I feel a certain glee when I find a TV show that I really love. If the show is science fiction, even better.
Some say we are in a golden age of television, and I happen to agree. In fact, I had trouble narrowing down to a manageable list of favorites of shows that premiered this year. There are shows not on this list that I enjoyed; there are shows not on this list that premiered in 2014 that were certainly among the best of the year.
But this list is my list – my list of the best shows of 2015 that premiered in 2015. And what a list it is.
I had to start my list with Limitless, as I live-tweet the CBS show every Tuesday night. I’ve left events early to get home in time to watch it live. It premiered in September and returns Tuesday (Jan. 5).
I enjoyed the original Limitless movie, which starred Bradley Cooper. They brought Cooper in for a couple of episodes to attract an audience, but it was pretty clear early on that this show stood all on its own. Part police procedural, part mysterious serial, part comedy, Limitless is a weekly joy to watch. Star Jake McDormand creates a Brian Finch who is completely adorable and who you root for every second.
An episode that spoofed Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (complete with post-credits scene), claymation, sensitive and amusing back- and side-stories of other characters – all add up to the fastest and most enjoyable hour of TV every week. I’m still waiting for my Bruntouchables T-shirt.
Also: We’re waiting for a Stavros backstory, guys. (For the uninitiated, Stavros is the best janitor in the world, and is standing under the word “Jungle” in the back right of the photo in this link.)
Marvel’s Agent Carter is one of three Marvel series on this list. Deal with it. The ABC series premiered in January and Season 2 begins Jan. 19.
Agent Peggy Carter was the love of Captain America’s life, but got left behind when he was frozen beneath the sea. She lives in a post-War America that regards single women as secretaries and is the most badass woman agent in the SSR, the precursor to S.H.I.E.L.D. She plays the role she’s expected to, when she has to, but knows her country needs her.
Fortunately, Howard Stark (Tony’s dad) knows full well what Agent Carter is made of, and comes to her to help exonerate him when he’s framed.
Carter’s moving to Los Angeles for Season 2 and is supposed to get a love interest who will fill the hole in her heart left by Steve Rogers’ apparent death.
All I know is, I wouldn’t want to be on the opposite end of a gun with that look Carter’s got on her face.
Netflix gave us this Marvel BAMF in November. Blessed with super strength stemming from a car accident with a chemical tanker when she was a child, Jessica Jones is a complex woman.
Suffering PTSD from having been mind-controlled by the Purple Man, Jessica is angry. You can see the anger on her face, in the way she carries herself. She wants to protect those she loves while staying away from them so as not to bring harm to them.
The series was nuanced and layered and also laid the foundations for the Luke Cage and Defenders’ series. Add in some Rosario Dawson to tie it to Daredevil, and we’re ready for The Defenders. The timing of Season 2 is still up in the air, as it has to be sorted out with the other three series taking place in New York’s Hells Kitchen.
It’s all tied to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as well, as it’s the New York City recovering from the devastation of the first Avengers movie.
I suppose Daredevil should have been listed above Jessica Jones, as it debuted first, but I really loved JJ. Daredevil premiered on Netflix in April and its second season is reportedly coming in March (and will bring with it the Punisher and Elektra).
As one of the handful of people who saw the Ben Affleck Daredevil movie, I wasn’t sure how to feel about the series. It was dark and angry and very, very human. The fight scenes are fantastic and beautifully choreographed. The relationships are complex and complicated.
A superhero whose powers mostly com from training his senses rather than actual superpowers, Daredevil is somewhere in between Peggy Carter and Jessica Jones. Carter is fully human and uses her wits and agility to get out of tight spots. Jones is super-strength in a small package who bulldozes her way out of trouble. Matt Murdock uses his wits and agility when needed, while bulldozing his way through (albeit gracefully) to get out of trouble.
I am a huge, huge fan of the Terry Gilliam movie 12 Monkeys and was extremely skeptical about any series that would try to capture that lightning in a bottle.
What a joy it was to be able to watch this show every week and know it was inspired by a spectacular work of science fiction but was fully its own. The first episode was quite faithful to the movie, but after that, things went off in their own direction.
The show tackles the paradox of time travel head-on, which I appreciated. Mysterious characters with their own agendas, which might be to spread the virus or to stop the virus, abound. Season 1 ended with Cole strapping Cassie into the time machine so she can be saved in the future. I’m gonna guess she’ll survive, but then that paradox will have to be resolved.
I look forward to seeing how when Season 2 premieres in April.
I’ve actually read more than a few of the Michael Connelly novels that Amazon’s Bosch series is based on. It’s been a few years, though, so I wasn’t all stuck on the specifics and didn’t mind deviations from the source material.
Amazon didn’t disappoint (the series premiered in February and the second season is coming sometime this year). Titus Welliver (you might remember him as The Man in Black from Lost) plays Harry Bosch to perfection. A good man who believes in justice and loves his family, his first loyalty is to his job. Not his bosses, mind you, but his job. Actually, not even really his job, but his mission.
His mission is to put criminals away, make them pay for what they’ve done. (His mother was a prostitute who was killed when he was a child, causing him to be placed in an orphanage.) Each season is based in part on multiple books, weaving together disparate stories skillfully.
See? I’m not all about science fiction. I’m also about complex character dramas that involve crime.
What made this Netflix series so good was that the backstory almost didn’t matter. Who did what to whom as a child, whether Dad was a good Dad or a bad Dad – was the Good Son really the Good Son and was the Bad Son really the Bad Son? It was interesting, and kept pulling the story along, but the characters were so well drawn and acted that the results didn’t matter so much.
A second season has been ordered for sometime this year. In case you haven’t watched Season 1 yet (it dropped in March – what’re you waiting for?), I won’t spoil it for you, but the ending left a really obvious opening for a continuing story.
I’ve been disappointed in the past by series with excellent first seasons that became formulaic and stupid in subsequent seasons. Here’s hoping Bloodline lives up to its first run.
I almost didn’t include iZombie on this list, because its second season premiered in October. But then I looked it up and realized the first season was a short one, premiering in March. It’s packed a lot into that short time.
I never read the comic book it’s based on, but I like my zombies, whether fast or slow. Of course, one might question whether Liv and her ilk are truly zombies, as there is a cure, which means this is a virus, which means it’s not true zombie-ism, but for the sake of simplicity, let’s just go with the show title and the fact that most people are not as well-versed in zombies as some people I know who have actually written papers on the issue.
Anyway, the conceit of this show is that zombies take on the personality of the people whose brains they eat, and also absorb some of their memories. So Liv eats the brains of murder victims and pretends to be a psychic to help a cop solve mysteries. She works in the medical examiner’s office, and the main M.E. is helping her to find a cure.
It has romance and friendship and an overarching mystery, but the best part is seeing our main character switch from a basketball coach to a country singer to a racist old man to an obsessive stalker. This show isn’t brilliant, but it’s great fun and our lead character’s acting is terrific. It comes back Jan. 12, and I’m looking forward.
Having never read the book, I had no idea where Wayward Pines was going, so I was pretty shocked when the truth came out. I might have been more shocked when I found out a second season had been ordered.
Don’t get me wrong. The series was great. It was well-acted and -written.I enjoyed watching and live-tweeting each week. But I do like one-shots (thus the three mini-series I have included on this list).
That said, the show ended at a spot that certainly left room for a second season. It premiered in May, where we found Matt Dillon and others stranded in the friendliest place on Earth, the town of Wayward Pines. They’re trying to get out, but can’t, and all have to pretend they’ve always lived in Wayward Pines. They had no lives before the town, they’re told.
They play along, though they really can’t figure out why. A certain groupthink comes into play and some rea fine with pretending it’s always been this way. When we find out (SPOILER ALERT) that they’re a gazillion years in the future and humans have devolved into these horrible animalistic creatures and Wayward Pines is the last place left on Earth (or, at least in the United States) where humanity resides, well, that’s kind of a shock.
It explores interesting aspects of human nature, from groupthink, to brainwashing our children (who, after all, always relish the idea that they know it all anyway), to how people react to bad situations when they actually know the truth.
Curious to see where Season 2 takes us this summer.
What if you realized we’re all being monitored and catalogued and tracked by our government and corporate America? What if you realized this but also were totally paranoid and delusional? Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean no one’s out to get you.
Mr. Robot premiered on USA Network in June and was renewed before it even premiered because the pilot had been streamed in various places online. The show has something for everyone. Corporate bad guys. A government watching us. Hackers. Love interests. Blackmail for sex tapes. Paranoid delusions. Mental illness. Family drama.
At turns moody, dark, surreal and completely conspiracy theorist, Mr. Robot boasts a tremendous cast. Can’t wait for Season 2. Show creator Sam Esmail has said he already has an arc and an end game in mind, feeling the show should only last four to five seasons. I like that. Know where you’re going, and head in that direction.
This Netflix series dropped in June. The story of eight people from around the world who are telepathically linked, the first season showed them coming to terms with this fact and getting to know one another. Some characters got more screen time than others, but we really learned a lot about each individual character and where they are in their lives in Season 1.
It all came together by the end of the season when they went to rescue one of their own, each using his or her specific skills to help – a hacker, a martial arts expert, an actor, an assassin, a driver, everyone contributes in some way. We see as each takes over from another in a time of great need, providing the skills necessary to ensure each character’s safety.
There’s a bigger mystery behind it all, of course, and Season 2 promises to investigate that.
From one great ensemble to another. Dark Matter seemed a bit kitschy at first. Eight people on a spaceship come out of stasis, none remembering their names or how they got there. Their names are numbers, given for the order in which they woke up. Plus a ninth, an android, who also doesn’t know anything about the crew or the ship.
As they find out more about their backgrounds, the question is who they really are. If they were a bad person before they lost their memories, can they change who they are? If they are clones of a bad person, does that mean they are bad people, too?
We find that some people who seem honest and true have dark backgrounds. And some who don’t seem very trustworthy turn out to be rather honorable. We know there’s a mole, but we don’t know who. And by the end, it appears the person we least expected it of is the turncoat.
Season 2 airs sometime this year (Season 1 premiered in June last year, so it’ll probably be a summer series), and maybe we’ll get some more questions answered.
I’ll admit, I almost didn’t put this show on my list. The best of 2015? I enjoy watching it, sure, but was it really the best of the new crop?
Thing is, this NBC show, which premiered in September (it returns for the rest of Season 1 on Feb. 29), has become a weekly must-watch. Jane Doe, our main character, has tattoos over virtually every inch of her body. Each is a clue. To a murder, to a conspiracy, to something.
The crew at the FBI who have custody of her (her biggest tattoo, on her back, was the name of FBI agent Kurt Weller) have come to treat her as a colleague. She has massive combat skills and appears to have special forces or similar training. All we know at this point is that she volunteered to have her mind wiped and she may or may not be the little girl who lived next door to Weller when he was a child. His dad was convicted of kidnapping and killing her, even though her body was never found.
Did he kidnap her? Is all of this part of a larger conspiracy? There definitely is a larger conspiracy, as we’ve seen certain interactions between the FBI and CIA directors, as well as others. But whose conspiracy is it, really? And who stands to lose?
I expect we’ll get more answers in the second half of the season, and you know what? I want those answers. It’s been renewed for a Season 2, however, so I don’t expect we’ll get all the answers quite yet.
I’ve read a great number of books by Philip K. Dick, and The Man in the High Castle is no exception. It’s been a few years, though, so I decided not to re-read it in advance of the Amazon series. I loved the book, but wanted to allow the series to stand on its own. Any book-to-series adaptation contains necessary changes and I didn’t want to be watching and thinking, “Oh, but it happened THIS way in the book.”
It dropped the same November day as Jessica Jones, but we chose to watch this one first. A world where the Axis powers won World War II (and the Germans developed the bomb first), the America we see is split in three – Japanese Pacific States, the Greater Nazi Reich, and a neutral buffer zone between the two. No one officially rules over the buffer zone, and you can take a bus there. Not that it’s as simple as that, but the camping’s really good in the Rockies, you know.
Our leads discover films that show alternate histories, ones where the Axis lost. Ones where the A-bomb was dropped on San Francisco instead of Washington, D.C. The Man in the High Castle may or may not be responsible for the creation of these films, and he collects them.
Who the Man is, we don’t know, though it’s implied by the first series end that it’s Hitler himself. We find sympathetic characters in both the Reich and the Japanese Empire – those who want peace more than they care about their nations becoming the ultimate power.
Season 2, which will come sometime this year, will have us in a different timeline, one where the Allies won. I guarantee, however, that it won’t be as simple as that, and the films will still exist. What is the nature of reality?
I admit it – I expected this show to be completely stupid. An animated series from Netflix set in the 1970s, it features a pothead son who’s flunking out, a workaday dad who just got promoted to management, a Tupperware-ish-selling mom who is going crazy without a career of her own, a younger son who’s a good boy dealing with bullies (the kind who beat you up), and a young tomboy daughter who’s precocious and doesn’t want anything to do with societal expectations for little girls. The neighbor is a drugged-up radio DJ who always has a hot, busty woman on his arm, but is actually a really nice guy.
We laughed out loud consistently as we watched. Not many shows do that. Perhaps part of it was that I related to the “Be home before the street lights go on!” free-range childhood these kids have. The idea that little kids would go trick-or-treating alone. The idea that the biggest TV star is an overweight white dude who manages to kick ninja’s asses.
Somehow, this show managed to tackle the topics of racism, sexism, unions and more, all while being laugh-out-loud funny. It had a scant 6 episodes, premiering in December. No word if it will return for a second season, but if it does, I’ll be watching.
In The Expanse, we find there are three nations, in a sense: Earth (and Luna), Mars, and the Asteroid Belt, which is run by Earth and which is mined for ice to be turned into water to be sent back to Earth, Luna and Mars.
It’s only a few episodes in – it premiered in mid-December – but it’s been renewed already for a second season in 2017. The main storyline revolves around a missing heiress whom we see ever-so-briefly in the premiere. Where she is, what she was doing, and what happened to her color everything.
What we know so far: Tensions are running high between Earth and Mars. Earth has the upper hand, as it controls the water, but Mars is a very military culture. And someone is trying to get the two to go to war. Fortunately, both sides, for the time being, don’t seem to want to go to war and cooler heads are prevailing. We’re going to assume that’s not going to last for long.
The next episode (the fifth of Season 1) is Tuesday.
The Miniseries I loved:
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
The BBC America seven-episode miniseries aired over May and June. I’m not usually big on stories about magic, but the characters and world created in this miniseries (based on the book) was excellent. It did so well that some suppose BBC might give a Season 2, which would move this from my miniseries list to permanent series. But that hasn’t happened yet.
The SyFy miniseries aired in December and was quite true to the book that spawned it. I purposely didn’t go back to re-read it (it’s probably been a couple decades or more since I read the book as a teen), so the surprise wouldn’t be spoiled. What were the Overlords? Were they really demons? That all depends your point of view. They weren’t acting alone, that much we know. So does that mean demons are agents of God? Or is the idea of gods and demons just the way we humans process the overmind that controls the universe?
I loved the first season of the original Heroes series. Season 2 succumbed to the writer’s strike and it turned into a muddled mess after that and I was barely watching by the end of the series when our cheerleader Claire, jumped off the ferris wheel and revealed her powers to the world. The miniseries, which premiered in November and has three episodes left to air – returning Jan. 7, Thursday – picks up years after Claire’s reveal. I’ve really enjoyed seeing some of the old characters and a lot of new characters and really want to know if the bad guys are actually bad.
All show photos via the shows.
TV House photo by Kenn Wilson via Flickr Creative Commons.