Oztix | News | We Had A Lot Of Screen Time This Year: Here's The Movies & TV Shows We Thought Were Best

Each year, The Music team and contributors take a deep dive into the year that was, scratch our heads and try to jog our memories for what were our top picks of the year. The votes have been cast, the results have been tallied and 2018's best and brightest can finally be revealed. So far we've shared our Album Of The Year, Song Of The Year, the Local & International Live Performances Of The Year and the Artist Of The Year. Today, we share our TV Show & Movie Of The Year.

TV Show Of The Year by Maxim Boon

It’s the golden age of TV, so they say. And since we’re all spending so much time with the ol’ gogglebox, it’s probably not drawing too long a bow to say our watching habits could be a kind of litmus test for the psyche. So, what do the telly triumphs singled out by our writers reveal about minds behind this mag? Well, that we’re all a bit afraid. But if that sounds a tad bleak for a rousing review of the year’s best binge-watching, I’d beg to differ: millions of years of evolution didn’t make us a bunch o’ scaredy-cats for nothing. Fear keeps us alert, keeps us alive, and keeps us honest. And it’s those finer fear factors that can be found percolating through many of this year’s highest ranking shows.

Possibly the most dominant subtext running through our top ten is how often we hide our truest natures. Maniac, easily the most A-List laden show of this year’s winning crop, saw Jonah Hill and Emma Stone star in Patrick Somerville's dark comedy wrestling with the complexities of mental illness. The Haunting Of Hill House took the ghost story trope into new, psychologically sophisticated territory to explore the ties that bind and the hurts that fracture a family with a tragic past shrouded in secrecy. The BBC-made Bodyguard delivered a taut, politically incisive window on the threat of extremism through the lens of unresolved emotional trauma, while Killing Eve, another BBC success featuring a powerhouse performance by Sandra Oh, also used counter-intelligence as a vehicle to look at the yin and yang of empathy vs sociopathy.

BoJack Horseman, Better Call Saul and Big Mouth – no strangers to this annual review – all brought their escapist, comic A-game to the TV party again this year - laughter is medicine for the soul, after all. But it’s our eclectic top three that seems to reveal the most about what anxieties might be praying on our collective minds. The Handmaid’s Tale, starring the irrepressible Elisabeth Moss, continued to feel terrifyingly prescient in a world riven by political divides, while Donald Glover (the king of this year’s poll results) showed us how to see the funny side of struggle, making lightning strike twice for dramedy Atlanta's second season. But it’s a newcomer that takes this year’s crown, with a show that took existential terror and spun it into comedy genius. The Good Place, helmed by Kristen Bell and Ted Danson, is a heaven-sent study of what might be waiting for us in the great beyond. I guess we're a bit preoccupied with what comes next – but at least we're headed there with a smile on our face.

The Top Ten

1. The Good Place

2. Atlanta

3. The Handmaid's Tale

4. Big Mouth

5. Better Call Saul

6. BoJack Horseman

7. Killing Eve

8. Bodyguard

9. The Haunting Of Hill House

10. Maniac

Past Winners:

2017: Stranger Things

2016: Stranger Things

2015: Game Of Thrones

2014: True Detective

2013: Breaking Bad

2012: Breaking Bad

2011: Breaking Bad

Movie Of The Year by Hannah Story

Turns out The Music’s writers are into Marvel movies. Who knew? Looking at our top ten we love a bloody fantasy/superhero story, starting with Black Panther, before big-upping Avengers: Infinity War and Deadpool 2 (the latter's first film topped our poll back in 2016). Black Panther is of course #1 and is also the most culturally significant, an all-black superhero movie and the first Marvel flick to be helmed by a black director in Ryan Coogler. Black Panther broke box office records and became the highest-grossing film by a black director and, as it stands, sits at #3 on the list of top grossing films in Australia this year. Add to its smash success and cultural import a script that is actually good, plus the thirst appeal of Michael B Jordan, and you’ve got yourself The Music’s Movie Of The Year.

But our writers are also into big heart-wrenching musical dramas, which explains #2 and #3 - Bohemian Rhapsody and A Star Is Born. It’s no surprise a collection of music writers would froth over a Queen biopic, but the performance of Rami Malek alone earns its place at the top of our list. Meanwhile, Bradley Cooper’s directorial debut with his remake of 1937 film A Star Is Born exposed us both to Cooper’s singing voice and to Lady Gaga’s impressive acting chops.

Still, our love of blockbusters and musical dramas doesn’t mean we don’t appreciate an auteur film: In Bruges director Martin McDonagh’s confronting and discomfiting Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, rounded out the top five, and Greta Gerwig’s first film Lady Bird was at #6. Both films were nominated for plenty of Oscars this year, including Best Picture, but only Three Billboards... won, thanks to the strength of Frances McDormand and Sam Rockwell’s performances. While Three Billboards... tackled homophobia, racism and sexual violence, Lady Bird took a more subdued view of the world – it’s a feminine approach to ‘00s/’10s mumblecore movies where Saoirse Ronan and Timothee Chalamet start to come of age, but where the focus really is on female friendships and the relationships between mothers and their daughters.