Many of you may remember that I created the Power Rankings! for television shows ages ago, based whimsically off of fantasy sports nonsense (of which I’m both fan and player) and those very Power Rankings! went with me from the San Francisco Chronicle to The Hollywood Reporter and enjoyed a surprising (to me) level of popularity and cache in the industry. It’s always mysterious what takes off.
The Power Rankings! would later be completely and utterly ripped off by Paste Magazine, while I was still using them, no less (although I think they dropped the exclamation mark, which makes no sense because that exclamation mark was my hint to the world that this was just a fun exercise that didn’t really matter).
It was annoying, mostly because Paste was both pretentious and annoying about the rankings, but others had tried in the past to steal them and I just shamed them publicly and they stopped. I snarked at Paste periodically but by that time it was impossible for any critic to watch all (or even most) shows and, despite the Power Rankings! starting off on a whim, I did actually take them very seriously when I put them together, as they not only represented the best of the best in my mind at the time but were also used to announce the arrival of up and coming series and to remind people that some shows they maybe dropped were on a creative comeback.
Alas, when you can’t watch everything, you can’t really rank everything without a big asterisk (or numerous asterisks) and I was feeling the unfairness, perhaps, of something that had become way more important than I intended it to be and, partly because of that, much less fun to do. Also, related, my job was much less fun to do because I had already accomplished everything I wanted to do, reached the heights I had sought and then felt creatively bored. So I got a development deal to write television shows and now write fiction and non-fiction, except for letters.
So, whatever, Paste could have and ruin the rankings. I didn’t care anymore.
(I have no idea if the magazine — is it still a magazine? — is even using them anymore because I have no idea whether Paste even exists.)
The number of creators and writers (and even directors) who came up to me during the heyday of the Power Rankings! to tell me how much they enjoyed reading the list and, more important, how excited they (and their writing staffs) were to be included, ended up being kind of shocking. Again, this all felt vaguely at odds with how I started them, but it was rewarding to see the influence.
Two instances in the many interactions (personal, not just emails or calls) I had with creators about the Power Rankings! still stand out to me. The first was Armando Iannucci, who had already created so many funny shows by the time he created (and wrote and directed) “Veep” for HBO, that his talent was a thing that vibrated in the ether. To this day, “The Thick Of It” remains one of the funniest comedies ever created. I love his movies, too.
I had met him a couple of times on the critics press tour but it was after one of our TCA Awards nights that this Power Rankings! story emerged. After one of those events (when Iannucci was still with the show, of course), everyone was mingling about afterward and I made my way over to say hello. I had no idea if he’d remember meeting me or recognize me but that’s partly what those events help with, so I made my way through the throng to tell him how much I loved “Veep.”
Before I could pour out the praise, Iannucci said that he loved reading The Power Rankings! and thanked me for doing them. That’s not what I was expecting, of course, and so I kind of blurted out, in my stunned state, “You read those?”
Not only did he, but he said they were validation, week after week, to the writers and actors; they were a little morsel (not his word, trust me) that added a little fuel to the series as it was getting recognized for its work on a continual basis.
“Veep” was at the TCA Awards because it was a winner, as all attendees are. The other Power Rankings! story I want to share came from the other end of the spectrum.
“Magic City” was a drama created and written by Mitch Glazer that ran for two eight-episode seasons in 2012 and 2013; as was custom for Starz back then, the second season was green-lit before the first season aired, giving people a chance to invest. The pay cable channel was fiercely trying to compete and had two series that really stood out at the time — “Boss,” which was vastly underrated and “Spartacus,” which was more fun than it probably had any right to be as it chased its own seriousness. Those were building blocks and Glazer’s “Magic City” was the next step.
My initial review of it was mostly positive, as “Magic City” tried to mix “Mad Men” and “The Sopranos” into 1950s Miami Beach. From then on, even with its flaws, I would tout “Magic City” in the Power Rankings! as it fluxuated each week (flux being the driving force of any rankings system).
Starz and Glazer held a private party at the Hollywood Hills house of Glazer and his wife, actress Kelly Lynch. Two things immediately stood out when I arrived:
Glazer owned an architectural marvel from one of my favorite architects, the legendary John Lautner, and stepping out of the car and seeing it was something I'll never forget. Getting to go inside and get a tour of the place from Glazer — whose love of mid-century modernism runs deep — and to just hang out in there was a wonderful memory.
In fact, most of the conversation that night with Glazer was how he found the house, outbidding a couple of other actors (for a price, if I’m remembering correctly, that was about 1/10th of its current value), and about architecture in general, Lautner in particular and our love of modernism.
And then, with my boss present (I’m not sure she realized how big The Power Rankings! had become; I was always touting it as a feature we needed to keep and maybe even promote more), Glazer went on a very heartfelt, genuinely honest and thankful rundown of how the inclusion of “Magic City” when it appeared was so meaningful to the people on the show and, of course, to him, since “Magic City” was the show he’d always wanted to make.
It was almost too much. I could feel the burden of what the Power Rankings! meant when I had mostly started it on a whim, something that would be fun to write, would cover a lot of ground and look kind of amazing as a graphic.
I left that party thinking that my half-thoughtful, half-haphazardly constructed rankings would now be less enjoyable to write about, because there was more in the balance than I had ever intended.
I also left wanting the house, but that’s another story.
And this — this long-winded riff — is my way of introducing something that I may do again or may just disappear by next week:
A pyramid of essential shows to start watching if you haven’t already. You know, based on the hierarchy of needs, and maybe even the food pyramid?, except that I don’t have the graphics chops to create a pyramid.
Fun fact: Not only did friend, fellow podcaster and writer Jason Snell write the code that I used at the San Francisco Chronicle — where, to be clear, Jason did not work — I also brought it over to The Hollywood Reporter (where, to be even more clear, Jason also did not work) and stuffed the code into the machine, as it were, after I was told they didn’t know how to create such a thing (which they also said at the Chronicle). I’m forever grateful to Jason for that and, I think we can both agree, the story of using his code at two different places without them knowing never ceases to be funny.
I didn’t ask Jason to hack Substack for a pyramid graphic. But I DO once again find myself rolling out a potentially half-baked idea that could turn into something! Yay?
Not a ranking, per se, just a list, which isn’t exactly meant to be numerically important but — OK, fine, because it’s supposed to be in a pyramid and I used the word “hierarchy,” maybe there’s an order. But it’s really not value based — these are all good shows. I’m structuring them only by the ones I would choose first if I was, say, in need of a list of shows to watch and couldn’t figure out where to start first.
Not a ranking. Maybe not even an ongoing feature.
But also, maybe so?
Here goes, with (vaguely new-ish) shows you should get to at some point, in little informational bricks that kinda sorta build a pyramid if you imagine in in your mind:
House Of Ninjas; Netflix.
A Shop For Killers; Hulu. Baby Reindeer; Netflix.
Fallout, Amazon Prime. Ripley; Netflix. Shōgun; FX/Hulu.
Fargo S5: ; FX/Hulu; Slow Horses S3: AppleTV+; Black Twitter: A People’s History, Hulu/Onyx; Alice In Borderland S1&2; Netflix.
And there you have it, layers of suggestions. 1, then 2, then 3 and 4. A pyramid to support your viewing options. Start watching and maybe we’ll do this again.
Hey, head's up, for those who are interested, the OG Richard Chamberlain, Toshiro Mifune Shogun miniseries is now streaming on Paramount+...
Very interesting what you told us about the Power Rankings!
I must start to watch a few of shows you mention.