The 12 Best TV Shows of 2019, So Far

Its already been a great year for TV—from paradigm-shifting period miniseries like When They See Us and Chernobyl to imaginative, provocative debuts like I Think You Should Leave, Pen15, and Ramy. Here are 12 shows from the first half of the year that are worth visiting and revisiting, as chosen by V.F. TV critic Sonia Saraiya, with contributions from chief critic Richard Lawson.

Barrys second season is my favorite TV of the year so far. This tense, dark comedy from Bill Hader follows the hitman turned actor as he learns, with painfully slow awareness, the past cant be murdered, buried, and forgotten as easily as a Chechen gang member or inconvenient former friend. Season one offered Barry the illusion of a new life, one entirely separate from his bloody present. In season two, it feels as if the illusion has sprung a leak—and the sins of the past are pouring in through every open crack. Somehow, the show is also deeply funny—terribly, horribly so, as if tragedy skipped a step and went straight to farce. The unique excellence of the second season is how adroitly Hader and co-creator Alec Berg find ways to raise the stakes for Barry while keeping the shows tone darkly amused. That control alone is a baffling display of talent, one that so many other television comedies—even prestige-y ones—fail to get right. Supporting performers Henry Winkler, Stephen Root, Anthony Carrigan, and Sarah Goldberg can make you giggle at a gunshot. —S.S.

Chernobyl, HBOs five-part miniseries, is not just excellent television; its paradigm-shifting historical storytelling, the kind of tale that alters, ever so subtly, the texture of the real world. The series, from Craig Mazin, dramatizes the 1986 nuclear meltdown at the Chernobyl Power Plant—a Level 7 nuclear disaster that set loose seven tons of nuclear fuel into the atmosphere. Invisible radiation and Soviet propaganda are not inherently easy topics to dramatize, but Chernobyl uses the unknown to gripping effect, turning the dread of not knowing—and widespread apparatchik denial—into slow-burning, autocratic horror. The scale and magnitude of the disaster, coupled with the science fiction-y quality of radiation and the repression of the Soviet regime, make for potent drama, led by Mad Men alum Jared Harris. A plus: The series has inspired a resurgence of interest in the disaster, here and abroad. Dreadful history has rarely been so captivating. —S.S.

These two Comedy Central half-hours don't feel much alike—ones set at a fictional megacorporation, and the other takes place in the wake of a teen stars meteoric rise to fame. But they share a lot of satisfying, snarky DNA: ruthless cynicism, sharp references, and lovable but shallow protagonists. In The Other Two, Heléne Yorke and Drew Tarver star as the older siblings of breakout sensation Chase Dreams (Case Walker)—a development that gives them an undignified avenue to finally obtaining their own fame, if theyre willing to exploit their little brother in the process. In Corporate, now in its second season, an ensemble cast from different tiers of the same massive bureaucracy comes together for a pitch-black workplace comedy about surviving todays corporate culture. I need more episodes of both, immediately. *—S.S.*other t

Between the Jumpsuit, the Hot Priest, and “hair is everything,” the second season of Phoebe Waller-Bridge's Fleabag has become a sensation. The unnamed lead, played by Waller-Bridge, flirts and lies to the camera as she becomes wrapped up in passion for Andrew Scott, a priest with a drinking problem and a smoldering gaze. Deeper, more intricately wrought, and even cheekier than the first season, these six short episodes buzz with life. One-on-one conversations become electric, intimate battlegrounds; each characters emotional nuance is both astonishing and hard to keep up with. The characters are so well-drawn, and the performers so skillful, that each frame is resonant with their interpersonal friction—and laden with their unspoken shame. Fleabag is so keyed into what makes us rattle and tremble that it can turn a cup of tea into an earthquake. The shows lightning pace makes its nuances flash by almost too quickly to see, but theyre very much there, revealing a second season that layers deep belly laughs with tender vulnerability. Its a joyous roller coaster, mining the unstable balance between high-stakes drama and outrageous laughter for a gripping crescendo that can be watched again and again. —S.S.

Sam Rockwell and Michelle Williams scintillate in FXs fragmented biopic miniseries Fosse/Verdon, an exploration of the fruitful, tumultuous collaboration between director and choreographer Bob Fosse and his third wife, Broadway star Gwen Verdon. Fosses artistic legacy is the stuff of legends—but marred, rightfully, by his atrocious, exploitative behavior toward women. Verdon, meanwhile, has become a historical footnote, even though, as Fosse/Verdon shows us, she often played midwife to Fosses labors—translating his moods, refining his vision, dancing his demanding parts, and bringing him the purchased rights to Chicago. The time-jumping, genre-defying mini uses the razzle-dazzle of show business to illuminate what the characters would rather hide, while crisscrossing through Verdons and Fosses intertwined lives through marriage, divorce, parenthood, and the taxing, unrewarding, but vital work of artistic creation. —S.S.

I Think You Should Leave

To think that I Think You Should Leave star and co-creator Tim Robinson only lasted one season as a Saturday Night Live cast member! He stayed on as a writer for a few more years—but in his Netflix series, Robinson is allowed to show the full, crazy tilt of his comedy. A deliciously absurdist sketch show, I Think You Should Leave drags comedy snobs down into a world of farts and grunts and silly songs. But it does so in a way that still feels like crucial social satire, Robinson skewering the politesse and insecurity of our age with a loving but not unforgiving exactness. To single out one sketch is to ignore a dozen brilliant others, but the bit that has Robinson choking as he pretends all is well so he can impress a famous fellow guest at a dinner party is so dark and wonderful and perfectly pitched that it makes laughter feel new again. Theres been no series so far this year that provokes such visceral, cathartic uproar; I Think You Should Leave is kind in that way, giving us permission to feel giddy joy at a time so bereft of it. —R.L.

Love Island

Whats great about ITV2s sexy-singles-in-almost-paradise reality series is that it never gets too mean, too drunk, or too stupid to look like an American dating show. Instead, the Brits and Scots and Irishwomen of Love Island are pleasant house cats, chasing patches of Mallorca sun as they navigate contrived relationships with a disarming friendliness. There is a read of the show, which airs just about every day in the summer, that places it in grimmer context: Its about the very real horrors of straight coupling, just reduced to a punchy, heat-baked silliness. Regardless of how one watches it, though, Love Island remains an insidiously comestible treat, a surprisingly sexless come-on that is way better at teasing out fascinating details than its U.S. counterparts could ever be. An arresting character study of vanity gone to prune, Love Island is maybe the only show on this list that demands a companion cocktail. —R.L.

A comedy from duo Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle inspired by their uncomfortable middle school years, Pen15 is a period piece in which Erskine and Konkle play versions of themselves circa the year 2000—but everyone else is cast to their age. Konkle, 32, bats eyes across the cafeteria at a boy half her size, while Erskine, also 32, spends an agonizing episode trying to figure out how her clitoris works. Konkle and Erskine resurrect turn-of-the-millennium puberty with uncanny detail: cargo pants, tiny butterfly clips, inexplicable enthusiasm for a B/*/Witched concert, and the slow static of a dial-up connection. They so thoroughly inhabit their roles—Erskine in an awful bowl-cut wig, Konkle with two symmetrical, much-handled wisps of hair framing her face—that its frequently easy to forget theyre not real middle schoolers. Its as if both women arRead More – Source