The 20 Best New TV Shows of 2019

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor – December 29, 2019

Above are the highest-scoring first-year TV series debuting in the United States between January 1, 2019 and December 31, 2019. Shows are ranked by Metascore (an average of grades from top professional critics on a 0-100 scale) prior to rounding, and any programs with fewer than 7 reviews are excluded.

(Note that limited series, as well as TV movies and specials, are ranked in a separate list.)

3 of 21 photo by Amazon

88 Undone (Prime Video)

(#3) The second adult animated series from BoJack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg (co-created with Kate Purdy, a writer on BoJack) is darker and more experimental in nature. Featuring a partially rotoscoped animation style (think Richard Linklater's Waking Life), Undone follows Alma (Rosa Salazar), a 28-year-old Texan who nearly dies in a car accident. When she recovers, she realizes that she can experience time in a new way, and she uses that ability to investigate the death of her father (Bob Odenkirk). A second season should arrive next year.

“To call Amazon's “Undone” a breathtaking piece of animation would be both to speak truly and to undervalue its strengths. To call it a complex, rich psychodramedy would be accurate and far from the complete picture. It is both, a perfect marriage of story and style, each half invaluable and impossible to divorce from the other.” —Allison Shoemaker, RogerEbert.com

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