While television offered more than enough escape from the anxieties and outrages of life in 2017, it also found plenty of contextual and thematic relevance to kick around — sometimes intentional, sometimes just coincidental.
All I know is I’ve never had a better time doing my job, or a harder time picking my yearly favorites. Here they are:
1. “Twin Peaks: The Return” (Showtime) I couldn’t have been more skeptical about letting David Lynch (and his co-creator Mark Frost) run wild for an 18-hour sequel to their groundbreaking yet befuddlingly complex 1990 series. Now I’m a believer. Some say this crazy and exquisitely realized work counts as Lynch’s best film, but I claim it as a triumph for TV — surprisingly linear in its serialized plot, yet mind-blowingly spot-on in its rumination on such subjects as evil, atomic weaponry and the very nature of existence. Years from now, museums will show it on a continuous loop.
2. “The Handmaid’s Tale” (Hulu) This unforgettably chilling adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s novel arrived with disturbing resonance in an American culture contending with baby-faced nationalists, presidential propaganda and threats to women’s rights. In any other head space, it would simply be a terrific TV show — with a career-defining lead performance from Elisabeth Moss. In 2017, however, it was something more vital, as it seeded the story with added hints of a resistance afoot in Gilead, the theocratically fascist country once known as the USA.