First list of the year complete!

So, what did I think of Empire's top 20 TV of 2023?

Considering first the overlap between Empire and The Guardian, there are thirteen shows that appear on both lists (down three from last year) and, of these, I liked all but one of them which seems like a good hit rate - I just didn't get all the praise for The Curse, but maybe I just didn't give it enough time.

Of the ones that The Guardian chose to ignore, Slow Horses is the only one I find to be an unforgivable omission (The Guardian gave it four stars) but I enjoyed the animated duo of Scott Pilgrim (four stars) and Blue Eye Samurai (four stars). I also liked Foundation (three stars) and was quite surprised The Guardian didn't, which was also the case for Interview With The Vampire (three stars), which was well done but just not my sort of thing. I also liked Gen V (four stars), but The Guardian were never going to include that and I've absolutely no idea what Empire were thinking putting Doctor Who on the list. Shows on The Guardian list that I'm surprised Empire omitted are Only Murders In The Building (four stars), Blue Lights (no review!) and Top Boy (no review?) which I've not seen (yet), but the final series got great reviews.

Summing the ranks across both lists, we see an unusual level of agreement between the two slightly different publications, with the five lowest totals being Poker Face (11), The Last Of Us (9), Happy Valley (7), Succession (4) and The Bear (2). I enjoyed all of them, with I think only Poker Face (which I enjoyed, but I wouldn't say it's great) not making my top five of the year. The only entries in the top six of either list that don't appear in the top five overall are Beef (#4 in The Guardian, #19 in Empire) and Barry (#5 in Empire, #13 in The Guardian).

So that's our first list of 2023 completed - I suspect I might get Empire's films completed but that's probably going to be it before 2024 comes calling. Part of the reason that I'm struggling to get through the lists is that there's been a lot of great telly this year so it will be interesting to see how much of that makes it onto next years list.

#7 - Most perplexing
#20 (2024)- Fine, but somewhat inessential

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I'm not wishing I was back in the USA, coz I come from Morecambe and the skies are grey

Image
Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 15/11/24 : Earth To Grace - Massive Wagons I will listen to the new entry at #1, but there's absolutely NO WAY I'm writing a whole entry on it - so instead we have this which I know absolutely nothing about. But it has to be better than the abomination at #1. Well, it's something you don't hear too much of these days - I guess "hard rock" is probably as good a description as any. It’s not going to win any awards for musical complexity but it’s quite catchy - I was r eminded of Gary Moore in his heavier days that teenage me used to like. It also certainly doesn't take itself too seriously - "Free And Easy" tells us "I don't shoot guns, it's not healthy - I drive a Ford C-Max I got off my dad and it's filthy" and "Rabbit Hole" offers up an amusingly sceptical take on conspiracy theories and then abruptly ends "Auf wiedersehen, adios - this song fucking ...
Read more

I saw your mum - she forgot that I existed

Image
Continuing my trip forward in time through the album charts 22/12/23 :  Stick Season - Noah Kahan Well, this week surprises us on a couple of fronts.  Firstly, and probably the least expected, this is possibly the album I've heard most this year - because obviously I'm a massive Noah fan. Well, it might not surprise you to hear it's not me but my delightful daughter - but you might be surprised to hear just how much my youngest absolutely LOVES Noah, particularly given his folkiness.  She's got tickets to see him next year and (excluding festivals) they're the most expensive gig tickets I've ever bought.  But despite having heard the album loads, I've never actually listened to it, so I'm interested to see what I make of it on a one-on-one basis. You know what - the headline is that, having actually listened to it I can report that, at least in places, I liked this way more than I previously did.  I listened to it over headphones for the first time and t...
Read more

Time is the fruit of patience

Image
Continuing my trip back through the 1990 album charts. 27/05/90 : Passion And Warfare : Steve Vai I know that Steve Vai is a highly respected guitarist, but I've got no more clue about him than that.  I also don't have a great history with albums from highly respected guitarists, so I'd have to say my confidence isn't sky high going in to this one (and nothing would have convinced me to buy it - 7/32). Ohmigod, this is rubbish.  The guitar playing is indeed of a very high quality, but man cannot live on guitar playing alone and everything else about it is just pretentious bombast.  "The Audience Is Listening" deserves a specific mention for being particularly rubbish, with a teacher introducing "young Steve Vai" to the class to play a lovely tune and then providing an increasingly histrionic running commentary on how much she doesn't like it.  I can imagine he's very impressive live, but such virtuosity often doesn't translate onto an alb...
Read more