In the United States, it's the top-rated non-animated series HBO Max has acquired since its launch in 2020, and amongst the top five of all scripted debuts on the streaming service this year. The breakout TV series is spreading like flash frost across the nation. There's an entire TikTok cottage industry dedicated to the show (I bought my sister a shirt through it). The gay bar I occasionally work at won't stop playing "All The Things She Said" over the speakers.
It feels like the top of this list contains programs that will undeniably be remembered when we're discussing the best of the decade or even of their entire era, but it's not extreme to suggest that there was more "good" this year than "great." Although that's not the end of the world. The truth is that almost every streaming service had something to justify its cost with Netflix, Hulu, Prime Video, Apple, and more making this list of the best of the best.
The beauty writer Jessica DeFino refers often to the "mirror world" inside our phone, the uncanny, glistening selfieverse that's also become more real for many of its devotees than the lumpy, blotchy meatspace where the rest of us live. I thought about the mirror world while watching All's Fair, Ryan Murphy's new creative product-I can't call it a television show, because it isn't one.
The Conjuringfranchise offered the perfect marriage between the hottest horror trend (the "based on a true story" claim) and the hottest Hollywood trend (the massive cinematic universe). While the main Conjuring movies starred Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga as real-life paranormal investigators/frauds Ed and Lorraine Warren, spinoffs like Annabelle and The Nun flashed back to the origin stories of the creepy totems they encountered.