Even though it’s officially 2019, I’m going to continue talking about 2018 this week. I’m going to talk about my favorite television shows from 2018 today and Friday will be my favorite movies. Much like my list of favorite songs, these shows may not be from 2018 but they are the shows I watched a lot last year.
When I first saw a commercial for The Good Place back in 2016, I wrote it off as a fluff show. The premise didn’t sound interesting at all. Then I ran out of shows to binge on Netflix. So in a moment of “why not,” I turned it on. It is SO GOOD.
The original commercials made me think this was about Kristen Bell in heaven. It’s not. Well, it is but it isn’t. Kristen Bell’s character, Eleanor, is a trash person. She insults everyone, she literally defrauds old people for a living, and she is only out for herself. When she dies, she is sent to heaven. But she knows she doesn’t belong there. So she tries to get her soulmate, Chidi (William Jackson Harper), to help her earn her way into heaven. Since he was an ethics professor when he was alive, it makes sense that he might be able to teach her how to be a good person.
I would really love to tell you more about the show but I would hate to spoil it for anyone that hasn’t seen it. There are currently three seasons of The Good Place. They are all available either on Netflix or Hulu. You should definitely check it out. You won’t regret it.
If you couldn’t tell from my Instagram, a lot of my life revolves around dance. Both my daughter and I dance. We spend a lot of time in the dance studio or at dance events. Normally, we don’t watch a lot of dance reality shows. I’ve only seen one season of Dancing With The Stars and I’ve never seen So You Think You Can Dance. But World of Dance had a few dancers that we recognized from social media. Since it’s on this list, you can figure out that we enjoyed it.
We aren’t big fans of the judges. Sometimes they make decisions that make no sense to us. But that’s OK. We’re really there to watch the dancers. Thanks to this show, we have been introduced to a lot of amazing dancers and dance groups that we never would have seen otherwise. If you love dance and you can tune out all of the actual reality show stuff, WoD is a pretty good show.
Even though we’ve never really watched Dancing With The Stars (beyond watching a few favorite celebrity routines on YouTube), my daughter was looking forward to the junior version of the show. Once again, the lineup featured a couple of dancers we followed on social media. (I think that might be the key.) Juniors was a little more light-hearted than other dance reality shows, which added to the fun a bit. I’m not sure if we would watch a second season, though. It depends on who the competitors are.
The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. I’m not sure I actually have words for this Netflix series. It has almost everything I want out of a supernatural television show. I only say ‘almost’ because I think I would prefer a little more theatrics in my television witchcraft but the show isn’t any lesser without it. The show has a perfect balance between Sabrina’s witch life and her mortal life. And Kiernan Shipka is amazing as the title character.
Sabrina recently released a holiday special that is a perfect witchy companion to all of the Christmas specials out there. If you are into supernatural witchiness, this is definitely the show for you. (Much better than CW’s Supernatural and it can easily be binge-watched in a day or two.)
While this isn’t a comprehensive list of everything I watched in 2018, these were my favorites. A few shows that didn’t quite make the list are Netflix’s Nailed It!, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, The Good Doctor, and Netflix’s BoJack Horseman. However, these weren’t shows that made me run to my TV every week to watch. I enjoyed them when I remembered to watch them but I didn’t carve out time in my week to fit them in. Let’s just say I’m thankful that DVRs exist.
Were there any shows that you absolutely loved this year? Or are there any older shows you think I should check out? Let me know in the comments.