10 best shows you slept on in 2018

You

If you ever thought that Dan Humphrey was a psychopath and Gossip Girl really let us all down when it refused to explore the uber-creepy aspects of his character (the dude secretly posted things about his friends for years!), then Lifetime’sYou might just be your next big obsession. Starring Penn Badgley, who formerly played Mr. XOXO himself, as Joe, a bookstore manager who becomes obsessed with a woman shopping in his store. Now, Joe is a complete, utter trash person, and we know this because You happens to be narrated by him a la Gossip Girl voiceovers of days gone by.

Now, fair warning, this show is truly disturbing in places. Joe, as mentioned, is terrible and not a person anyone should root for. The premise of the show is him explaining his horrible, toxic behavior as though it were reasonable and sane. It is not, and we know it, and this show is bonkers anyway. It’s honestly wildly addictive, and carefully walks a line somewhere between horror and satire that’s kind of difficult to explain if you haven’t seen it. In some ways, it feels like a distant cousin of Lifetime sister series UnREAL, which delighted in telling strangely compelling stories about objectively terrible people.

You often manages, sometimes purposefully, sometimes seemingly accidentally, to have something to say – about toxic masculinity, about social media, and the eternal conflict between the faces we present to the world and our inner selves. It’s not exactly prestige television, but it’s also impossible to look away.