Just like with the previous edition of Additional Bite-Sized Reviews, the point of this post is to function as a review compilation, if you will, of some notable 2023 television series that I’ve either just caught up with or which I never found the time to write about when they were released way back when. For this post, I have specifically highlighted five of the past year’s best shows. For quite a few of these, I had initially intended to write extensive, long reviews, but time flew by and now I just feel the need to get my thoughts out there on some of my favorite shows from 2023.
F.A.Q.
- What are Additional Bite-Sized Reviews?
– My movie and television catch-up review series ‘Additional Bite-Sized Reviews‘ is an evolution of the Overview-article section previously titled ‘What I Didn’t Write About.’ In articles such as this one, I will provide my readers with my thoughts on select new films, new shows, or even classics that I feel like giving my thoughts on relatively briefly, since I don’t have the time to dedicate thorough reviews to them at this point in time. - Why do the bite-sized reviews not include either a letter grade or a review score?
– In my full and thorough reviews, I like to score or grade what I watch. But since these reviews aren’t as detailed, I think it is fairer to the films and shows to simply just decide whether or not to recommend them. I guess you could say this is the only type of review that is basically ‘scored’ with the classic thumbs-up/thumbs-down-method on my site, though sometimes my recommendation answer comes with a caveat.
Poker Face: Season 1 | Series | Created by Rian Johnson | Release Year: 2023 | Season Length: 10 Episodes | Recommended?: Yes.
Who would have thought that in the post-The Last Jedi era of Rian Johnson’s career thus far, the brilliant filmmaker would then become American entertainment’s premier representative of the whodunit film subgenre and that he would usher in a little bit of a renaissance for the subgenre. His Knives Out films are excellent modern updates on the Agatha Christie genre that led to a streamer/studio bidding war, but also to other streamers and studios doubling down on the genre to chase the same audience (e.g. Apple TV+’s The Afterparty). A while back, I finally got the chance to check out Rian Johnson’s own murder mystery series — titled Poker Face — which I had heard a lot of great things about, but which hasn’t really broken through and made as many waves internationally as Knives Out did. However, let me tell you, Poker Face is absolutely terrific.
If the Knives Out film series is Rian Johnson’s modern take on Agatha Christie, then Poker Face is clearly his stab at doing a Columbo-type of show. Like with Knives Out, Poker Face’s primary hero has this special ability that sets her apart from the rest of the cast. Knives Out’s character played by Ana de Armas couldn’t tell a lie without needing to vomit, whereas Natasha Lyonne’s Poker Face lead character can always tell if you’re lying. Unlike Knives Out, it isn’t so much a whodunnit as its formula is much closer to Columbo — i.e. it’s all about how Lyonne’s character catches on that the villain of the week is lying and how she proves it. That final thing is important to note because there is so much here that she just cannot do because she isn’t associated with law enforcement unlike Columbo. She has to go about her business differently, which adds an interesting wrinkle to the show.
Lyonne is phenomenal and immensely watchable as the raspy-voiced drunken vagabond on-the-run version of Columbo, and, from episode to episode, she is backed up by brilliant guests-of-the-week with Charles Melton, Tim Blake Nelson, Lil Rel Howery, and, especially, Nick Nolte being some of the highlights. It’s also a neat innovation to have so many episodes that include some kind of modern tech (e.g. Social Media, Emails, Facial Recognition, etc.). I’ll also add that the show is wonderfully cineliterate, as it contains several visual, or otherwise, references to great films (and the way they use Bong Joon-ho’s OKJA as a crucial plot development in one episode is something you have to see to believe).
This was one of the highlight series of last year, as it contained inventive episode premises, great guest performers, a compelling lead performance, an addictive episode-to-episode formula (in addition to a great season-long narrative), and, occasionally, a strong sense of cinematic style.
Shrinking: Season 1 | Series | Created by Bill Lawrence, Jason Segel, and Brett Goldstein | Release Year: 2023 | Season Length: 10 Episodes | Recommended?: Yes.
Bill Lawrence is having a little bit of a moment. The Scrubs-creator is on a roll over at Apple TV+. Next week, his Vince Vaughn-led Bad Monkey series will premiere and follow in the footsteps of Lawrence’s Ted Lasso and Shrinking. Shrinking is a series that is essentially about a shrink (played by Jason Segel) who is losing it over overwhelming sorrow and grief, but who is still trying to do his job and in inventive ways. Though his emotional out-of-the-box thinking also leads him to sometimes cross some ethical barriers and removing his doctor-to-patient filter. It is a show about what happens when the grieving therapist needs therapy and a helping hand. There is a focus on grief and mental health, obviously, and it clearly emphasizes that you should surround yourself with people who love you to get through grief. Initially, I thought it was to the show’s detriment (due to it perhaps not being very believable) that its characters always hung out, but I think the show is actually trying to highlight an ideal.
Like Scrubs and Ted Lasso at their best, the series manages to be both very funny, insightful about specific workplace situations, and capable of being emotionally powerful. And, as a huge fan of Scrubs, I think it is frankly genius of Lawrence to now do a comedy-drama about therapists, since Scrubs was arguably at its finest when it featured a doctor acknowledging their own and their patients’ problems in heartfelt conversations. Admittedly, I don’t think Shrinking is as funny as Scrubs or Ted Lasso, but the character drama is supremely strong. It may not be a show with many standout episodes, but that is only because it is consistently and uniformly good.
I’ll add that the cast is also excellent. Harrison Ford is obviously the show’s biggest star, and he has the perfect exasperated energy of a Scrubs-esque boss, but while the exasperated Ford can be quite funny, it is a particular joy (and particularly moving) to see the legendary actor allow himself to be vulnerable in the show. It is a finely tuned performance from Ford that goes really well with Segel’s upfront but anxious energy.
The Fall of the House of Usher | Limited Series | Created by Mike Flanagan | Release Year: 2023 | Season Length: 8 Episodes | Recommended?: Yes.
Whenever we get to see Mike Flanagan tell a horror story on Netflix, he never misses. It is as simple as that. Ever since Hush and The Haunting of Hill House, through Gerald’s Game and The Haunting of Bly Manor, and to the recent years’ Midnight Mass and The Fall of the House of Usher, Flanagan has consistently proven himself to be a brilliant master of horror storyteller, who has a good grasp of character drama in addition to his clear eye for the effectiveness of the utilization of horror trademarks and tropes. His track record is quite strong, with Midnight Mass and Doctor Sleep being my personal favorites in his oeuvre, and, back when I first saw the series, it became clear almost immediately that he had hit it out of the park again with The Fall of the House of Usher.
Though I still think his best work is his original horror series Midnight Mass, Flanagan has proven himself to be adept at adapting stories from some of the greatest storytellers (e.g. Henry James and Stephen King). The Fall of the House of Usher is yet another example of his ability to take an iconic work from a celebrated writer and update it for modern audiences. The Fall of the House of Usher is obviously an adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe’s short story of the same name, but the series as a whole uses said story and envelops it in a series of other references to, and adaptations of, other Poe writing. It amounts to something like a greatest hits tribute to Poe but with a very modern spin.
While there are still elements of gothic horror, the modern updates makes it feel something akin to a The Haunting of Hill House meets Succession narrative. There is a focus on the Usher family, its downfall, family secrets, and family tension, but also on greed, consumerism, and the sins of the filthy rich. As such, there is a clear political heartbeat throughout this series that works. That said, its political commentary never stands in the way of Flanagan successfully setting up instantly iconic horror imagery that is chilling, disgusting, and disturbing. Frankly, the series features some of the greatest and most chilling horror imagery that the genre saw last year.
Although the flashback/past timeline that each and every episode is interspersed by isn’t always as effective or rich in detail as the modern-day, Usher-family downfall depicted from episode to episode, the flashbacks do have their moments. The frame story has moments that will make your blood run cold, and the secondary present-day narrative always has an innovative way to surprise the audience. Sometimes the surprise is in tone, as Flanagan isn’t afraid of being very comedic in his horror, but the series is at its most effective when it is at its most unsettling and shocking. On the whole, the series also features uniformly good or entertaining performances, with Bruce Greenwood and Carla Gugino being the standouts, the latter of whom gets the chance to play a fun multi-faceted role.
For All Mankind: Season 4 | Series | Created by Ronald D. Moore, Matt Wolpert, and Ben Nedivi | Release Year: 2023-2024 | Season Length: 10 Episodes | Recommended?: Yes.
It’s no secret by now that I am a big fan of For All Mankind. For each and every season review, I believe I’ve made it very clear that it is one of the hidden gems in Apple TV+’s content library. The alternate history show about space travel scratches an itch for sci-fi fans and history buffs, and it features solid character and family drama, as well as genuinely intriguing political developments and tense action revolving around space travel.
In the fourth season, we find our returning characters in the early 2000s, as the US-Russian relationship has changed quite a bit, space travel is much more common than previously, and there is a significant base on Mars, where astronauts and common workers collaborate to work on an asteroid containing valuable resources that all countries of Earth want to get their hands on. The series’ long-time astronaut protagonists Ed Baldwin (played by Joel Kinnaman) and Danielle Pool (played by Krys Marshall) are still very much on active duty, and, this season, they find themselves on opposite sides, as the latter is given a leadership position, while the former is not only stubborn but also hiding the troubling effects of his body no longer working as well as it used to.
Over the years, For All Mankind has been consistently good, but, even though I will say that I really liked season four as well, I must also admit that it is probably my least favorite of the bunch thus far. Don’t get me wrong, the show still features excellent performances, strong and complicated character drama, tension-filled sequences in sci-fi settings, and, frankly, refreshingly surprising developments in the world of the show. I think the main reason why this season didn’t fully hit as well for me as the previous season is that there was a feeling of the show retreading recurring themes and narratives without adding all that much to it. There is only so much you can do with the NASA-ROSCOSMOS/CIA-KGB distrust subplots before it just starts to feel like more of the same, and, at times, it did feel like more of the same, at least with the characters in space.
This series thrives on taking human Earthbound stories and transporting them to the Moon or to Mars, and there are some good examples of that here, but, most of the time, the season doesn’t really cover all that much new ground. Plus, its focus on mining a material on an asteroid is probably the least ‘to boldly go where no man has gone before’ space storyline that these seasons have covered. There are elements of the season that feel worn-out or dry when they didn’t previously.
But, don’t misunderstand me, I really did like this season. Despite the above-below/rich-poor/astronauts-mechanic aspect being relatively ordinary as an idea, I do think it is quite special to throw an All-American character like Ed Baldwin into the mix and essentially make him pro-unionising. Furthermore, the Margo Madison defector narrative thread is one of the best subplots this season, and it is so well-acted by long-time regular cast member Wrenn Schmidt. On the whole, For All Mankind is still a terrific show that delivers on the promise of a heady, quasi-realistic alternate history show with a dash of science-fiction, and the focus on fighting to make space travel necessary in a world where the people on Earth’s focus on space is more so as a costly business than a necessary ambition and exploration makes for a fascinating heartbeat for the latter stage of the season. That said, I do hope the writers of the show can come up with new ways to make the US-USSR dynamic feel fresh going forward.
The Bear: Season 2 | Series | Created by Christopher Storer | Release Year: 2023 | Season Length: 10 Episodes | Recommended?: Yes.
So, yeah, I know what you may be thinking. Why am I writing about the second season of The Bear when the third season is out? Well, the truth is, as is the case with most of these shows in this article, I’ve had extensive notes about these shows and seasons from when I watched them so long ago, and, for whatever reason, I just never had the time to release the reviews when it would’ve made sense. Anyway, here we are, let it rip, as they say. Following in the footsteps of the phenomenal first season, season two is all about rebuilding the restaurant in a new image. One of the themes of the season is that it is never too late to start over, as this season we follow as the supporting cast of characters is given an opportunity to reinvent themselves in culinary school, in a fancy restaurant setting, or, would you look at that, in my home country of Denmark. Meanwhile, we follow along as Carmy becomes emotionally involved with Claire, though he is constantly concerned that at some point the other shoe will drop and the sky will fall — because life has given him battle scars that make it so that he is in constant panic mode.
In season two, this series continues to be one of the most well-made series about mental health. It is a show that is exceptionally good at highlighting how important it is to communicate and share your feelings with others, or how you can work through tough moments in your life full of emotion by working together, but it is also a show about how pressure and structure can be both a good and a bad thing. And, when compared to season one, my immediate feeling was that it wasted no moments in completely recapturing the energy, chaos, and lovability of the first season.
In the blink of an eye, this show can go from comfort TV to some of the most stressful television you’ve ever seen. And no episode illustrates that better than the sixth episode of the season, Fishes. Although the star-studdedness of season two can sometimes be a little bit distracting (with Will Poulter, Olivia Colman, and others making memorable guest appearances), Fishes, arguably the most star-studded episode of them all, overcomes that by being extremely relatable but also worryingly stressful, in a way that you immediately realize is extremely scarring. It is one of the best episodes of television of last year, as it highlights so many issues related to familial trauma, depression, grief, and PTSD in ways that feel authentic and raw, but also because of how powerful the individual performances are. It feels so real.
I will also say, as a Dane, that I loved every second of the episode in Denmark. And, here at the end, I will say that the only iffy note that I had jotted down was that I felt the ‘freezer door’ relationship drama felt a little bit too melodramatic or convenient for this show, but maybe that’s just me. But, on the whole, it is a glowing recommendation, as it reaches the level of the first season and, on some occasions, even exceeds it.
– Reviews Written by Jeffrey Rex Bertelsen.
I'm Jeffrey Rex 
3 thoughts on “2023 TV Catch-Up / Backlog: The Greats | Bite-Sized Reviews”