excuse episode 3’s cold open, which was essentially one joke stretched across 30 minutes. Sustained not just by Tennant and Sheen, but by director Doug Mackinnon, who established a visual palette, then ran seemingly infinite variations on it.

8. City on a Hill (Showtime), a fictionalized account of the early days of Operation Ceasefire (a.k.a. “The Boston Miracle”), a collaborative effort between police, black ministers and social scientists, who came together in the mid-‘90s to curb rising youth homicide. City on a Hill imagines two unlikely allies: Jackie Rohr, a cocaine-snorting, corrupt and racist FBI veteran (Kevin Bacon, rakish and robust) and Decourcy Ward (played by Aldis Hodge with smoldering strength), a principled new DA from Brooklyn committed to stemming the rise in violent crime and easing tensions between law enforcement and the black community. Together, they take on a group of armored car robbers, in a case that ultimately embraces Boston’s citywide criminal justice system. Part procedural and part thorny bromance, this first season was grounded by its two stars, but the cast of characters was impressively large and well-defined. And although I found Ward's wife annoyingly drawn, I can’t fault any of the performances, and was particularly taken with a few actors not well known to me — chief among them, Amanda Clayton (as the wife of one of the robbers, a frizzed-out fury of blonde ambition), who walked off with every scene that was smart enough to feature her. Not only did the characterizations and performances reek of Boston, but so did the settings — all the more remarkable because Showtime insisted that the series, once the pilot had been picked up, be shot in and around New York City, to save on costs. Nonetheless, City on a Hill captured the seedy feel of Boston’s bars and hangouts, the middle-class homes with their narrow hallways and overstuffed living rooms — and there was always, at the heart of the series, a sense of Boston as an uneasy melting pot of suburbs and districts, whose residents view the city through the prism of the particular neighborhood in which they live. The series, the brainchild of Boston native Chuck MacLean, has happily been picked up for a second season; there’s obviously a lot of good story left to tell. Also worth a look: another period drama about urban crime, Season 3 of FX’s Snowfall, which continued to chronicle the early years of the crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles. I included Season 2 among my 10 best shows of 2018. The latest season ultimately proved no less suspenseful, but there were a few rough patches early on. The sudden departure of Emily Clara Rios left Sergio Peris-Mencheta’s character adrift; the scripted departure of Jonathan Tucker left a gap that was difficult to fill. (Adriana Ducassi — who had worked so well as an antagonist in Season 2 — was not the answer, as the writing staff soon realized.) Holding the show together was the always impressive Damson Idris; the reintegration of Franklin‘s mother and father into his life — and new emphasis on the father and daughter next door — deepened and broadened the sense of community, a community Franklin’s business dealings were decimating. The new title card showed a neighborhood burning over time, an image beautifully realized through the course of Season 3.

7. A Confession (BBC One), the story of DS Steve Fulcher, who sacrificed his own career to bring a serial killer to justice. BBC and ITV have commissioned a slew of true-crime dramatizations in the past few years; there’s typically a punch to the gut early on, from which you spend the rest of the series recovering. With A Confession, there was no respite. Siobhan Finneran is Elaine Pickford, whose 22-year-old daughter Sean O’Callaghan has gone missing; Imelda Staunton is Karen Edwards, whose troubled daughter Becky disappeared years earlier, and who, upon hearing about the hunt for O’Callaghan, grows convinced that her own daughter fell victim to the same predator. And Martin Freeman is the dedicated and compassionate police officer, who makes the decision to forego formal protocol while interviewing a suspect in O’Callaghan’s case — in order to obtain vital information about prior victims. A Confession was a four-part retelling of a landmark case that prompted the courts to revisit the PACE Act, the 1981 code of practice aimed at protecting the balance between the powers of the police and the rights of the public. Although Fulcher’s actions result in the recovery of Becky’s body, a myopic judge deems the information inadmissible, and Fulcher finds himself scapegoated by his own department. Writer Jeff Pope paints a sympathetic portrait of Fulcher, who made a choice he felt was morally right and legally sound — and in doing so, Pope forces us to question the effectiveness of the law when it comes to securing justice. He also, radically, disavows the notion of shared grief, as Elaine, to the end, refuses to meet with Karen, embittered that her daughter’s memory has been forever tied to a girl of less sterling reputation. Freeman and Finneran were splendid, but Staunton was the standout. At the end of episode 2, police arrive with news that her daughter’s body has been discovered, and she collapses in sobs of grief and relief. And even as the screen goes dark, her sobs continue, refusing to let the police force — or the audience — off the hook. Also worth a look: another investigative procedural, the third season of CBC’s Cardinal — a return to form for a series that had lost a little of its luster in its sophomore year. As Season 1 had demonstrated, the series works best when Cardinal’s family life serves up a mystery as compelling as the case the detectives are working, and the suspicious death of Cardinal’s wife Catherine in the opening episode provided the new season with the perfect framework. Billy Campbell and Karine Vanasse were as appealing as ever, and new showrunner Patrick Tarr (whose approach I took to instantly) — abetted by a sterling writing staff — ably combined two of Giles Blunt’s novels, By the Time You Read This and Crime Machine, into an effective double mystery. Season 4 returns this month; if you haven’t yet spent time in the fictional Canadian town of Algonquin Bay, the full series is available on Hulu.

6. Carnival Row (Amazon): With Game of Thrones having ended its run, it feels like dozens of shows have lined up to stake their claim as its natural successor. (I guess we’ll know we have a winner when a million fans demand it be redone.) Some were rather good (The Witcher), and at least one was pretty awful (His Dark Materials), but none had the stunning direct appeal of the one original, Carnival Row. René Echevarria and Travis Beacham developed it from an unsold screenplay by Beacham, with Echevarria serving as showrunner. I've been a fan of Echevarria's for decades, and it was clear from episode 1 that we were in good hands. With a city full of mythological creatures, a heady dose of class and sexual warfare, absorbing political and familial conspiracies, and a string of unsolved murders, there was more than enough to capture and hold a viewer’s attention. And yet I confess to feeling a bit of unease four episodes in. Episode 3 was a fine flashback focusing on the origins of the love story at the series’ core, between Rycroft “Philo” Philostrate (Orlando Bloom), a half-blood Inspector of the Burgue Constabulary, and Vignette Stonemoss (Cara Delevingne), a “fae” (or winged fairy) who’s fallen in with a group of outcasts and instigators. But when the series returned to the present, the writers seemed more concerned with establishing the supporting players, and the possibility loomed that the two leads — who’d by then been splintered into separate story-lines — were going to prove the least interesting characters on the screen. But the series refocused — beautifully — by episode 6 (penned by staff writer Stephanie K. Smith) and made it quite clear why the supporting cast was getting so much airtime: the creators needed all hands on deck as the season finale approached, as its many story-lines not merely accelerated, but unexpectedly, gratifyingly intertwined. Ultimately, Carnival Row gave us romances to root for, villains to jeer, mysteries to solve, effective allegory, fanciful mythology — and uniformly strong performances. I came away quite satisfied. Also worth a look: the other fantasy drama that captured my attention in 2019, A Discovery of Witches, which premiered on Sky One, then made its way to the States via Shudder and Sundance Now. It starred the great Matthew Goode, who infused his character — centuries-old vampire Matthew de Clermont — with a carefully calibrated blend of intensity and romanticism. By virtue of the source material, Deborah Harkness’s best-selling novel of the same name, it had a lot of supporting roles to fill — witches, vampires and demons — and the fact that the characters were so easily distinguished and identified was a credit to both the casting and the performances. Bonus points for its gorgeous location footage of the Scottish Highlands, rural Finland, and the French province of Auvergne — most of it shot in South Wales: a conjuring trick as impressive as any witch’s incantation.

5. For All Mankind (Apple TV+): Apple TV+ put all its marketing dollars behind the Jennifer Aniston-led Morning Show, which I found unwatchable; this was the Apple product that impressed me. Ronald Moore’s creation stemmed from a simple premise: what if the Soviet Union had beaten the United States to the moon? And from there, Moore wove variations on our own history, variations that extended far beyond the race for space; he explored the political fallout, the sociological ramifications. How the world as we know it might’ve been altered by one small (Soviet) step. I know Moore best from his episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Deep Space 9, but part of the genius of For All Mankind is that it didn’t play like science fiction. It hewed closely to actual history, and when it diverged, there were no technological advances or social upheavals that felt beyond the realm of possibility. (It was the refreshing antithesis of how these shows – the likes of The Man in the High Castle — typically operate: the ones that introduce us to an alternate universe years after its formation, and we gawk at how much has changed. For All Mankind got us in on the ground floor.) And just as the drama managed to avoid the trappings of sci-fi, it also eschewed the tropes of soap opera. Moore gave voice to a large cast, but all of the storylines were filtered through the U.S.’s determination to regain its supremacy in space. (Only one subplot, about a Mexican family that crossed the border into the United States, seemed at times awkward and inconsequential.) In fact, amusingly, if For All Mankind flirted with any genre, it was horror. It was clear that every mission could be the astronauts’ last, so whether they were piloting a routine test flight, executing a time-sensitive rescue or merely taking a walk on the lunar surface, their exploits were charged with chilling intensity, because the stakes were so high and the risks so potentially grave. Fittingly, since one of the most significant changes to the space program in For All Mankind was NASA’s admittance of women astronauts more than a decade before it actually happened, the series was grounded by a trio of fascinating ones: Jodi Balfour as Ellen Waverly, Krys Marshall as Danielle Poole, and Sonya Walger as Molly Cobb (based on real life flier Jerrie Cobb, who was on the verge of becoming the first female astronaut, until NASA pulled the plug on the program). But ultimately, shrewdly, the stories gave way to one mission that dominated the second half of the season, one led by series star Joel Kinnaman — and he was never more commanding or charismatic. Also worth a watch: another look at Soviet history, Craig Mazin’s miniseries about the 1986 nuclear disaster in Chernobyl. Every bit deserving of its multiple Emmy Awards (for Outstanding Limited Series, Writing and Directing), it was an absorbing and unnerving series that managed to articulate so much: the devastating human cost, the science of nuclear energy, and the workings of the Soviet system — all of it grounded in the growing bond between scientist Valery Legasov (Jared Harris) and Soviet official Boris Shcherbina (Stellan Skarsgård). It was, of course, a perfectly timed series, with the rise of fascism in this country — and an Administration bathed in secrecy and misinformation — making it seem far more than an event specific to another country in another age.

4. Guilt (BBC Scotland): BBC Scotland’s first original drama commission was a genre-defying, nail-biting firecracker of a series. The first episode had all the earmarks of a black comedy — as brothers Max and Jake McCall struck and killed a pedestrian while driving home drunk from a party, then worked feverishly to cover up the crime. But as the series progressed, it became both deeper and cheekier — an unusual combination, to say the least. I’m loathe to reveal too much, because most anything I’d say would spoil some element of the plotting, but let me just mention that it’s the rare show that can, over the course of four episodes, become simultaneously more character- and more plot-driven, without either element feeling compromised. (I’m still a bit dazzled how writer Neil Forsyth pulled it off.) Guilt is at once an escalating character drama and a string of narrative sleights of hand, and offhand, I can’t think of another series that’s managed both objectives with such bravado. Mark Bonnar and Jamie Sives as Max and Jake were stellar: the bossy older sibling and the kid who never grew up. (The actors have been friends since they met as 11-year-olds at Leith Academy in Edinburgh, and no doubt their easy rapport on the screen is a result of that; they fully convince as brothers who’ve spent years brokering the terms of their relationship.) Their bond deepened and darkened through the course of the series — and they had splendid support from Ruth Bradley, Sian Brooke and Ellie Haddington, plus the welcome addition of Bill Paterson in the final two episodes. But Bonnar was the series’ ace-in-the-hole, and his range and technique have never been more astonishing. At this point, at age 51, he’s so in demand that he’s seemingly ubiquitous — yet he steadfastly refuses to be typecast: enjoying equal success as a villain and as a victim, and often morphing from one to the other within a single series. (He does so in my #1 choice, below.) Also worth a look: the other show about life after a fatal hit-and-run, Netflix’s Dead to Me. Let’s just start by saying that Christina Applegate’s performance was the best work I’ve seen her do. Let’s end there, too. There are a lot of reasons to watch Dead to Me: the clever premise, the steady stream of turnabouts, the rapport between Applegate and her co-star Linda Cardellini, who (despite all the contrivances of the plotting) manage to offer a believable portrait of a friendship forged through mutual grief. But ultimately, you’re watching Applegate, and thinking how satisfying it is — in an industry that so often discards or destroys young actors as they age — to see one who has not only survived, but thrived: nurturing her craft, choosing good vehicles or knowing when to leave bad ones, turning personal misfortunes into advocacy and philanthropy. Hollywood doesn’t have a stellar track record when it comes to easing young actors into adulthood; Applegate is one of its most inspiring success stories.

3. What We Do in the Shadows (FX, BBC Two), the year’s most delectable surprise. In 2014, co-directors and co-writers Taiki Waititi and Jemaine Clement released a big-screen mockumentary about a group of vampires sharing a house in modern-day New Zealand. Their TV adaptation transplants the concept to Staten Island, heightening its fish-out-of-water concept while retaining its daft and giddy spirit. Kayvan Novak is 757-year-old vampire Nandor the Relentless: king of Al Quolanudar till it dissolved in 1401 and a USA basketball fan since 1992. (He wanted to become an American citizen to compete in the Olympics until the Macarena swept the nation and he got distracted.) Natasia Demetriou is Nadja, the household matron, who spends her nights scouring the borough for the reincarnation of her former lover, Gregor. And Matt Berry is Laszlo, an English nobleman turned by Nadja, who passes his time making topiary sculptures of vulvas. All three give pitch-perfect performances, as they fight to maintain their majesty in a world that has long since passed them by. It’s the kind of show that can get unlimited mileage out of the tiniest quirks, like Nadja’s inability to pronounce the Americanized nickname “Jeff,” or Laszlo's inability to transform into a bat without first declaring, "Bat!" In a piece of scripting emblematic of the show’s gratifyingly unpredictable style, Nadja’s hunt for Gregor’s latest incarnation (a plot introduced in the pilot) seems like a throwaway — the kind of funny bit that will come and go in an episode. And when she fastens on the human she believes to be her reincarnated lover — an unassuming parking attendant — you think she’s mistaken: that the humor lies in her singling out the least likely suspect. But the writers not only make two unexpected returns to this story-line during the course of the season, they manage two unexpected — and hilarious — twists. What We Do in the Shadows is a fresh blend of high-concept set-pieces and small, almost gentle character beats; you rarely know if what you’re laughing at is a continuing plot thread or a one-off gag, but you’re too busy laughing to wonder. Also worth a look, another series about a family of misfits, HBO’s The Righteous Gemstones. Actor-writer Danny McBride’s latest — focusing on a family of famous televangelists — began as a satire of right-wing hypocrisy, but soon morphed into a moving exploration of grief and the price of loss. The cast was uniformly strong, but for me, the show was stolen by three women: Cassidy Freeman (as McBride’s onscreen wife), sexy and funny in her tight dresses and dressing gowns the way Jean Harlow used to be; Edi Patterson (as the ignored middle child), needy and sympathetic and gloriously unhinged, with a final-act monologue at an Outback Steakhouse that stacks up with the year’s best; and the most delightful surprise, singer-songwriter Jennifer Nettles (as the late family matriarch), viewed only in flashbacks and given limited airtime, but so full of talent and heart that you fully understood how the Gemstones fell apart without her.

2. Schitt’s Creek (CBC, Pop): I’ve spent five years waiting for Schitt’s Creek to get this good. The premise, in case you’ve recently arrived on this planet: the wealthy Rose family — video magnate Johnny (Eugene Levy), his wife and former soap star Moira (Catherine O’Hara), and their two grown children David and Alexis (Daniel Levy and Annie Murphy) — lose their fortune and are forced to take refuge in the town of Schitt’s Creek, which they had purchased as a gag birthday gift in 1991. The evolving story has been the Roses adapting to (and ultimately thriving in) their new home, and to that effect, Season 5 kept multiple story-lines successfully front-burnered: David and Patrick’s deepening relationship, ending with a surprise proposal; Alexis forging a career in PR and strengthening her commitment to Ted; and Moira sharing her flair for the dramatic by directing the local production of Cabaret. But no one benefited more than Emily Hampshire, who’s done such strong and dutiful service for years without nearly enough of a showcase. So much of the energy and poignancy of Season 5 came by way of Stevie: meeting a man in an unlikely way, taking a chance on a long-distance relationship, then having her hopes dashed when he didn‘t share her interest in a romance — only for this most private of characters to be cast, improbable as it sounded, as the uninhibited Sally Bowles in Cabaret. On opening night, when Moira eased Stevie’s concerns about the lack of forward motion in her life (“It feels like everyone’s growing up all around me”) by responding in admiration, “You just stand your solid ground, refusing to be anything but you. And whether you set sail, or stay put, that’s not going to change” — well, it was one of the loveliest moments I witnessed in 2019. And although Hampshire’s solo turn on “Maybe This Time” was one of those scenes that can be awful on screen — where an actor gets off to a shaky start, then “finds their voice” — she served up a nuanced performance with unexpected grace notes: peeling away layers of Stevie that she's been loathe to discard, then soaring without ever stepping out of character. In brief, she nailed it, just as Schitt’s Creek nailed pretty much everything this season. As a footnote, if you don’t come away from each and every episode parroting Catherine O’Hara’s delivery, then you’re not watching right. Also worth a look: Series 2 of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag, the show that defeated Schitt’s Creek at the Emmy Awards. As others have noted, Series 2 deepened the themes that had proven so beguiling and invigorating in Season 1. If you haven’t seen Fleabag, then start at the beginning — although, heretically, I found the first episode off-putting, trying too hard to assert itself as something candid and outrageous, instead of just being candid and outrageous. I quit fifteen minutes in, and only returned to it when Series 2 garnered such acclaim. So phooey on me, but in case you have the same response: stick with it.

1. Summer of Rockets (BBC Two): Sometimes I watch TV and think there are two kinds of dramas: the ones from Stephen Poliakoff — and everybody else’s. As I was binging Poliakoff's Summer of Rockets, I was sampling BBC One’s World on Fire, which had viewers buzzing on social media. Of course it did: the characters were familiar types designed to dictate a predetermined response, and the situations were the manipulative staples of soap opera. It was well done, but there was nothing about it that you couldn’t see coming a mile away. The other writers, I sometimes feel, write TV; Poliakoff creates art. Summer of Rockets, which touches down in 1958, is his most personal story to date: the lead character, Stephen Petrukhin (Toby Stephens, outstanding) is a Russian-Jewish émigré, an inventor and a designer of hearing aids — like Poliakoff’s father. The Petrukhin family — Stephen and his wife Miriam, descended from Jewish aristocracy; their daughter Hannah, a reluctant debutante preparing for “the season”; and their young son Sacha, being packed off to boarding school — are all striving to fit into an unyielding British society, and in the opening scene, their outsider status is highlighted as they’re questioned before being admitted to the royal enclosure at Goodwood. (“I think you’ll find we’re on the list,” Stephen insists, as his family hides their shame. “Every year this happens,” he adds, as if hoping to transfer his embarrassment onto those who are detaining him.) But fortune takes an unexpected turn when Sacha goes missing, and one of the posher attendees, Kathleen Shaw (Keeley Hawes, exquisite), retrieves him. Petrukhin — keen to assimilate himself into English life and customs — is thrilled to make her acquaintance, and that of her husband, MP Richard Shaw. And from there, the worlds of these two very different families intertwine, as Stephen — caught up in Cold War espionage — is charged by MI5 with insinuating himself into the Shaws’ lives, while Kathleen ensnares Stephen’s children in a more personal agenda. There wasn’t a plot point I saw coming, not a character who didn’t feel fresh, not a denouement that didn’t convince and occasionally surprise — and in the character of Hannah (newcomer Lily Sacofsky, enchanting), Poliakoff caught exactly what it was like to grow up at the dawn of the Atomic Age: when young ladies had nightmares about weapons testing, but also about etiquette classes. Also worth a look: spaceships instead of rockets, in the second season of CBS’s Star Trek: Discovery. The first season had caught fire midway through; Season 2 continued to ride a wave of confidence and creativity, with the welcome arrival of a new captain, an exciting season arc, solid outings for the core characters, and gratifying development for bit players I never expected to be more than window dressing. Only the two-part season finale felt padded, as characters kept interrupting a countdown to engage in final farewells and personal reflection. But then, I guess if the universe is ending, you’re allowed to take a little extra time to prevent it.

Enjoy reading about TV's best? Check out two similarly-styled posts: The Five Best TV Shows You Might Not Be Watching and Five Foreign TV Dramas You Shouldn't Miss. Or if you enjoy detailed looks at hit shows, check out my write-ups of Voyager Season 4, Cold Case Season 4, Gilmore Girls Season 7 (and the subsequent, ill-judged Netflix miniseries), Judging Amy Season 6, and fourteen essays devoted to all the seasons of the great nighttime soap Knots Landing, starting here. I also look back at Murder, She Wrote and pick out The 10 Best "Murder She Wrote" Mysteries. Or if you have a preference for sitcoms, I serve up my 10 Best Mary Tyler Moore Show Episodes, delve into Rhoda Season 3, WKRP in Cincinnati Season 4 and Bewitched Season 2, pen an appreciation of the underrated Mike & Molly, and offer up some thoughts as to why The New Adventures of Old Christine took such a tumble in quality over its five seasons.