Here’s what’s happening in the world of television for Sunday, December 27th. All times are Eastern.
Top choice
Death by 2020 (Netflix, 03:01, premiere): It’s been quite a year, wouldn’t you say?
Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones (from Black mirror) go back to their special comedy roots with this flip-of-the-bird in the year that was. Look for Zack Handlen’s review of this special, which features Samuel L. Jackson, Hugh Grant, Kumail Nanjiani, Tracey Ullman, Samson Kayo, Lisa Kudrow, Diane Morgan, Leslie Jones, Cristin Milioti, Joe Keery and Laurence Fishburne.
Wild cards
We have reached the point in this long, long year when most broadcast options are either a) festive or b) repeat. So, for the rest of 2020, we will highlight some of those festive things, but also some great shows or episodes from the year that you might have missed.
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The masked dancer (Fox, 8 p.m., series premiere): This spinoff feels like a proper complement for 2020. The dancers are masked, and celebrities will never be with him again.
Pen15 (Hulu): “It’s easy to have fun with the extremely uncomfortable pubescent experience, an era that offers the kind of uncertainty and suffering that the Maya (Maya Erskine) and Anna (Anna Konkle) lyre in high school endure. Finding ways to balance that suffering – an accessible, bottomless pit of comedy – with moments of growth, emotional depth, and occasional social triumph in ways that do not indicate a total overhaul is significantly more difficult … For an adult comedy that was already pretty cool, Pen15 it continues to offer growth pains that are too easy to relate to, with some of the amateur witchcraft, in the clearest and most easily recognizable ways possible. ” Read the rest of Shannon Miller’s thoughts in our list of the best televisions of the year.