It’s time to bundle all the culture from 2023 into a blender and guzzle it down like Kendall Roy. Yes it’s the Guide’s annual end of year sum-up, where we round up the best films, albums, TV shows and books from the past 12 months. This isn’t to be confused with the Guardian arts desk’s own definitive rankings – here’s film, music, TV shows and classical, with stage, art and games to come. Instead this is a smattering of thing we enjoyed with no rankings attached.
So what went down? Well it was a strange year for film, which frequently seemed to be in a state of either feast or famine. Barbenheimer was arguably the biggest movie event in decades, reminding us of how great the cinema-going experience is. So naturally, Hollywood decided to capitalise on that by … seemingly barely releasing any new films for months afterwards, the result both of the long tail of the pandemic and an actors and writers strike that prevented many studios from properly promoting their movies. Still, there were plenty of great films released in the past 12 months, and this year’s Oscar race looks particularly stacked after a slightly spavined few years.
