Friends, Romans, countrymen, how’s it going? Yep, me too.
Here we are, at the end of another year. This year went by very quickly. I typically like to measure the year in how many things I watched, and in case you do too, here’s a list of the best crimey TV shows you may or may not have missed, this past year.
There were many great TV shows in other genres too, like English Teacher, Interview with the Vampire, Fantasmas, and Shōgun! There were a great many new seasons of existing TV shows, too, like Evil, Abbott Elementary, What we Do in the Shadows, Hacks, My Brilliant Friend, and Girls5Eva. But this is a list of crimey shows, as you might expect from a crime website.
Happy watching!
Apple TV+
Bad Monkey, Season 1 (Apple TV+)
I was pleasantly surprised by Bad Monkey, the groovy new adaptation of Carol Hiaasen’s classic Florida PI story. Vince Vaughn is Andrey Yancy, a down-and-out former detective living in Key West, who becomes embroiled in a mystery after a severed arm is found on a fishing trip. It’s bright and bubbly enough as much as you’d want for a neo-noir, and more than plenty sultry and cheeky. A good alternative for those not headed to the Keys for the winter holidays.
Philippe Antonello/Netflix
Ripley, Season 1 (Netflix)
We didn’t really need another adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley, but I’m very glad we got one. Developed, written, and directed by Steven Zaillian, Ripley unfolds as a noir, in punchy, digital black-and-white. The thing about this new series, is that its leading actor, Andrew Scott, is incredibly good. He’s incredibly good in it, and he’s incredibly good in everything. I might even say that he’s the best actor working today. In the first shot of Scott’s face, his dark eyes look black and cold, like pools of crude oil. In Ripley, Scott has managed to evacuate almost all humanity and feeling from his body; he embodies the sharp contrast of a body which appears to be human but lacks a human’s soul. This mode of characterization makes for a compelling antihero, but also feels rather like an intervention in the Ripley canon.
Anthony Minghella’s The Talented Mr. Ripley is nothing if not emotional; it stars Matt Damon as a young, giddy and thoroughly disturbed interloper who falls in love with a beautiful man and a beautiful lifestyle, and then does whatever he can to preserve whatever he can have of it. It is as heartbreaking as it’s terrifying, a study in explosive pathos and even, maybe, how the pursuit of community only results in greater loneliness. But the novel, written in 1955 by Patricia Highsmith, offers us a slicker, slimier sociopath. We’ve seen an unfeeling Ripley before, but not in a while, and not as well as the one Andrew Scott offers to us, which is an awkward but conniving lizard-man.
Netflix
A Man On The Inside, Season 1 (Netflix)
Michael Schur’s new comedy, about a retired professor (Ted Dansen) who goes undercover at a retirement community on behalf of a private detective, is a heartrending and moving show about aging, friendship, and rediscovering passion and a lust for life. It’s also a very, very cute detective show, and Dansen is perfect.
Apple TV+
Slow Horses, Season 4 (Apple TV+)
Slow Horses has consistently been one of the best TV shows in recent memory, a funny, gruff, anti-Fleming espionage series with propulsive plotting and memorable performances.
True Detective: Night Country, Season 4 (HBO/Max)
Jodie Foster and Kali Reis star in this much-anticipated installment of True Detective. I didn’t watch it because it seemed a bit too scary, but in his glowing review on our site, Nick Kolakowski says “Does the new season succeed? Issa López, the showrunner who wrote or co-wrote all the latest episodes, wisely takes much of what made the show’s first three seasons work so well, while tweaking other elements so it becomes her own beast.”
HBO
The Penguin, Season 1 (HBO/Max)
The Penguin! This isn’t your momma’s Penguin. This isn’t fun, Batman fare. This Penguin, played by Colin Farrell and 100 lbs of prosthetics, is no Oswald Cobblepot. He is “Oz,” a tough Gotham gangster. And in fact, this is a gritty crime drama about gangsters that our reviewer Hector Dejean likens to a modernized, souped-up Edward G. Robinson movie. He writes, “The show provides an engrossing panorama of criminals tossing aside moral codes in favor of survival, and it gives viewers some jaw-dropping performances from extremely talented actors.”
