THE BEST, WORST AND WEIRDEST TV OF 2020

• Date: 19 December 2020
• Author: Ed Power
• Published date: 19 December 2020
• Publication title: Irish Times (Dublin, Ireland)

Tiger King was the guilty pleasure we turned to en masse as life came to a halt. COVID was weird and scary. So was Tiger King. But it also served as an escape hatch as normality was turned inside-out.

The timing was uncanny. Just when we required distraction, along came this gonzo plunge into the dark side of the American dream. Did Carole Baskin really bump off her first husband? How could "Tiger King" Joe Exotic possibly be a real person? Despite ourselves, we were all sucked in. As we were, the unpleasantness outside retreated a little.

Tiger King and March 2020 have now long receded, like something on the far shoreline of a different life. Today the new normal feels simply . . . normal. The weird bit is going to be going back to crowds and commutes and live concerts. That isn't to suggest television has diminished in importance in the intervening months. This winter we've all been glued to

The Crown

season four, aka The Crown: Finally We Get to the Juicy Diana Stuff. And some of us have found our new Game of Thrones in Star Wars spin-off

The Mandalorian

.

The Mandalorian is essentially Game of Thrones with spaceships and Beskar armour instead of dragons and minus the nasty, exploitative stuff. In a break with Thrones, The Mandalorian doesn't, for instance, get off on shoving kids out of windows (unless something unpleasant lies in store for Baby Yoda).

A blockbusting Disney romp was obviously never going to lean into gratuitous nudity and sexual violence. But those "edgy" flourishes have probably already had their time anyway. They were bound up in Thrones' charm. And yet, just a decade on, how horribly they have aged. Would a "prestige drama" today get away with depicting a boy-king using a crossbow to kill a prostitute purely for the jollies, as Game of Thrones did in 2012?

Along with popcorn entertainment, 2020 has trotted out an impressive selection of middle-brow hits.

The Queen's Gambit

crept onto Netflix in October, without anyone noticing. But word of mouth was soon spreading about this thoughtful and optimistic chronicling of the rise of an orphan chess prodigy (Anya Taylor-Joy) as she battles both the patriarchy and her own demons. Beth Harmon's story was assumed by many to be based on fact. Actually, it was completely fictional. Yet Taylor-Joy was so riveting, Scott Frank's script so punchy, that the series succeeded in communicating a higher truth about ambition and self- realisation.

The Queen's Gambit basked in deserved praise. Yet...