The GQ Staff's Favorite TV Shows of 2018

You loved them, you binged them, and we wrote about them just for you.
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In the time that it takes for you to read this, three television series have almost certainly premiered, with at least one of them on a network that you didn't even know existed. Television in the 2010s is defined by excess, and while there are fewer consensus favorites than ever, the shows that resonate really knock it out of the park. So yes, while no year-end TV roundup can be truly definitive, the good stuff is as good as it's ever been, and we don't want you to miss it.

The Great British Bake Off
Everett

I’m going to say something really blasphemous: I like Noel and Sandi better than Sue and Mel. The most recent season on Netflix is a bit weird—stop giving out handshakes! Give everyone enough time to actually make a beautiful thing!—but it’s still the warm, charming, kooky series we all use to hide from the rest of the world. Bonus points for this year’s final three all being people of color!—Jaya Saxena, GQ contributor


American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace
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The masterstroke of American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace is in its decision to barely spend any time on the titular event. Instead, it works backwards, beginning with Andrew Cunanan's murder of the fashion impresario, backing up through his lesser-known string of victims until we arrive at his formative years. In doing so, Versace becomes a tragedy not just about the death of an icon, but about an American failure of empathy and understanding, one that manifested in ways that seem painfully clear in hindsight. In tracing the crimes of one manipulative young man, Versace charts a course through American culture's quiet hostility towards its gay communities, a hostility that didn't just fuel the self-loathing of a man who would kill other gay men, but also the cultural indifference that gave Americans little reason to care in the first place.—Joshua Rivera, GQ contributor


Elite
Netflix

A Spanish-language Netflix original series about a private high school that dishes out some of TV's sharpest stories about HIV, queerness, drugs, and class, Elite is one of the streaming service's boldest experiments, and it pays off. Its first season is pulpy only insomuch as it feels like a real stab at depicting what teenagers do behind closed doors (if every teenager around the world had a six-pack and perfectly coiffed hair, but I digress). Its core mystery is intriguing, enough to keep you wanting more, but just as enthralling is how the show slowly, preciously unravels the day-to-day lives of its intricate, beautifully written characters.—Brennan Carley, entertainment associate editor


High Maintenance
HBO

Creators Katja Blichfeld and Ben Sinclair gained a cult following on Vimeo for their web series High Maintenance, which follows a weed dealer—known only as “The Guy” and played by Sinclair—biking through Brooklyn on his delivery routes to all manner of stoners, potheads, and sometimes crossdressing dads played by Dan Stevens. When Blichfeld and Sinclair took their webisode format to HBO in 2016 for a half-hour time slot, there were some growing pains, but in Season 2 they've truly hit their stride. Through the whimsical lives of The Guy’s clients, the show seamlessly weaves together affordable housing, Airbnb, Uber, the ex-Hasidic Jewish community, and the push notification breaking news cycle in ways that are both refreshing and also very 2018.—Ben Pardee, lead web producer


Jersey Shore Family Vacation
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I get the feeling we're never going to get a full reunion of the original Jersey Shore family (Samantha "Sammy Sweetheart" Giancola sat out both seasons of MTV's revival this year, content instead to clutter your Instagram feed with #SponCon). But Family Vacation is probably 2018's best reboot of any kind. It's clear that this group of former strangers have some kind of magic chemistry together, even though they've gotten older and wiser (well, some of them). To be honest, it's nice to tune into a show that has no real premise beyond "watch these very good friends hang out." There's no longer a "we're going to Italy for a season!" conceit, really, and any attempt to inject a narrative into the show is usually abandoned after three episodes. But in 2018, that aimlessness worked. It reminded me of how important it is to keep friendships alive and thriving even in the darkest of times.—B.C.


Little Drummer Girl
Everett

John le Carré novels do not easy adaptations make, but Stoker and The Handmaiden director Park Chan-Wook works with an all-star cast to give us a brilliant show to close out the year. It very nearly flew under the radar altogether. Michael Shannon stakes yet another claim as one of our finest character actors and Florence Pugh seems to grow in talent ten sizes every time she's in something new.—T.P.


The Good Fight
"Day 478" -- Episode 211 -- Pictured (l-r): Sarah Steele as Marissa Gold; Nyambi Nyambi as Jay Dipersia; Christine Baranski as Diane Lockhart; Audra McDonald as Liz Reddick-Lawrence; Delroy Lindo as Adrian Boseman of the CBS All Access series THE GOOD FIGHT. Photo Cr: Elizabeth Fisher/CBS é2018 CBS Interactive, Inc. All Rights Reserved.Elizabeth Fisher

On any given night this year, you can bet I was streaming both seasons of the delicious CBS All Access legal thriller The Good Fight, an extremely good spinoff of The Good Wife. It's a show that does "ripped from the headlines" storylines better than any other, and any series that's giving Christine Baranski a platform to act her way through micro-dosing on my computer screen deserves all the fistfuls of cash I can shove at it. The Good Fight also brought actors Cush Jumbo (legend!) and Justin Bartha (swoon) back into my life, and for that, I say "thank you, yes." —B.C.


One Day at a Time
Netflix

There isn't a throwback more pure than One Day at a Time. The reboot of the '70s and '80s series of the same name has remained staunchly old-school in its presentation, adhering to sitcom tropes like laugh tracks and simple sets, all while remaining modern in its concerns. In its second season, the series about a Cuban-American family living in L.A. (and their very dumb and rich white landlord) found opportunities to make its warm, corny heart grow ever bigger, even as its comedy found simple, lived ways to sharply critique our political moment by illustrating the small ways it has turned the Americans hostile towards its hispanic countrymen. But it's not all politics—One Day at a Time mostly feels like a celebration, a show about people who are frank about their circumstances in a world that hasn't given them much to work with, and their determination to make it happen anyway.—J.R.


Pose
VH1

There is not a thing about Pose that doesn't work. A show that hires trans women to play trans women shouldn't have been revolutionary this far into our cultural history, but it was, and Mj Rodriguez, Indya Moore, and Dominique Jackson all delivered the year's best performances across the show's eight episodes. It's story is joyful but realistic; there's no happy endings for the sake of tying the narrative with a bow. Pose deftly weaves stories about the AIDS crisis, homelessness, homophobia, gender affirmation surgery, and chosen families into its gorgeous ballroom scenes. No show brought me greater joy in 2018. Here's to many, many more seasons of perfection like this.—B.C.


Succession
HBO

Yes, Succession is about a series of problems happening to very rich, attractive white people, but it is also a wickedly addictive-to-watch tragedy after catastrophe befalls the Roy family. Showrunner Jesse Armstrong, who cut his teeth on the brutal witticisms of Peep Show and The Thick Of It, crafts something bigger and more dramatic here, but no less fucking funny.—Tom Philip, GQ contributor


Survivor
CBS

Sorry but if you're not still watching Survivor you're missing out on a snake eating its own tail six times over, a show whose contestants have so actively studied its past that it's become a wild hybridized 3.0 version of itself that's arguably just as thrilling as its first season was 18 years ago.—B.C.


Big Mouth
Everett

The most recent season of Big Mouth gets into such amazing and important territory for teens—shame, sexual orientation, consent and desire, not to mention the ways our parents disappoint us. It also has a whole episode subplot about a “jizzcuit.” It’s sweet without being precious, and dirty without being completely offensive. It’s also the rare show about puberty that acknowledges just how horny girls get, too. May you all be blessed by the sound of Maya Rudolph saying “bubble bath.”J.S.


Killing Eve
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Former GQ editor Lauren Larson nailed it in her review of Killing Eve earlier this year, asserting that this is a show that "stabs you in the fucking eye." More happens in the first three hours of Killing Eve than has happened in many seasons of lesser shows. At the center of it all is the gorgeous, fraught relationship between operative Eve (Sandra Oh) and the ruthless serial killer psychopath she's chasing down (Jodie Comer). There has not been a more accessibly enjoyable thriller this entire year.—T.P.


The Good Place
NBC

“Four hot people navigate the moral minefield that is the afterlife while accompanied by other hot people” is still the best premise of a show in years, and while this season gets into some weird territory, it’s still hilarious. It also never fails to make me want to be a better person. Even the actual philosophers they reference couldn’t inspire me to do that. Probably because they weren’t as hot.—J.S.


Schitt's Creek
Pop Press / CBC

Every single performance on the gleeful Schitt's Creek—a show equal parts droll and fuzzy—could be singled out as its best. As David, Daniel Levy plays "over this whole thing" better than anyone right now (and his onscreen relationship with Noah Reid's Patrick is one of television's finest depictions of same-sex love). Catherine O'Hara's Moira is dementedly funny and disconnected from all things earthly in the most endearing way. Eugene Levy grounds his constantly feather-ruffled Johnny in a fatherly warmth. Annie Murphy as Alexis is a new kind of clueless, a woman who has finally begun to reckon with her choices and the places they've led her (and my god is she funny). And we haven't even gotten to the ensemble, or the snuggly Christmas special that airs next week! I could go on and on! But stop reading and get thee to Netflix to catch up.—B.C.


Atlanta Robbin' Season
FX

The follow-up to the first groundbreaking season of Atlanta gave us some of the most surreal, memorable episodes of television in this or any year, and often without explaining itself or revisiting a single one of its ideas. Few shows can do a one-off episode like "Teddy Perkins", an opaque horror fable that is, in part, about a man trapped by the image he created to sell his art. In its second year on the air, Atlanta Robbin' Season became something mythic, a series where characters get lost in strange circumstances they don't really belong in, only to come back to the world they know and find that they've lost something, and they can't really tell who took it from them.—J.R.


RuPaul's Drag Race and RuPaul's Drag Race: All Stars
VH1

Some have argued that the most popular queer show on television's move to VH1 has changed its essence, but I don't think that's true. If anything, it's given the show higher stakes and bigger budgets, and for that, we must be grateful, no matter how much we all loved its scrappier early days. Season 10 showcased the finest batch of regular-season contestants in years (Monet X Change, Monique Heart, MISS VANJIE), and All Stars 3 may not have crowned Shangela but it did bring us truly game-changing moments (BenDeLaCreme, looking at you!) and a fair share of iconic lip synchs. With another season beginning tonight, it feels like the race is only just getting started. —B.C.


Bonus: The Feeds of Instagram-Famous Animals

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As it's been noted, 2018 was a hellish garbage fire of a year. With indictments forever looming and New York Times bombshells routinely dropping an hour before bedtime, I've had to create my own palette cleanser to keep the Kavanaugh "I LIKE BEER" nightmares at bay. Some people prefer watching Ozark to help them unwind. Me? I want all the cute animal content on the internet pumped right into my veins. Giggling to myself while watching Peach the cat dance to Michael Jackson (then firing it off to my bestie in a DM), helps me feel sane, connected and—dare I say it—happy during these difficult times.

Once I deployed my friends, family, colleagues, and Twitter strangers into sharing their sources of joyfulness with me, I was truly able to cull a safe little haven of Instagram Cuteness™ where no trick goes without a treat. Feeling down? How about an otter dancing like a ballerina, a Shiba impersonating Bob Ross, or maybe Rosie the hiking cat? To be honest, I'm not quite sure how or when I started following most of these accounts. But when you're aware you've existing during a rough time in history, sometimes the only antidote to moving backward is to accumulate one giggle at a time. Each night, as I scroll through my Lisa Frank-ified Explore page, I find myself saying "one more genuine laugh" before I allow myself to put the phone down and finally get some peaceful rest.—Andie Diemer, visuals editor