The Best New TV Shows of 2017

Rather than weigh in yet again on the bloody brutality of Game of Thrones or the continued biting humor of Veep, our Best TV of 2017 list focuses on new series, from a creepy crime drama and a surprisingly brilliant mockumentary to a Margaret Atwood adaptation and, well, that other Margaret Atwood adaptation. With many different genres and platforms represented—streaming shows make up a healthy chunk of the list—we think this is a thorough sampling of the vast and varied landscape of television at the moment. In alphabetical order, here are Vanity Fair’s best new TV shows of 2017.

Alias Grace

With seven on-screen adaptations this year alone, Stephen King may have been the author most dominating the pop-culture landscape in 2017—but Canada’s Margaret Atwood wasn’t far behind. Though not as splashy as Hulu’s awards-season coup, The Handmaid’s Tale,Alias Grace made its way to Netflix for six episodes of spellbinding historical murder. Don’t let the high collars and low hems put you off: this isn’t your mother’s period piece. The show and book follow Grace Marks (Sarah Gadon__), a real-life convicted 19th-century Canadian murderess who nonetheless keeps both the audience and her fictional interrogator, the Atwood-created Dr. Simon Jordan (Edward Holcroft), guessing as to her innocence and mental state. The mini-series—made for the CBC, adapted by Canadian triple threat Sarah Polley (Away from Her), directed by Mary Harron (American Psycho—so she knows her way around an ax murder)—may not contain the genre elements of Handmaid, but its psycho-sexual themes are classic feminist Atwood. Polley has also packed this series with Canadian luminaries, including Anna Paquin and married stage legends (and Slings and Arrows stars) Paul Gross and Martha Burns. A compelling watch for lovers of Canadian history, period dramas, and seductive, morally ambiguous leads. — J.R.

American Vandal

A mockumentary starring a YouTube celebrity, about a juvenile straight-boy prank involving drawings of penises? Absolutely not! That was my initial reaction upon hearing about Dan Perrault and Tony Yacenda’s Netflix series: immediate revulsion and annoyance. But colleagues and friends urged me to give the show a look, and I’m so happy I listened to them. American Vandal, which lovingly and dead-on accurately skewers the tones and rhythms of true-crime series like Serial, was maybe my favorite new show of the year. It’s exquisitely observed and executed, from a sprawling, dazzlingly choreographed party scene to its more meta moments of self-reflection. The mystery is intricately crafted and gracefully unspooled. And the cast—including YouTuber Jimmy Tatro as a misunderstood ne’er-do-well accused of a mildly heinous crime and Tyler Alvarez as the A.V. club geek determined to crack the case—is a terrific ensemble of young actors, beautifully embodying characters written with loving specificity. These kids are goofs and screw-ups and nerds and brown-nosers and basics, but all are rendered with a texture and decency that go well past cliched high-school stereotype. Which makes it a strangely pleasant, heartening show to watch. American Vandal is filled with a resonant bonhomie, and ends on a note that is, well, downright moving. What an exciting surprise. —R.L.

Big Little Lies

With a shortened season of Game of Thrones, no Westworld, no American Crime Story, and American Horror Story and The Walking Dead on the wane, 2017 was a year at once crowded with viewing options and bereft of anything that felt like a true week-in, week-out prestige cable event. Except, that is, for Big Little Lies—the seven-episode, star-studded murder mystery that wrapped viewers up in the highly dramatic first-world problems of the well-to-do moms of Monterey, California. That Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Laura Dern, Shailene Woodley, and Zoë Kravitz turned in incredible performances should come as no surprise; the female leads have six Oscar nominations and two wins among them. That director Jean-Marc Vallée (Wild,Dallas Buyers Club) would deliver visually arresting, cinematic TV is also unsurprising. And that writer, producer, and TV veteran David E. Kelley would elevate Liane Moriarty’s juicy beach read into something much denser also feels like a foregone conclusion. But despite all the marquee names involved, Big Little Lies still exceeded expectations as the “smaller” dramas and internal conflicts of women feeling unfulfilled by the expected role of mother or wife jockeyed for space alongside the more brutal externalized violence of domestic abuse, sexual assault, and, ultimately, murder. It was a season of TV so delicious that even those who loved it are unsure if they want to return to the lushly appointed homes of the Pacific coast for a second season. How can you top perfection? Why would you try? —J.R.

Dear White People

Based on Justin Simien’s eponymous 2014 film, Dear White People is a complicated success. The Netflix series balances many tones—satire, seriousness, romance—all while pushing an urgent message forward, about black students in higher education, and about the larger failings of America’s racial dialogue. The kids at Winchester University—played beautifully by Logan Browning, DeRon Horton, the stellar Antoinette Robertson, and others—deal with plenty of familiar college drama: sex and social stress and all that. But they also have to face administrative systems selectively deaf to their protests, and the persistent threat of police brutality. Those hard, depressing realities fascinatingly commingle with the soapier stuff on Dear White People. It’s a sharp, engrossing collage, timely and talkative and full of youthful energy. —R.L.

Godless

For all of Netflix’s crowing about how this mini-series is a Western centered on women, there sure are a lot of men leading the story. Jack O’Connell—finally clearly stating his case for stardom to American audiences—plays an outlaw on the run from his old gang, led by a mean and saturnine Jeff Daniels. That great hangdog Scoot McNairy plays a former sharpshooter sheriff who’s losing his eyesight, while little Thomas Brodie-Sangster, mostly grown up, is his cocksure but sweet deputy. That’s a bunch of guys! But near about everyone else—including Michelle Dockery as a flinty homesteader and the great Merritt Wever as a lesbian who used to be married to the mayor of her small town—is a lady. Godless tells the story of a bunch of bad dudes invading a community mostly populated by women (a mining accident killed all the husbands and fathers and sons) and laying waste to it—until the women stand up to defend themselves in the series’s rousing, bullet-riddled finale. I don’t think Godless—created by Scott Frank and produced by Steven Soderbergh—should pat itself on the back too much; despite its telegraphed feminism, it is ultimately the tale of a lone rebel cowboy. But what’s good about Godless is really good: a gorgeously filmed, finely acted tweak on a well-worn genre that also graciously honors many of the form’s classic tropes. —R.L.

The Handmaid’s Tale

It’s difficult to overestimate what Hulu’s adaptation of the classic dystopian Margaret Atwood novel did for both TV and the cultural landscape this year. Show-runner Bruce Miller could never have predicted, when he started production back in 2016, how this 30-plus-year-old Canadian novel would become a warped mirror for the relationship between American women and the current administration. Costume designer Ane Crabtree couldn’t have known how iconic her take on the red robes and white bonnets of Atwood’s handmaids would become. The show boosted under-the-radar profiles (director Reed Morano is now one of the hotter commodities in Hollywood), single-handedly turned Hulu into a serious original-programming contender, and, at long last, landed Elisabeth Moss her much-deserved Emmy.

Morano’s hyper-saturated colors and Moss’s intense, interior performance turned The Handmaid’s Tale into both a chilling harbinger of our potential authoritarian future and a soothing balm for those grappling with the early days of the Trump presidency, reminding them that at least our world is not that bad . . . yet. But perhaps the trickiest element Handmaid had to pull off was opening up the world of a cherished novel in order to create enough material for multiple potential seasons of a TV series. It’s not a task Miller took lightly: “People have sections of this book tattooed on their bodies. People have spent their entire academic careers studying parts of this book. This is as sacred a text as you can be touching,” he told Vanity Fair back in January. The proof of Miller’s experiment won’t be known until Season 2, but it’s safe to say, with a mountain of Emmys at home, that he didn’t defile Atwood’s sacred text . . . yet. —J.R.

Legion

Much like the ever-expanding world of comic-book films, TV has been flooded with shows adapted from or inspired by popular superheroes and villains. But as we all know, more is not necessarily better—and 2017 has been a particularly abysmal year for new comic-book shows. Inhumans,The Gifted,Iron Fist,The Defenders, and The Punisher all came and went with little wit, heart, or artistic vision to recommend them. But standing out from the pack is FX’s Legion, a hyper-stylized take on a familiar mutant tale from Fargo show-runner Noah Hawley. In an X-Men spin-off world focusing on David Haller (Dan Stevens)—a potentially schizophrenic, potentially superpowered young man—reality is constantly bent to the breaking point. And while Haller’s father may be one of the world’s most famous mutants (Professor X, the Patrick Stewart version to be precise), Legion is unhinged, in every sense of the word, from the on-screen X-Men legacy that came before it. Anchored by Stevens, who is at once dangerously charismatic, menacing, and wholly sympathetic, Legion pushes the boundaries of coherent storytelling with gonzo performances from Aubrey Plaza and Jemaine Clement. That those two find themselves thrown together by the end of Season 1 portends a very explosive Season 2. Trust in Hawley, who—in both Fargo and Legion—loves to take audiences to the breaking point of surreality before pulling them back in with relatable character drama. —J.R.

The Mick

Kaitlin Olson breaks away from the It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia pack to star as Mickey, a booze-addled mess suddenly tasked with raising three spoiled kids when her wealthy sister and her husband are hauled off to prison for financial crimes. But the tone of The Mick is not too far from Philadelphia, biting and caustic and maybe a little sociopathic. Olson sells it beautifully, as does the rest of the cast, particularly Sofia Black-D’Elia, Thomas Barbusca, and wee Jack Stanton as Mickey’s new charges. The show has fun skewering class and pretension and various social codes—an episode about gender fluidity is handled with calm, blunt correctness—but it’s also happy to just romp around in the amoral muck these selfish, conniving characters make. The Mick is lively and laugh-out-loud funny, a circus of lovable awfulness that’s bright and bitter in just the right proportion. —R.L.

Mindhunter

Between returning favorites like Master of None,Stranger Things, and Orange Is the New Black, as well as hyped-up new premieres like the crossover Marvel event The Defenders, there was no shortage of hotly anticipated Netflix series on the radar this year. But perhaps the biggest (and maybe the only) upside of Netflix’s too-much-TV model is that, occasionally, a series flies under the radar, catching both TV critics and binge-watchers by surprise. American Vandal was one such show—and the very next month, Netflix unleashed another: the engrossing 70s-set serial killer drama Mindhunter. Perhaps it’s a true testament to the state of Peak TV that a show both executive produced and partially directed by David Fincher and based on the F.B.I. profiler who inspired a Silence of the Lambs character, among others, could sneak up on us. But as with Stranger Things last year, part of the electric joy of Mindhunter was in the shared discovery.

Beyond that shared discovery, though, lurked an increasingly addictive tale of boy-scout agent Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff at his most apple-cheeked) falling deeper and deeper into the world and mindset of the men who inspire him to coin the term “serial killer.” Ford’s warped journey through the looking glass is perfectly balanced by the steadiness of colleagues Bill Tench (a dry Holt McCallany) and Wendy Carr (the brilliant Anna Torv). Mindhunter tautly blends fact with fiction—actors as real-life killers make several mesmerizing cameos—and police procedural with prestige character-based drama. —J.R.

Ozark

I wasn’t supposed to like this show. I’d had enough antiheroes, enough small-town crime (didn’t Justified just end?), and maybe enough Jason Bateman. And yet Ozark—starring Bateman, who also directed four episodes—is such an addictive good time, a clever and suspenseful descent into ruin that, from some angles, could be seen as a yuppie riff on Breaking Bad. Bateman’s bored accountant-turned-mob money launderer on the lam is sneaky and resourceful, and it’s a thrill to watch him wriggle his way out of one terrible jam after another. Bateman is excellent at playing that kind of desperate quick-thinker. And as his disillusioned but tenacious wife, Laura Linney is a treat, tearing into the juiciest role she’s (sadly) had in years. Ozark isn’t high art, but it is masterful entertainment—a sly and wicked thriller with just enough pathos to deliver the occasional punch to the gut. —R.L.

Get Vanity Fair’s HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Joanna RobinsonJoanna Robinson is a Hollywood writer covering TV and film for VanityFair.com.Richard LawsonRichard Lawson is a columnist for Vanity Fair's Hollywood, reviewing film and television and covering entertainment news and gossip. He lives in New York City.