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Do you suffer from Game of Thrones Finale Syndrome (GoTFS)? Common symptoms include: irrational anger directed toward television season finales, a nagging sense that you’d excel in an HBO writers room, and an overwhelming urge to tell George R.R. Martin to finish that goddamn book!
Well, if you identify with these symptoms, you’re not alone—8.2. million people watched Sunday night’s House of the Dragon season 2 finale, and it feels like exactly 8.1 million of them didn’t like it. And while there’s no known cure to GoTFS, the medical team at Esquire can offer some relief ... in the form of more television. Specifically, the best television of the year so far. Bonus: Most of them don’t feature an ensemble cast muttering about war or require an encyclopedic knowledge of a fictional dragon armada.
Now, reader, I’ll show some mercy and drop the bit. Here are the best 16 shows of the year so far.
Interview with the Vampire
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In the sensational sophomore season of Interview with the Vampire, the interview continues—but this time, Old World vampire Armand joins in the telling. In an opulent penthouse in Dubai, gentleman vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac unspools the story of his eternal life for journalist Daniel Molloy, picking up right where season 1 left off. Flashbacks transport us to postwar Paris, where Louis and his sister-daughter Claudia settle after their apparent murder of their maker, Lestat. They soon fall in with the Théâtre des Vampires, a flamboyant coven of vampires hiding in plain sight as vaudevillian bloodsuckers, with Armand at the helm of their onstage productions. But as the present timeline reveals, Louis is an unreliable narrator—and his longtime companion Armand has his own designs on the story. Interview with the Vampire is a singular achievement: Luscious and gothic, poetic and brutal, it weaves some of the finest performances on television into an astonishing tale of desire, revenge, and the slipperiness of truth.
House of the Dragon
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Listen, I know that House of the Dragon’s home stretch left many fans feeling shades of the Game of Thrones finale’s letdown. I’m right there with them! That said, House of the Dragon season 2 is still great enough for the HBO series to maintain its seat on the streaming wars’ Iron Throne. We saw more dragons, more Sad Fabien Frankel, and more exceptional performances from the ensemble cast. (Give Steve Toussaint his flowers!) Let’s just hope that season 3 actually sees the all-out war that we’re waiting for.
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Hacks
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Three seasons (and oodles of Emmy nominations) into its run, Hacks just keeps getting better and better. Season 2 ended with legendary Vegas comedian Deborah Vance and her loyal writer Ava Daniels parting ways, but season 3 quickly reunites them in pursuit of a new dream: late-night television, an old boys club in sore need of disruption. Once grudging colleagues, now friends and true creative partners, Deborah and Ava’s dogged pursuit of their latest goal makes for thrilling television. But of course, it’s a bumpy ride through the psyches of these complicated, confounding women, masterfully brought to life by Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder. We were looking forward to season 4 well before season 3 wrapped, but after that cliff-hanger ending, now we’re truly locked in.
America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders
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I find myself shouting out Greg Whiteley in this list every year. The documentarian behind Last Chance U, Cheer, and Wrestlers has been telling television’s greatest sports stories for nearly a decade (!) now. His latest and greatest docuseries? America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. While following the world’s most famous cheerleading squad, Whiteley manages to: 1) Show how we continue to undervalue women’s sports, 2) Profile the genuinely remarkable women that make up the team, and 3) Make an argument for the team’s performance of “Thunderstruck” as the single greatest athletic feat ... ever?! I’ll just say it: America’s Sweethearts is my favorite thing I’ve watched this year. (Consider yourself thunderstruck, baby.)
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Girls5Eva
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Like with 30 Rock and Veep before it, the joke density of Girls5Eva boggles the mind. This musical comedy series about a one-hit-wonder girl group is snort-laugh funny, packed with ridiculous lore, hilarious punch lines, and throwaway jokes funnier than anything you’ll hear on The Bear. Revived on Netflix after its cancellation by Peacock, season 3 sees the gals travel America on their comeback Returnity Tour, where tensions within and without the group threaten to break up the band once and for all. It sounds like season 3 may be the end of the road for Girls5Eva, so pour one out for the most underrated sitcom on television today—exceptional not just because of how hard it makes us laugh but because of its poignant message about how it’s never too late for a second chance.
Presumed Innocent
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Do I love Presumed Innocent because I’m on a Jake Gyllenhaal kick this year? Probably. Even though my favorite variant of the actor right now is Road House’s Jake Paul-Gyllenhaal, I enjoyed his take on prosecutor Rusty Sabich, previously played by Harrison Ford. His performance fueled another stealth show of the summer for Apple TV+, following last year’s Hijack. (Now that guy—I don’t even remember his name—is my favorite Idris Elba variant.)
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Conan O’Brien Must Go
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In Conan O’Brien Must Go, Conan O’Brien returns to the international misadventures that made Conan Without Borders such a cult classic. This time around, O’Brien links up with fans in Norway, Argentina, Thailand, and Ireland, all of whom seem genuinely shocked to see their favorite comedian turn up on their doorstep. Where other travel shows deliver reverent odes to a country’s attractions, this one stands apart as a hangout comedy about an idiot abroad, more focused on O’Brien’s daffy encounters with locals than any sort of cultural education. Fans of the comedian’s typically unhinged hijinks will find a lot to love here, but they’ll get more than they bargained for, too, as in the segment where a visibly moved O’Brien gazes out over the Irish meadowland once owned by his ancestors. At just four episodes, the series leaves you wanting more, but don’t worry—it’s coming back for season 2.
Ripley
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If you’re expecting the sun-soaked decadence of Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley from Netflix’s new adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s beloved novel, you won’t find it here. The familiar contours of the story remain—New York conman Tom Ripley is sent to Italy to retrieve a shipping magnate’s dilettante son; murder and mayhem ensue—but that’s where the similarities end. Unlike the lavish excesses of Minghella’s version, each chilly black-and-white frame of writer-director Steven Zaillian’s noirish rendering is a work of art, rich in visual symbolism and aesthetic purpose. Andrew Scott dazzles as an older, harder version of Ripley, imbuing him with a downright sociopathic emotional remove. The series soars highest when it traces the minutiae of Ripley’s crimes, suspending us in agonizing, palm-sweating tension. Just how will he get away with it all? You may already know the answer, but even so, there’s endless pleasure in Zaillian’s bold new vision—a modern masterpiece of the small screen.
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Curb Your Enthusiasm
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Twenty-four years after it premiered, Curb Your Enthusiasm came to an end with season 12. Say it ain’t so! But Larry David being Larry David, the series didn’t go out quietly. The final season finds our favorite curmudgeon on trial in Atlanta for the one act of kindness he’s ever performed in his life: handing a water bottle to a parched voter waiting in line to cast her ballot. (Yes, that’s really illegal in Georgia.) Enjoying newfound fame as a liberal folk hero, Larry returns to familiar pastimes: causing chaos at the country club, feuding with waiters, and sparring with the late, great Richard Lewis. Curb’s swan song plays the greatest hits, and we’re not complaining—why mess with perfection?
Shōgun
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FX’s sumptuous adaptation of James Clavell’s seminal novel is truly epic in every sense of the word. Set in feudal Japan, it follows the fateful collision of two men: Lord Toranaga, a principled leader fending off his political rivals through shrewd strategy, and his unlikely ally John Blackthorne, an English sailor shipwrecked in Japan. But Shōgun is ultimately about a collision of cultures, values, and ideas; we see this most keenly in the extraordinary scenes between Blackthorne and Lady Mariko, the mysterious highborn woman assigned to be his translator. Shōgun is filled with grand battles and visuals, but it’s Blackthorne and Mariko’s thorny discussions about death, honor, and freedom that leave the deepest mark.
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Constellation
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Apple TV+’s sci-fi domination continues with Constellation, a trippy mystery about an astronaut who survives a deadly disaster on the International Space Station, only to discover that key pieces of her life on Earth have changed. As Jo (Noomi Rapace) struggles to make sense of why her memories don’t match her present experiences, her young daughter Alice embarks on a quest for understanding that takes them through the looking glass and back again. Rich in metaphor and meaning, Constellation slowly peels back the layers of its quantum puzzle box to reveal a gripping tale about the indomitable love between parent and child. Part thriller, part fairy tale, it’s often a disorienting viewing experience—but one that rewards patience with immense payoff.
Palm Royale
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What if all your favorite comediennes teamed up to make a prestige soap opera and Apple threw bajillions of dollars at it? You’d get Palm Royale, the daffy confection starring Kristen Wiig as Maxine Dellacorte-Simmons, a cheery former pageant queen trying to scale the heights of Palm Beach gentility. During the fateful summer of 1969, Maxine elbows her way into high society by way of her connection to her husband’s comatose aunt Norma, the reigning queen bee of Palm Beach, played with wide-eyed comic delight by the great Carol Burnett. The all-star cast is rounded out by Laura Dern as an unlikely friend, Allison Janney as a menacing foe, and Ricky Martin as a bartender with a secret connection to Norma. Visually splendid and packed with wildly entertaining performances, Palm Royale is where dishy diversion and social satire meet.
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Masters of the Air
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Let me just throw a whole bunch of names at you: Austin Butler, Callum Turner, Barry Keoghan, and Ncuti Gatwa. A long time before these men were bordering on household-name status (one of them dates Dua Lipa now!), they signed up for a World War II–set miniseries about the U.S. Air Force’s 100th Bomb Group, known for its heroics during deadly missions. Well, thank the sweet, sweet skies that they did. Masters of the Air is a dutiful, big-budgeted, starry retelling of the story of a damn impressive group of men—who entered the cockpit knowing that their survival chances were slim. Add jump-out-of-the-screen-with-their-Hollywood-charm turns from Butler and Turner and you have another singular entry in Hollywood’s great canon of World War II stories.
Mr. and Mrs. Smith
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It was all the way back in February 2021 when we first learned that Donald Glover and Phoebe Waller-Bridge would star in a television series based on 2005’s Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Waller-Bridge eventually left the project—but don’t let that get you down, because the incomparable Maya Erskine (of PEN15 greatness) took her place. Honestly? I couldn’t imagine this show without her. Mr. and Mrs. Smith is all of the things it needed to be: quippy, sexy, and fun. What the series lacks in plot (which sometimes borders on plodding) it makes up for in Erskine and Glover’s can’t-look-away performances. Just thank Amazon that it’s better than Prime Video’s ill-fated Citadel.
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Feud: Capote vs. the Swans
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In 1975, Truman Capote published a story in this very magazine that revealed the secrets of many of his high-society associates, unleashing one hell of a scandal. Ripe for the Ryan Murphy treatment, right? That’s exactly what we receive in Capote vs. the Swans, which marks the second installment in Murphy’s Feud anthology series. Now, Murphy runs a little Jekyll (early seasons of American Horror Story) and Hyde (Monster: Monster—The Jeffrey Dahmer Monster Story or whatever it was!) with his projects, but Capote vs. the Swans is the former. The entire cast—including Naomi Watts, Chloë Sevigny, and especially Tom Hollander as Capote—serves up a feast’s worth of performances. They’re good enough to make you crave the old-timey elitist life you never had.
True Detective: Night Country
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Can you think of a better start to 2024 than the continuation of the Jodie Fosteraissance? The return of True Detective is all kinds of badass: a chilly, nihilistic atmosphere, a thrilling newcomer in Kali Reis, and showrunner Issa López saying all the right things during the show’s six-episode run. (If you go around dunking on Nic Pizzolatto and citing The Thing and Alien as inspirations for your detective series, you have my heart.) Night Country successfully reinvigorated the True Detective formula—and we can’t wait to see what López has in store for us in season 5.