Billie and Josie's Best of the Decade

The Agents of DOUX are living the wild life this winter: not only are we doing our traditional Best of the Year posts, but we're also offering a smattering of Best of the Decade articles. Here is CoramDeo's, and below you can find out which shows Billie and Josie thought were the standouts of the past ten years.

Billie 

Because I honestly didn't remember what I was into ten years ago, I consulted our annual "Best of" lists. (Our "Best of 2020" is in progress; our old ones are all on our articles page). Sadly, my favorite television shows for the past decade either ended badly or eventually lost me, with only a few exceptions: Breaking Bad, Rectify, The Good Place, Person of Interest, and the eternal Supernatural. So that's my "Best of the decade" list.

The only show I've fallen deeply into Buffy-like love is Outlander, though. I didn't start watching Outlander until July 2019, but when I did, I kind of went nuts. I wrote 42 episode reviews (for the first four seasons) in the space of six months, and then a month later, I reviewed season five as it aired, as I was reading and rereading the entire book series. I don't do things like that unless I'm obsessed. It might be newish to me, but Outlander premiered in 2014 and the book series goes back to 1991. That should also count as a best-in-a-decade, right?

Josie 

Like Billie, I really couldn’t remember everything I’d watched in the past ten years—especially movies!—but instead of digging into our annual Best of the Year posts, I checked out the Doux Reviews All Shows page to refresh my memory.

And you know what? I think I may have created not only a list of Best of the Decade shows, but also a nice reminder of all the shows I can rewatch over the next few weeks:

Awake is a one-season stunner about a man who lives in two realities: one in which his wife died in a car accident; the other, his son. Jason Isaacs carries the series beautiful, and the show’s mature pace give a stately grandeur not often seen on network TV.

Fringe aired from 2008-2013, so I think it counts for this list. After a slow start and a truly mediocre first season, Fringe became on of the most thoughtful science-fiction shows I’ve ever seen. By the end, I enjoyed every moment of every episode, and I suspect that I’ll even like the first season more when I start my rewatch.

Legends of Tomorrow has become my new background noise. (For years, it was Angel.) The wacky game of time-traveling misfits have spent so much time on my screen during quarantine that they feel like roommates, and Season Five will definitely make my Best of 2020 list when I finally get around to writing it, too.

Peaky Blinders—a show everyone recommended but I kept resisting—is glossy, beautiful violence and masculine angst, with phenomenal clothes and even better acting. (Oh, the cheekbones!) My reviews are still in progress, and writing about the show has made me appreciate even more just how complex it is.

The Vampire Diaries started in 2009, but it didn’t end until 2017, so I think it qualifies for however we’re defining “decade” in this context. A slow start, a few whiplashingly good seasons, and a steady decline meant that this show isn’t the “best” of anything, but I’m really just proud of the fact that I did so many reviews.

Honorable Mentions go to The Good Place (it was such a pleasure to review this show with my fellow Agents of DOUX), Hannibal (arthouse gore!), and Person of Interest (although I still haven’t seen the last season!).

Now over to you: what are your best of the decade shows?

Josie Kafka is a full-time cat servant and part-time rogue demon hunter. (What's a rogue demon?) and Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.