If you're a TV and media critic, your workday is likely split into three unequal parts. There are the pieces you write without anyone asking for them, the pieces that you'd like to write but probably won't have time to tackle and the pieces you don't really want to write but have to for pageview and/or business reasons.
Year-end "Best Of" lists fall into the latter category more often than not because at the end of the day, you're not likely to create a list all that different than the ones being cranked out your fellow critics. If you compiled every "Best of 2023" list published in the next couple of weeks, you'll find that most of them are drawn from about 20 of 25 possibilities. Sure, they may be ranked differently depending on the critic, but they are not going to vary all that much from outlet to outlet.
Executives in charge of pageviews love "Best Of" lists because they're easy to promote, popular with readers and make the shows and producers who are part of the list very happy. But from an intellectual point-of-view, are they really worthwhile? Does it require a sophisticated TV palate to argue that Succession was a really great show?
There's been an ongoing discussion in 2023 amongst TV critics and industry watchers about how even after a six-month Hollywood strike and an industry slowdown, it is still astoundingly difficult to keep up with all the worthwhile shows on a regular basis. But with all of that content clutter and a wealth of riches, the same few shows seem to end up on everyone's list. Maybe there were only 10 or 20 worthwhile shows in 2023. But maybe the story of TV in 2023 was more nuanced than "these are the ten best shows of the year."
Most TV critics think of themselves as the equivalent of a tour guide to television. Their task is to hopefully highlight the shows that deserve the attention of viewers (and warning them about the ones to stay away from). And at their core, "Best Of" lists are a reflection of those values. An effort to capture the entire viewing year into one or two consumable lists that serve as a guide for the year's TV viewing.
But if the "Best Of" lists reflect a tour guide approach to TV criticism, I would argue that most readers are really in need of a park ranger approach to covering television. Rather than distilling choices down to the "best," it's more useful to provide context and choices and a larger perspective. Does anyone really need to be reminded The Bear or Reservation Dogs were great shows? I don't think so. I think it's much more useful to talk about some of the good shows that didn't get as much attention, the under-viewed ones that audiences missed and even the shows that are the best at delivering a solid 30 or 60 minutes of entertainment.
"Best Of" lists are a fun intellectual exercise and arguing over these lists is the TV critic version of those music clerks arguing over the which band is the best in the movie "Empire Records." But like those clerks, we can get so wrapped up in the mental gymnastics of it all that we lose sight of what really be helpful.
What was the best TV show of 2023? You probably don't care. But that won't stop you from clicking into the story anyway. Or writing it.
