2018 in Review: A Dozen Wonderful Things on TV This Year!

It's been a pretty quiet year here at Part-Time Cinephile. When last I posted here, I shared my terribly important thoughts about the 2018 Oscars.  That was in February.  And my predictions of the winners were 100% accurate.

Normally, this post would be about the best binge-watching of the year. But in 2018, I wasn't much into binging on TV. Even so, I did see some delightful things on the small screen, and they're worth writing about.  It will come as no surprise to my regular readers that this is a highly personal, somewhat idiosyncratic list. It reflects my personal tastes and skews heavily towards music, comedy, and happy, uplifting fare. Take it with a grain of salt - but if you find something on this list that piques your interest, watch it and enjoy it, then my work here is done!

Here are twelve wonderful things I found on TV this year, in alphabetical order:

1. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend: Trapped in a Car With Someone You Don't Want to be Trapped in a Car With (The CW)



The final season has been uneven at best, but it's delivered one absolutely perfect song parody. In less than four minutes, "Trapped in a Car..." lampoons the entire trajectory of the Beach Boys' careers - from their surfer anthem days to the experimentation of "Pet Sounds" to the easy listening dreck of "Kokomo." Nothing I write here will do justice to its brilliance - just click on this clip and hear it for yourself.

2. Forever (Amazon)

A quirky and imaginative take on the meaning of a lifelong commitment - and then some. SNL alums Fred Armisen and Maya Rudolph play a long-married couple whose lives have become stale and predictable. The ski trip they take to shake things up is only the first in a series of mystical events that lead them back to their original passion for each other. There are two completely unforeseeable, gut-punch plot twists within the first two episodes, and it only gets loonier and more crazily inventive from that point on - not to mention heartbreaking and sometimes genuinely profound. Trust me, the less you know going in, the better. I actually did binge this one; at just eight short episodes, it can easily be devoured in the course of one snowy weekend. And it's far more substantial than you'd expect at first glance.

3. Jesus Christ Superstar Live (NBC)

I've not found the resurrection of live television musicals to be very satisfying so far. Productions of The Sound of Music, Grease, Peter Pan and Hairspray have run the gamut from underwhelming to excruciating.  But with Superstar, directors David Leveaux and Alex Rudzinski got it just right. Filmed in an arena setting with a live audience, it had an energy, a confidence and a clear directorial vision that's been sorely lacking in the previously mentioned productions. Norm Lewis' Judas was the show's VIP, though Sara Bareilles gave us a soulful Mary Magdalene, and John Legend's singing in the title role ultimately compensated for his limited acting chops.  Alice Cooper's cameo as Herod seemed more exciting than it actually was, an inspired piece of casting that didn't quite coalesce in the actual performance.  But that's a nitpick; this was an impeccably produced and executed show: thrilling, emotional, and a perfect choice for its Easter Sunday airdate.

4. John Mulaney: Kid Gorgeous at Radio City (Netflix)

In his third stand-up special for Netflix, the former SNL writer hit it out of the park.  He gets plenty of mileage and laughs from the kind of anecdotal humor that is his trademark (stories about his upper-middle class Catholic upbringing; outrageous statements from his gruff, conservative father; musings about getting older and becoming a bona fide adult). But his greatest moment is this analogy for the Trump presidency, which he develops to pitch-perfect hilarity:
   "It’s like there’s a horse loose in a hospital! I think eventually everything’s going to be okay, but I       have no idea what’s going to happen next. And neither do any of you, and neither do your parents.    Because there's a horse loose in the hospital!!
I watch a lot of Netflix stand-up specials - and there were good ones this year from Jim Gaffigan, Ellen DeGeneres, Chris Rock and Russell Brand, among others. Hannah Gadsby's justly praised Nanette was a near-miss for this list. But Mulaney's Radio City special is the one I go back to, repeatedly, when I need a really good laugh. 


5. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert - opening monologues (CBS)

How you feel about this choice is probably dependent on your politics.  For me, Colbert's relentless mocking and skewering of the man in the White House was my nightly sanity check in a world gone mad. Though I miss the early days of the show when Colbert sometimes got more serious and linked his scathing comments to his own religious convictions, I'll still revel in his gleeful Trump takedowns anytime. 

6. Live from Lincoln Center: Stars in Concert (PBS)

Over a series of four summer Friday nights, these Broadway stars (Leslie Odom Jr, Andrew Rannells, Sutton Foster, Stephanie J. Bloch) performed intimate, immensely enjoyable one-hour sets against a backdrop of New York itself - the lights and traffic on Broadway, seen though an enormous window behind the small stage.  To my recollection, no one performed any of their own show-stopping hits (although Rannells memorably rocked out with his standard audition number - Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run"). But all were personable and funny, sharing and singing music that mattered to them and musing on their youthful hopes and sometimes rough roads to Broadway acclaim.  The superbly produced specials captured the feeling of really being there for the viewer at home, making for a quartet of highly enjoyable evenings.

7. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Season 2 (Amazon)

The clothes! The apartments! The glamour! The stunning location shoots in Paris and the Catskills!(no I'm not kidding about that last one!) The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel has the most gorgeous production design of maybe any television show in history.  But eye candy alone doesn't land a show on my list.  In its second season, Mrs. Maisel took its indefatigable heroine further along in her journey towards stand-up comedy stardom, with some meaningful reflection on both what it costs her personally and the privileged bubble in which she's been living vs. the scruffier, harder world she's now going to have to deal with. Showrunner Amy Sherman-Palladino delivered even more smart, rapid-fire repartee, plus a collection of impressively choreographed scenes of hectic activity that will leave you dizzy.  It's not just the best-looking show on streaming  - it's very likely the smartest and best-acted as well. Kudos especially to Rachel Brosnahan, Tony Shalhoub and Alex Borstein this season. I can't wait to see where these characters go next.

8. Mom, Season 6 (CBS)

Over six seasons, Mom has evolved from an enjoyable but uneven two-hander (Allison Janney and Anna Faris as a mother-daughter pair of recovering alcoholics) into a female-driven ensemble comedy with reliable laughs and genuine emotional insights.  It's consistently true and respectful to the challenges of sobriety and creating a new life without abandoning its mainstream sitcom sensibility, and I think that achievement isn't sufficiently valued. With expanded roles for Mimi Kennedy, Jaime Pressley and Beth Hall - plus the addition of Wiliam Fichtner as Janney's fiancée - the show has gotten better every season, nicely balancing all characters' story arcs with sensitivity and humor. In season 6, the cast expanded again to include the outrageously funny Kristen Johnson as Janney's long-lost stepsister -- fresh out of prison and looking for a new, sober start.  Johnson is a larger-than-life performer who could easily suck all the air out of the room, but it's a tribute to the show's well-honed and infinitely generous cast of actors that she fits right into the ensemble, earning her big laughs, but outshining no one.  This show is my Thursday night feel-good fix. If you haven't discovered it yet, you should.

9. The Romanoffs (Amazon)

Like many Mad Men fans, I'd been anxiously awaiting Matt Weiner's next show (though still secretly wishing he'd done a series with Sally and Bobby Draper as adults.). Instead, he gave us this gorgeous, expensively produced anthology series in which every story contains at least one character who is a descendant of the Romanoff dynasty, Russia's last ruling family.  Filmed in glamourous locations around the world with a distinguished international cast, its episodes are intricately plotted, smartly written, and beautifully acted.  Well, Ok, there are a couple of duds near the middle. (Particularly insufferable is a chapter in which Andrew Rannells plays a piano teacher accused - perhaps falsely - of pedophilia.  This is clearly Weiner's answer to his own accusers in the #metoo movement, and it plays very badly).  Breeze past that episode, and enjoy the remaining very good ones.  The best of the lot is pictured above. Kathryn Hahn and Jay Ferguson play a couple adopting a baby girl from a Russian orphanage; the episode plays like a dark comedy of innocents abroad as the two navigate a strange, cold, confusing landscape of bureaucrats, unheated hotel rooms, and unsmiling clerks. But it evolves into a complex drama of marital discord - with one particularly brutal scene in which the entire foundation of their marriage comes perilously close to dissolving - before finding its way back to a (partly) happy ending.


10. SNL - The Kavanaugh Hearing cold open with Matt Damon



The best sketch SNL has done in years - and that's from someone who believes the show is still approximately as funny as it was in 1976. Two days after Brett Kavanaugh's infuriating, appalling appearance before the Senate to answer allegations of sexual assault, SNL managed to perfectly encapsulate the entire experience in a 10-minute sketch that both entertained and - dare I say it - healed us. Matt Damon dropped by to play a spectacularly pissed-off/entitled Kavanaugh (though, honestly, only a few minor tweaks away from the real thing) and the regular cast portrayed the key senators to delirious effect. (Kate McKinnon's apoplectic Lindsey Graham was a highlight.) The sketch nails every single absurdity in the actual hearing, while being so funny that even people who think Kavanaugh was innocent laughed out loud.

11. A Very English Scandal (Amazon)

The middle-aged resurgence of Hugh Grant continues - impressively - under the direction of Stephen Frears, who also gave Grant his best role in years with 2016's Florence Foster Jenkins.  In this tragi-comic British mini-series, Grant plays the real-life disgraced politician Jeremy Thorpe - accused, but not ultimately convicted, of hiring a hit man to murder a former male lover who threatens to expose their affair.  The series hums along with a darkly comic energy, but it's also thoughtful and honest about Thorpe's complex dilemma: he's a deeply closeted gay man who comes to political prominence in a time when homosexuality was a criminal offense in Britain. By the time his aggrieved former lover (an emotionally volatile but sympathetic Ben Whishaw) comes forward in the late 70s, the world is a changed place. The series depicts its events as the last gasp of Establishment respectability prevailing in a newly open and permissive society, giving it a gravitas that belies its swinging, insouciant tone.  Both Grant and Whishaw deliver exceptional, complex performances.

12. The Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle (pretty much everywhere!)

Because, honestly - can you even think of a lovelier, happier event on our screens this year?  An English prince married a bi-racial American divorcee and the whole world tuned in to cheer for them. A gospel choir sang "Stand By Me" in Windsor Chapel and an African-American clergyman preached passionately about the power of love, while Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, chortled in obvious enjoyment and Zara Tindall (Princess Anne's daughter) gave them all a stunningly frosty side-eye.  Who would have thought that the British royal family (most of them, anyway) would be our guiding light for diversity and tolerance in the 21st century?  I cried more tears of joy watching this wedding on television than I have at any nuptials I've attended in person for people I actually know - and I'm not ashamed of that. Sometimes we all need a feel-good event like this to rally around and give us hope.