Don't Miss the Slate TV Club

If you are looking for good commentary on the best television shows of 2015, you should catch up with the Slate TV Club.  TV critics Margaret Lyons, Willa Paskin, Alan Sepinwall, and June Thomas provide their top 10 list of shows and take you through the year again to highlight some corners that you may have missed.  

Here is June Thomas singing the praise of Netflix's Sense8:

Sense8’s sloggy bits were minorly irritating, whereas the transcendent sections were maximally mind-blowing. The discovery period in which the eight people in the cluster figured out their interconnections went on for slightly too long, but it was still magical. (If you aren’t familiar with the Sense8 mythology, David Levesley summarized it as follows: “An evolutionary quirk has bred an ubermensch species known as ‘sensates,’ who are born on the same day and ‘cluster’ together, a connection that links their senses and emotions telepathically and allows them to speak the languages and perform the skills of their cluster-mates.” You can also see this in action in the clip below.) Directors Andy and Lana Wachowski, Tom Tykwer, and James McTeigue brought a grand, if slightly goofy, cinematic vision, and even if I have some cavils about the writing by the Wachowskis and J. Michael Straczynski, their creative ambition was breathtaking.

And here is Alan Sepinwall highlighting the much forgotten Manhattan on WGN America:

So here you’ve got another period drama about Complicated but Great White Men—specifically, the scientists who worked on the Manhattan Project—from a writer who already worked on one of those (Sam Shaw, formerly of Masters of Sex). And while it’s not perfect—it suffers from the Nucky Thompson Problem, where the most important character (rebellious scientist Frank Winter) is played by a fine actor (John Benjamin Hickey) doing good work, yet most of the time I’m more interested in every other person on the show—it looks amazing. Thomas Schlamme of West Wing fame is the lead director, and it’s become a whole lot more complicated and interesting as we’ve gotten to know all of the supporting characters (a more diverse lot all around) and their many conflicting agendas.

Just reading through the banter back and forth tells me I have a lot more viewing to do just to give 2015 justice.  And now we are about to embark on a new year.  I am not ready, but I am eager to see what else is in store for the new year.