Year-End Lists

A hand-curated, browsable index of notable year-end lists. Follow the link for each list to see essential commentary from its author, at the source.

2017

San Francisco Chronicle: David Wiegand: 10 Best TV Shows of 2017

11 January 2018

David Wiegand: 10 Best TV Shows of 2017, as published by The San Francisco Chronicle. This year it “includes only shows that premiered in 2017.”

[see also 2016]

Vox: Emily St. James: 18 Best TV Shows of 2017

11 January 2018

Emily St. James: 18 Best TV Shows of 2017, “an 18-way tie,” as published by Vox

[see also 20212010s20192018]

The second tier: 27 more shows I loved, in alphabetical order

Andy Greenwald: Top Ten TV Shows of 2017

09 January 2018

Andy Greenwald: Top Ten TV Shows of 2017, as posted to Twitter

Mercury News: Best TV Shows of 2017

03 January 2018

Big Little Lies - Jean-Marc Vallée

San Jose Mercury News: Best TV Shows of 2017

[see also 2018]

Esquire: Best TV Shows of 2017

30 December 2017

Twin Peaks: The Return - David Lynch

Esquire: Best TV Shows of 2017

[see also 202320202010s2018]

Verge: Noel Murray: 20 Best TV Shows of 2017

22 December 2017

Better Call Saul

Noel Murray: 20 Best TV Shows of 2017, as published by The Verge

[see also 202220202018]

Fresh Air: David Bianculli: Best TV of 2017

22 December 2017

Better Call Saul

David Bianculli: Best TV of 2017 (as aired on NPR’s Fresh Air)

[see also 202020192018]

Entertainment Weekly: Best TV Shows of 2017

19 December 2017

GLOW

Entertainment Weekly: Best TV Shows of 2017

[see also 2016]

New Yorker: Emily Nussbaum: Definitely Not a Top Ten List

18 December 2017

Writing in The New Yorker, Emily Nussbaum provides this wisdom about lists:

Each December, I write a festive rant about my loathing for Top Ten lists. It’s always the same: lists are reductive, phony, anti-art. Online, they work first as clickbait, then as groupthink. They force critics to rate radically dissimilar projects—the epic, the dramedy, the sleek time-killer, the ambitious game-changer that doesn’t quite cohere—so that algorithms can crunch out a blandly universal must-see selection. I don’t like math, and if I knew anything about how numbers worked I wouldn’t have gone into arts criticism. Plus, I haven’t seen all the TV, and neither have you.

After some important caveats and context, she offers these favorite TV shows:

[see also 20192018]

Runners-up, not in order

Daily Beast: 20 Best TV Shows of 2017

18 December 2017

Big Little Lies - Jean-Marc Vallée

The Daily Beast: 20 Best TV Shows of 2017

[see also 2023]