2023’s best performances, Percy Jackson pops, The Crown slips, and more from the week in TV

The 15 best TV episodes of 2023

It’s end-of-year list-making time at The A.V. Club, and the TV team has already counted down the very best shows and performances of 2023—and we have plenty more celebratory retrospectives planned over the coming weeks. Today, we’re toasting the episodes that really hit us hard, from an unexpected detour in The Last Of Us to a gruesome Yellowjackets installment we saw coming but still managed to shock. These are our 15 favorite eps of the year, listed in chronological order and capped at one entry per show. – Tim Lowery Read More

The 17 best TV performances of 2023

What a victorious year it’s been for TV—and we’re not just talking about the WGA and SAG winning their contract negotiations. The past 12 months have also boasted some truly great series, as evidenced in our best shows of the year list, that were brought to life by some truly great performers. From breakout turns in I’m A Virgo and Beef to celebrated final bows in Succession and Reservation Dogs, these are The A.V. Club’s favorite performances from 2023. (Heads up that we limited it to one actor per show, a daunting task for any fan of The Bear … or Barry … or Abbott Elementary … or …. ) – Saloni Gajjar Read More

Fargo recap: The season’s weakest episode so far

“Show, don’t tell” is one of the first rules that anyone who fancies themselves a writer must absorb. As with most writing advice (avoid the passive voice, “I before E except after C,” etc.) it should really be presented as more of a guideline. Sometimes simply telling is good. A character acknowledging their reality is powerful, or funny, or terrifying when it’s done right. It annoys me, is the takeaway here, but even with a show as brash and unsubtle as Fargo, I found myself frustrated by this week’s episode, “The Tiger,” and its fragmented, obvious storytelling. – Tom Philip Read More

The Crown season 6, part 2 review: Finally free of Diana, the show bows out early

The Crown has reached its end, its obvious conclusion: the death of Queen Elizabeth II (Imelda Staunton). Just kidding. That would have made sense! But no, the finale wraps up in 2005, at the wedding of Charles (Dominic West) and Camilla (Claudia Harrison). The episode’s title, “Sleep Dearie, Sleep,” is named for the song that was played at Elizabeth’s funeral in 2022, and much of this last batch of episodes (which drop December 14 on Netflix) does a lot of nodding and winking at future events that The Crown will never portray. – Lauren Chval Read More

The cast of Archer share their favorite memories from the show’s 14 seasons

After 14 seasons on TV, Archer finally comes to a close next week, with the long-running spy comedy ending its shockingly consistent run of profane jokes, high-energy action, obscure references, and Kenny Loggins musical stings with a three-episode finale event, Archer: Into The Cold, on December 17 on FX and FXX (and Hulu). Ahead of the release of the sendoff, we talked to four members of the show’s cast—H. Jon Benjamin, Aisha Tyler, Amber Nash, and Chris Parnell—about their legendary tenure on the series. We asked each of them to tell us about their favorite Archer memories, their go-to episodes—and which of the show’s controversial genre-hopping “coma seasons” they enjoyed jumping into the most. – William Hughes Read More

A Murder At The End Of The World recap: Darby makes “the big old mistake”

Since episode one, A Murder At The End Of The World has been a show about victims. Though we’re on the hunt for a killer, the show separates itself from the pack through Darby’s power to piece together the crime by understanding the life taken, not the one who took it. And although the flashbacks have illuminated this attribute ad nauseam, Darby seems to have forgotten her training. After five weeks, Darby admits she made “the big old mistake,” focusing on catching a murderer when she should be trying to understand the murdered. This realization is a revelation for the show, allowing writers Marling and Batmanglij to announce their thesis on whodunits: Victims matter, killers don’t. – Matt Schimkowitz Read More

Percy Jackson And The Olympians review: Disney Plus series feels like it has staying power

Let’s face facts: There’s never a good way to tell your 12-year-old son that he’s the result of an ill-fated romance with a Greek god, let alone that he’s a demigod—or “half blood”, if you’re feeling particularly discriminatory—being stalked by murderous mythical monsters. Still, there is a right way to (hey, you knew it was coming) adapt Rick Riordan’s Camp Half-Blood novels, and it certainly wasn’t the 2010 film, Percy Jackson And The Olympians: The Lightning Thief. It deviated too far from the books, for starters, and it aged up its characters from school kids to teens plagued by angst and romantic tension. The plot was dabbled with extensively, our young hero was granted full control of his demigodly powers immediately, and … well, you get the picture. It wasn’t faithful to the source material, and people were (rightfully) mad. – Kayleigh Dray Read More

Carol & The End Of The World review: Netflix’s adult-animated miniseries moves to a rhythm all its own

There’s a certain set of characteristics we’ve come to expect from an adult-animated series that looks and sounds like Netflix’s Carol & The End Of The World (out December 15): 27 minutes packed with sight gags, rapid-fire jokes, and throwaway plotlines that are designed to be forgotten by next week. – Jenna Scherer Read More

The Curse recap: Bye-bye Flipanthropy, hello Green Queen

Producing reality television is a kind of invisible art. If it’s an art at all. And from what The Curse has been showing us, Dougie (Benny Safdie) may well be a most accomplished artist in that regard. Whitney (Emma Stone) has been trying to wrestle control of Flipanthropy and nudge it toward a direction that better reflects her and her husband Asher’s (Nathan Fielder) interests in green passive homes and community-first local engagement. But it was only a matter of time until such a blandly positive angle would prove to make not even remotely watchable television. As Dougie puts it while watching an early cut of the episode they shot with the hired-for-TV buyer couple Whitney herself cast last week, what they’ve been assembling is a frictionless show. – Manuel Betancourt Read More