Wild Cards
The most easygoing procedural on TV right now. A demoted detective and a con man doing community service get forced into a partnership, and their casework quickly becomes a con artist’s playbook applied to solving crimes. It is a CBC…
Tag shows you should be watching
Schitt’s Creek
A rich family loses everything except a small town they bought as a joke, and six seasons later you will cry at a wedding. The setup is a fish out of water sitcom; the show it becomes is one of…
The Good Place
Eleanor Shellstrop dies and ends up in the wrong afterlife, and the show that follows is the smartest high concept comedy ever aired. Every season reinvents itself (the season 1 finale is one of the great TV twists), and underneath…
Brooklyn Nine-Nine
The precinct sitcom with the best ensemble on broadcast TV. Andy Samberg’s Jake Peralta is a manchild detective who is actually great at his job, and around him the show builds one of the deepest comedy benches ever: Holt’s deadpan…
Pokemon
Ash, Pikachu, and 25 plus years of the adventure that defined a generation’s childhood. The Indigo League run is comfort viewing royalty: the nostalgia is load bearing, and the show knows it. The honest take: this is not a prestige…
JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure
Generations of the Joestar family, each fighting a bizarre battle against an escalating rogues gallery of vampires, Stand users, and men named Dio. No anime has more range: every part swaps protagonist, tone, setting, and art style, and somehow it…
Modern Family
The family sitcom of its decade, done with a mockumentary sheen and a cast with chemistry most shows would kill for. Three branches of one big family: the traditional Dunphys, the older man with the younger wife, and the gay…
Beavis and Butt-Head
Two idiots laugh at music videos. That was the whole pitch in 1993, and somehow Mike Judge built one of the most influential animated shows ever out of it, then handed the culture the template for idiot comedy that everything…
King of the Hill
The quiet masterpiece of adult animation. Where its loud cousins went for shock, King of the Hill built a sitcom about a Texas propane salesman and his family that plays like a live action show that happens to be drawn.…
South Park
Still the sharpest satire on television after 25 plus years, which is almost impossible. South Park’s superpower is speed: a six day production cycle that lets an episode about Tuesday’s news air that same week, and a willingness to attack…