Best TV shows of 2023: Streaming on Netflix, Disney, Prime, Neon and more

Brian Cox as Logan Roy and Jeremy Strong as Kendall Roy in season one of Succession.

We’re edging ever closer to the summer holidays, when we’ll finally have some time on our hands to catch up on the entertainment we’ve missed during a busy year. Reviewers Greg Bruce and Zanna Gillespie pick their best streaming shows of the year - add them to your watchlist if you missed them first time round.

HE SAW

Welcome to Wrexham (Disney)

It’s disappointing to have to include this among the year’s best viewing options because there’s something so gross about the concept of rich Americans buying a soccer club in a depressed British town and making a self-serving piece of marketing collateral about it. The series is enjoyable, mostly in spite of new owners/actors Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney. It’s the town’s characters and the club’s players who make it. Some of the scenes will make you cringe until you turn inside out, but that’s all part of it. Take the bit where Rob McElhenney goes into the Wrexham Women’s team’s changing room to congratulate them on winning the league - in the movie version, presumably playing in his mind, everyone’s whooping and laughing and starstruck, but in the scene we’re watching, it looks like it’s taking all their energy not to tell him to f*** off. You won’t be able to look away.

Welcome to Wrexham, starring Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, is streaming now on Disney+.

Robbie Williams (Netflix)

This docu-series contains an extraordinary amount of Williams in his undies, which I guess you could argue is a visual metaphor for the psychological nakedness its star exhibits throughout. The documentary’s key conceit is to force him to rewatch all the video footage of his life, and to film him reacting to it, then to ask questions that force him to react to it even harder, evoking the sort of deep introspection and emotional unravelling we love to watch. It can be tough – at times, it feels like a multi-hour emotional breakdown set to Angels – but it’s worth it.

Beckham (Netflix)

The subject is such an easy and obvious documentary win, it’s surprising it’s taken this long to get made: his talent, fame, beauty; his talented, famous, beautiful wife, his whole life recorded on a wide range of media. But what makes the series so great is the way it transcends its raw materials. It’s the final step in the transformation of the way we see Beckham - from sports star to laughing stock to icon to human.

David Beckham as a child, from archival footage that features in the four-part documentary series about the star. Photo / Netflix

Jury Duty (Prime Video)

With the most morally questionable premise of any show made this year, and that includes Love Island, this series succeeds entirely because of its unbelievably perfect star. Ronald Gladden believes he’s been called for jury service, but he’s actually walking into an invented court case peopled entirely with actors in a fabricated courtroom. He’s thrown moral curveball after moral curveball, but he is not just unimpeachably good; he’s even better than that. The series is wildly uneven and sometimes drags, but when that final episode hits, all is forgiven.

The Bear (Disney)

Like Succession, The Bear has attained such omnipresence in the culture this year, it feels trite to even write about it. If you’re the type of person (the type of person who likes good television) who will enjoy The Bear, you’ve almost certainly already watched it. Nevertheless, as a depiction of addiction, of performance under pressure, of familial relationships fraying and decaying, it is perfection. It would be better without the schlocky and intellectually dishonest “if you work hard you can achieve anything” vibe, but this is America – what are you gonna do?

The Bear, starring Jeremy Allen White, is the story of a high-end chef who moves to Chicago to run his dead brother's sandwich shop.

SHE SAW

Severance (Apple+)

Even if you’ve already watched Severance - the psychological sci-fi thriller in which people can sever their consciousness, separating their work selves from their home selves - it’s been such a long and agonising wait for season two that it’s probably worth binging the whole thing again to refresh your memory. Severance was the most original and compelling show of 2022 and it left us - almost cruelly - on a monumental, heart-in-throat, cliffhanger ending. Little did we know then that the writers’ strike would delay production of season two so much. We still don’t have a confirmed release date, but it’s coming some time in 2024 and you’re going to want to be ready.

Sex Education (Netflix)

Initially, the concept of a teenage virgin being a profoundly astute sex therapist struck me as too outlandish, so I had abandoned Sex Education after only a few episodes. However, the fourth and final season aired this year, and the passionate response from its fanbase, who had become intimately attached to these characters, reeled me back in. What I’d failed to see the first time was that Otis’ ability to give sound, mature sex advice to his peers was being cleverly juxtaposed with his bumbling personal sexual experiences. It’s deeply uncomfortable at times - sometimes sexually explicit - but at its heart it’s a sweet study of teenage romance, and even more so, friendship. You’ll laugh, cry, cringe and heart-clutch.

Otis Milburn (Asa Butterfield) with his mum, sex therapist Jean Milburn (Gillian Anderson), in Netflix's Sex Education.

Never Have I Ever (Netflix)

The second high school comedy on my list, Never Have I Ever, is a charming Netflix series created by Mindy Kaling. It centres around Indian-American teen, Devi, who’s desperate to lose her virginity and has a colossal crush on the hottest boy in school. It’s not quite as shallow as it sounds, Devi’s recovering from a physical and mental breakdown following the sudden death of her father, so among the high school high jinks, the show tackles grief, race and sexuality with a lot of warmth. In an inspired choice, Never Have I Ever has an unlikely narrator for a teen girl: tennis-playing hothead John McEnroe. Like Sex Education and Succession, the show ended this year with its fourth season, which tied up Devi’s high school experience in a neat little feel-good package.

Succession (Neon)

For those that dropped out of Succession some time during the very occasionally lacklustre second and third seasons, this is your call to action, because the fourth and final season is so worth returning for. The much ballyhooed third episode - Connor’s Wedding - remains the best episode of television I’ve ever seen. Jesse Armstrong’s writing on this series, loosely based on the Murdoch family, is razor-sharp and the performances are flawless. It’s a surprise to no one that it leads the Emmy nomination count this year. Due to the WGA and Sag-Aftra strikes, we’re still waiting to see which of the - count them - 14 nominated cast members will take home a statue.

Brian Cox stars as Logan Roy in Succession.

Couples Therapy (ThreeNOW)

We’ve arrived late to Couples Therapy, but we’re making up for our tardiness with conscientious engagement - AKA binging. A local version of the series was released earlier this year, but we’re deep in the US series, which has three seasons in which to luxuriate this summer. In it, clinical psychologist Orna Guralnik works through the relationship woes of four couples each season. It’s deliciously voyeuristic but doesn’t feel exploitative, because these couples willingly entered into recorded therapy sessions knowing they might get uncomfortable, embarrassing and exposing. It’s been an illuminating watch as a couple, seeing who each of us relates to and what relationship dynamics seem familiar. It’s like free therapy without ever having to tell anyone how you really feel.