Some new things on a television screen I loved in 2018. Twelve items magically compressed into 10.
1. ‘LODGE 49’ (AMC)
The eccentric South Bay saga, in which a sidelined surfer falls in with the crowd at a local Shriners-type hall, is full of mystery and magic adventure and feeling, with memorable characters in circumstances that somehow manage to be ordinary and fantastic at once.
2. ‘RANDOM ACTS OF FLYNESS’ (HBO) / Joe Pera Talks With You (Adult Swim)
Art television. “Random Acts,” indie filmmaker and artist Terence Nance’s exuberant, exquisite variety-show magazine of African American life and culture is dense yet fleet, political but mystical and as playful with form as anything outside of Adult Swim. Joe Pera’s dry, luminous miniature about an awkward middle-school music teacher in love with the rocks, people and breakfasts of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, is actually on Adult Swim but sweeter than its rowdy stablemates, a supposedly informational series that really just wants to tell a story.
3. ‘THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT’ (ABC)
Clever and credible, the straight-ahead sitcom I watch weekly. (Among ABC family comedies, this is the one where the family is Irish-Catholic.) Mary McCormack is the house-smart dry wit managing husband Michael Cudlitz and a variety pack of eight boys in early 1970s suburban Los Angeles.