My top 20 shows of 2020 — and how TV prised open the world

Television’s lens gets ever wider, just as our worlds got smaller

Arabella (Michaela Coel) in I May Destroy You — BBC/Binge

Remember when TV was just small-town cops and big-city hospitals? Remember when it was a window to Chicago and New York and Mount Thomas and not really anywhere else?

I think the thing that stood out for me on television in 2020 — and boy was television vital in 2020 — is how much wider the lens was.

This year I fell into what seemed to me to be entirely authentic other places and cultures. From the Black diaspora of London, to an Arab-Muslim community in New Jersey, to a multi-national military base in Italy, to the Irish education system. I spent time in Los Angeles, Lexington, Albuquerque, Dublin and (admittedly outrageously stylised versions of) Rome and Saint Petersburg.

And I didn’t go looking for this stuff. It just floated to the top, critically, but became personally essential in a year largely without my favourite art form, theatre, and when our own worlds became so much smaller.

It’s certainly more inclusive than traditional filmmaking, it seems to me …

I think it shows we just trust so much more interesting people to make television now. It’s certainly more inclusive than traditional filmmaking, it seems to me, at least at the mainstream/popular/accessible end.

The other thing that stands out, for me, is that my top six shows are not simply female-led, but about women who find a way out from under crushing societal burden. I think that’s telling, too. Mad Men was the Joan and Peggy show to me, not the Don Draper show.

I had to rank 20 shows because they were all dear to me in some way and I like making lists. I recommend them all wholeheartedly.

1. I May Destroy You (BBC/Binge)
2. I Hate Suzie (Sky Atlantic/Stan)
3. We Are Who We Are (Sky Atlantic/HBO/SBS)
4. Mrs America (Hulu/Binge)
5. The Great (Hulu/Stan)
6. The Queen’s Gambit (Netflix)
7. The Crown s4 (Netflix)
8. Ramy s3 (Hulu/Binge)
9. Normal People (BBC/Hulu/Stan)
10. Better Call Saul s5 (AMC/Stan)
11. Bad Education (HBO/Binge)
12. Bojack Horseman s6 (Netflix)
13. The New Pope (Sky Atlantic/HBO/SBS)
14. Better Things s4 (FX/Binge)
15. Quiz (BBC/Binge)
16. The Good Fight s4 (CBS All Access/SBS)
17. Corporate s3 (Comedy Central/Binge)
18. Couples Therapy (Showtime/SBS)
19. Ted Lasso (Apple+)
20. Feel Good (Channel 4/Netflix)