168 Best Movies & Shows Released in 2017 (Page 4)

With true crime hitting an all-time high, and Making a Murderer making millions, here comes Netflix's The Keepers. However, while the two shows share a common genre and general tone of voice, The Keepers is a much more interesting show. For one, it focuses on the victims and their stories, instead of the grisly perpetrators. Second, it trades cliffhangers for substance without compromising on breathtaking twists and revelations. Across seven taut episodes, it meticulously examines the unsolved murder of Catherine Cesnik, a Baltimore nun in 1969, who is suspected of being murdered to cover up sexual abuse at the Catholic high school she taught at. Adroitly edited, beautifully shot, and featuring great music by Blake Neely, The Keepers unfolds a horrific tale and emphatically captures the pain still lingering on five decades later.

Genre: Crime, Documentary, Mystery

Actor: Abbie Schaub, Gemma Hoskins, Jean Hargadon Wehner, Tom Nugent, Virginia Anzengruber

Director: Ryan White

Rating: TV-MA

Unlike Lovesick, which rightfully changed its name from Scrotal Recall, Schitt's Creek is still called Schitt's Creek many seasons in. After flying under the radar for a while, the sitcom about a wealthy, Arrested-Development-style family coping with the sudden loss of their fortune is starting to get the attention it deserves. Warm and witty writing, very gif-able catchprases, and a great main cast have turned this slightly slim-sounding premise into a long-running cult classic. The great Catherine O'Hara plays Moira Rose, the cynical matriarch, while many of you 00s kids will immediately recognize the male lead, Eugene Levy, as “Jim's dad” from American Pie aka them most embarrassing dad ever to grace a screen. In all its simplicity, the steadily fleshed out riches-to-rags plot is hilarious, undemanding, and witty, exactly what you want a sitcom to be.

Genre: Comedy

Actor: Annie Murphy, Catherine O'Hara, Catherine O'Hara, Chris Elliott, Dan Levy, Daniel Levy, Dustin Milligan, Emily Hampshire, Eugene Levy, Jennifer Robertson, Karen Robinson, Noah Reid, Sarah Levy, Tim Rozon

Rating: TV-14

Think of Dix pour cent, or Call My Agent!, as it was so horribly translated, as a smart French version of Mark Wahlberg's Entourage or, as the director once quipped, Desperate Housewives with actors and their agents. Ten percent (dix pour cent) is the fee that said French agents receive as compensation from the actor's fee. It chronicles the life of an aspiring talent agent at a French casting agency. New to Paris, she lands her dream job, but now has to deal with a variety of very stressed-out, capricious characters on both sides of the bargain. It is one of those shows that finds hilarity in the fact that nobody actually talks to each other over sometimes simple issues. On the actor's side, many of the appearing A-listers star as themselves. The countless cameos include the likes of Jean Reno, Monica Belucci, and Charlotte Gainsbourg. It's basically a soap opera but so well-written and complex, you might refrain from binging it too hard just to make it last longer.

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Actor: Anne Marivin, Assaad Bouab, Camille Cottin, Fanny Sidney, Grégory Montel, Laure Calamy, Liliane Rovere, Nicolas Maury, Ophélia Kolb, Ophélia Kolb, Stefi Celma, Thibault de Montalembert

Rating: N/A, Not Rated

At once cynical and still in love with the glamor of show business, Difficult People puts a comedic target on absolutely everybody—celebrities, executives, and fans who love media as much as they hate it. Much of the series' comedy comes from how its two protagonists (played with undeniable chemistry by Julie Klausner and Billy Eichner) constantly sabotage their own opportunities at success, as they get swallowed up in a self-cannibalizing ecosystem of fleeting trends and failed ideas. But even as Julie and Billy almost always come home defeated, there's something touching about the unwavering strength of their friendship that gets them through each day. It's an unexpected reminder of the real things and real people who are here now, laughing with us about the absurdity of it all.

Genre: Comedy

Actor: Andrea Martin, Billy Eichner, Gabourey Sidibe, James Urbaniak, Julie Klausner

We follow the daily adventures of 3 bears that are individually lovable but collectively iconic. They rotate around as the centerpiece of an episode, each offering different flavors of humor namely dopey, slapstick, cringe, absurd, and when all else fails, funny animal. Some episodes take us into flashbacks of the bears as lost babies looking for a home, and it was a mistake to turn that into its own show, but it is in perfect quantity here. The recurring characters never overstay their welcome, changing the 3-person dynamic into even numbers where no character ventures off alone, or the inevitable 3 against the world, where the bears unite to overcome something else.

Genre: Animation, Comedy, Family, Kids

Actor: Bobby Moynihan, Demetri Martin, Eric Edelstein

Rating: TV-Y7

Sexual assault and trafficking are never easy to depict onscreen, especially when they’re based on true events, but Three Girls strikes a balance between realism and empathy. It’s gritty but never gratuitous, critical but never preachy. You can tell the cast and crew took their time to carefully tell this important tale, which continues to be overlooked by authorities in Manchester. As a result, Three Girls can be difficult and frustrating to sit through, but that only speaks to the quality of its acting and storytelling. Three Girls is a must-watch, but you’d be forgiven for not wanting to put it on a second time.

Genre: Crime, Drama

Actor: Ace Bhatti, Adam Karim, Adrian Harris, Amanda Hale, Antonio Aakeel, Bo Bragason, Brian Fletcher, Deka Walmsley, Ezra Faroque Khan, Jackie Clune, Jamie Ballard, Jason Hughes, Jay Sajjid, Jessica Fostekew, Jill Halfpenny, Jonas Khan, Katherine Pearce, Katy Carmichael, Kerrie Hayes, Lesley Sharp, Lisa Riley, Liv Hill, Maggie Service, Marc Danbury, Marc Geoffrey, Maxine Peake, Molly Windsor, Naomi Radcliffe, Nick Moss, Paul Hickey, Paul Kaye, Pearce Quigley, Peter Singh, Philip Hill-Pearson, Ria Zmitrowicz, Robert Gwilym, Ross Anderson, Rupert Procter, Salman Akhtar, Simon Cook, Simon Nagra, Steffan Rhodri, Tebraiz Shahzad, Tom Prior, Tristan Sturrock, Vincenzo Pellegrino, Vineeta Rishi, Waleed Akhtar, Wasim Zakir

Director: Philippa Lowthorpe

Rating: NR

Search Party starts off with a simple mystery: whatever happened to Chantal, that girl Dory (Alia Shawkat) barely knew in college? She's been pronounced dead by authorities but Dory is sure she's seen her alive just recently. With nothing else going on in her life, a life she imagined would be filled with big feats and adventures by now, Dory enlists the help of her fellow 20-something friends and decides to get to the bottom of the case.

What ensues is a terrific mystery—perfectly paced and twisted—elevated by Dory and company's comic self-absorption, which buoys the story with great wit and humor. It's both a self-contained mystery and a satire, and none overwhelms the other. 

As the series progresses, Search Party gets even deeper down the loony hole. The crimes get darker, the stakes get higher, and their sanities barely withstand the new cracks they get. But it also gets even more complex and interesting, with many things to say about our so-called lost generation, the millennial generation, who would rather solve mysteries and find simple cure-alls than look at ourselves in plain light.

Genre: Comedy

Actor: Alia Shawkat, John Early, John Reynolds, Meredith Hagner

Rating: TV-MA