But the show’s humanistic ethos-its insistence that life is enriched by care, and that food encapsulates care better than virtually anything else-made it unmissable. If The Bear were just a tense restaurant comedy with abundant Chicago in-jokes, it would still be on this list.

Once again, Succession managed, in offensively lavish environments, to extract new meaning and heightened drama from its cyclical character studies. Still, their post-mourning solidarity could last only so long: As the series drew toward its epic conclusion, it became clear that the Roy siblings would always return to their trademark nastiness and caustic wit-even without their father as an obvious adversary. Watching them rally around one another in grief rather than greed boggled the mind, but the show succeeded in puncturing some of their characteristic narcissism. Season 4, by contrast, brought them together in the face of tragedy. In the gulf between Logan’s unrelenting control and the futures that his kids envisioned for their family’s company, the show forced the Roy siblings to confront one another’s depravities again and again. How do you end a series that spent its entire run questioning the likelihood of its premise? Up until the fourth and final season of Succession, the media magnate Logan Roy (played by Brian Cox) never truly stepped down from his post, perennially thwarting his four adult children’s attempts to jockey for power.

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