The first few months of 2023 left us with the eventually misleading impression of a lackluster year with few thrills from the small screen. A string of excellent series this autumn made us realize that 2023 would ultimately be up to the task and that perhaps it was our relationship with them that had changed. Despite the writers' strike that slowed activity in the United States for several months, titles have continued to hit channels and platforms at a steady pace.

Faces and stories follow one another; seasons are devoured in a week, sometimes in an evening; and one series chases another. The increasing dominance of mini-series, an otherwise highly fertile format, means that TV fiction is finding it harder and harder to make a lasting impression on us.

A single season would never have been enough to make us love the damaged villains of Succession, a recurring series in end-of-year best-of lists. It took four for the death of Logan Roy, the loveless, foul-mouthed patriarch played by the Shakespearean Brian Cox, to leave us somewhat orphaned by this large, disunited family.

Another series to slip back into this list – and an excellent antidote to Succession – is The Bear and its own big, sick family, whose putative members struggle to turn their dive into a local gastronomic sensation. The guest stars – from Jamie Lee Curtis to Olivia Colman to Will Poulter – parade, with the season culminating in a tumultuous Christmas episode. The series has been renewed for a third season.

Another series to have been extended by a platform that doesn't often offer this sort of gift is The Diplomat, a Netflix original production in the shape of a double comeback: that of Keri Russell, an immense series actress since The Americans (or even Felicity for the 40-somethings), and that of the old-fashioned, chatty and colorful series. Developed by a former writer for The West Wing and Homeland, The Diplomat draws as much from Aaron Sorkin's art of dialogue as it does from the toolbox of Hollywood marital comedy. The latter was given a new lease of life this year with Platonic, Nick Stoller's lively series, carried with all the energy of a mid-life crisis by Neighbors actors Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen, and also approved for a second season.

In addition to these welcome renewals, the other good news for the industry is the excellent health of French series. And we'd love to have a second glassful of Sous contrôle (Under Control), Charly Delwart's Séries Mania award-winning political satire, and its fingers-in-the-socket foreign minister, played by a top-notch Léa Drucker.

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