It’s the end of a fantastic year of TV, and the Lorehounds are back with our annual rankings of the Top Ten Shows of the Year! Overall, we saw a tremendous amount of quality content coming out of the various studios and streamers. Whether you wanted fantasy, science fiction, or prestige drama, 2023 had something to offer you.
Ranking our favorite shows is not an easy task. John ranks primarily on “vibes,” which is his tongue-in-cheek way of saying his criteria are somewhere between his personal enjoyment, the originality of the show, and the quality of the production.
David takes a more scientific approach to his ranking system. He combines the impact on the industry, the production value, and his overall enjoyment to rank things A through F, with the occasional “S-tier” show surpassing them all.
We’ve been so grateful for the growth of our community over the past year. We recently crossed the milestone of 100 paid Patreon subscribers. To celebrate the year with them, we invited our subscribers to submit their own lists of top shows for the year. Our resident data wizards Gregsaw, DaveyMac, and Subzero volunteered to make some beautiful graphics showing the overall community rankings of the shows. They even aggregated the data to put together a ranking of networks for the year. You can find the public website for community rankings here [https://bit.ly/2023LorehoundsCommunityTop10]. A huge thanks to our data wizard trio for handling this project for us!
And now to the main event: our rankings for 2023. As a reminder, you can listen to a two-hour conversation on this topic right now on our public and patreon podcast feeds. We talked at length about our reasonings for including (and omitting) shows on our lists.
| David’s List | John’s List | Community List |
| 1. The Bear | 1. Mrs. Davis | 1. The Last of Us |
| 2. Barry | 2. Succession | 2. Foundation |
| 3. Succession | 3. The Bear | 3. Silo |
| 4. The Last of Us | 4. Foundation | 4. The Bear |
| 5. Foundation | 5. The Last of Us | 5. Loki |
| 6. Fargo | 6. Barry | 6. The Wheel of Time |
| 7. Loki | 7. Loki | 7. Ted Lasso |
| 8. The Gold | 8. The Fall of the House of Usher | 8. Mrs. Davis |
| 9. Slow Horses | 9. What We Do In The Shadows | 9. Yellowjackets |
| 10. Full Circle | 10. Silo | 10. Ahsoka |
Perhaps the most interesting part of the data analysis comes from the network rankings. A few years ago it would have been a shock to see Apple TV+ sit at the top of this list. After 2023, with hits like Foundation and Ted Lasso, Apple TV+ has cemented itself as a streaming staple.
-
- Apple TV+
- HBO
- Disney+
- Hulu
- Prime Video
- Netflix
- Peacock
- Showtime
- FX
- Paramount+
With so much great TV this year, we had to compare notes on what we missed. David’s biggest miss was John’s number one show of the year, Mrs. Davis. The community also picked Mrs. Davis as its collective biggest miss. John’s biggest miss of the year was Gen V, the spin-off of The Boys.
Our guilty pleasures also got a shoutout on the podcast. This category was reserved for shows we loved in our leisure time that didn’t have a chance at making one of our lists. David enjoyed both 100’ Wave and Reboot. John picked School Spirits, and the community could not settle on a winner. You can see all the submissions in the Tableau chart.
To close out the year, we looked ahead to 2024 and beyond with our most anticipated shows. John is looking forward to Severance, which the Lorehounds will be covering jointly with Steve and Anthony from Properly Howard. The community is also looking forward to having a waffle party in Severance season 2. David is most excited for the return of our mutual top show of 2022, Andor.
If you want more details on why we chose the shows we did, tune into our December Second Breakfast episode, which will have the full discussion of our favorite shows of the year. We have a great 2024 planned, starting off with a season-wrap-up podcast on Fargo season 5, followed by coverage of True Detective: Night Country, Severance, House of the Dragon, The Rings of Power, and more.
Happy holidays to all who celebrate and happy watching in the New Year!
-David & John