#‘TV’s Top 5’: The Best (and Worst) Shows of 2023

Welcome to the 241st episode of TV’s Top 5, The Hollywood Reporter’s TV podcast.

Every week, hosts Lesley Goldberg (West Coast TV editor) and Daniel Fienberg (chief TV critic) break down the latest TV news with context from the business and critical sides, welcome showrunners, executives and other guests, and provide a critical guide of what to watch (or skip, as the case may be).

This week’s supersized episode features a look back at the best and worst TV shows of 2023 as Dan and I are joined by THR TV critic Angie Han.

(Programming note: TV’s Top 5 is off Dec. 22 for Christmas. Our next episode comes out Dec. 29 with our 2024 preview.)

Here’s how this week’s episode plays out:  

1. Headlines

Curb Your Enthusiasm, Station 19, Kevin Hart, Blue Eye Samurai and Freeform lead the week’s industry headlines.

2. Netflix “transparency”

Pigs must be flying somewhere because the streaming giant just released viewership “data” for some 18,000 titles. But don’t get too excited — while this is a huge change for the streamer, the data is still an algebraic equation as the data is in total hours spent for the six months from January to June 2023 that covers 99 percent of the titles on the platform and not at all comparable to traditional viewership from Nielsen — hell, it’s not even the same metric that Netflix releases each week.

3. Best TV of 2023

Dan and Angie open up about how they landed on their respective top 10 TV shows of the year as their lists feature some overlap — yes, Succession is there — but also a lot of differences.

4. Worst TV of 2023

Why waste time watching bad TV. Angie and Dan have done the work so you don’t have to by watching duds including My Life With the Walter Boys, Citadel, Secret Invasion, Extrapolations and several others that you’ll have to listen to find out.

5. Critic’s Corner

As usual, we end with Dan’s thoughts on this week’s new and returning series. In this episode, he weighs in on the end of The Crown, Reacher, Percy Jackson and the Olympians and much more.

Hear it all now on TV’s Top 5. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to never miss an episode. (Reviews welcome!) You can also email us with any topics or Mailbag questions you’d like addressed in future episodes at [email protected].