Charlie Brooker wishes Death To 2020
Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Sunday, December 27. All times are Eastern.
Top pick
Death To 2020 (Netflix, 3:01 a.m., premiere): It’s been quite a year, wouldn’t you say?
Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones (of Black Mirror) return to their comedy-special roots with this flip-of-the-bird to the year that was. Look for Zack Handlen’s review of this special, which features Samuel L. Jackson, Hugh Grant, Kumail Nanjiani, Tracey Ullman, Samson Kayo, Lisa Kudrow, Diane Morgan, Leslie Jones, Cristin Milioti, Joe Keery, and Laurence Fishburne.
Wild cards
We’ve reached the point in this long, long year when most of the broadcast options are either a) festive or b) repeats. So for the rest of 2020, we’ll be highlighting some of those festive things, but also some great shows or episodes from the year you might have missed.
The Masked Dancer (Fox, 8 p.m., series premiere): This spinoff feels like an appropriate addition to 2020. The dancers, they are masked, and the celebs will never not be at it again.
Pen15 (Hulu): “It’s easy to poke fun at the exceedingly awkward pubescent experience, an era that delivers the kind of uncertainty and suffering that middle-school pariahs Maya (Maya Erskine) and Anna (Anna Konkle) endure by the pound. Finding ways to balance said suffering—an accessible and bottomless well of comedy—with moments of growth, emotional depth, and the occasional social triumph in ways that don’t signal a total overhaul is significantly harder… For a coming-of-age comedy that was already rather brilliant, Pen15 continues to deliver all-too-relatable growing pains, with a side of amateur witchcraft, in the sharpest and most recognizable ways possible.” Read the rest of Shannon Miller’s thoughts in our list of the year’s best television.