Derry Girls (TV Program)

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    Best TV Episodes of 2022

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    TV in the streaming era is an endless feast. This year, series like “Barry,” “Ms. Marvel,” “Pachinko,” “Station Eleven” and “This Fool” offered some of the best bites.TV can be a lot of different things these days. So can a TV episode: It can be a “chapter” of a visual novel, a revelatory stand-up special or a straight-up sitcom installment.You’ll find all of those and more in our choices of some of the best individual pieces we’ve sampled this year. Television in 2022 may have been all about the binge, but sometimes what you remember most about a feast is simply that one perfect bite. JAMES PONIEWOZIK‘Amber Brown’ (Apple TV+)Season 1, Episode 3: ‘No Place Like Two Homes’Aw man, I loved this light tween drama about a sixth grader whose parents are newly divorced. In the show’s third episode, Amber (Carsyn Rose) is trying to build up the courage to audition for the school play — she hopes to follow in her father’s drama-club footsteps so they can bond more now that he’s moved back to town. “Do you think he likes me?” she asks her best friend. Of course, her friend says. He’s your father; he loves you. “Well, I know he loves me,” Amber replies. “I just wonder if he likes me.” It’s this kind of brutal, beautiful poignancy that makes the show so special. (Streaming on Apple TV+.) MARGARET LYONS“710N,” from the third season of “Barry,” included some of the year’s most thrilling action sequences.HBO‘Barry’ (HBO)Season 3, Episode 6: ‘710N’More than one scene from this stunner — a high-speed motorcycle chase through a traffic jam, a high-firepower shootout at a car dealership — would have been the high point of any other series. But there was more to “710N” than simply showing off Bill Hader’s directing chops. The action sequences, simultaneously thrilling, slapstick and bathetic, served the larger purpose of “Barry,” to tell the story of an antihero without celebrating his antiheroism. (Streaming on HBO Max.) PONIEWOZIK‘Black Bird’ (Apple TV+)Season 1, Episode 4: ‘WhatsHerName’Dennis Lehane’s mini-series was a showcase for the fine and distinctive actor Paul Walter Hauser, who plays Larry Hall, a convicted kidnapper and suspected serial killer who is close to having his convictions overturned and walking free. It is nominally the story (based on an autobiographical novel) of another convict, played by Taron Egerton, who makes a deal to befriend Hall and compromise him. But Hauser’s soft, sibilant, weirdly sexy performance is all that matters. In the fourth episode, Hall is put in charge of cleaning up after a prison riot (itself a shocking yet poetic spasm of violence, as directed by Jim McKay), and Hauser conveys a deep, narcissistic satisfaction that puts cleanliness next to beastliness. (Streaming on Apple TV+) MIKE HALEShauna Higgins, left, and Dearbhaile McKinney in “Derry Girls.” An episode this season flashed back to when the parents on the show were rebellious teens.Netflix‘Derry Girls’ (Netflix)Season 3, Episode 5Lisa McGee’s rowdy Northern Irish comedy used a high school reunion to turn its clock back from the 1990s to the 1970s, visiting the adolescence of its Derry Mums. The half-hour brought in a new cast to play its adult characters as punk-era teens, but McGee established such a voice and sense of character over three short seasons that you could instantly recognize the elders in their younger versions (and see their daughters in them as well). The tart, heartfelt episode underscored how teenage rebellions, like some political ones, cut across generations. PONIEWOZIK‘Fleishman Is in Trouble’ (FX on Hulu)Season 1, Episode 7: ‘Me-Time’This limited series worked hard to re-create the pyrotechnics of Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s 2019 novel, from the upside-down shots that mimicked the topsy-turvy imagery of the book cover to a copious use of voice-over. (Brodesser-Akner, who created the series and wrote this episode, is a staff writer for The New York Times Magazine.) Here, it pulled off the novel’s signature reversal — telling the title character’s divorce story from the perspective of his wife — using the tools of the screen, in particular a wrenching performance by Claire Danes, an emotional volcano who has rarely erupted better. (Streaming on Hulu.) PONIEWOZIK‘Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal’ (Adult Swim)Season 2, Episodes 7-9: ‘The Colossaeus’ (parts I, II and III)In its second season, “Primal” expanded its scope and time frame, dipping into 19th-century England for an episode and introducing various other clans to our cave man and dinosaur protagonists. But it was this three-part blood bath, culminating in a triumphant slave rebellion at sea, that exemplified the show’s tender nuance and also its unrelenting savagery. It was a reminder that while cartoon violence can be exhausting and meaningless in live-action shows, it can still be mesmerizing and meaningful when done where it belongs. “Primal” is almost entirely wordless, and its characters rarely rely on gesture; instead, their ideas are communicated through expression, breath and attention. And yet, few other shows are able to capture passion and pain with such precision, an entire life story told through one furrowed brow. (Streaming on HBO Max.) LYONSIman Vellani, right, with Aramis Knight, plays a teenager with superpowers in “Ms. Marvel.”Disney+‘Ms. Marvel’ (Disney+)Season 1, Episode 5: ‘Time and Again’This “Spider-Man”-like series about Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani), a Jersey City 16-year-old in a working-class immigrant family who discovers that she has superpowers, is the most charming and likable of the Marvel shows for Disney+ so far. The obligatory flashback episode revealing how Kamala came by her powers was set during the partition of India and Pakistan; the incorporation of that fraught history could easily have led to something labored and stiff, but in the hands of the writer Fatimah Asghar and the director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy it was ingenious and surprisingly moving. (Streaming on Disney+) HALE‘Pachinko’ (Apple TV+)Season 1, Episode 7The penultimate episode of this Min Jin Lee novel adaptation, set in and around the 1923 Yokohama earthquake, is staggering in its scope and rendering of cataclysm. But it’s equally, quietly devastating in how its expands the depiction of a key character: Koh Hansu (Lee Minho), introduced in the series as a menacing, charismatic gangster. Laying out how he began as a young math tutor with hopes for a legitimate life, then fell onto his path through disaster and circumstance, “Chapter 7” connects him to the series’s other Korean exiles making hard choices in an unwelcoming Japan. (Streaming on Apple TV+.) PONIEWOZIK‘Rothaniel’ (HBO)A lot of “confessional” comedy has ground itself into a rut in recent years. But the comedian Jerrod Carmichael breathes new life into the paradigm with this lyrical and restrained special, in which he comes out as gay and explores his fraught relationship with his family. Carmichael weaves together sorrow and humor, insight and fear, love and disappointment, unraveling family secrets and allowing for messy and unresolved truths to all exist at once. (Streaming on HBO Max.) LYONSAn episode of “The Simpsons,” seemingly about Lisa and Bart in the scouts, gave way to a rapid-fire series of gags.Fox‘The Simpsons’ (Fox)Season 34, Episode 3: ‘Lisa the Boy Scout’A seemingly routine episode of “The Simpsons” is hijacked by hackers (wearing masks that are a frightening combination of Guy Fawkes and Homer Simpson) who demand a $20 million ransom; until it is paid, they will broadcast a stream of “Simpsons” outtakes “so ill-conceived, so idiotic that their exposure would destroy the value of the very I.P. itself.” Luckily, no one pays, and we get to see a lovingly assembled panoply of blackout sketches, written by Dan Greaney and directed by Timothy Bailey, ranging across 34 seasons of characters and animation styles. One highlight: a two-hander for the Sea Captain and Groundskeeper Willie whose dialogue consists entirely of “Yar” and “Aye.” (Streaming on Hulu.) HALE‘Slow Horses’ (Apple TV+)Season 1, Episode 3: ‘Bad Tradecraft’Based on Mick Herron’s Slough House novels, “Slow Horses” — set in a fictional MI5 office where out-of-favor agents pass their time doing busy work — is in one sense a sendup of John le Carré’s moody, cerebral tales of the postwar British intelligence services. But it’s also a completely credible spy thriller, with complicated, believable twists and well executed action. The first season’s third episode, written by Will Smith and directed by James Hawes, best encapsulated the show’s seesawing mix of sardonic humor, deft characterization and sometimes brutal suspense. (Streaming on Apple TV+.) HALE‘Station Eleven’ (HBO Max)Season 1, Episode 9: ‘Dr. Chaudhary’TV’s sweetest apocalypse story began just before the holidays last year, so it was the gift that kept on giving in early 2022. The penultimate episode, which found Jeevan Chaudhary (Himesh Patel) impersonating a doctor in a big-box-store-turned-birthing-center, was an inventive expression of the show’s oddly hopeful vision: the first sparks of humanity’s future being kindled amid the mundane ruins of its past. Like the traveling actors who make the backbone of this story, Jeevan puts on a performance that ends up becoming real and restorative. (Streaming on HBO Max.) PONIEWOZIKAn episode of “This Fool” used “Austin Powers” references to make a point about the importance of change.Hulu‘This Fool’ (Hulu)Season 1, Episode 5: ‘Sandy Says’The closing seconds of this episode-long homage to “Austin Powers” were perhaps the most satisfying payoff I saw this year. “Sandy Says” exemplifies the tricky tone “This Fool” is able to strike, combining the structure of traditional sitcoms with the style of auteur comedies, hitting a sweet spot of goofy and clever. Luis (Frankie Quinones), newly out of prison, is in annoying-eighth-grader mode with his constant “Austin Powers” references, and the episode is packed with shagadelic Easter eggs before Luis explains part of why the movie means so much to him. “I’m tired of wasting time living in the past,” he says. “Ideally, we’ll change. The world is ever-changing, homey. I gotta change with it. That’s what ‘Austin Powers’ is all about. You know, I used to think that movie was a comedy. But now I know, it’s a tragedy.” (Streaming on Hulu.) LYONS‘This Is Us’ (NBC)Season 6, Episode 4: ‘Don’t Let Me Keep You’“This Is Us” did a lot of traveling over its six-season run — through multiple family trees, across the divide of death, from the future to the deep past. But it was often at its best when focused on one story, here Jack’s (Milo Ventimiglia) trip to Ohio to attend his mother’s funeral and reckon with the legacy of his abusive father. It’s a showcase for Ventimiglia, who anchored a big-feeling show through his reserved portrayal of a father, husband and son driven to fix things. (Streaming on Hulu.) PONIEWOZIK More

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      Lisa McGee Found it Hard to Say Goodbye to Her ‘Derry Girls’

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      The Northern Irish writer said that she had never felt so close to a group of characters. Now, the show’s third and final season is arriving on Netflix.LONDON — In 1990s Northern Ireland, Lisa McGee and her friends decided to skip school to go to a concert. They were caught when one of the group posed for a photograph at the event, which then ended up on the front page of a local newspaper and was seen by her parents.“I’ll never forget that story because of how delighted my friend was in that photograph compared to the trouble she got in. It was just the perfect contrast,” McGee, 42, recalled in a recent video interview. She added: “I remember her saying it was worth it. I think she got grounded for life.”That was just one of many childhood experiences McGee drew on for her TV comedy, “Derry Girls,” which follows a group of chaotic and accident-prone friends and their families. The show, while joyous, is set during the Troubles — the violent, decades-long sectarian conflict that defined the region until the late ’90s.Like her characters, McGee attended a Roman Catholic school in Derry, and, like the show’s central figure, Erin, she grew up wanting to be a writer. The third and final season of “Derry Girls” arrives Friday on Netflix after airing in Britain this year, and McGee admitted that she had been struggling to let go.“I was connected to those characters in a way that I think is probably not entirely healthy,” she said. She kept notebooks filled with details for each of them, she added, and even now, lines for the characters still come to her. “It was really hard to stop talking to them,” she said.In the recent interview, McGee discussed growing up in Derry, which is also known as Londonderry; the joys of being ridiculous; and bringing the show to a close. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.When did you realize your childhood could be fodder for a show?When I moved to London, there were a few of my Northern Irish friends that moved over at the same time. And I remember being out in the pub and talking about stuff that happened to us and there was just horror on English people’s faces. We normalize this stuff that English people were like, “That’s not normal, lads, that’s weird.” I realized there’s something really funny about this, that this little pocket, this little place has normalized all this crazy stuff.I’d always felt that my group of friends at school were funny, and I’d always wanted to write something about a group of female teenagers who were the leads and were being the ridiculous people, not just the “friend” or “sister.”You’ve said in the past that, growing up, you didn’t want to write about the Troubles. What changed for you?Well, the truth is, I wasn’t going to. I was going to set the show in the modern day and it was actually my executive producer, Liz Lewin, who had been in pubs with me and my friends, listening to all these stories and said, “You’re really missing a trick, I really think you should try and do a period piece.” I just thought it was a headache, it’s too complicated, people wouldn’t understand. But I’m so glad she convinced me because the minute I started writing it, it gave me the chance to explain some things, and talk about some things that maybe people in the rest of the U.K. didn’t know about.But yeah, I just found the Troubles so boring. It was all that was on the news and I wanted to be a writer because I liked the escape, the fantasy of it all. So I still can’t believe this is the thing that has been the most successful thing for me.The show’s central character, Erin (played by Jackson), right, wants to be a writer, like the show’s creator.Hat Trick Productions and NetflixThe stars and heart of the show are the women and girls. How influential were the women you grew up around, what were they like?When I went to university, I realized Derry was different from all other places. The women, traditionally, were the breadwinners because it was a factory town and, apart from shirt factories, there wasn’t any other employment really, so a lot of the men were unemployed. So we grew up in this sort of weird society where the dads were looking after the kids and the mums were going to work.I also went to an all-girls convent school, so the cleverest person was a girl, the sports hero was a girl, the class clown was a girl. Growing up, everyone who was powerful or interesting or funny was female. I never questioned that we should be those things when I grew up, because women were very rock ’n’ roll where I came from, very forthright and very funny and ballsy and tough. That’s what I knew, and it only started to sort of fall apart when I grew up a bit.On “Derry Girls,” the girls aren’t aged up or put in particularly adult situations. They are ridiculous and embarrassing in ways that feel very true to teenagers. Was that a conscious choice?Part of it was just that was what was truthful — I was that ridiculous person. It was definitely a conscious decision for them not to be sexualized. I feel that’s the story that’s told over and over again about teenage girls. I always felt like, yes, that’s part of it, but our panic about not getting good grades was up there along with what boys we wanted to get with. Our ambition was one of the biggest things about my group of friends, that panic about failing or not getting into university, not getting a good job, all that sort of stuff. There was also the importance of your relationship with your other friends, that gang, that group, how important their opinions were.As young people, how present were the dangers of the Troubles for you and your friends?Now, looking back, you really lose your breath thinking about how dangerous things were, but we weren’t really scared. Not really. But we should have been. There were armed soldiers on our streets, outside our houses and lots of other gunmen in balaclavas floating about on the other side of things. It’s what you know; we didn’t overthink it. It actually, weirdly, started to really affect me and my friends after the Good Friday Agreement. When peace times started, we realized that what happened wasn’t OK, and there was a hope that things wouldn’t go back to the way they were.The realities of the violence were so dark, yet “Derry Girls” maintained a lightness. How did you think about the show’s tone?I always just thought about it through their eyes, how they would see it. For most teenagers, their views are very selfish, it’s like, “How can I make this about me?” and for the adults, it’s just a bit of an inconvenience most of the time, as it would have been.There’s a line in an episode where Michelle says there’s something sexy about the fact they hate us so much. Everything has its spin. So Michelle’s always thinking about sex, and Erin, quite a pompous character, loves the idea of it and writes about being a child of conflict and all of that.What I decided was that most of the story has to be about whatever the gang are trying to do that week, with the Troubles normally getting in the way of it.The show ends on an episode set around the time of the 1998 Good Friday agreement, and the declaration of peace. Why did you choose that as the show’s end point?I feel like that was the day Northern Ireland grew up, that vote and that phenomenal, phenomenal thing. That was the day we put all the pain and suffering behind us for the greater good. And I wanted to run that parallel to the kids’ growing up. It’s the beginning of their adulthood, just as Northern Ireland is walking into this new phase of its life. It always felt like that’s where I should naturally end the show, this hope and the positivity of the agreement and them going out into the big, bad world. More