HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Here we are again – another year has reached its end. Another year in which this blog somehow continued to exist (in fact, I know exactly why it exists – because I stubbornly keep it alive out of sheer spite, but that’s a different topic). Another year in which I still, from time to time, managed to find some muse and a bit of desire within myself to share a few short, careless impressions with you about the latest Hollywood junk. You heard that right – one of the main reasons for my extreme inactivity was, and unfortunately most likely will continue to be, not only the lack of time and creative thought, but also the absolute carelessness being thrown at us from the land of unlimited possibilities – at least as far as the seventh art is concerned. I don’t know whether my now-anniversary years are starting to weigh on me and comic-book cinema, for example, is simply completely insufficient and, to put it mildly, boring for the purposes of my reviews, or whether I just can’t find anything impressive anymore – not only something I’ve actually watched, but even something that deserved enough attention for me to finish, let alone sit down and write about it. Whichever of the two it is, the fact remains that I’m increasingly feeling Hollywood’s creative helplessness when it comes to cheering us up and distracting us from our fast-paced daily life on the big screen.
But today, at the start of 2026, I decided to share with you kind of a personal little ranking of what I managed to watch on the small screen – and which, in fact, I find far more meaningful, genuinely interesting, and perhaps worthy of your attention.* As you’ve probably already read in the title, or as should be clear from the previous sentence, these won’t be films but series (honestly, they’re basically episodic films), each at a different stage of its development from a narrative standpoint, which at some point managed to grab my attention and which I finally got around to watching – and believe me, that’s no easy task these days. That said, I feel obliged to point out a few things about the brief thoughts you’ll be reading below:
- Not all of the series started over the past year – I simply only now managed to catch up with everything that has been released so far.
- You won’t see any comic-book ones here (I’m taking a break from them for an indefinite period, at least as far as reviews go), not least because I already gave them more than enough attention throughout 2025.
- In reality, over the past year I’ve watched mostly anime, but for now I won’t be including them in these rankings – they really deserve a separate list altogether. After all, “Demon Slayer” already filled the anime gap on this blog.
- I also haven’t included series that I’m already watching and that have received new seasons (for example “Fallout”, which was worthy of its own standalone review for a gamer like me), as I wanted to focus on productions that were entirely new to me.
- The ordering below is more or less based on how impressed or intrigued I was by each series, but if I’m being honest, they all deserve to be in first place (or at least somewhere near the top).
Well, with this overly long introduction out of the way, there’s nothing left for me to say other than for you to go ahead and skip everything written below except the titles and just update your watchlist for the new year. If you’re still here, though, and curious to see a bit more about what I personally enjoyed, take a look at my quick recommendations and impressions after the eye-catching images (and then go watch them anyway, of course):
5. „Murderbot“
For years now I’ve been a fan of Artline as a publisher, and especially of the series and authors they bring to the Bulgarian market. It’s no coincidence that half of my shelves at home are filled with their books – books I really should find the time to actually get to (a goal for the new year?). I’m drifting off topic again – the point is that Martha Wells had crossed my radar as an author more than once, and “The Murderbot Diaries” had popped up for me repeatedly, even as an ad. It took the release of the series, however, for me to finally pay it proper attention – and thank goodness it was precisely those books behind it, because otherwise there was a real chance I might never have even heard of it, given that its marketing campaign, at least around here, honestly wasn’t particularly strong.
After the first season, though, the four books published so far on the subject are already gathering dust on my shelf and waiting their turn (shame on me, since each of them can literally be read in a single day), while I’m waiting for Artline to be kind enough to publish the remaining three so I can find out what happens without having to wait ten years for all of them to be adapted – if that even happens at all. In any case, for me the series was genuinely interesting – extremely relevant and timely considering the latest trend called artificial intelligence, while at the same time being easy to digest, quick to watch (after all, its runtime is that of a standard comedy), and presenting a more chill, more comedic, yet just as philosophical take on science fiction. In each of the series in this ranking I’ll try to point out the person who impressed me the most, and here that is unquestionably Alexander Skarsgård, who is surprisingly convincing as an android – to the point where, even after later reading the book adventures of the “murderbot”, I can no longer imagine anyone else in the role.
I still can’t say for certain how faithful the series is to its source material or how much it will appeal to those of you who prefer to read something rather than watch it, but for me “Murderbot” is a laid-back, humorous, and engaging sci-fi story that manages to steal the viewers’ attention, however briefly that may be – and perhaps that’s exactly where all of its charm lies, since it can easily be watched in one sitting.
4. „Shrinking“
And since we’re already talking about comedies, I honestly don’t know how I managed to miss this one until now, but I definitely don’t regret giving it a chance. After all, when its creators are Brett Goldstein – my favourite from “Ted Lasso” (another show on the platform that I wholeheartedly recommend) – and Jason Segel himself, who’s been a personal favourite ever since “How I Met Your Mother”, there was really no way to expect anything mediocre. “Shrinking” is a therapeutic comedy for viewers (which is a bit ironic, given that the main characters are therapists), because it genuinely makes you forget about your own problems, live through those of the characters, empathise with them, or sometimes outright dislike them.
The show puts the emphasis on a different perspective on therapists, their lives, and the fact that they, too, are just people like everyone else, capable of going through the same emotional catharses as their patients. Harrison Ford is a wonderful addition to this ensemble and fits perfectly as the therapeutic guru who can both solve other people’s problems and completely fail at dealing with his own. I’ve been looking for a dramedy like this for a long time, if I may call it that – something to watch with the same pleasure I once watched “Friends”, “The Big Bang Theory”, and the aforementioned series including Segel – and I’m glad that some people in Hollywood still have the capacity to produce something different, something provocative without unnecessary drama, something funny without artificial laughter, something that doesn’t feel like a waste of time despite its short runtime.
For your information, the third season starts at the end of January, so you’ve got plenty of time to prepare. Let’s hope the quality remains at the same level – especially now that Goldstein is actively involved as a character in Jimmy’s story – and that it continues to be just as captivating.
3. „Silo”
This is the series on the list that I’d probably known about and postponed for the longest time. I even bought the books (and still haven’t read them, of course – shame on me x2, though much like “Murderbot” I’ll most likely still force myself to read them before the story wraps up in the show), purely because of the concept, because of the similarities to “Fallout”, and because of the hype surrounding the production itself. To my delight, my expectations were met – the first season of “Silo” is exceptionally strong and a very promising start to what could be a great adaptation. Once again, I should stress that this is my opinion as a viewer who hasn’t read the original story, but honestly, I’m somewhat worried that reading it might lead to one of two outcomes: either I’ll know the entire story and the series will, more or less, lose its appeal for me, or the show will diverge slightly – or even drastically – from its source material, and I won’t like that either. In both cases, I have a feeling I’d be ruining my own enjoyment of Graham Yost’s production, so for now I’ll stick to the adaptation, which is, after all, the subject of this ranking.
The story in “Silo” grabs you from the very first minute, and the action unfolds at a fairly brisk pace throughout the entire first season – the twists aren’t wildly unexpected, but they’re relatively frequent and skillfully woven into the mystery of Silo 18. The hierarchy and the different social classes are presented extremely well through the various levels, clothing, manners, and even food, if you will. As with all the other representatives of the sci-fi genre in this ranking, none of this would matter without a strong cast, and the natural leader on screen and in general is undeniably Rebecca Ferguson, though I was also pleasantly surprised by some of the other major roles, such as a former rapper in the face of Common.
What I do want to point out is that, unlike some of the series you’ll read about further down, the second season was weaker in my opinion. That said, the parallel storylines moving across multiple silos, as well as the new faces breathing fresh life into one of them and into the production as a whole manage to keep it afloat. I’m not sure how much of Howey’s trilogy still remains to be covered, but Yost and his team still seem to have things under control and the intrigue is very much alive, so only time will tell whether their project will ultimately manage to break free from the confines of its silo.
2. „Pluribus“
If I’m being honest, up until about two months ago I knew absolutely nothing about this series. Later on I stumbled across some random ads, and even the name didn’t ring a bell. Then, however, I found out that this is actually the new show by Vince Gilligan – and after “Breaking Bad” and “Better Call Saul”, I don’t think anyone would simply walk past one of his projects. My interest grew even more once I came across articles about the show’s marketing campaign in the US and all the hints it was dropping about what awaits us. The fact is, though, that by the time I finally sat down to watch it, there were already three or four episodes out – needless to say, the weekly wait for each new episode after that was pure torture. Right now I’m glad that the end of the first season didn’t come with such an overly open ending, or rather not the kind that leaves you right in the middle of a climactic moment whose resolution you then have to wait years for – here, the season’s own form of climax arrives just before that.
“Plur1bus”, as it’s stylised on the posters, is one of the discoveries of the year and, for me, perhaps the most original production I’ve watched in the past twelve months. The story is gripping and quite modern, I’d say, even without the presence of an alien virus (especially considering that Gilligan had the idea quite a long time ago, which also makes it feel slightly prophetic). The quality bar is set so high that I sincerely hope the team will manage, if not to surpass themselves, then at least to match this level in the second season. The series tackles and emphasises a variety of pressing issues and definitely succeeds in influencing and provoking the viewer – not without the enormous help of an excellent cast. Rhea Seehorn is outstanding in the lead role, but for me Karolina Wydra absolutely steals the show – the actress manages in a magnificent and completely believable way to portray collective thinking, and at times you simply forget you’re watching a performance rather than some warped, apocalyptic reality.
The sad part of the whole story is that if, God forbid, such an apocalypse were ever to actually happen, the immunised would behave towards one another exactly as depicted in the series. Well, if that does happen, I can only hope the virus is just as “benevolent” as it is here – and if not, at least Gilligan is doing everything he can to prepare us for such a scenario in the best possible way.
1. „Severance”
Whatever I say about this series will feel insufficient. I thought there was no way it could impress me more than the previous two, especially since I’d actually finished them before getting through this one. Well, I’m extremely glad I was wrong – not only did the series impress me more, it outright blew my mind, both literally and figuratively. The only real downside of “Severance” is that it genuinely starts off slowly – the first few episodes are relatively sluggish in terms of action and somewhat tangled when it comes to where, what, and how things are happening. In the final episodes, however, the plot completely unleashes itself – the story remains just as intricate, but many of the threads begin to unravel, the ending of the first season is brutal, and the second season (oh, how glad I am that I watched them back to back instead of waiting three years impatiently to find out what happens) picks up directly from where we were left in the dark and builds with every subsequent episode.
And if in “Silo” the second season sometimes feels more like an expansion of the first rather than a true improvement, in “Severance” the continuation is fundamentally different. Erickson and Stiller have created a world that, for me, has no real analogue among the things I’ve watched. All of the main characters – especially the “severed” ones, and especially Adam Scott and Britt Lower – are simply brilliant in their roles and almost unrecognisable (ironically, given the essence of their characters) compared to other productions I’ve seen them in so far. The two worlds, the entire mystery surrounding what Lumon is doing and why, the relationships between the characters in their inner and outer lives, the conflicts of personalities within the same person, the interactions between those who are themselves all the time and those who live two parallel lives, the transition from one to the other, the multiple storylines running in parallel – there are so many elements in this series that make you think, react, and eagerly anticipate the fate of its characters that this ranking simply isn’t enough to contain them all.
The truth is, without going into detail about the story and the characters, there’s no way to fully convey the impact “Severance” has, so I’ll just say this – watch it carefully, enjoy the astonishing performances (it will literally take you seconds to distinguish the characters’ consciousnesses and which version of them you’re watching), and immerse yourself in an original story. I like Ben Stiller as an actor – now, because of this, I like him even more, and I can’t wait to see what he and Dan Erickson come up with for the upcoming (hopefully not in 100 years) third season. Make sure you don’t miss it – otherwise I’ll have to resort to one of my all-time favourite quotes – “Devour feculence!”.
* It just occurred to me that this post could just as easily have been titled “Top 5: Series on Apple TV”, but let’s not boost the egos of those working directly or indirectly for the media giant too much. The fact remains, however, that in the short three-month period during which I’ve been able to use the service for free, the streaming platform has become my personal favourite and has seriously made me wonder whether it’s worth ditching all the others in its favour (except you, of course, Crunchyroll – you-re far too loved at home).
