The 20 Best New TV Shows of 2017

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor – December 27, 2017

Above are the highest-scoring first-year TV series debuting in the United States between January 1, 2017 and December 31, 2017. 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.)

5 of 22 photo by Erica Parise/Netflix

81 GLOW (Netflix)

(#5) Created by Nurse Jackie vets Liz Flahive and Carly Mensch and produced by Orange Is the New Black's Jenji Kohan, this wildly entertaining period comedy examines a unique bit of 1980s pop culture: the professional wrestling league turned TV series known as the Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling. Alison Brie, Betty Gilpin, and Marc Maron head the cast.

“It’s smartly plotted, with characters that deepen in the course of the show. But, refreshingly, in our era of homework TV, it’s also a joyride, all roller skates and mousse-claw bangs, synthesizer jams and leopard-print leotards, home pregnancy tests and cocaine-serving robots. By the final episodes, I was whooping at my computer screen, fists in the air, like a superfan.” —Emily Nussbaum, The New Yorker

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