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Want to see a show that’s worth your time? Use our biannual must-see list to make sure you don’t miss a winner. Here are our picks of the best TV shows released between January and June 2023. (Come back in December for our favorites from the whole year.) A quick message — there are some spoilers ahead!
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Abbott Elementary
A terrific, The Office-like mockumentary comedy hit — on a broadcast network? ABC’s Abbott Elementary, which follows the heroic teachers at an underfunded Philadelphia school, won Emmy, Golden Globe and AARP Movies for Grownups Awards honors, and many consider it the best series on TV in an era when cable and streaming shows hog most of the glory. Its second season defied the sophomore slump. This show gets straight A’s.
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Barry
Be sure to catch the final, increasingly dark season of this inspired, touching, grisly comic thriller, Barry, about a hit man (Bill Hader) sent to prison by his beloved acting teacher (Henry Winkler, 77). Plus, follow the antics of the hit man’s talented but horrible actress sweetie (superb Sarah Goldberg), his ex-handler-turned-nemesis (still more superb Stephen Root, 71), and the funniest and most original foreign gangster you ever saw (Anthony Carrigan). And keep your eye peeled for some fun guest stars, like director Guillermo del Toro, 58, as a crime lord. If you have Max (formerly HBO Max), you’ve got four seasons to watch, as cocreators Hader and Alec Berg confirmed that the fourth will be the last.
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Dead Ringers
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In what she calls “the biggest acting challenge I’ve ever done,” movie star Rachel Weisz, 53, plays identical-twin gynecologists who share drugs and lovers, as well as impersonate each other to mislead other characters, in Amazon’s Dead Ringers. If she doesn’t get an Emmy nod, the Emmys need their head examined. It’s based on the 1988 Jeremy Irons movie of the same name, inspired by two actual evil identical-twin gynecologists — but this reboot gives it a feminist spin about women’s health care.
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