TVLine’s Year in Review is officially underway, and we’re starting with the best dramas of 2019. Which series snagged our No. 1 spot? Scroll through the gallery below — which includes Succession, Stranger Things and more — to find out.
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Image Credit: Courtesy of CBS 10. EVIL
Mike Colter is a priest-in-training verifying demonic possession. Katja Herbers is a psychologist who tags along to determine whether mental illness — and not The Devil — is really to blame. The pair and their complex, layered (and, yeah, sexy) partnership come via Good Wife creators Michelle and Robert King, who know a thing or two about well-crafted dialogue and building stakes. The cases of the week are flat-out scary in a way broadcast network supernatural dramas usually are not. Roll it all together and you have a smart, sinfully good Thursday-night treat.
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Image Credit: Courtesy of Netflix 9. WHEN THEY SEE US
There were few 2019 dramas as raw, chilling and difficult to watch as this Netflix mini, which reclaimed the narratives of five teens wrongfully accused of raping a woman in Central Park. Evocatively directed by Ava DuVernay and brought to life by a deep bench of powerful performances, When They See Us certainly put America’s racist justice system under a magnifying glass. But at its core, the show was about innocent boys — Yusef, Korey, Kevin, Raymond and Antron — who deserved to have their stories told so thoughtfully.
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Image Credit: Courtesy of Netflix 8. STRANGER THINGS
More than worth the long wait, Season 3 of the Duffer Brothers’ Netflix hit delivered on every level, detonating thrilling set pieces (like the epic Battle of Starcourt), evolving relationships (including, at last, Joyce and Hopper’s) and miraculously still managing to surprise us (admit it — you never saw “The Neverending Story” coming). The eight episodes also gave Priyah Ferguson (Erica) and Brett Gelman (Murray) plenty of scenes to steal, introduced the series’ first LGBTQ character (Maya Hawke’s Robin, an insta-fave) and just about wrecked us with their poignant depiction of the one thing scarier than the Mind Flayer: change.
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Image Credit: Courtesy of HBO 7. EUPHORIA
The freshman season of HBO’s high school drama earned headlines for its flagrant nudity, its depiction of drug use and its ability to make parents everywhere worry about what their teens really were up to. But the series also adroitly opened up a conversation about toxic masculinity, transgenderism and the modern teenager’s embattled quest for identity. Plus, it cemented something we’d long suspected: Zendaya is one of the best actresses of any age working today.
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Image Credit: Courtesy of FX 6. POSE
After a fabulous freshman season, FX’s uplifting LGBTQ chronicle got even bolder and more confident in Season 2, sharpening its focus on Blanca and her band of merry misfits. (Stan and Patty were gone, and we didn’t even miss them.) Billy Porter was fantastic, of course, but Pose‘s cast has now blossomed into a full ensemble, with Indya Moore, Angelica Ross and Mj Rodriguez delivering series-best work, as well. Driving it all, though, was the show’s big, beating heart, taking stories of unbearable hardship and finding within them an unmistakable glimmer of hope.
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Image Credit: Courtesy of HBO 5. CHERNOBYL
HBO’s five-hour miniseries managed to make a tragedy that is 33 years and 5,000 miles away seem in-the-moment resonant. By intimately visiting all manner of involved individuals, Chernobyl invited us to appreciate the desperate, and sometimes unwittingly suicidal, actions that were taken to keep the accident from being even worse. It was devastatingly bleak at times, to be sure, but by finding the human element to something so huge, this mini found its narrative power.
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Image Credit: Courtesy of HBO 4. WATCHMEN
It all could’ve gone so badly for Damon Lindelof, a dyed-in-the-wool fan of the seminal DC Comics series, who chose to pay homage to the source material by creating his own story within its fictional world. But his leap landed as surely as Adrian Veidt did on the moon, servicing both Watchmen newbies (with the tale of Angela Abar, played by the flawless Regina King) and diehards (via the expertly woven threads concerning Doctor Manhattan & Co.). Compact, compelling and often delightfully confusing, HBO’s Watchmen is everything we never knew we wanted from a superhero story.
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The One Where the Sun Comes Out
Image Credit: Courtesy of CBS All Access 3. THE GOOD FIGHT
In its third season, the CBS All Access drama cemented its status as one of television’s boldest and most unpredictable series. In addition to introducing a Roy Cohn-esque lawyer played by a scenery-devouring Michael Sheen, the Good Wife spinoff continued to tear down its fourth wall in ways that enhanced the narrative (i.e. the immensely clever and super informative Schoolhouse Rock-like musical interludes). But it was the series’ continued obsession with all things Trump, as well as its searing exploration of race, gender and sexual misconduct in the workplace, that made this season’s Fight next-level great.
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Image Credit: Courtesy of HBO 2. SUCCESSION
Season 1 of HBO’s fascinatingly dysfunctional family portrait was nearly a comedy, but Season 2 was definitely a drama. While it still had plenty of comedic zing — see: Boar on the Floor; “L to the O.G.” — things got awfully dark, too, as Logan Roy’s command of his sprawling media empire was threatened by enemies foreign and domestic. Creator Jesse Armstrong and his writers upped their game as the Roys jockeyed for position while bracing for disaster, and the cast cemented its case as TV’s best ensemble, top to bottom. (Bonus points for delivering the year’s most tantalizing end-of-season cliffhanger.)
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Image Credit: Courtesy of Netflix 1. UNBELIEVABLE
This Netflix drama’s opening episode dared you to continue watching, exposing us as it did to the plight of a teen rape victim whose tragic-but-shaky testimony only elicited side-eye from the cops, and even earned her condemnation. Yet stuck with it we did, and the reward was a compelling tale of two Colorado detectives who went from being perfect strangers to slightly imperfect partners in crimefighting. With universally heralded performances from principals Kaitlyn Dever, Merritt Wever and Toni Collette, this eight-episode binge emerged as the year’s most engaging, accessible and emotionally wrenching drama.
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