The Best TV Shows of 2020

Network: USA

Season: 1

Where to Watch: YouTube TV

The year 2020 has killed a number of things; seeing Dare Me be one of those things to burn out before it truly got to shine bright was terrible. Based on a novel by the same name, Dare Me—which was canceled back in April—followed two friends who owned the cheerleading team and, in effect, ran one of the more popular social circles in their town. The series took a hard look at their lifestyle, aka getting lit and doing adult things under the cover of a small suburban bliss. The emergence of the murder mystery paired with layered performances from Herizen Guardiola and Marlo Kelly make this series not getting a second season high on the list of things I hate about 2020. Especially after that amazing twist in the Season 1 now-series finale —khal

Network: STARZ

Season: 1

Where to Watch: STARZ

Over the summer, acclaimed director Karena Evans told Complex's Watch Less podcast that she not only directed the pilot for STARZ's strip club-set drama P-Valley, but she effectively created the show's entire vibe. If you've watched anything she's done (aka every video from Drake's Scorpion album), you should know what time it was. After diving into the series, which follows the dancers and custies in a strip club in the Mississippi Delta, the series' style and flair is pure Karena, which is for the good. We've seen what goes down in the strip club from the music videos from some of your favorite rappers, but the sights and sounds have rarely been treated this beautifully before. The familial aspect of the women who work at The Pynk was treated wonderfully, with the work of Brandee Evans as Mercedes really shining bright. Executive producer Katori Hall did that. —khal

Network: Netflix

Season: 2

Where to Watch: Netflix

Diego Luna’s turn as Felix Gallardo has been one of his best roles yet. This second season is centered around Gallardo’s downfall as he tries to take control of Colombia’s stranglehold on the cocaine business. Gallardo and his team were the ones who figured out how to make cannabis without seeds (sinsemilla in Spanish) effectively changing the weed game forever. Now Felix sets his sights for bigger and better things all while the walls around him begin to close in as his political influence disintegrates due to his role in the torture and murder of DEA agent Kiki Camarena (Michael Pena). And as Gallardo is dealing with the crumbling of his empire, Chapo is laying the groundwork for Sinaloa’s takeover, so I think it’s safe to assume Season 3 will cover his rise to becoming the richest drug dealer to ever live. Luna encapsulates the anxieties and paranoia Gallardo must’ve been going through and Season 2 does a good job at closing the Guadalajara Cartel’s chapter. —Angel Diaz

Network: HBO

Season: 1 (Mini-series)

Where to Watch: HBO Max

There seems to be news of a new feature or series based on the work of Stephen King every week or two these days. But the HBO miniseries adapted from King’s 2018 book The Outsider stands out in that crowded field because Richard Price, a veteran crime novelist who wrote some of the best episodes of The Wire, treats it not as a horror story but as a hard-boiled murder mystery that happens to take a supernatural turn.

Like Price’s 2016 miniseries The Night Of, The Outsider follows every moment of a single investigation, largely through the eyes of small-town Georgia police detective Ralph Anderson (Ben Mendelsohn). But in King’s story, there’s a surreal twist to the gruesome murder of a young boy that appears to have been committed by his little league coach Terry Maitland (Jason Bateman, who also directed the gripping first two episodes). The logical and calculating Anderson can’t bring himself to accept the unbelievable explanation that a monstrous shapeshifting entity took the form of Maitland to kill the boy, until it becomes the only possible truth. —Al Shipley

Network: FX

Season: 1 (Mini-series)

Where to Watch: FX on Hulu

People come to television in search of many different experiences. There’s the hangout show; most typically a comedy, it involves characters hanging out and shooting the breeze. There’s the prestigious show; which often features a high-profile actor or creator with weighty material that feels Important. However, when it comes to FX and Hulu’s Devs, the show is far more of a, shall we say, mood or experience than it is anything else.

Entirely written and directed by sci-fi wunderkind Alex Garland (Ex Machina), Devs can be exceedingly difficult to explain, but I’ll do my best to do so without giving the whole thing away: The show focuses on a Silicon Valley tech company named Amaya, whose development team (get it?) is working on a secret project at the behest of CEO Forest (Nick Offerman). Lily Chan (Sonoya Mizuno) is drawn deeper into the mystery of the project after the sudden and inexplicable suicide of her boyfriend, who had just started a new role with the team. 

This is about as straightforward as Devs gets, as it soon turns into a weighty treatise on free will, determinism, and the evils of corporate greed. If you’re excited by any of those themes, congrats, you’re going to absolutely love Devs. The show never lacks in ambition, diving deep into big ideas and concepts. It’s not a passive show either. Instead, it rightfully demands your attention with every beautifully composed shot. Far and away the best-looking show to have aired in 2020, the visuals of Devs frequently evoke Kubrick in their framing and staging. Additionally, Garland manages to make the well-worn landscape of San Francisco feel as alien as The Shimmer did in Annihilation. The show isn’t without its fits and spurts, however. It’s purposefully methodical in its intentions and storytelling, which means this deliberate pace certainly won’t be everyone’s cup of tea. If it is yours, however, Devs offers a singularly unique experience that is exactly what we need from our stories.

The thing with mood-based television is that its success ultimately comes down to whether or not you’re willing to take a specific journey with a very purposeful creator. For those willing, following Garland down his rabbit hole will find a new Wonderland, one you’ve likely never seen before. So many of the show’s moments have lingered in my mind long after airing, beautifully imprinted like a tapestry adorning a wall. That is to say: Perhaps Devs isn’t so much an experience as it is a feeling. —William Goodman

Network: STARZ

Season: 3 (Final season)

Where to Watch: STARZ

The 30-minute drama is an underrated television format that’s finally gotten some traction in recent years, particularly on STARZ, which has aired half hours including The Girlfriend, Sweetbitter, and most notably, Vida. When the series premiered in 2018, estranged sisters Lyn (Melissa Barrera) and Emma (Mishel Prada) were brought back to East L.A. by the death of their mother Vida and decided to make a go of running Vida’s bar with Vida’s wife they never knew about, Eddy. Over the course of three seasons that dug deep into family secrets, issues of ethnic and sexual identity and gentrification, and lots of sex and arguing, Lyn and Emma and Eddy never exactly figured out how to get along all the time in their strange new life together. But in the series finale, it felt like the journey concluded on an optimistic note, with the three of them starting to become the family they always could have been. —Al Shipley

Network: Hulu

Season: 2

Where to Watch: Hulu

Ramy Season 1 was relatively light-hearted and a refreshing look into the world of a modern Muslim family trying to navigate living in these American times. It was funny, smart, and tried to show an honest portrayal of a millennial Muslim male wrestling with his faith and temptation. Season 2, on the other hand, was all those things except with a lot more cringe.

Ramy made it very hard for us to root for him like we did the season prior as he constantly fell off his din and into the clutches of shaitan. This season had me wanting to spend more time with his father Farouk (Amr Waked), mother Maysa (Hiam Abbass), sister Dena (May Calamawy), and uncle Naseem (Laith Nakli) instead of him. Ramy’s life is too chaotic for my liking; he truly needs to find God after what went down this season. However, redirection from lovable idiot to a fucking dickhead worked along with making this go-round deal with heavier situations. Mahershala Ali’s turn as Sheikh Ali Malik makes you stay, though. His calm demeanor, empathy, and wisdom is intoxicating as we try to forget the shit Ramy steps in. While Ramy Season 2 makes you get into a fetal position in disgust, it's an overall better season than the first. —Angel Diaz

Network: Prime Video

Season: 1

Where to Watch: Prime Video

This show is art. Created by Stefano Sollima (the same guy that brought us Gomorrah) and based on the book of the same name by Roberto Saviano (he wrote Gomorrah, too), the story follows a shipment of coke as it connects three criminal organizations internationally. ZeroZeroZero is set in three separate parts of the world—New Orleans, Monterrey, Mexico, and Gioia Tauro, Italy—via land, sea, and air. Gabriel Byrnes’ family owns a shipment company that plays middleman to the Leyra brothers in Mexico and the 'Ndrangheta in Italy. Scottish rock band Mogwai provides the dramatic score that follows this cursed deal across the seven seas as the direction of Janus Metz, Pablo Trapero, and Stefano Sollima coupled with the cinematography of Paolo Carnera, Romain Lacourbas, and Vittorio Omodei Zorini immerses the viewer into this world where legit and illegitimate business are one in the same. I ran through the eight-episode season in a matter of days and can’t wait for the second go-round. Easily one of the most underrated shows so far. —Angel Diaz

Network: Prime Video

Season: 2

Where to Watch: Prime Video

After an explosive first season—and an equally explosive response from viewers—it was a no-brainer for Amazon to lock in a second season prior to the first one airing; there's even talk of a spin-off on the books. Blending the ever-popular world of superpowered beings and the shit they have to deal with behind the scenes, the show's second season blended its formula of ultraviolent action and ultra-dark humor with socially-conscious themes to create a tale that felt shockingly relevant when released during a summer where the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor flooded news cycles and social media timelines. The excellent Aya Cash was perfect for Stormfront; fans of You're the Worst knew she could get down with the dark insanity, but giving her superpowers on top? It was a marriage made in Prime heaven. Shows like The Boys may be designed to help you forget the trials and tribulations of the daily grind, but it's dope that it was able to delve into similar themes as Watchmen; feed us future seasons this good, if not better.

Oh, and if you're complaining about The Boys dropping week-to-week, you're watching TV wrong. Get over it. —khal

Network: HBO

Season: 1

Where to Watch: HBO Max

What was Lovecraft Country, exactly? Misha Green's HBO series, starring rising star Jonathan Majors alongside screen vet Jurnee Smollett, was a tour de force, literally throwing H.P Lovecraft monsters into the Jim Crow South. It was equal parts horror, comedy, action-adventure, and socially conscious discussion on race and all of its complicated roots in America...in one show, sometimes at the same time.

Was it perfect? Far from it. Taking steps back from the story left me questioning certain decisions made in terms of time spent on storyline pieces that felt more insignificant in the long run. Also, while I know how Misha gets down when it comes to modern needle drops in older tales, hearing Rihanna and others blasting during moments of this show felt a little...eh.

All of that said, you have to respect a series that takes those kinds of swings. You get amazing moments, like Courtney B. Vance being the best Courtney B. Vance early on in the series. Or Majors' becoming the Last Action Hero right before our eyes. Or Jurnee getting spotlight episodes where all of the passion and talent we saw back in Eve's Bayou being put on full display in a ghost story that doubles as an examination of race relations and what it takes to battle IRL monsters. In true HBO fashion, Lovecraft took extreme measures to hold up a mirror to the systemic problems in the United States, and gave us memorable moments to dissect. —khal

Network: AMC+

Season: 1

Where to Watch: Prime Video

For many, the fact that HBO's Succession didn't drop a third season this year was frustrating. If you want to see what happens when a powerful family battles itself to gain power, with way more violence to boot, you should check out the brutally beautiful Gangs of London a run. From the mind of Gareth Evans—who directed and wrote the Raid films—the opening scene alone was enough to turn heads. The series could've been just another British battle royale, but Evans gave the show a depth that other creators may have cast aside to focus more on the tightly-produced action sequences. It's violence is beautiful, but the show's core is with the power struggles and exceptional acting. Enduring that struggle is well worth it, with Joe Cole (Black Mirror, Peaky Blinders) leading a cast that will draw you in with their chilled exterior, opening you up for the real meat of this crime-drama. —khal

Network: Hulu

Season: 1

Where to Watch: Hulu

When we hear the story of a popular jock falling in love with the awkward, unlikeable girl at school, we feel like we’ve seen this trope played out to an exhausting degree. And we have, endless times when it comes to the coming-of-age romance genre. Hulu’s adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel, Normal People, however, makes this story feel different. It’s a tender portrayal of two young people, Connell and Marianne, falling in love in high school and constantly being drawn back to each other in the years following. It’s a sexy show—but not in the way we usually experience “sexy" in television. It’s sexy in that there’s a lot of sex, but never presented in a way that feels gratuitous. The first sex scene of the series between Connell and Marianne is in the beginning of the second episode when Connell takes Marianne’s virginity. Of all the depictions of sex on television, this scene is a refreshing one—one that emphasizes consent and shows two people who are learning to use their bodies to create an intimate connection. 

As Connell and Marianne drift apart, they still go off to attend the same university. We see them orbiting each other’s lives as they start and end new romantic relationships, get back together in between, and go through truly depressing episodes of life. At times, it’s extremely frustrating to see the two of them fail to communicate through words—we know they love each other, why can’t they just say it and make it work? It’s through their lack of verbal communication, we see how they use sex - together and with different partners—as a form of connection but also of self-destruction.

Normal People is revelatory in its attempts to portray sex, mental health, and emotional development as they would happen in real life. Watching the series doesn’t feel like watching television—it feels like experiencing the love between two people, and all of its intensity and frustration that it births. The series’ ending is painfully ambiguous, but it also feels full of hope for Connell and Marianne. They want the best for each other, even if that means they might not be together. It’s a testament to the hopefulness that love brings us. —Andie Park

Network: Netflix

Season: 3

Where to Watch: Netflix

Let's not sit here and play in each other's faces—Breaking Bad and Ozark are each other's tether. Breaking Bad is the cleaner version, a meticulous Shakespearian drama built around one loathsome genius’ arc to reach a glory he’s always felt was his destiny. Ozark takes Breaking Bad’s narcotics-soaked concept back to square one—you crawl into bed with the devil, now you're the devil—eschews any whiff of pretension, and cranks the pulp up to eleven. No overt use of color schemes to evoke fastidious symbolism. It’s all gray, dark, dreary, blue, and perilous. 

Ozark’s third season puffs its chest and stakes its claim as one of television’s all-time nail-biting edge of your couch crime thrillers. Every obstacle presented in Ozark escalates until it combusts. Though Julie Garner’s turn as Ruth Langmore, which can be described as nothing less than a ball of thunder, is a high point, Jason Bateman’s choices to evoke subtle comic beats as turmoil surrounds him speaks loudly and shouldn’t be ignored. Ozark’s fourth season is promised to guide us deeper into the underworld. The Byrds are magnets of chaos. The Langmores are cursed. The Snells seek revenge. I’m already sweating. —H. Drew Blackburn

Network: Netflix

Season: 2

Where to Watch: Netflix

Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini launched their careers playing troubled high schoolers in two very different shows, Married…with Children and Freaks & Geeks (respectively). Decades later, Dead to Me brought Applegate and Cardellini together for arguably the most substantial and complex roles they’ve ever played, as two very troubled middle-aged women whose uneasy but genuine bond of friendship deepens despite being enmeshed in an increasingly complex web of death and deceit.

Created by comedian Liz Feldman, Dead to Me is a thrilling and often morbid show, full of tense cliffhangers and moments of catharsis. But the cast’s comedy chops keep the show from getting too heavy: Applegate plays a woman at her wit’s end, regularly letting loose impressive strings of profanity like “Fucking don’t fucking cuss at me!” James Marsden felt almost underused in the first season, which ended with the death of his character Steve. But the second season of Dead to Me resurrected Marsden as Steve’s more entertaining twin brother Ben in a classic soap opera twist, giving a loony, unpredictable edge to the show’s dark comedy. —Al Shipley

Network: HBO

Season: 4

Where to Watch: HBO Max

“The Ultracheese,” is one of pop culture’s most profound explorations of growing older and how friendships pass. Alex Turner, who basically always goes off, really went off when he opens the song singing: Still got pictures of friends on the wall, I suppose we aren't really friends anymore. 

Turner is equal parts melancholic, disaffected, nostalgic, which is why it’s so haunting to hear him sing it this way, cause that’s the truth. “The Ultracheese,” is the only piece of art that dissects the loss of a friendship that comes close to rivaling Molly and Issa’s arc in Season 4 of Insecure. What I’m really saying is, Molly and Issa’s arc is top two and it’s not two. 

The selfishness, navel-gazing, hurt, loneliness, the chase to fill the deep void that person left in you—Insecure gets it so painfully right. The slow burn that’s unique to television is what makes the depiction of their break-up so special. If you’ve been watching Insecure since 2016, you can probably barely count on one hand a twist in a show that’s as simultaneously shocking and obvious as Molly and Issa falling out. Issa Rae, Prentice Penny, and co. truly take their characters where they’re naturally gonna go, that’s part of their genius. In any situation, the characters feel authentic. We're not gonna put anybody on that Summer Jam screen, but there are shows and movies that try and accurately capture millennial Black life, but tell stories too dependent on aesthetics starring archetypes doing line readings of twitter threads. Insecure shatters this mold—it’s not on the race beat or sending a message about how fucked up this really country is. These are often necessary and important stories to tell, but it’s just as important to have stories where Black folks, particularly Black women, are just living, getting beat down by all of the very regular garbage life throws our way. Insecure, of course, isn’t the very first show or movie to do these things, but I’ll be damned if Issa Rae’s take isn’t lowkey brilliant. —H. Drew Blackburn

Network: FX

Season: 4

Where to Watch: FX on Hulu

Four seasons into Better Things and I'm not hearing enough of you giving Pamela Adlon the auteur accolades she deserves. Four seasons in, and she's steered this series into not just a vehicle that mirrors her life but one that is loud and unafraid to highlight what women have had to go through—and continue to go through—in a number of facets of life. Season 4 featured everything from being at your wit's end with an ex to periods to teens discovering themselves. It's a lot of heavyweight real talk that's hilarious AF and always touching. I was OK with the Season 4 finale, complete with REM needle drop, to be the end of the series, but word is Season 5 has been ordered so who knows where Pamela will be taking Sam and her brood into the future. I do know that those who know, and are ready to feel, will be along for the ride.  —khal

Network: BBC One / HBO

Season: 1

Where to Watch: HBO Max

Quite possibly the most important series to drop in 2020, Michaela Coel's I May Destroy You is, simply, impressive. Fans of her E4 series Chewing Gum should be familiar with Coel's (at times) offbeat sense of humor, but where Chewing Gum packed way more of the funny, I May Destroy You examines life from a deeper space.

Arabella (Coel) is introduced as a more free-flowing writer who has a crushing deadline on the piece she's working on. Instead of staying in and knocking the work out—damn you, writer's block—she spends her first night home from her recent Italy trip going club hopping with a friend. That night turns dark, with Arabella spending the earlier part of the series concluding that she'd been raped that fateful night. From there, through a mix of comedy and reality, we piece together not just what happened that night, but the cycles of abuse and struggle that Arabella and her friends Kwame and Terry have been going through for damn near their entire lives.

As Arabella finds her strength (and, more importantly, herself), viewers are given a hard trek through the stages of dealing with trauma. And it isn't just with Arabella, although she's used as the vessel to highlight how victims of sexual assault attempt to cope and continue to live through these horrific, life-changing experiences. Coel doesn't shy away from the real, and even at its darkest, it's a series that's more necessary than many other series hitting television these days.  —khal

Network: HBO

Season: 10

Where to Watch: HBO Max

It's almost as if Larry David knew and readily acknowledged Season 9 of Curb Your Enthusiasm wasn't his best effort—he confirmed plans for a tenth quicker than he's ever agreed to a new season since the fifth. Like JAY-Z once hilariously said of Kingdom Come: "First game back, don't shoot me." From Season 8 onwards, I've treated new seasons of Curb like I treat new JAY albums: tempered expectations, tapering my hopes off at "solid" and accepting that nothing new will probably match the heights of the imperial phase. Even Kingdom Come has gems; Season 9 has its own flashes of brilliance. Still, too many middling returns can threaten the curve.

But that quick-trigger renewal held promise. So I approached Season 10 with cautious optimism. And the reward is Larry's 4:44. If Season 9 was the first game back, Larry is fully in shape in Season 10, with just one dud (that'd be "Side Sitting") and a bunch of truly inspired rich people's problems fuckshit. Spite Stores! Fake Criers! Destination Weddings! Jon Motherfucking Hamm reinventing the celebrity cameo on a show that's already reveling in meta-satire. Plenty of viewers came away from Season 10 hailing it one of the show's best. Those people clearly haven't revisited the early seasons in awhile. But what matters is that a show in its tenth year and two decades of being a thing is still producing heaters that are even debatably in line with its prime. True GOATs don't fall-off, they just need a recharge. Hopefully LD is at 100 because there's only one creator I trust to tackle the pandemic. —Frazier Tharpe

Network: AMC

Season: 5

Where to Watch: AMC

Better Call Saul seemed like an underdog. The Breaking Bad prequel/spinoff arrived with a healthy amount of skepticism—understandably so! Vince Gilligan had just delivered a deeply satisfying conclusion to the story of Walter White, so why tempt fate a second time? Especially with a character who was, for the most part, around to be comedic relief as the stakes got increasingly darker and more dramatic?

Well, Season 5 of Better Call Saul certainly made fools of us all.

Don’t get me wrong, while I’ve been a fan of the Peter Gould and Vince Gilligan show since it started (and have certainly done my fair share of advocacy for those prior seasons on this very site) but Season 5 elevated itself into a whole new stratosphere, landing in a certain rarefied air few series can hope to achieve. Saul has always functioned as a somewhat bifurcated product. On one side, you had the lawyer aspects of the show, exemplified by Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) and Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn). The other functioned as more of the dedicated Breaking Bad prequel featuring Mike Ehrmantraut (Jonathan Banks) in his early days of working with Gus Fring (Giancarlo Esposito). 

While the early goings of the show saw a slight crossover between the two halves, they largely stayed apart...until Season 5 essentially ran the two into one another like a high-speed collision. The resulting show was explosive—both literally and figuratively. Jimmy’s full transition into Saul Goodman puts him directly into the wake of some unsavory characters and dangerous positions, all of which eventually spilled out into his home life with Kim. On the subject of Kim, Rhea Seehorn’s performance has always been superlative—but Season 5 saw her elevate her acting time and time again. It was already a shame she’s not been nominated for an Emmy, but it’ll be nothing short of negligent if she’s not among the awards pool this go-round. Other highlights included the Vince Gilligan-directed “Bagman,” which solidified itself in the same breath as Breaking Bad classics like “Fly” and “Ozymandias.”

On the other side of the fifth season, there’s now no doubt Better Call Saul is absolutely worthy of the legacy Breaking Bad left in its wake. We never should have doubted Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould, as it’s clear they’ve managed to capture lightning in a bottle for a second time. The scrappy underdog has victoriously emerged as a full-grown beast. Underestimate it at your own peril. —William Goodman

Network: FX

Season: 4

Where to Watch: FX on Hulu

Simply put, Fargo continues to be high art for TV lovers. The fourth chapter in this anthology, we're introduced to Chris Rock's Loy Cannon, who heads a Black crime organization in Kansas City, Missouri. Like most shows set in these seedier worlds, there's a power struggle at the root of the series' conflicts, with allowing everyone from Jason Schwartzman to living legend Glynn Turman to shine. Unlike most shows set in these worlds, your hands aren't held, allowing you to pay attention amidst the HIGH ART that's unfolding around you.

There aren't many shows shot this well, nor are there many shows taking this many risks between the first and last frames, seemingly without a care for convention or consideration. Too much of today's television landscape is easy to spot; series like The Undoing fell apart in the final act not because the story doesn't make sense, but because people played armchair detective, trying to guess the outcome based on the information presented—only to be disappointed by the obvious outcome. Fargo's fourth season doesn't even give you those chances; you just have to go with it. And we say that knowing that it can be frustrating to put that much trust into a series that isn't bothered with giving you a progressing storyline following its previous seasons. A lesser show would stumble and fall the moment it dared to be different. Fargo isn't that show.

In 2020, the best television has been series that let you roam within them, worlds you can escape into. Many give you roadmaps to help guide you, some faltering along the way. Chris Rock and company might as well put a blindfold on you, although as you follow their voices, you'll be entertained along the way. It's amazing that Fargo, which has three extremely necessary seasons before this one, can still amaze with a tale that also dives into racism in America during a time where some still held onto that American Dream. That's truly impressive.

We shouldn't be shocked by any of this; FX continues to reside firmly in its bag. When you tally up COVID-19 fears, #BlackLivesMatter protests, the 2020 election, and the losses of everyone from Kobe Bryant to Alex Trebek, we owe it to ourselves to get lost in quality television. Pardon me: we owe it to ourselves to indulge in high art like Noah Hawley's fourth season of Fargo. If only more TV series could operate at Fargo levels of greatness.  —khal