“Ozark” is the end of a Shakespearean tragedy with the previous acts: Do not be tied to anyone; You probably won’t last. The show is about a nice married duo who climb the ranks of a drug cartel. Dukes is the pregnant feeding investigating her finances. Burke is her couples therapist. Both are divine. Dukes opts for an ingenious skepticism, as if she’d been deposed by Fargo PD. Everyone lies to her and the thrill of her performance comes from the demeanor she maintains amid the obvious insults to her intelligence. She must have a dozen options: “How stupid do you think I am?” Meanwhile, Burke is a bag of Sour Patch Kids – glamorously dirty, full of wisdom and corruption. You make these candies with acid and sugar. They are addicting and when they run out it’s horrible. (Streaming on Netflix.)

Seyfried’s version of the 1930s movie star and lover Marion Davies in David Fincher’s film about writing Citizen Kane shows what Seyfried does best to reinterpret the best of Davies. The result is a kind of world-weary effervescence. An actress who always had a keen instinct for her graduates, finally from soda to champagne. (Streaming on Netflix from December 4th)

For a few weeks, the athleticism at this professional wrestling start-up is more exciting than anything that happens in Vince McMahon’s empire. And nobody in WWE has that kid’s combination of diction (Juilliard over Long Island), intensity, or cheesiness. Even when Friedman lost his cool (his nom de ring is MJF), he still has amazing control. The character is part heel, part tool (hair gel, slipper, Burberry bling – sticky, sticky, sticky) and part Goodfella wannabe; His mouth runs more than he does. For reasons only the producers of this show can explain, a long period culminated in October between MJF and veteran Chris Jericho in a version of “Me and My Shadow” with women dancing and live singing. It was less than spectacular, but nothing Friedman did. He wasn’t embarrassed at all. It was slick in a way that should worry Ric Flair. This kid makes you say, “Woo!”

The show is a bloody zoo with half-finished ideas. But right there, in the middle of the chaos, there was about 30 minutes of continuous construction around Ellis, as a housewife named Hippolyta. Up until that point, she was a little gamer in the midst of all the monsters, magic, and racist history. Suddenly, shit! She screamed through a wormhole into another dimension and then into another – she dances with Josephine Baker, commands a troop of Amazons and does interplanetary fieldwork in costumes that would drive Sun Ra crazy. Ellis has been around for a long time and for those of us who have waited for a part that will turn fear into joy and joy into anger and rage into amazement, the wait was more than worth the wait. More please. (Streaming on HBO Max.)

Officially, it’s about a chess master (see below), but a few episodes are also about her dreary adoptive mother, who Heller finally plays in a state of subdued surprise. The benefits of the chess chaperone lifestyle are beyond the character’s wildest dreams. But instead of milking that juicy matron part for campiness, Heller relies on the unexpected warmth of motherhood in the 11th hour. (Streaming on Netflix.)

I don’t know which Kentucky orphanage was so integrated in the 1950s, but I almost didn’t care because Ingram is so good. In fact, it’s so good that I’ve even resigned myself to its triple stereotypical part (pickaninny; black best friend; Morgan Freeman at the end of “The Shawshank Redemption”). Her galactic charisma and physical lightbulb turned a stock roll into a three-course meal.

It’s proof for Taylor-Joy that Ingram only appears in about two and a half of the seven episodes of this series and I didn’t miss her as much as I imagined. That’s how overwhelming Taylor-Joy is, despite the fact that from some angles she looks like Emma Stone, reinvented by Tim Burton – long face and big eyes, like an insect trapped in the body of a drunk pill popper. I can imagine that this was no easy feat: cunning, stupor and stratagem – how do you deal with all of this? I take it like you just landed here from space with no intention of going home.

Buttigieg had suspended his presidential campaign less than two weeks ago, and in the first few minutes his decision to stand up for Kimmel came to me as the nadir of ambition before it most. But Buttigieg’s joke delivery came almost from an awkward comedy school (who me? Funny?). Its timing was its own clockwork. He was excellently humble in a sketch in which he was handing out pretzel samples on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. And his interview with Patrick Stewart was calm and only slightly scratchy. Here is someone who ran for almost a year for president and yet was the most human (and amusing) about not doing retail politics, just plain retailing.

Pure magic. Magic that didn’t have to be so magical for a Google Hangout. It took place in the middle of an all-star party (almost all) that was being held for one of the country’s great magicians. The song comes from Sondheim’s underrated “Pacific Overtures” and is in its Top 10. It’s too artful to explain, but Sondheim puts it in the present and the past. The video opens with Harada and Sesma in their respective boxes. Then it goes to Sesma alone and then to Ku – as Sesma’s younger self – looking down like from a tree, and Sesma turns his head to Ku. Then Loh suddenly arrives in a fourth box. He’s on his back first but has shot so his head still matches the face-to-space ratio of the other three. I give you geometry. These four impressed me. Part of the magic is how they’re connected. On stage, it’s time to collapse. Here it is also distance. Technically, I don’t know how she and the technicians did it. But the boy did it to me – as appropriately ambitious and funny recognition of Sondheim’s boldness and as a metaphor for the teamwork that is necessary to achieve something meaningful and permanently decent this year.

If the great Michaela Coel is the wounded psyche of this HBO series, then Opia is its reality check. She plays Coel’s best friend Terry and is here both verbally and physically. (Her body language alone could fill a dictionary.) But it is the patience in her actions that annoyed me, the compassionate watching of Coel and the looking out for Coel. Opia is Ethel for Lucy, Pam for Gina: another dictionary definition – for “support”. (Streaming on HBO Max.)

Everyone in this cruelly canceled Hulu remake of the film was fantastic, including Zoë Kravitz. But Lacy is worth singling out, as few actors perform more complex work with sporty secondary bananas. He’s built like a baseball player, but comes with reserves of friendliness that compliment Jenny Slate’s stupidity, Lena Dunham’s self-absorption, or Kravitz’s reluctance. There is no award for this, just my incessant admiration. (Streaming on Hulu.)

There is no person in this Showtime series who does not exist in the shadow of Ethan Hawke’s tornadic rendition of John Brown. But these two, who play enslaved men involved in Brown’s passionate warfare, create something special: Neither of them will. Johnson is the young eyes and voice of the show and what a smart comedian he is. His face can express a hundred kinds of surprise and fear, doubt and relief all the same. Where did Point-Du Jour come from? His line readings are clear and funny. These two made me laugh the most. Her raised eyebrows always seemed to match mine. (Streaming on Showtime.)

Apparently, Warwick came to Twitter eight years ago, but this was the year her account became one thing – dry, wise, as elegantly spectral as grumpy, generous. Warwick tweets the way she sings, gentle and martini-dry. A tweet that drew thousands of glances warns Spotifiers that artists can see our playlists. She used the “I see you” eye emoji, where a period would lead. Another specifically asked that no one tell her what “hot girls’ summer” was even though it was “was” at the time. The attraction is that the tweets sound like they are – that smoky timbre, the showbiz diction. They are a snack. I read some of their posts and actually tried to wipe the salt off my hands.

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