BEST of CULTURE

THE ART THAT ENTERTAINED, MOVED, & INSPIRED US IN 2023

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What could be more timely than a show about anger? Creator Lee Sung Jin casts Ali Wong and Steven Yeun (above) as L.A. drivers whose road rage encounter escalates into a prank war that threatens to ruin both of their lives. Each party's fury is rooted in a lifetime of repression. While the show isn't about Asian American identities per se, it's grounded in the ethnic communities to which the characters belong and specific to protagonists grappling with inequality, stereotyping, and the expectations of immigrant parents. Darkly hilarious but also profoundly observant, Beef pairs the racially tinged negative emotions that the poet Cathy Park Hong famously named "minor feelings" with major stakes. (Netflix)

TV SHOWS

by Judy Berman

1. SUCCESSION and RESERVATION DOGS (tie)

This was the rare year when two series brilliantly, in their own ways, fulfilled the potential of television. HBO's Succession, an Emmy-winning drama that drove watercooler conversation, was the obvious choice. Creator Jesse Armstrong and his virtuosic cast didn't waste a second of the show's final arc, which unfolded largely in the aftermath of media mogul Logan Roy's (Brian Cox) ingeniously executed midair death. Every episode earned the fanfare that greeted it: Swedish tech edgelord Lukas Matsson (Alexander Skarsgard) waging psychological warfare on the Roy kids in Norway! That white-knuckle election episode! That tour de force funeral episode! The bangers just kept coming. And the finale made the biggest bang of all, ending a race to the bottom that everyone, especially the broken Roy siblings, won.