Year-end roundtable: What's next for television after a weird 2023?

In a series of special year-end roundtable discussions, The A.V. Club looks back at some of the stories that made the biggest impact on pop culture in 2023.

This year, the landscape of television was defined by some big losses and even bigger wins. The losses came from a handful of stellar series finales like Succession and Barry, as well as a number of shocking cancellations that we’ll probably be grieving for quite a while. The wins, on the other hand, are thanks to the efforts of thousands of striking writers and actors, who shut down the entire industry for months this summer in order to secure a fair contract and just treatment from studios moving forward.

Here, A.V. Club staffers Sam Barsanti, Saloni Gajjar, and Emma Keates look back at a year in television that was as weird as it was wonderful, with a keen eye towards what worked and what didn’t, what was lost and what was gained, and—for better and for worse—what comes next.

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Saloni Gajjar: A lot of memorable TV shows ended this year, even if not all the finales hit the mark: Succession, Barry, Mrs. Maisel, Ted Lasso (?), The Crown, The Owl House, Archer, Reservation Dogs, Snowfall, Never Have I Ever, Picard… and this is off the top of my head and not counting unexpected cancelations like The Other Two and The Great. So I do feel like there’s going to be quite a void on my viewing calendar at least starting next year.

I do think most of these got it right when it comes to the finales, especially Succession and Reservation Dogs. Generally speaking, I’m beyond content with how these two wrapped even though I’m bummed they’re over. I guess this applies to NHIE, too. A TV show ending on its own terms, even if it’s early, is always a gift for both the creators and the audience.

That said, I hate that there’s a question mark after Ted Lasso. Season three kinda tarnished the show’s goodwill in many ways, but leaving the show’s fate in limbo is just so damn annoying.

Emma Keates: Adding to the void feeling is the fact that so many shows won’t air their next seasons until 2025 (or very late 2024) due to the strikes. I’m so proud of what both guilds were able to accomplish but I’m definitely going to be watching a lot of old seasons of Survivor next year.

SG: Right. Knowing there’s no new The White Lotus or Severance etc. adds to the pain!

EK: I’m also generally pretty happy with the way a lot of these shows ended. I could not have asked for a better final Succession season (even if Kendall could) and I also really loved the Barry finale.

Sam Barsanti: I’m not a particularly studious TV-watcher, and a lot of the shows that had big finales were shows I either didn’t watch or fell off of before they got to this point, but I agree that it just seems like there’s a void on the horizon for TV… I would also throw in the fact that Max (by which I mean David Zaslav) has kneecapped HBO and rendered the future of that once-reliable TV destination a bit murkier than it has been for the last few years.

SG: That’s a good point. It makes the question of whether anything take up Succession’s mantle even more interesting. Despite Zaslav’s bullshit, I still hope the cable has those unmissable shows—True Detective S4, for example, which comes out in January. Plus, I don’t think anyone expected Succession to become the giant it did by the time S4 wrapped, so it’s hard to predict what hits. I hope there’s other upcoming HBO stuff like The Sympathizer that can take over—I’m personally so excited for that one in 2024. Then again, they replaced it with The Idol on their Sunday night schedule this summer. Perhaps another cable or network will be the breakout star in that case.

EK: I agree, Sam. I would normally point to either The Last Of Us or House Of The Dragon or better yet, something yet to be discovered as Succession’s successor (ha), but the future of all of these big-budget, big-time commitment shows feels so up in the air right now. I do think shows like Yellowjackets or Severance, if they turn out a stellar next season, could end up as all-timers.

SB: House Of The Dragon is the perfect example of what I’m talking about. That show should be a huge deal, even for people who hated the original Game Of Thrones finale (I’m one of them), but I wouldn’t put it past Zaslav to kill it off on a whim (or something that appears to be a whim for us regular people).

SG: We can’t trust him even with a guaranteed hit like HOTD, which is absolutely bonkers if you think about it.

EK: I haven’t felt safe since they took Westworld off the platform. RIP.

SB: Westworld? Now we’re talking: I’ve spent every day since then trying to find a good deal on the full series, even if I never watch it again! I just don’t like the idea of never having that option. And now that it’s harder to watch (if only because I don’t remember where it lives now), it means future generations won’t have the opportunity to realize for themselves that season 2 was good, season 3 was okay, and season 4 ended in a way that would’ve made for an interesting season 5!

SG: TV shows simply don’t get time to cultivate an audience in general in today’s landscape, whereas Westworld had such a loud fanbase, even if it lost viewers as it went along. It was still prestige TV!

It doesn’t help that TV shows have such long gaps now, making that coveted Sunday night spot such a gamble. I remember Mare Of Easttown unexpectedly taking over all the conversation during the weeks it aired. Perhaps a miniseries is the way to go in terms of betting on something taking over as a brief successor.

EK: Right, that precious time for shows to not only cultivate a fanbase but also figure out their own story is something our current landscape is really hurting for. People laugh at me now when I recommend an old show with the caveat that it takes a couple of episodes/seasons to get good but it used to be the truth! If we didn’t let that happen, we wouldn’t have had Bojack Horseman or Parks And Recreation or The Leftovers, and I do often wonder what great shows we’ll never have because everything has to be perfect in its first season now if it has any hope at a future.

SG: Exactly. I hate the trend of having to wait like 2 years for an eight-episode season. I’m not counting the gaps during the strikes when production was halted, of course. But we used to be a proper country and TV shows with 22 episodes aired every damn year. Now the wait times are a little bit insane. I understand actors/creators have other projects to do, but it makes it tough to invest in these characters.

EK: Saloni, I totally agree that miniseries are probably the place to look for the next big thing. (And they can’t cancel them without a conclusion!) And it’s always exciting when a show that could have been a miniseries like The Bear does a second season and actually knocks it out of the park.

SB: I also would like to say that I think the strikes were good and just.

SG: Oh, absolutely. I’m glad Hollywood came to a standstill to recognize the WGA and SAG contracts. Still, I feel like this trend set in mostly due to streaming demands and now we’re usually just waiting for a year or two for a new season. And semi-connected is the trend of splitting seasons. Why?

SB: Splitting seasons is such a gross scam. It has to be all about paying people less for more work, right? And I feel like everyone sees that and hates it.

EK: It drives me insane. I do love that more streamers are bringing back weekly episode releases, but it should be that, all at once, or nothing. Don’t ruin your own show for no reason!

SG: God, splitting season infuriates me, especially when the gap is only like 3-4 weeks. Netflix usually does it the most (Stranger Things, You, The Crown, Bridgerton’s upcoming season). It feels like such a ridiculous, transparent ploy for the reasons you mentioned Sam. And maybe they think audiences will get more hyped for the next half, but it’s just unnecessary. They gotta stop it.

SB: Circling back to The Bear, can I throw out another trend I’d like to stop? This partially stems from my frustration with awards shows (a frustration that grows every year), but I think we could all stand to be less precious about genre. Was Barry a comedy? Not all the time, but when it was it was one of the best. Really I’m just sick of getting weird looks when I insist that, yes, The Bear IS a comedy!

EK: I totally agree, Sam. Succession had some of the most gut-wrenching moments I’ve ever seen on TV and some of the absolute funniest.

SG: The awards categorization is fascinating to me. I do think this year’s general comedy noms are a little questionable with Barry, The Bear, Wednesday. I’m okay with a bit of discourse (sue me!) around it because I think it robs some great, funny shows from getting the limelight. I’m thinking stuff like The Other Two, Somebody Somewhere, Ghosts etc. So I think figuring out some boundaries won’t be the worst thing. But I do agree that a genre is fluid because yeah, Barry was both tragic and hilarious. Same with Succession, an intense drama that also never fails to make me laugh multiple times during the hour.

SB: Is Ghosts a funnier comedy than Wednesday? I don’t know how to answer that question, which is why I’m not an Emmy voter (that’s the one reason), but my wish for 2024 is that we either invent a new genre for prestige shows that are funny and also harrowing, or we go back to the old days when a 30-minute show was a comedy, no matter what, and a 60-minute show was a drama.

SG: I think your latter idea with the 30-minute and 60-minute is a good, understandable solution. That makes it easy.

EK: I agree. And just do away with the comedy and drama distinctions altogether. The best shows have a healthy mix of both anyway.

SB: Comedy, drama, and just general good shows. I think that could cover everything.

EK: You should submit this as your voter application, Sam.

SG: To end on a positive note, what’s a 2023 TV trend you hope continues in the future?

EK: This isn’t necessarily specific to 2023, but there were some GREAT needle drops this year. Radiohead’s “Climbing Up The Walls” in Yellowjackets, everything in The Bear, even The Summer I Turned Pretty’s extremely on-the-nose use of Taylor Swift—all perfect. I hope shows in 2024 take note and keep adding a little extra something to their soundtracks. It makes such a huge difference.

SG: I have a couple. One, I really hope that with WGA and SAG’s wins this year, we continue that fighting spirit for unions and labor rights in an industry that hasn’t paid attention to it so publicly before. In that vein, I hope we learn actual viewership data that benefits the creators/cast/writers. Netflix gave us a tiny, tiny morsel recently, but I hope it expands more. Two, the addition of really old shows on streaming was great. We got quite a few this year and it’s just nice to know a newer audience can find these gems.

SB: I don’t know how new it was this year, but it happened enough times this year that I think it counts as a current trend: I’d like to see more people get opportunities to do things they’ve always wanted to do—I’m thinking of Rian Johnson and Poker Face, probably my favorite show of the year—or things they never would’ve done if not for a hard-to-ignore offer from a network/streamer—like Bryan Lee O’Malley returning to Scott Pilgrim for Netflix’s unpredictably excellent sequel/retelling. I guess what I want is more blank checks for TV creators who use them to do interesting things.

SG: I love both of those; Poker Face and Scott Pilgrim Takes Off were excellent (and on our best shows of the year list!). And any fan of The OC knows what a good needle drop can do for you.

I’d like to end by adding (before The AV Club’s Mary Kate Carr notices) that Riverdale also ended this year. And if any show is a mix of all kinds of genres … well, we lost it for good.