From Schwartz Media. I'm Ruby Jones and this is seven AM's summer series. If a TV series entertains you and transports you somewhere new for an hour, it's.
A good show. But if it tells you.
Something about yourself and the moment that you're living in, well that is a very good series. And this year the best television came in surprising formats, including a queer dating show in Japan, a technicolor reimagining of ancient Greece, and in the depths of a beloved, if stressful Chicago kitchen. Today, I'm speaking to the Saturday Papers TV critic Sarah Kresmastin about the best television of twenty twenty four and how it grapples with ambition, love, grief, and the gods. It's Tuesday,
December twenty fourth. Sarah, Welcome to seven AM.
Thank you so much.
A huge year for television. It feels like there was a lot that came out of wildly variable quality. But let's talk about the best. Yes, tell me what your first pick of the year is.
So I like to shake it out between fiction and nonfiction television or scripted and nonscripted, because that's where my interests so as go, and I feel that Nonscripted really gets the short end of the stick and a lot of end of year raps. My first pick was Lance Oppenheim's three part docu series ren Fair.
Okay, tell me about rent Fair.
Ren Fair is vibe wise a mix between Game of Thrones and succession and it's all true.
Welcome to the Texas a Renaissance Festival.
It's about a battle for succession in America's largest Renaissance festival, which is the Texas Renaissance Festival, after its eighty six year old founder decides that he's going to retire.
Now that guy's is George.
Kulham and he's referred to as King George, the Ruler.
He's not crazy, he's just thinking on a level that you can't comprehend. I don't know what's going to happen to it after he's the house if he ain't work and it don't work.
George George, George George.
And he's a deeply unpalatable human being.
The perfect way to go would be have a woman screw me to death, and that's my goal.
But that's what makes for the power dynamics and the power struggle and kind of palace intrigue that takes place over each of these three episodes. With the place where this actually takes place in Texas is so lawyer on such a large physical scale that George incorporated it as his own city, of which he's been the mayor for the last forty years. So his retirement and the possible change in this festival is quite significant for a lot of people. So as a documentary, it explores all of
these elements. Openheim's really interesting to me because he has a lot of heightened kind of cinematic elements that come in to make it visually really compelling, really fun to watch. And then we have this kind of push me ploye relationship with this odious man at the center of the action.
And it's just another way of proving.
As our best kind of factual story telling does that fact is stranger than fiction.
But it was a super transporting documentary.
I don't think it got the attention it deserved this year, and I think will be perfect kind of summer watching.
Tell me a little bit more about the odious man at the center, King George, Are you on his side at all?
Like I am never on George's side, But I'm deeply interested in all of the factors which coalesced to make George. I mean to describe him. I think the most effective way is telling you that he has an employee who's devoted solely to managing his profile and dating on a sugar Daddy website, which you have no judgment to either party if that's what they.
Freely choose to do.
But he's quite explicit about his sexual life, and there's.
He's the mayor of the festival and like the Sugar Daddy correct.
See seeking a mate and everything in his life is defined by great power imbalances.
So, yeah, that's George.
It sounds fascinating. Your second pick, Sarah.
Yes, so again did not get the attention that I wished it had this year. Another factual genre pick is The Boyfriend, which is Japan's first queer dating show.
When I saw Kazuto, I was surprised. He's a really good looking guy. Think you must be popular.
My first impression is that he's friendly and kind, but it's also a little bit mysterious.
I was initially attracted by the blurb, which.
Was something along the lines of nine men move in together and run a coffee truck.
In an effort to find their one.
True love something like this, which seemed unlikely.
Yes, it was just like, what is this? So it's nine men.
They move in together four months in Chiba, which is near the beach, and they paired up in different combinations to go out and actually run this coffee truck business.
So far, we're serving a cafe latte, hot nice latte, hot niced, and regular drip coffee also hot niced.
Yeah.
So the people that I've recommended it too, who wouldn't have otherwise watched it. The reaction has been unanimous that it's extraordinarily moving, so surprisingly compelling and emotional and not at all what you would expect from the description of this is a you know, a reality dating show.
Yeah, it sounds very wholesome and non toxic.
It is both of those things, and it's like the rare show where and this is not particular too, you know, factual storytelling.
I do feel it made me slightly better in my own relationships. It wakens up something in you.
When you're watching it that is like a little room in the house that you didn't know was there. They are so deliberate and intentional with their choices.
So I realized that I've never been able to really let myself commit to the idea of being in love before I thought if I'm vulnerable or grow So it's amazing to be able to meet you.
That's so cool.
The pacing is very gradual, the camera is extremely intimate, and we get to know each of these men very slowly.
Their backstore, their character, and you get an idea cumulatively across all these episodes, not just into how relationship is just hard for anybody, but particularly for members of the queer community in Japan, and they're working in groups, they're working on themselves and then slowly, slowly as a group towards this beautiful cohesion that just has this wonderful emotional effects that we're seeing change over time in real life.
And I just find it the most gorgeous thing I've seen in a very long time.
And so this show, it's Japanese. There hasn't really been a queer reality TV series in Australia, has There is that something you've noticed?
Yes, I have noticed that for a very long time, and I wish there was something exactly like this. People who know me know that I'm an enormous reality TV nerd, but I think something that was not just prurient or voyeuristic, something that's actually relatable and generous and slowly paced. I mean, maybe we just don't have as a culture the patients
for it, but I don't think that's true. I think that people who watch this and invests in the show can see that it could work in any other culture as well.
After the Break, Kitchens and Chaos. So, Sarah, we've been talking about your favorite TV shows of the year. So I far we've spoken about the nonfiction, But tell me, tell me about the fiction.
What have you seen? What have you loved? So this was a very very difficult list to narrow.
Down because it's a phenomenal year for storytelling.
The Bear has to be mentioned. Part three.
We continue to see the full range of human experience represented in an old sandwich shop, which for me never gets old. But they're also doing new things in new ways with all of these familiar people and settings.
In the third season.
Yeah, so in this third season, Kami has the new restaurant and and these big ambitions.
Three mushroom wait an application, no no, no, no, no, no customer requests no mushrooms.
Is it a moffication or an allergy? Doesn't he doesn't like mushrooms.
Doesn't he doesn't like mushrooms.
Doesn't it the mushrooms? It's about the clamer deal with him.
I'm not doing anything to this time.
Guy hates fucking mushrooms.
Customer, you get here, chie, I'm gonna send you.
But the themes, would you say they remain the same, this theme of pressure and chaos.
Yeah, it's like, be careful what you wish for. You know, things will be great. My life will be great once I achieve this goal or dream. So he's kind of at the pinnacle of where he had wanted to ended up, and yet he's being still plagued by these old ghosts and these old kind of reactions in himself. We see Chef Sidney Ao and Abiri in more detail.
We're letting even more into her backstory. I feel like I've been here an hour. Yeah, it's it's a lot.
Why are you doing this.
So that I can push you and you can push me?
That's what you want it right, and we can see why.
You know, the true achievement is not the opening of the restaurant or getting a perfect review. It is the way in which they deal on a daily basis with these ghosts that they're each dealing with. So it is just so absorbing and immediate and compelling. It feels so lightly handled as it explores, you know, grief and dysfunction and hope and relationships that I just find time stops whenever I watched any of those episodes. You know, there's so many ways of framing this show that do and
don't work. We saw it win so many Comedy Emmys this year, and for people that expect comedy to look a certain way that was not pleasing to them.
It might be the most tragic show to ever be built as a comedy.
Though this is what we get.
This is herm. It feels appropriate to twenty twenty four in some ways, it's true. Okay, So your fourth final pick Sarah Chaos Camelinazus.
Come on, she's right, the King of the Guards.
King of the Guards.
So I feel like this has been Jeff Goldbloom's big year.
He gets to be Zeus in Chaos, and he was oz and wicked and just Jeff Goldbloom in both roles very successfully. So it follows, you know, Jeff Goldbloom Zeus, who becomes increasingly unhinged, and the interlaced fates of a lot of gods and demigods and mortals as they each face and interpret differently the same prophecy.
The line appears the Order Waynes, the Family, Fools and Chaos, name a line appears.
You see this?
You see this? Nkal right here that this is vertical wrinkle. No, no, no, that's the line.
That's the line.
I discovered it just now. I'm supposed to be immortal. How is that aging? What's next to dipping bone density? Gummer session es, necessity for the daily student, prune the Order Waynes, that's what it says.
Oh, my friend, I'm waning.
I'm waning.
The humans act like they think.
It's Charlie Covell's creation, and it's dexterously doing new things with these old classical material And I hadn't seen something that was that steeped in genre here, you know, the classical myth, but at the same time so original and how it was putting it together and so every kind of aspect of this show was really like astounding to me.
Yeah, what I really liked about it was its ambition. I don't think it made every single shot that it aimed for, but I loved how high it ended, and I also thought it was very funny. The way that the Underworld in particular was conceived is this place of kind of like interminable bureaucracy. I found very very funny.
We have this high, technicolor beautiful Elasian world of the gods and Olympus, and then Creed does the mortal world and everything looks like vaguely dusty and kind of grim, and then the Underworld it is this desaturated, monochromatic, kind of bureaucratic.
Hellscape, but in a familiar health.
So it's the hell of you know, the office place, which is done just so gorgeously. So yeah, it felt new in a way that was rare even in a euro of great shows, and was packed with wonderful actors. Misha Butler as Knaeus was just extraordinarily compelling, Aurora Perano as Eurydice.
Susi Azadas one of the fates. It was a delight.
Okay, that's chaos, and we'll be back with some honorable mentions after this, So Sarah, before I let you go, are there any other notable mentions? Any other excellent TV that you've watched that you've liked to throw out there.
Well, I wanted to say that this is an unlikely Companions suggestion if you're into any of the stuff with Chaos in terms of like reinventing genre or referencing genre.
Interior Chinatown, so that is on Disney.
It's Charles Hugh's creation is based on his novel and it stars Jimmy O Yang and Ronnie Chang. It's kind of always gesturing towards graphic novel sensibilities and video game sensibilities and police procedural sensibilities in ways that are just so meta and fun and engaging type of hit TDS and executive producer. So if you're a fan of his work, you can definitely see the kind of that trace. It's particularly in the early episodes that's just been so fun
and again it feels very new and necessary. Somebody somewhere, which I've only started like two weeks ago, Somebody somewhere has this wonderful and for me, it was very unexpected because again it seems to have gone under the radar, the soaring lightness as it's dealing with these themes that like are just about common humanity. I couldn't recommend that one enough. And then Ripley I really loved. I just
found it gorgeously sinister. Again, this kind of monochromatic landscape Italy in the summer thriller What more could you want?
That was a stand up for me as well.
Yeah, I watched that, and then I went straight back and watched the original film. Highly enjoyed both the experiences.
Than you and the relatch who knew that it was such that Ripley would be a seemingly infinite text. I look forward to the next reinterpretation of it. The look iman a lot liked it, so that was good, And I also liked the few, the Caupodi and the Swans. I mean, that's been again, reasonable minds have differed greatly. I found it kind of had this soap opera charm, or even like an actual operatic charm.
The period detail.
Also, it's a writer's movie in many ways. There's episode four with James Baldwin. Just if you're a fan of Capodi at all or New York in the fifties, sixties, seventies, this is a wonderful immersive experience. It has certain narrative flaws, But again, I think that would be a wonderful summer watch and I'm actually gonna rewatch it myself.
So I mean, speaking of soap operas, you haven't mentioned territory.
Oh I know, so this is.
Yes, well it's my favorites because you know, in no small part because I grew up in the Northern Territory.
Would you put it as scripted or unscripted?
I just thought it was so much fun, so much Yeah.
Yeah.
It has been a devastating year politically, and as devastating it it has been, it has been a fabulous year for our TV arts and entertainment, so you know we've got that going for us.
Sarah, thank you so much for your time.
Thanks for having me.
Ruby seven Am will be back tomorrow as we explore the best music of twenty twenty four.