#76

The Penguin

HBO Max had a mini-series last year featuring a character that was “intorduced” in the big screen movie, The Batman. That was Penguin.

However, unlike the Batman Forever Penguin, who was played by Danny Devito, this version of the Penguin is played by Colin Farrell. When you think about the Penguin physically, Colin Farrell does not come immediately to mind.

The make-up job on Colin Farrell to make him look like the Penguin is truly some of the best make up on TV. But the make up is far from all- his performance was more than just make up. Colin Farrell brought so much life to the character of Oswald “Oz” Cobb that he was deeper than the character has ever been.

Throw in an Emmy-winning performance from Cristin Milioti as Sofia Gigante. Milioti was absolutely sensation in this role and provided such a foil for Oz that you were almost rooting for her.

The finale of the show had one of the most shocking and upsetting events that, even though Penguin was the protagonist of the show and easy to root for, you found yourself completely switched to seeing him as the villain. It was truly an amazing moment.

#77

Shrinking

We go back to Apple TV + for the next show on our list. Shrinking is a comedy that buries a lot of real life drama into its storylines.

Starring Jason Segel and Harrison Ford, Shrinking is very poignant, funny as only real life can be, and filled with wonderfully characters.

Jason Segel is our main character. He is therapist Jimmy Laird, who gets way too close to his patients. However, the death of his wife rocked Jimmy’s world and had him questioning everything, including how effective he was at his job. He has a strong relationship with his daughter, Alice, though the loss affected them both.

The fact that Harrison Ford has not won an Emmy for his performance in this show is criminial. Ford gives such a human performance as Dr. Paul Rhoades, whose personal struggle with Parkinson’s disease is one more powerful storyline among some of the best around.

There is a wonderful comedic troop of actors on the show adding color and hilarity. Other cast members included Jessica Williams, Christa Miller, Michael Urie, Ted McGinley, Luke Tennie, Brett Goldstein, Wendie Malick, and Lily Rabe.

The show has had two seasons so far and is one of the best shows from Apple TV +.

#78

Watchmen

One of the all-time classic comic book mini-series came from DC Comics was entitled Watchmen written by Alan Moore. It was adapted as a big screen movie by Zack Snyder.

Years later, LOST’s Damon Lindelof created a new TV show for HBO based on the movie/comic.

Watchmen the TV series was very different, but it was a sensational series. Honestly, (and this is a little shameful) this was the first time I ever heard about the Tulsa race massacre, which plays a big role in this story. It was set 34 years after the movie.

Featuring Regina King, Don Johnson, Tim Blake Nelson, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, Louis Gossett Jr., Jeremy Irons, Jean Smart, and Tom Mison.

#79

Hawkeye

The first Marvel Studios to find its way onto the list is Hawkeye, starring Jeremy Renner, reprising his role as Clint Barton from the series of the MCU movies and Hailee Steinfeld, playing Kate Bishop.

The show was set at Christmas as Clint has to leave his family in order to try and retrieve his old Ronin costume he wore during the period when his family had been blipped. He comes across fangirl Kate Bishop, who was inspired by Hawkeye during the battle of New York. She had taken up archery and was intent on joining Clint on his rounds.

The show was wonderfully written and had a nice tone to it. It is a great Christmas time show as it deals very much with family.

One of the issue a lot of people had was the return of Vincent D’Onofrio as Kingpin. Some people hated his return here because he was not playing Kingpin the way he did in the Daredevil Netflix series. That did not bother me at all. I expected some differences.

The show also introduced Echo, though the use of Echo is probably the weakest area of the season.

Yelena, portrayed by Florence Pugh, guest starred starting in episode 4, in her attempt to kill Clint for his part in the death of her sister Black Widow. Pugh and Steinfeld had remarkable chemistry and their shared scenes were some of the best of the series.

Jeremy Renner and Hailee Steinfeld worked extremely well together, in a mentor-mentee/father-daughter style.

I really enjoyed the six episode series and I would love to see another season at some point.

#80

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

While this would also include the time when the show was hosted by Trevor Noah and others, my favorite stretch of The Daily Show was when Jon Stewart was the host.

The Daily Show appeared Monday-Thursday on Comedy Central. It is a parody of a news program, hosted by Jon Stewart. He has had a lot of correspondents that have become huge stars including Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, Samantha Bee, John Oliver, Ed Helms, Rob Corddry, Jessica Williams, Larry Widmore, Olivia Munn, Roy Wood Jr., Hasan Minhaj, Jordan Klepper, Ronny Chieng, Lewis Black, Wyatt Cenac, Michael Che, Josh Gad, Jason Jones, Al Madrigal, Aasif Mandvi, Rob Riggle, and Kristen Schaal.

The writing and humor of this show is as high of a level as you are going to find. There have been people in the world that gets their news from the Daily Show.

Jon Stewart is truly one of the best interviewers you are going to see. He is so intelligent and well-read, I would hate to try and debate Stewart. Just ask Bill O’Reilly.

Jon Stewart left the show and spent several years away, as comedian Trevor Noah took over the desk. Noah was a solid host too. Stewart has returned to The Daily Show for once a week.

Here is your moment of Zen…

#81

Murderbot

I had heard some positive things about this Apple TV + show, but it turned out to be one of my favorite new shows of this year.

Murderbot is a futuristic sci-fi show where a personal security unit robot winds up getting a mind of his own and that mind has some potential violent tendencies.

Sec Unit was played by Alexander Skarsgård and he goes rogue. He is assigned to a team of researchers who were on a dangerous mission to another planet. Sec Unit does the voice over for the show and he is both fascinated and repulsed by the humans and their decisions.

Sec Unit is obsessed with an in-universe TV show called The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon. As viewers, we see some of the scenes of this show making it quite meta.

I did not expect to love this show as much as I did, but it was gripping, extremely funny and full of great action.

#82

Paradise

The next show in the countdown is one of the better shows from the last year on Hulu. Starring Courtney B. Vance and James Marsden, Paradise is a dystopian/sci-fi/mystery show that saw Marsden as the President of the United States who had to lead during an extinction level event,

Vance played his main secret service agent who discovered the president’s dead body. He was murdered!

Did I mention that the surviving humanity retreated to a hidden city inside a mountain?

Shenanigans ensued. The mystery was amazing and the flashback episode that showed what happened was epic.

Paradise was a surprise hit and earned its place on this list.

#83

Sherlock

The British mystery crime drama reimagined Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s legendary detective Sherlock Holmes and placed him in the present day.

This show helped introduce me to Benedict Cumberbatch, who led the show as the autistic-like Sherlock, and Martin Freeman, who was his sidekick Dr. John Watson.

The series ran for four seasons, but each season only had three episodes. However, each episode was more like a movie length, running around and hour and a half.

These were all great episodes. Perhaps my favorite was “Sign of Three,” which details Watson and Mary Morstan get married.

#84

Sliders

One of the cooler sci-fi concepts came in the 1990s with this show where four unlikely people wound up “sliding” through parallel universes, trying to find their way back home.

Much like Quantum Leap, each week Quinn Mallory, Professor Maximillian Arturo, Rembrandt “Cryin’ Man” Brown and Wade Welles found themselves in a new situation where they had to survive until their hand held timer device counted down so they could open up a vortex wormhole so they could depart.

Most of the time, the group encountered plenty of trouble, including variants of themselves. The show’s first few seasons were so great, while on FOX, but after FOX canceled it and it ended up on the Sci-Fi Channel (eventually Syfy), the episodes got much weaker. There were cast members replaced and Sliders, which was really the connection between the characters, became less engaging.

Jerry O’Connell, Cleavant Derricks, John Rhys-Davies, and Sabrina Lloyd were the original cast. Kari Wuhrer joined the cast as Captain Maggie Beckett.

Sliders is one of those underrated gems of the sci-fi genre. It sadly seemed to go too long and weakened its overall memory.

#85

Orange is the New Black

One of the earliest Netflix series was Orange is the New Black, a comedy/drama set inside a women’s penitentiary.

The cast included Taylor Schilling, Laura Prepon, Uzo Aduba, Danielle Brooks, Natasha Lyonne, Kate Mulgrew, Samira Wiley, Taryn Manning, Jason Biggs, Jackie Cruz, Laverne Cox, Diane Guerrero, Lori Petty, Ruby Rose, Adrienne C. Moore, Selenis Leyva, Dascha Polanco, Lea DeLaria, Michael Healy, Michelle Hurst, and Pablo Schreiber.

I enjoyed the series, but the last few seasons did not match some of the first few.

#86

Hano

This show is most likely not as well known as some of the others on this list so far. Yet this Netflix series, which went 2 seasons for a total of 16 episodes, was sensational, and remarkably funny.

American Vandal was a mockumentary series that spoofed true crime shows such as Making a Murderer and Serial. The show followed friends Peter Maldonado (Tyler Alvarez) and Sam Ecklund (Griffin Gluck) who created an internet show where they investigated a couple of cases at their high school, Hanover.

In season one, the pair investigated the prank that saw 27 faculty cars vandalized by someone who drew phallic images on them. Season two the investigation was at a Catholic private high school that had someone spiked the school’s lemonade with a laxative. They called this perp the “Turd Burglar.”

Yes, there were a lot of dick and poop jokes. There were plenty of sex jokes. These are usually the types of humor that I do not find entertaining. This was the total opposite. American Vandal was one of the funniest series I have ever seen. It was not only incredibly smart and funny, it was a great mystery.

Netflix canceled the series after the second season, but these first two definitely found a place on my top 100.

#87

Fargo

One of the best anthology series around. A few of the seasons of Fargo, based of course on the classic movie of the same name, are as good as you get. There were a couple of seasons that were not as good, but the first two and season five were so awesome.

The casts change each season and have included some gigantic stars such as Billy Bob Thornton, Martin Freeman, Chris Rock, Bob Odenkirk, Jon Hamm, Kirsten Dunst, Jean Smart, Ewan McGregor, David Thewlis, Ted Danson, Juno Temple, Carrie Coon, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Nick Offerman, Kieran Culkin, Brad Garrett, Ben Whishaw, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Patrick Wilson, Jesse Plemons, Joe Keery, Colin Hanks, and Adam Goldberg.

The FX show is always creative and funny with the greatest characters around.

#89

Freaks and Geeks

Sometimes a TV show comes in like a comet and burns itself out before its time. NBC’s coming of age show Freaks and Geeks is one of those. It was one of the most universally beloved shows, but only after its run of one season of 18 episodes ended. Freaks and Geeks is on a ton of people’s favorite TV show lists and sits at 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Yet it only lasted one season. Why? Part would have been because of the sporadic episode schedule and apparent conflicts between the network and the creators. Freaks and Geeks became a cult classic after the show was gone from NBC.

What a cast! An amazing who’s who of young actors at the time included Linda Cardellini, Seth Rogan, James Franco, Jason Segal, Busy Phillips, John Francis Daly, Martin Starr, and Samm Levine. Joe Flaherty, Tom Wilson (Biff Tannen himself from Back to the Future), Becky Ann Baker, Steve Bannos, Dave Allen, Kayla Ewell, Ben Foster, Joel Hodgson and Ann Dowd also appeared among a group of distinguished actors.

Written and directed by Paul Feig, the show was produced by Judd Apatow.

I have only ever seen this show once, but the memory of it holds a sweet spot in my heart. It is down the list because of its short run, but this is one of those shows that deserves a rewatch.

#90

Scandal

Olivia Pope and her crew is at #90 in our TV show countdown. Scandal was part soap opera, part governmental thriller and always fun.

Starring Kerry Washington as Olivia Pope and Tony Goldwyn as President Grant, Scandal was created by Shonda Rhimes. Olivia Pope was a DC “Fixer” who would be hired to deal with problems in our nation’s capital.

The big draw for many people was the on-again-off-again relationship between President Grant and Olivia. They were portrayed as soulmates thorughout the seven seasons, but I was never a fan of this relationship. Mind you, I loved Olivia, but I always found Grant to be a jerk and not worth her. Their relationship was definitely toxic, and that brought a ton of drama to the show.

Other stars from the show included Bellamy Young, Jeff perry (whose Cyrus was one of the most intriguing antagonists you would find), Scott Foley, Kate Lowes, Darby Stanchfield, Guillermo Diaz and Joe Morton.

These were some of the most rotten characters you will find on TV, even those that you were rooting for. The levels of GREY on this show was stunning.

I did not love every storyline of Scandal, and it did feel like it went a little too long. Of course, Joe Morton’s character, Rowan Pope (Olivia’s father) was one of those characters like the Cigarette Smoking Man from the X-Files that I would have loved to see a bullet placed into his brain.