The Best of 2023, objectively… cos I said it

The best TV and Film that came out in 2023, mwah.

The Best Television

Such Brave Girls

URGH DELICIOUS. Deeply and truly unhinged in such a gratifying way. You guys NEED to get on this. Kat Sadler, who plays Josie, and wrote the show and her real life and TV sister Lizzie Davidson, who plays Billie, ARE genius. I cried laughing at so many moments. When Josie bleaches Billie’s hair and she’s in so much pain she starts frothing at the mouth. Or when she refuses to tell her situationship that she’s already had the abortion because it means he’ll stick around a little longer. These situations don’t even feel hyperbolic to me, these are grounded lived experiences in the modern world. My dad who we call ‘no filter Phil’ told me I reminded him of Josie. I shared this outrageous news with my mum who said ‘yes you definitely do. You remind me of the sister also’. If you’ve watched the show then you’ll know these comparisons don’t inspire confidence and aren’t really compliments but I’ve taken them on the chin. 

Rain Dogs

Ahhhhh the joys of complexity. Complex characters in complex situations. Moral grey areas throughout - what a joy to see and feel. I follow so many rich white kids who attend Central Saint Martins and simply can’t resist the urge to have a photoshoot in a council estate. Poverty porn has become absolutely rampant and this show is an antidote to that and blurs the lines between victim and perpetrator.  Also, if anyone is interested, Jack Farthing who plays Florian Selby has what I consider to be the perfect aesthetic  - he is exactly my type. Timothee Chalamet but English and better. Stunning. 

Happy Valley Season 3

I HATE COP PROPOGANDA (I adore this show). I HATE COPAGANDA (I’ve watched this show 3 times now). FUCK THE POLICE (season 3 was the best season). ACAB (I think I have a girl crush on Sergeant Catherine Cawood).

Succession Season 4

Absolutely delicious, obviously. It was the best season so far. I am absolutely bereft at no longer being able to look forward to another season but I  respect the artistic integrity. I went on a date with an extremely short man child in 2023. The one positive of him was that he watched Succession. I breathed a sigh of relief at having something to talk about finally. But then he started saying that he thought the ending was bad. As in, the way the writers chose to end the show was artistically a bad choice. He was 100% sure that one of the siblings should have taken over. This angered me no end. It’s not that I wouldn’t have liked to see one of the Roys take over - of course I was sad when they didn’t. But sad is extremely different from BAD. I tried to womansplain to him that just because something made him feel sad doesn’t mean that it is bad. Just because you didn’t get what you wanted doesn’t mean that the whole artistic team made the wrong choice. It was as if he was so used to getting his own way that any deviation from his own personal vision and desire was immediately labelled as wrong. I also tried to explain to him that the show is derivative of Greek tragedies and so the tragic ending and the fatal flaws of each character make total sense.  By the end of this conversation I’d become borderline hysterical in defending a bunch of writers who didn’t even know that I existed. There was a long silence and the date ended shortly afterwards. 

Also I would love to hear from everyone who they’d get into a relationship with, out of Kendall, Roman, and Shiv. I think you can tell a lot about a person via this question. I’m SUCH a Kendall girl I could 100% fix him, all these other bitches don’t know what they’re doing. Roman I could also maybe manage but I’d find the roleplay he so desires a little trying. I don’t really enjoy thespianism or the dramatic arts and I may tire after a while. (Gerri is a saint).  Shiv would obviously be the most difficult? I don’t even think she needs fixing though? I feel like she gives the appropriate responses to her external stimuli? Lmk your thoughts. 

Girls

The millennials who watched this show when it actually came out in 2012 (when I was 10 years old) are screaming at me through the screen. But OMG it’s SO good. If there are any gen z reading this, let me actually put you on this. Especially the depiction of debilitating OCD at the end of season 2 and then just everything that happens in Season 3 episode 3. I am very much a Hannah girl and in 2024 I’m going to try and channel Jessa a lot more. Also, for those reading this who loved and adored Woody Allen but have since had to relinquish that love due to the whole marrying his kid and molesting the other, there’s a character called Ray in this show who has his exact personality but less annoying, less ugly, and no pedophilia. I hope you find solace in him. Also Adam Driver plays a character called Adam in this and he’s massive and genuinely feral. This is Adam Driver’s best work and always will be. 

I’m about to finish the entire series, so my entire life will lose all meaning soon. 

The Best Movies

Stop Making Sense

I know this isn’t a new film but the restoration came out this year. Anything A24 get their spindly little indie hands on you know I’ll be watching. I was so severely depressed the day I had booked to see this with my friends and considered cancelling but that would have been the worst mistake of my entire life. I watched this film in the BFI Imax and it was a full body, spiritual experience. I levitated up into the air and my soul became free. I only knew a few Talking Heads songs beforehand and now I listen to the ‘Stop Making Sense’ live album on a daily basis. If I could be anyone, I’d be David Byrne. I wish to move as freely, I only wish to wear oversized grey suits from now on, and when I get too hot in the jacket I wish to hold it out behind me with my eyes closed in musical ecstasy and have a nervous stage manager sprint behind me and snatch it out of my arms. This was the best thing that happened to me in 2023. 

Priscilla 

I don’t enjoy the work of Francis Ford Coppola. I found the Godfather such a delirious male tedium. It’s so forgettable? In 2024 we should collectively begin to forget the Godfather. If The Godfather is your favourite film, a) cringe and b) I urge you to gain a personality before it’s too late. The best thing Francis did was provide the sperm necessary to produce Sofia Coppola. Where her Father failed she has succeeded. Also, in my opinion, this is the best of her work so far! Such a triumph. The desecration of the icon of Elvis was so cathartic, especially after the blah blah of the Baz Luhrman circus film. The film was so, so tragic. I think all women can see themselves in the bewildered eyes of Priscilla. I cared for her so deeply in my bones. Side note, I’ve seen people on tik tok making edits of this film being like “ugh I wish I was her”. Did we watch the same film? Her life with him looked genuinely hellish and worst of all they weren’t even having sex? 

Saltburn

I like this one because it was just so, so entertaining. I’m of the Tik Tok obsessed generation, but I’m also slightly pretentious. I want to enjoy high art, read Ulysses, understand the wit of Shakespeare etc but I have grown accustomed to getting serotonin kicks from 5 second videos on a little screen. Long indie foreign arthouse movies sometimes fail to scratch the itch. Saltburn sits deliciously in the middle. It’s based off of Brideshead Revisited and it has absolutely beautiful sets, giving you that high art feel. Something scandalous or shocking also happens every 5 minutes which keeps you hooked giving that tik tok serotonin blast. The film is funny, disturbing, gruesome, and sexy.  My favourite line, and also my favourite line delivery of the year, was Rosamund Pike saying ‘I have a complete and utter horror of ugliness, ever since I was young’. Same. The criticism of Emerald Fennell being upper middle class and making a film about upper middle class people is such a boring one? Also it’s tinged with sexism.  If you have an actual criticism of the film, other than being able to successfully identify Emerald Fennell’s social class, let me know. 

A shoutout to whoever did the advertising / social media marketing for this film. Just as Saltburn was about to hit theatres, they invited loads of gen z fashion tik tok influencers to a Saltburn-esque mansion, had them dress up and make content. It really worked. I’m seeing other influencers have Saltburn themed parties now without even being paid to do so. Y’all deserve a pay rise. 

Wilding 

This was a magical fairytale except that it all really happened. And it happened in England too! It made me appreciate the wonderful English landscape so much more. It feels worryingly EDL to be patriotic about England, even if it is only for its landscape, but this film made me feel it (in a non EDL way). Shoutout to Isabella Tree, the star of this doc. She married this dude who had inherited this fuck off stately home on a fuck off piece of land and then used her pussy power to convince him to stop viciously farming the land and rewild the whole goddamn thing. She’s literally a god. We need to all be doing it like her in 2024.

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