20 Best Shows Of 2023 On Itunes

Black Snow has the sleek style of a modern murder mystery, but its concern with Australia’s colonial past that sets this show apart. As a neo-noir series centered on a murder, the show has all the classic elements: the hardboiled detective, the suspicious townsfolk, and the murder. As the murder is set in 1994, nostalgic summer-tinged high school scenes make it easy to root for justice for the show’s young victim.

But the series stands out as it’s always mindful of Isabel Baker, always concerned with her and her dynamics with her friends, family, and her South Sea Islander (ASSI) community. Supported by the strong performance of newcomer Talijah Blackman-Corowa, and even consulting the ASSI community personally in the show’s development and production, Black Snow is excellent not just as a murder mystery but also as a depiction of a community that’s rarely portrayed on screen.

Bright, breezy, and refreshingly unburdened by the seriousness of so many live-action Superman shows and movies, this new animated series wipes the slate clean and boils down the titular hero to his most endearing qualities. Here, Clark Kent is still learning to be more in touch with his identity and emotions—most evident in his enigmatic flashbacks to his childhood, and in his absolute nervousness around the energetic and spontaneous Lois Lane. So while the action and the intrigue in My Adventures with Superman are still somewhat ordinary for an animated series, the undeniable, bashful chemistry between its two leads is what keeps these adventures worth going on. It’s a romcom and a coming-of-age story wrapped in a classic superhero adventure, where selflessness and courage are firmly at the heart of everything.

Undead Unluck is such a strange anime with such a strange duo. Named after their respective powers, the undead Andy seems familiar with his Deadpool-like regeneration, albeit with such a fast rate that he can shoot out body parts with such gruesome animation. However it’s the unlucky Fuuko that brings them to the most absurd comedic scenarios, including, but not limited to, surviving a giant truck crash, a lightning strike, and a whole meteor. In order to achieve their goal of dying, they have to build up a bond to maximize her unluck. As they learn more about Fuuko’s abilities, as well as the organization hunting them down, it’s likely that they’ll go through wackier situations that will escalate as the show progresses. It’s definitely something uniquely watchable, if you can handle the off-putting gore that’s part and parcel of Andy’s powers.

Despite featuring a sharp script and solid performances, Party Down struggled to rake in views when it premiered in 2009, and sadly had to quit after just two seasons in. But since then, its small cast had gone on to become TV luminaries and its sardonic humor garnered newfound appreciation among the younger crowd. Even the show’s hustle culture premise, which was quite novel then, can be found in almost every show now. 

So it’s not a stretch to call Party Down a pioneering comedy. It’s simple and efficient, with each episode taking place at a different event, but it’s also deeply funny and keenly aware of the ironies and hypocrisies of the industry it’s a part of. People, myself included, were afraid that it might lose some of its underdog edge when it was rebooted in 2023, but rest assured, it remains as knife-sharp and hilarious as ever.  

You just wouldn’t expect yet another superhero show from The CW to carry the sort of emotional weight typically reserved for prestige melodramas, but Superman & Lois gets close. In contrast to recent darker portrayals of the Man of Steel, this series allows Clark Kent to remain a nerdy, wholesome dad, whose greatest challenges come from the problems he can’t solve with his powers. In fact, some of the superheroics only slow the show down from doing what it does best: navigating different relationships within the Smallville community, exploring various conflicts that can still pop up in a loving marriage, and looking at how Clark and Lois’s kids deal with the secrecy around having (or not having) powers.

Strong, character-focused writing and mature, measured performances help put Superman & Lois above a number of its superhero contemporaries. It still falls victim to cheesy situations and occasional stretches of monotony (especially in the second season), but its dedication to human drama over action set pieces and expanding its lore makes it easy to be moved by their most personal problems. This is what DC has needed all this time.

In fantasy worlds, races with different lifespans are a given, but rarely does a work actually contemplate how these variations would affect relationships between them. Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End starts after a great war, at the moment of peace, and to the titular elf, her shared journey with the human Himmel and their party feels like a blip in her life, their ten years of friendship blurred amongst her thousand years… until Himmel dies, which shifts her perspective on mortality. Frieren won’t have that much extravaganza we’re used to in other fantasy shows, but the way Frieren tries to reconnect with her former comrades, and the way she remembers their memory through flashbacks, all become a gentle and moving meditation on purpose, meaning, and connection, all paired with outstanding art and some of the best worldbuilding we’ve seen in anime.

Set in 1930s Hollywood, a decadent city festering with crime and corruption, Perry Mason is a stylish noir series that fully recalls the crime classics of its era. It has the hallmarks of an old-fashioned mystery, the most prominent of which is the titular detective himself, Perry Mason—a boozy antihero with a heart of rusty gold—but it keeps plenty of secrets up its sleeve, making it fresh and surprising at almost every turn. 

Sometimes, it gets ahead of itself and takes on too many plot lines for its own good, but if you can forgive the occasional convolutedness, the show rewards you with shocking twists and rich performances.  

Created by Boyz N’ The Hood director John Singleton, Snowfall is an epic crime drama that tracks the rise of the crack epidemic in the United States, mostly through the lens of Franklin Saint (Damson Idris). Over the seasons, we follow Franklin and a host of characters separately but equally involved in the drug trade. There’s someone from the government, someone from the other side of the border, and someone from a gang. These sectors and more are represented in this large-scale examination of crime and corruption, and though the show initially struggles to tie connections in a cohesive way, it eventually rises to the occasion in compelling ways. 

Snowfall is the type of show that only gets better each turnout, so if you’re not so sure about the first season, you might want to give the next ones a shot to make sure you don’t miss out.

Making a bucket list at the height of a zombie outbreak seems ridiculous, yet totally reasonable when you’ve spent the last three years overworked and undervalued. In real life, our workforce already feels zombified as higher-ups enslave the working class to high production and insufficient pay, so it’s nice to see Zom 100 exemplify that notion. Zom 100 also immediately captures that essential reminder to “live now,” which has become especially relevant as the Covid-19 pandemic found most people rekindling old hobbies and discovering new ones as death and sickness felt ever near.

Though there isn’t a lot of character-building in episode one, the titular 100-item bucket list promises an eye-opening, personal journey with our protagonist Akira. Thankfully, the opening didn’t shy away from the gore and electrifying tension of the zombie attacks, making this an interesting horror/slice-of-life/coming-of-age/drama to keep an eye on. 

Domestic abuse is a delicate matter, and onscreen depictions always run the risk of being either too sensational or mopey. The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, thankfully, is neither. It sensitively and creatively tells the story of Alice and all the other survivors who June shelters on her flower farm. More than just decor, these flowers serve as a lifeline to the girls: not only do they grow and sell them to earn a living, but they’ve also made a special secret language out of them. Different blooms mean different things, and when you live in a world where your pain is systematically ignored, it makes sense to communicate in hiding. Granted, the Lost Flowers of Alice Hart can get overly dramatic at times. Some plotlines include hiding who the child’s real father is and fighting to get custody of said child. But it’s unfair to dismiss the series as mere melodrama. It’s doing important work by shedding light on the manifold ways women are mistreated, and it does so in a commendably original and artful way.