The best TV of 2023 so far is stuff you can watch now, including Love Is Blind, Jury Duty, and more. Here’s the best shows on Netflix, Max, Hulu, Amazon, and others.
We’re going to put this really simply for you: TV whips. Long-form serialized storytelling — what a concept. What a gift! Even in an ongoing time where there’s just so much TV to wade through, it’s hard to be mad about so much beauty in the world.
At this point in the year, it’s possible that people are still working through the things they missed from 2022, let alone catching up on every single thing they could from 2023. Still, time marches on, and brings with it new, fabulous TV offerings — including some early contenders for the best of the year.
While this is a rolling list, the series here will be listed in reverse chronological order, by season finale. That means that the show with most recent finale will be listed first, and then the next most recent, all the way down to the earliest finale of 2023. At the end of the year, the Polygon staff will get together and vote on our favorites for a final, ranked list.
Our latest update added Ganglands.Jury Duty
Genre: Mockuseries/extended prank
Episodes: 8 episodes
Creators: Lee Eisenberg, Gene Stupnitsky
Cast: Ronald Gladden, James Marsden, Alan Barinholtz
Who expected the best new sitcom of 2023 to air on Freevee, the free-with-ads streaming service formerly known as IMDbTV that now lives within Amazon Prime Video? Neither did we, but Jury Duty, created by The Office vets Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky and directed by Jake Szymanski (7 Days in Hell), is the real deal: hilarious, sweet, and enough of a concept to bring the unexpected with each half-hour episode.
The idea of a jury-duty-themed mockumentary might have worked on its own, but the writing duo’s show goes the extra mile to create spontaneity. At the center of the series is Ronald Gladden, a non-actor who doesn’t realize he is in a sitcom and just wants to be the best damn juror he can possibly be. And by god, the genial gig worker is exactly that. Across the eight episodes, Ronald winds up sitting on a ludicrous civil trial involving a disgruntled worker at a Goop-like company, sequestering at a hotel with his fellow jury members (all of whom are secretly comedians), and spending an inordinate amount of time with James Marsden, who plays a fame-crazed version of himself. As foreperson, it’s up to Ronald to make sure his fellow juror’s “chair pants,” a homemade invention that attaches chair legs to pants, don’t disrupt the trial, and figure out a way for his group’s religious member to have sexual intercourse without breaking his premarital vows (it involves a loophole called “soaking,” which we will not attempt to describe). Eisenberg, Stupnitsky, Szymanski, and their team of on-the-fly writers constantly bring Jury Duty to that edge of zaniness without tipping off Ronald and blowing their cover. The pressure of the judicial system is enough to keep the unknowing target focused on serving his civil duty, much to our delight.
Slight spoilers: The judge reaches a verdict in episode 8 that brought me to tears in more ways than one. Jury Duty tells a real story, follows a real set of characters, and delivers a genuine payoff. And more than that, the final episodes pull back the curtain to explain the unfathomable lengths the production went to go to pull off the trick. It’s miracle work. —Matt Patches
Jury Duty is available to stream for free with ads on Freevee.Perry Mason season 2
Genre: Legal drama
Episodes: 8 episodes
Showrunners: Jack Amiel and Michael Begler
Cast: Matthew Rhys, Juliet Rylance, Chris Chalk
First, a quick confession: I skipped the first season of Perry Mason, HBO’s adaptation of the famed literary criminal defense attorney, perhaps best known for the long-running CBS series in the 1950s and 1960s. I watched the first episode, found it overly dark and dour, and wasn’t much interested in an origin story about Perry’s time before his days as a defense lawyer.
When The Knick showrunners Jack Amiel and Michael Begler came in to run Perry Mason’s second season, I was intrigued. And when I started hearing more and more people talk about how good the show’s new season was, I dove right in.
Good news: Not only is the second season of Perry Mason very good, you can absolutely skip the first season without issue if you want to. I operated purely on a “if it’s important, they’ll remind me” point-of-view, and it served me perfectly.
In Perry Mason, Matthew Rhys continues to excel as the saddest man on TV, picking up where he left off in The Americans (as well as A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood). He’s broken down, disillusioned with the system, and finds himself struggling with basic motivation at the beginning of the season. When a massive case falls on his lap, Perry and his partners find themselves thrust into a case that’s impossible to win, stacked against a massive conspiracy that could involve all the power players in Los Angeles.
Early on, the second season makes one crucial and bold diversion from nearly every piece of defense attorney media. I won’t spoil what it is, but the decision opens up Perry Mason to be a richer examination of the justice system and the people caught up in it.
It’s also just a fun watch. An immersive period piece with detailed production design (I love Perry’s motorcycle so much), Perry Mason delights in bringing 1930s Los Angeles to life, and Rhys’ supporting cast (especially Juliet Rylance as his brilliant legal partner Della, Chris Chalk as their dedicated investigator, Paul Raci as a terrifying gangster, Hope Davis as a wealthy socialite, and the always excellent Shea Whigham as Perry’s adversarial frenemy) help make it one of the best watches on TV. —Pete Volk
Perry Mason is available to watch on HBO Max.Game Changer season 5
Genre: Competition/reality
Episodes: 8
Showrunner: Sam Reich
Cast: Sam Reich, Brennan Lee Mulligan, Grant O’Brien
Dropout, CollegeHumor’s quietly excellent streaming service, changed the game show game with Game Changer. On the show, contestants (usually) arrive without knowing what game they are about to play — the gimmick relies on the players figuring it out as they go, often putting them delightfully at odds with Sam Reich (operating as the show’s host/antagonist).
Some examples of games from this season: a game where contestants wear a heart rate monitor and compete in a variety of mental tasks designed to elevate it; a game of improvised Shakespeare starring the Improvised Shakespeare Company (my favorite episode of the season, a remarkable display of skill and flexibility that is also laugh-out-loud funny); a parody of The Bachelor. Some of the best games are laser-targeted at one contestant, like in an earlier season, where the only rule was that [contestant redacted for spoilers] couldn’t win, much to their frustration and our delight.
Game Changer has been so successful that multiple other Dropout game shows have spun out from it: Make Some Noise, where contestants recreate sound-related improv prompts, and Play It By Ear, a musical theater improv show.
But it all comes back to Game Changer, the best game show on a streaming service that now has plenty of good ones. I’ve gotta come clean: Typically, I really do not like improv comedy, so the fact that Game Changer works so well for me should tell even the most skeptical of readers that it’s worth a shot. —PV
Game Changer is available to watch on Dropout.Love Is Blind season 4
Genre: “Reality” love
Episodes: 13
Created by: Chris Coelen
Cast: A hot mess of single people
Love Is Blind is supremely messy. There’s no way around that.
The concept of the show — that love is blind, and couples should test this concept for reality TV audiences by seeing who they connect with in “pods” where they can only talk to each other and then propose sight-unseen — is a whole thing. The resulting courtship is people chaotically trying to decide if they’re actually going to go through it. Even the live reunion special, a reality show tradition since time immemorial, started several hours late, for those who even got it to work. And according to some recent reports, production on the show was “emotional warfare” where producers severely mistreated contestants. In that light, messy doesn’t even begin to cover it.
Love Is Blind season 4 was no different. It was still the same bizarre medley of heterosexuality and practicalism, as couples told each other they were all in and then kept saying shit like “If we do this…” But from the jump, season 4 also had wild twists and turns: legitimate villains, mismatches so obvious they broke up before they were home, fresh engagements, more broken engagements, and entanglements that felt juicy even when they were dealing with mundane problems.
It was a refreshing peak and a return to the promise of the show as a whole. There is no reason to pretend this is a real courtship. And as friends, family, and the contestants themselves started to doubt the legitimacy of the whole operation, season 4 was all the richer for it. If season 3 was a cupcake of drama, then season 4 was three-tier sheet cake: easy, cheap, and surprisingly ornate in its construction for some fucking reason. And, like a sheet cake, it’s the sort of thing that makes you realize that it’s time to slow down and pace yourself. If this is the first, last, or only season of Love Is Blind, that’s more than enough. The show has given us all it can. And there’s still the After the Altar special to boot. —Zosha Millman
Love Is Blind is available to watch on Netflix.Party Down season 3
Genre: Comedy
Episodes: 6
Showrunner: John Enbom
Cast: Adam Scott, Ken Marino, Jane Lynch, Ryan Hansen, Martin Starr
Though Starz’s cult comedy Party Down only lasted for two seasons, fans spent most of the last decade hoping the much-bigger-than-they-were-when-they-were-on-Party-Down cast would reunite eventually, knowing full well that a revival can be a bit of a monkey’s paw wish.
