There is no math or formula to the selection of this particular list. The primary consideration I made was whether my siblings — all of whom are doctors and engineers (representing a decent cross-section of STEM-oriented Malaysian society) — have heard of them. They consume film and television as much as the next person, so if these didn’t register, it meant that it missed the zeitgeist.
With that consideration in place, major television shows like Succession, The Bear, Barry, Beef, and Gen V — which occupy a spot on established and authoritative top-ten lists anyways — did not make the cut here. To avoid any sense of hierarchy, this (short) list is not numbered, and varies in language, region and medium.
Scavengers Reign
Our comprehension of alien worlds, inevitably, are anthropomorphized to fit the gamut of human knowledge and experience. Few movies or shows, to my mind, manage to craft a fully realized environment that is completely otherworldly (Rene Laloux’s Fantastic Planet comes closest). This 12-episode series follows the survivors of a transport ship that crashes on an Earth-like planet and struggles to survive. Animators Joseph Bennett and Charles Huettner creates a rich canvas of the unknown, what it means to be an explorer, and the relationship we share with creatures around us – with spirits of their own. In his failed adaption of Dune, Chilean surrealist Alejandro Jodorowsky famously quipped that his ambitions was to create a phantom experience for the audience of being under hallucinogens. That film was never made, but “Scavengers Reign” comes close to checking that box. A beautiful, delicate visual phantasmagoria that’s worthy of all praise and attention.
Stream all episodes on HBO Max.
Reservation Dogs
Life on reservation land is fraught with hopelessness and despair. The show’s impetus during its first season was the suicide of a teenage boy – a defacto ‘rat pack’ leader. Over three seasons, we follow the surviving friends — Elora (Devery Jacobs), Bear (D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai), Willie Jack (Paulina Alexis) and Cheese (Lane Factor) — as they struggle to come to terms with his passing and their disappearing indigenous culture while finding a place in the world. Despite their violent reality, Sterlin Harjo’s “Reservation Dogs” is rooted in humor and Indigenous ways of being that shatters centuries long stereotypes of victimhood. For non-Indigenous audiences, it illuminates the sanctity of cultures worth fighting and protecting.
Stream all episodes on Hulu.
Poker Face
Created by Rian Johnson, “Poker Face” brings back a classic television format that, on first impression, comes across as a Y2K era relic like dial-up modems and fax machines: the procedural. Over the past decade, networks favored serialized shows (“Breaking Bad”, “Game of Thrones”, “True Detective”) with the introduction of streaming platforms and binge-watching as a new habit of consumption. While the structure is formulaic — Natasha Lyonne plays a casino worker with the intuitive ability of spotting lies, stumbling into crime scenes and solving them — everything else is draped with contemporary treatment. Johnson, who’s carved a corner for himself as a master of ‘whodunnit’ with “Knives Out” and since inked a $450mil deal with Netflix, turns the genre on its head. If you grew up with procedurals such as “Quantum Leap” and “Pysch”, this show is for you.
Stream all episodes on Apple TV.
Honorable Mentions:
Drops of God, Moving, Blue Eye Samurai, Rain Dogs