Dazzling star turns from Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz, a Brit playing two messy moms and an ‘Abbott Elementary’ standout were among favorites of THR’s TV critics.
A list of the 10 best TV performances of the year could be filled exclusively with actors from Succession, Reservation Dogs and Beef, the top three shows shared by both of our Best of 2023 lists. But what fun would that be? You already know that Sarah Snook and Devery Jacobs and Steven Yeun are great. Or you should.
That’s why, when Angie and I set out to do this list, we started with the simple rule: “Nothing from either of our Top 10 lists.” Those performances and those shows have been celebrated amply, and we wanted to cover as many of the year’s standouts as possible.
Oh, and if it seems like most of our favorite performances of the year were from women? You don’t know the half of it. Had we had more time or space, we would have loved to write about Aunjanue Ellis (Justified: City Primeval), Sian Clifford (Unstable), the entire cast of Yellowjackets, Natasha Lyonne (Poker Face), Kristine Froseth (The Buccaneers), Bel Powley (A Small Light), Diane Morgan (Cunk on Earth), Allison Williams (Fellow Travelers) and MANY more.
Here, however, are 10 TV performances from 2023 that we truly loved (in alphabetical order).
In a strong year for female creator-stars on British TV — see also Kat Sadler from Such Brave Girls and Sarah Goldberg and Susan Stanley in Sisters — Daisy May Cooper thrived as both creator-star and simply star, a breakthrough for American viewers and a confirmation for British fans. In Hulu’s Am I Being Unreasonable?, co-created with Selin Hizli, she plays a depressed mom with a secret whose life gets turned upside-down when she makes a new friend. In HBO’s Rain Dogs, created by Cash Carraway, Cooper plays an economically depressed mom trying to do the best for her daughter and resist having their lives turned upside-down by a friend from her past. Big takeaway: At this moment, if you need a messy mom, nobody is messier or funnier than Daisy May Cooper. — DANIEL FIENBERG
Janine Nabers and Donald Glover’s murky cultural satire Swarm struggles (mostly by design, sometimes not) to reconcile all the aspects of deranged superfan Dre’s personality, which ranges from childlike to calculating, from virginal to temptress. Star Dominique Fishback has no such struggles. She takes every extreme that the scripts heap onto Dre and crafts eerie consistencies within the inconsistency. She’s hilarious. She’s terrifying. She’s uncomfortably delusional and even more uncomfortably self-aware. Swarm is conclusive proof that Fishback, a veteran scene-stealer who often pulled attention and sympathies from the bigger names in the ensembles of The Deuce and Judas and the Black Messiah, can and should be at the top of the call sheet whenever possible. — D.F.
