AARP’s Best TV Shows From the First Half of 2023

If you liked Fargo and The Big Lebowski, don’t miss this hellzapoppin’ crime-caper comedy about a recovering addict (genius Patricia Arquette, 55) who zooms like a rock ’n’ roll hummingbird from her job at a Wild West theme park to a new life as a private investigator. She chases a TV newsman-turned-guru and stolen-Picasso merchant, gets swept up in the mad schemes of her convict hubby (Matt Dillon, 59), and keeps seeing a woman (Bernadette Peters, 75) who’s a ringer for her late mom.

Philippe Antonello/Prime Video

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

After a stellar beginning, the dazzlingly clever, 20-Emmy-winning The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel on Amazon — about Midge Maisel, a upper-class-housewife who becomes a  stand-up-comic — sank into mediocrity for two years. But its final season knocks it out of the park, as Midge becomes the first female writer on a Carson-like 1960s talk show hosted by a letch. Will Midge finally elbow her way into the spotlight on TV? Tune in and see.

Sophie Kohler/PEACOCK

Mrs. Davis

Boasting the quirkiest zigzag plot you’ll find on TV, Mrs. Davis on Peacock stars Betty Gilpin (GLOW) as a horse-riding nun on a galloping quest with her cowboy ex-boyfriend to destroy The Algorithm, a kind of Siri-Alexa-ChatGPT that possesses humans with their full consent. You’ll see rogue magicians, a medieval jousting contest, a hunt for a crazed sperm whale, a faux pope, and a guy stranded on a desert isle who is named Schrodinger and has a cat. Bewildering, but fun and original.

Paul Sarkis/Apple TV+

Platonic

In Apple TV’s Platonic, he (Seth Rogen) is a man-child who runs a trendy L.A. Arts District brewpub; she (Rose Byrne) is his old friend, an unfulfilled housewife and former lawyer. She dissed his wife, they fell out of touch, he got divorced, and 15 years later they reconnect. She thinks he dresses like “a ’90s grunge clown.” He accuses her of “online shopping for a fifth pair of high-waisted jeans.” But they bond again over adventures such as breaking into his ex-wife’s house to steal his beloved iguana. Though it’s billed as an update of When Harry Met Sally, Platonic is more about how we cope with middle age — with a lot of help from our friends.

Merrick Morton/HBO

Perry Mason

This reboot of Perry Mason on Max is better than the Raymond Burr original and got a lot better in its second and final season. It’s a gritty 1930s-set L.A. noir about alcoholic and bitter Perry (Matthew Rhys), his brilliant partner Della (Juliet Rylance), her Anita Loos-like lover (Jen Tullock), and a twisty murder case involving wicked plutocrats and Mexican Americans evicted from their Hooverville shanty town to make way for L.A.’s baseball stadium. Very Chinatown.

Poker Face

If you liked Rian Johnson’s Knives Out and sandpaper-voiced Natasha Lyonne’s Groundhog Day-like Russian Doll, you should try Johnson’s high-IQ mystery series on Peacock. Poker Face follows a magnetic drifter (Lyonne) with a gift for telling when anyone lies. While on the lam, the former casino worker stumbles upon new crimes in each town she lands in; meanwhile, she’s also on the hunt for her bestie’s real killer. As on Peter Falk’s Columbo, we see the crime, then the gumshoe cracks the case. Lyonne is a sleuth as irresistible as Angela Lansbury. The Guardian quips, “Think of it as Murder, She Rasped.”

Liam Daniel/Netflix

Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story

In a prequel spinoff of Bridgerton, Netflix gives us Queen Charlotte, the origin story for Golda Rosheuvel’s sharp-tongued, snuff-sniffing Queen Charlotte (Rosheuvel, 53, with India Amarteifio as young Charlotte) — which flashes back to her days as a teenager when she wed King George III (the British monarch against whom the Americans revolted). We love the swooning romance, witty dialogue and anachronistic song choices.

Claudette Barius/HBO

Succession

If you watch but one show this year, make it this most talked-about smash hit. In the final season of TV’s most cynically realistic hit, Succession (on Max), thundering potty-mouthed patriarch Logan Roy (Brian Cox, 77) drops dead, and the kids he betrayed start betraying each other in ingeniously devious ways. It’s fantastically well written, and the acidulous comedy is rooted in heartrending drama.

Sandy Morris/HBO

Somebody Somewhere

Bridget Everett, 51, is a comedian and actress from Manhattan, Kansas. On Max’s Somebody Somewhere — rated 100 percent perfect by Rotten Tomatoes critics — she plays a version of herself who returns to Manhattan (her real hometown) and forms a best friendship with an old high school acquaintance (Jeff Hiller), creating a platonic couple to match Platonic’s. It’s a heartfelt, seemingly improvised comedy about small-town homecoming, coping with aging relatives and walking 10,000 steps a day to wind up in the same place. It’s kind of the opposite of urban, fast-paced Succession, but Everett’s heroine is as foulmouthed as Logan Roy.