The 7 best (and 3 worst) TV shows of 2023

Secret Invasion

Secret Invasion should have worked. It had an incredible piece of source material to work from, with an A-List cast (including Samuel L. Jackson, Ben Mendelsohn, Olivia Colman, and Emilia Clarke) to work with, as well as the fact that it was set within the always-consistent Marvel Cinematic Universe. It also had shades of a British TV spy thriller. So what on Earth went wrong?

The Disney Plus series started rather promisingly, leaning into the paranoia that having shape-shifting aliens as your primary villains creates. But it could never quite hold your interest after that, with unnecessarily long episodes dragging the story out for no reason and pointless excuses as to why Fury couldn’t just call in his Avengers buddies to help him sort this out sooner (“I have to do this alone,” he says, as if the fate of the entire world isn’t at stake).

It also houses a twist designed to make us marvel in awe at its cleverness, but it only succeeds in retroactively harming the MCU as a whole. In fact, all it leaves us doing is wishing that it didn’t happen, because it’s unnecessary and doesn’t serve the show or the world it’s set in.

Secret Invasion is a story that needs to be treated like the Infinity Saga or Secret Wars. Instead, it got shoehorned into a six-part drama that felt totally removed from the wider MCU, and somehow still ended up harming it.

To no one’s surprise, Jackson’s performance does all the heavy-lifting and he does deliver one of his finest outings as Nick Fury yet. Olivia Colman is a scene-stealer, camping it up deliciously as the rather odd Sonya Falsworth.

Of all the Disney Plus Marvel TV shows, this might be the most disappointing.

Verdict: WORST