Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
With viewers, creative talent and venture capital making the most visible movement yet from traditional TV to streaming video on demand (SVOD) services, streaming video was the dominant TV story of 2016. Much of what I watched — and the majority of this Top 16 list — came streaming into my devices without ever having been available on a traditional broadcast or cable network.
The evidence of the shift is everywhere you look.
U.S. bundled TV providers, which includes satellite, cable and telco providers, are on track to lose more than 1 million subscribers this year. CBS All Access and Showtime both surpassed 1 million subscribers. Amazon Channels grew into a full-blown platform with nearly 100 streaming-video services that subscribers can individually add. Acorn TV, Seeso, Comic-Con HQ and CuriosityStream each programmed as many hours of original programming as a premium-cable network. FilmStruck, Tribeca Shortlist and Sundance Now filled their catalogs with SVOD-exclusive foreign, classic, indie and documentary films and carved out their own distinct identities. Sling TV and Playstation Vue continued to evolve their lineups and interfaces and DirecTV Now joined the bundled-TV-on-an-app category at the end of November.
Netflix, though, has continued to be the category-defining SVOD service, adding 4.3 million U.S. subscribers over the last year and producing the biggest list of original shows and films of any network — broadcast, cable, premium cable or streaming — on TV. And with 47.5 million subscribers in an economy with 92.5 million broadband households, Netflix still has room to grow.
The CW App
Sitting right on the fence between broadcast delivery and a niche programming, The CW has become a powerhouse delivery vehicle for its growing DC Comics universe and serialized dramedies like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Jane the Virgin. In 2016, the network put the whole operation on an app. And it’s free.
Samantha Bee
While the news media spent the year figuring out whether to cover Donald Trump as a candidate or a reality TV star — and never figured it out — the late-night comedy world pegged him from the beginning as an insecure, narcissistic, approval-seeking, dishonest braggart with little to no understanding about foreign or domestic policy. John Oliver, Seth Meyers and Trevor Noah held Trump to searing scrutiny (and ridicule), but Samantha Bee on TBS’s Full Frontal did it with a voice and conviction not seen since Jon Stewart left The Daily Show. She also co-created The Detour for TBS with husband Jason Jones, which gave her two of the funniest new shows of 2016.
British TV
For a country that’s one-sixth the U.S. population, the U.K. sent more than it’s share of good TV to this side of the pond in 2016. The Crown on Netflix and Fleabag on Amazon are this year’s most obvious premium imports, but there are plenty more from whence they came: Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency on BBC America, Catastrophe on Amazon, The Night Manager on AMC, Flowers on Seeso, Poldark, Downton Abbey and The Great British Baking Show on PBS, Happy Valley and The Fall on Netflix, and Agatha Raisin, Brief Encounters and Capital on Acorn TV.
Marvel's Dark Side
In the span of two years, Marvel’s dark side has gone from concept to multi-franchise universe on Netflix with Daredevil, Jessica Jones, and Luke Cage and will continue expanding with Iron Fist, The Defenders and The Punisher. In 2016, Luke Cage and Season 2 of Daredevil filled an ambitious 26 hours with crime, punishment and the deep interiority of character work that has made Marvel’s New York underworld so compelling.
'Bo Burnham: Make Happy'
In what was probably the best year ever for stand-up comedy specials, Bo Burnham’s Make Happy on Netflix is the one I still can’t get out of my head. In a genre dominated today by personal storytelling, Burnham has moved on to tomorrow — Los Vegas-style stagecraft that builds an emotional connection through performed emotion rather than confession. In “Can’t Handle This” (above), the special’s Kanye-esque closer, Burnham delivers stand-up lines through a musical performance that you’ll feel in your bones.
Donald Glover
FX’s Atlanta wasn’t the show I thought I wanted from Donald Glover or that I would have guessed he would make. (I would have been happy with a Troy and Abed in the Morning spinoff after Community ended.) What Glover made, though, with Atlanta was a filmic, character-driven masterpiece. He created and stars in the series as an aspiring talent manager but suffused himself comfortably enough into the third-tier Atlanta hip-hop world to disappear for entire episodes. You miss him and you don’t. Also, the show’s ubiquity on end-of-year favorites lists are great promotion for “Awaken My Love!,” his third Childish Gambino album — a lush, Prince-tinged R&B soundscape — that dropped in early December to broadly favorable reviews and wore a grove into my iPhone. Don’t quit your day job, Donald Glover. Either of them.
Surprise TV
This was a year of well-kept TV secrets. In January, Louis C.K. premiered his series Horace and Pete with Emmy-friendly stars like Jessica Lange and Alan Alda on his own website and with no advance press. (It’s now airing on Hulu.) In April, Beyoncé’s remarkable film Lemonade aired on HBO only a week after the network announced it. In July, Netflix did only a smidge of advance press on Stranger Things, and it become the TV phenomenon of the summer. For Thanksgiving week, TBS quietly binge-dropped mystery/comedy Search Party on its streaming app, and the series has been a critically praised hit.
Seeso
NBCUniversal’s Seeso is a go-to streaming service for NBC comedies — 30 Rock, Parks & Recreation, Saturday Night Live, etc. — and is building a roster of new shows in a big range of comedic styles. Bajillion Dollar Propertie$ is a spoof of Bravo-style reality shows, Flowers is a British dark comedy and Take My Wife (Episode 1 above) is the mostly true love story about comics Cameron Esposito and Rhea Butcher. All three are reason enough to try the service out, and all will be back for new seasons in 2017.
'BoJack Horseman'
It is unconscionable that the Television Academy failed to recognize Netflix’s BoJack Horseman with an Emmy nomination for either of its first two seasons, and it would be unforgivable for Emmy voters to ignore Season 3. BoJack’s rise from washed-up TV star to self-loathing Oscar contender was at times experimental (an episode without dialogue) and bleak (a minor character dying of a drug overdose), but it was always smart. If your idea of a talking horse is Mr. Ed, you’re missing one of the best shows on TV.
John Early
In March, John Early stole the show in his episode of Netflix’s The Characters, playing a self-involved jerk at a dinner party, a mouth-breathing bro on a first date, and a brassy female comic named Vicky (above) talking about “her denim.” In November, he delivered a lacerating take on millennial self-involvement in TBS’s Search Party that the Television Academy should not forget come Emmy nominations time.
'Togetherness'
Dramedy Togetherness finished its two-season run this year, and I was genuinely devastated that HBO pulled the plug on it. Maybe it just got lost in the sea of shows about depressed, upper-middle-class 40-somethings with family drama in Silver Lake — an oddly specific group that includes Transparent, Casual and You’re the Worst — but Mark and Jay Duplass’s Togetherness had a magical combination of big moments, small moments, absorbing realism and Melanie Lynskey, whose return to TV I will eagerly await.
Member Berries
“I loved Bionic Man,” says one of the talking berries in this fall’s Season 20 premiere of South Park. “Member Spock?” asks another. Those clusters of talking “member berries” were the soothing, nostalgic embodiment of Donald Trump’s “Make American Great Again” campaign slogan. “Member Reagan?” They hearken to simpler times when American values meant something. “Member when they’re weren’t so many Mexicans?” They remind us that things were better then. “Member Chewbacca?” They remind us that we used to have a national culture. “Member when marriage was just between a man and a woman?” This was the Archie Bunker election. The Baby Boomer swan song. If you were straight, white, male, Protestant and American-born, those were the days.
'Difficult People'
Julie Klausner and Billy Eichner on Hulu’s Difficult People are the Waldorf and Statler of Peak TV. They bring a 30 Rock joke density and an Absolutely Fabulous bite to razor-sharp commentary on pop culture. Difficult People is forward-thinking enough to cast a trans woman (Shakina Nayfack) — and make her a 9/11 truther — but not afraid to skewer Hollywood types for fawningly praising Klausner in a TV role (above) because they thought she was mentally retarded.
'The Path'
The Scientology brand has had a rough go of late between Alex Gibney’s 2015 HBO documentary Going Clear and A&E’s new docuseries Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath, but Hulu’s it’s-not-about-Scientology-wink-wink drama series The Path twisted the knife by showing how mind-warping groupthink can be in a closed society. Aaron Paul, Hugh Dancy and Michelle Monaghan were the year’s weirdest and most riveting love triangle.
Everything on TBS
In my January 2016 interview with TBS original programming chief Brett Weitz, I commented that I was not a huge fan of sad-coms, and he said this: “These depressive comedies have a cool factor, but for my taste and longevity wise, what we want to do is make people laugh.” And wow did TBS deliver. Full Frontal with Samantha Bee struck, Angie Tribeca spit-taked, The Detour slapped, Wrecked romped, Search Party found, and People of Earth ascended. All great. All renewed. And they all made me laugh.
'Lady Dynamite'
The most confidently bizarre thing on TV — and my favorite show of the year — is Netflix’s Lady Dynamite. Creators Pam Brady (South Park) and Mitchell Hurwitz (Arrested Development) built a manic, surreal world for comic Maria Bamford to tell a very personal story that fuses farce, parody, romantic comedy, screwball comedy, melodrama, biopic and really good drugs into a delicious fruitcake. It’s about life and love and career and comedy and mental illness, and there’s nothing else like it on television.
Scott Porch writes about the streaming-media industry for Decider and is also a contributing writer for Playboy. You can follow him on Twitter @ScottPorch.
