Restaurants
From either side of the Pond came The Bear and Boiling Point, two high-pressure series set mostly in restaurant kitchens. Lots of yelling of “CHEF!!”, “BEHIND!!” and “PLATE UP!!” All served with a sprinkle of obnoxious sous chefs. If you’ve ever thought your Christmas Dinners couldn’t get worse, The Bear is here to fix that. After painstakingly preparing an enormous dinner, Mum stops all the constant bickering, insults, abuse, infighting and fork throwing around the table by driving her car through a wall and into the dining room.
Quebec
Xavier Dolan has threatened to give up filmmaking following The Night Logan Woke Up, a five-part television series exploring his favourite topic - emotionally dysfunctional families. Includes a riotous family dinner that runs a close second to the dinner in The Bear.
Australia
The Plains, David Easteal’s extraordinary, strangely gripping, structuralist-inspired, three-hour documentary account of a man’s daily commute along freeways from the outer suburbs to his home in inner Melbourne.
Limbo, Ivan Sen continues to explore damaged characters and minimal dialogue, this time with the multi-hyphenate’s striking black and white photography among the drill hole debris of Coober Pedy.
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| Colin from Accounts |
Two superior series - Deadloch a consistently funny, feminist/lesbian inversion of serial killer police procedurals; and Colin From Accounts, also a consistently funny, rom-com unafraid of taking risks. The latter includes a lacerating Millennial birthday party in a boutique inner Sydney bar. And a dog on wheels.
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| The Last of Us |
USA
For its third episode Long, Long Time, The Last of Us virtually dropped its central narrative of an ex-marine escorting an immune teenage girl across a pandemic-ravaged and desolate USA. Instead, there’s an almost feature length two-hander between two gay men facing their advancing age in the time of the apocalypse. The small screen doesn’t get any better than this.
Killers of the Flower Moon could probably have taken less time to tell its account of the murders of the Osage for their oil rights, but De Niro, Scorsese and Robbie Robertson are in top form. Set in rural America in the same time period as Days of Heaven, these aren’t the only similarities it has with Malick’s great film.
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| The Blue Caftan |
Europe and beyond
Arresting filmmaking in Alcarràs, Close, EO, The Eight Mountains, Saint Omer, Pacification, Anatomy of a Fall and Afire. Also from Pakistan, the gay-themed Joyland and from Salé, Morocco, the very impressive The Blue Caftan, with its near transcendental, penultimate scene.
Korea
Stand-out feature film work in Past Lives, Riceboy Sleeps and Return to Seoul. Enthralling historical drama series in Pachinko; poignant comedy series in Extraordinary Attorney Woo and feel-good, intergenerational romance in Encounter (2018).
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| Emun Elliott, Hugh Bonneville and Charlotte Spencer in The Gold |
England
The Brink’s-Mat heist of 25 million quid in gold bullion from Heathrow in the 1980s is given a decidedly class-conscious twist by Neil Forsyth with Downton Abbey’s Hugh Bonneville commanding the police chase in The Gold. Perhaps the best written Brit series of the year.
Scotland
Dry-as-flint Scottish humour in new series of Guilt and Annika, way better than any comedy from south of the border. “Awa’ wi’ ye, ya Sassenachs!”
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