Best TV shows you might have missed: quick view
Here at ScreenHub, we review a lot of television across the course of the year. So if you’re looking for something decent to watch over the holiday break, there’s already a whole lot of recommendations here – and a few warnings of things to avoid.
That said, a few gems that have slipped through the gaps. Possibly because not everyone would consider them gems: television is a broad church, and one person’s gold is another person’s final episode of Plum.
But if you’re looking to venture a little beyond the obvious for your end-of-year viewing, we’ve come up with a few titles that are well worth stepping a little out of your comfort zone.
Scavengers Reign (Binge)
Technically this animated SF series belong to 2023, but it wasn’t until this year that it hit Netflix and found a wider audience willing to embrace the chance to hang out on an alien planet that actually feels very alien.
It’s the tale of various disparate groups trying to survive on, and escape from, a planet covered with life that isn’t so much hostile as just too busy doing its own thing to care if people die (or get eaten) in the process.
The show’s leisurely rhythms and clear line animation style disguise a slowly building tension; by the time they realise they’re in over their heads, the audience is right there with them.
Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont Spelling Bee (ABC iview)
Is there such a thing as a show that’s too funny? This exercise in escalating insanity is grounded (just) by the occasional reminder that the contestants are expected to actually spell words correctly, but otherwise it’s just joke after joke coming at you from every direction.
Which, let’s be honest, can be a bit exhausting if watched in bulk. But if you can hold off on the binge and limit yourself to small doses (two episodes at a time is probably one too many), Guy Montgomery and sidekick Aaron Chen are absolutely relentless when it comes to off-the-wall comedy.
A Bloody Lucky Day (SBS On Demand)
Nobody does twisty drama like the Koreans (Squid Game Season 2 coming soon!), but once this series gets its hooks in you there’s no turning back. The setup might sound a little generic – a cab driver accepts a last-minute, high paying customer only to discover he’s a serial killer – but the way the story ruthlessly whiplashes from that point on makes terms like ‘shock twist’ and ‘cliffhanger’ seem insufficient.
It’s not all crazy plotting though: there’s a real moral dimension to things, as the affable punching bag cabbie discovers the only way to battle true evil is to embrace the darkness – no matter where that particular cab ride may take him.
Tokyo Vice – Season 2 (SBS On Demand)
The first season of this 90s-set, reporters vs yakuza drama was good but not exactly great. The second (and final) season takes everything up a notch, fully embraces the Japanese supporting cast (while still giving Ansel Elgort’s expat journalist the occasional big story) and becomes an elegiac look at a gangster culture in decline even as the gangsters themselves often verge on the despicable.
Beyond the always engaging crime plots everyone has their own personal struggles, which all feel painfully real – even as Tokyo itself seems like the coolest place possible.
Sexy Beast – Season 1 (Paramount+)
This year was brilliant for people keen to see crime and action movies turned into streaming series (and by people I mean me). Both the series versions of Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen (Netflix) and Paris Has Fallen (SBS Online) – based on the Gerard Butler’s franchise, only without Butler – were entertaining expansions on the original’s trashy virtues.
But it was Sexy Beast, the prequel series to, yes, Sexy Beast, that really delivered. A string of escalating heists across 90s London conducted by a pair of chancers (one of whom was often terrifyingly abrasive) under the pansexual guidance of a man who might as well have been Satan himself, and with a surprisingly touching love story thrown in, it was an instant classic that almost nobody saw.
Ripley (Netflix)
Ripley, on the other hand, was based on Patricia Highsmith’s classic novel The Talented Mr Ripley (which yes, was also turned into a movie). Stretched out over eight episodes and filmed in luxurious black & white, this had more than enough room to deal with all the usual issues this story raises: for example, just what is the nature of the connection between Ripley and Dickie, the man who’s life he takes, and then takes on?
But perhaps more importantly, this series used its lengthy run-time to explore an even more important question: how exactly does one person on their own in a foreign country murder a number of people and get away with it?
Dragging a corpse down multiple flights of stairs in an apartment block has never been so excruciatingly suspenseful.
Rebel Ridge (Netflix)
The days when streaming services were buying up all the quality films and keeping them out of cinemas are (thankfully?) behind us, but that doesn’t mean there haven’t been a few feature-length gems going straight to the small screen. Case in point: Rebel Ridge.
Written and directed by Jeremy Saulnier (Green Room) and starring Aaron Pierre (The Underground Railroad), it starts small (a Black man is pulled over by some white cops who decide the money he’s carrying to bail out a friend is drug money and confiscate it) and rapidly escalates into an extremely tense series of standoffs and showdowns.
A career-reviving turn from Don Johnson as the scummy sheriff puts this one over the top; if it had gone into cinemas critics would still be talking about how good it is.
Star Trek: Lower Decks – Season 5 (Paramount+)
Whereas Star Wars has stumbled a bit in recent years under Disney’s leadership, Paramount decided a few years back that there was no good reason why Star Trek couldn’t be all things to all fans. So if, for example, you want grimdark, morally complex Star Trek (why?), there’s the Star Trek: Section 31 movie (starring Michelle Yeoh) out early next year. And if you don’t, there’s Star Trek: Lower Decks.
Initially this animated series was positioned as something of a gag-fuelled Rick & Morty knock-off involving a bunch of bungling ensigns on board a sub-standard ship during the Next Generation era.
Once it (rapidly) moved past its influences, it became the best Trek series on air. Deftly funny and with solid character work, combined with science-fuelled plots, cheery optimism and plenty of deep cut references (that you don’t need to get to still get the jokes), sadly the current season is its last – and so far it’s going out on a high.
