Ciara Moloney and Dean Buckley Television

The Sundae TV Awards 2025

We watched probably as little new TV this year as we have since we started doing these awards, and just like last year, that’s mostly because we’re just busy. Ciara finished her PhD and is now officially Dr. Ciara Moloney, expert in the screen and stage works of Martin McDonagh. Dean broke more news stories, including one a government spokesperson had to respond to on the radio. In many ways, the TV landscape is no less disillusioning than last year, but as the world slides further into nightmare, the beautiful illusions still left to find are all the more precious. Some of them even feel like hope.

And no, we didn’t watch Andor, so stop asking.

These, as far as we’re concerned, are the best shows of the most recent TV season (June 2024 – May 2025). As well as the classic drama and comedy awards, we also have two awards for reality, variety and documentary television, including game shows, professional wrestling and whatever Eric Andre is doing at any given minute. We picked our winners by consensus, so only shows we both watched were eligible to win, but we each picked a runner-up, regardless of whether the other has seen it.

You can find each of our full slates of nominees at the bottom of the post. We recommend checking them out if you’re looking for recommendations.

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Ciara Moloney and Dean Buckley Film

The Sundae Film Awards 2025

You don’t need us to tell you that 2024 was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year, but did you know that films came out during it also? We won’t hold it against if you forgot now that we’re two months that felt like years into a year that’s going to feel like decades. In fact, it’s the perfect reason to join us as we heap praise on the films that shone brightest through the dark. It was a great year for primates, body horror and homoeroticism, not to mention staring into the yawning abyss at the heart of American celebrity culture.

As with every year, we gave one award for each of the eight major Oscars: we care about most of the others (except for the fake awards like Best Original Song) but this post would be absurdly long if we picked those too. We each did out our personal nominees and then selected the winner by consensus, so the winners only come from films that both of us have seen and nominated, but we’ve each picked a personal runner-up regardless of whether the other has seen or nominated it. We also each gave a Special Achievement Award for something that doesn’t fit our other categories.

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Ciara Moloney and Dean Buckley Television

The Sundae TV Awards 2024

We didn’t watch as much new TV this year as we usually do. Partly that’s because we are both increasingly busy killing it at other things, but mostly it’s because, frankly, the TV landscape is increasingly disillusioning. We are so far gone from the days when it seemed like streaming might crack the possibilities of the medium wide open and change them forever. It did, to be clear, but then the vast, rapacious conglomerates that control all TV decided that, actually, ambition and vision are for losers who don’t have a Scrooge McDuck money vault. It’s hard to want to watch a lot of new shows these days when more and more of it seems like little more than an indistinguishable slurry of “content”.

What do you do when you’re a TV critic getting jaded with modern TV? If you’re Ciara, you sail the seven seas of classic television and answer the siren call of the new only when it earns your interest. If you’re Dean, you just start shooting as much animation and stand-up directly into your veins as possible, because there, if nowhere else, are ambition and vision still alive and well. But you never give up on television, because when it’s good it still melts your face off.

We’re two days late this year, but considering we were months ahead of the Emmys last year, we’re sure you’ll forgive us. These, as far as we’re concerned, are the best shows of the most recent TV season (June 2023 – May 2024). As well as the classic drama and comedy awards, we also have two awards for reality, variety and documentary television, including game shows, professional wrestling and whatever Eric Andre is doing at any given minute. We picked our winners by consensus, so only shows we both watched were eligible to win, but we each picked a runner-up, regardless of whether the other has seen it.

You can find each of our full slates of nominees at the bottom of the post. We recommend checking them out if you’re looking for recommendations.

Continue reading “The Sundae TV Awards 2024” →
Ciara Moloney and Dean Buckley Film

The Sundae Film Awards 2024

The best and worst thing about 2023 was how it gave us genuine hope that maybe… the movies are back? The seemingly unbreakable stranglehold that effects-driven action blockbusters have had on popular cinema for our entire adult lives was shattered by, of all things, an existentialist Barbie movie and a J. Robert Oppenheimer biopic. (The latter also dethroned the repugnant Bohemian Rhapsody as highest-grossing biopic of all time, a victory for good taste we never thought would happen in our lifetime.) Disney lost the global box office for the first time since we started this blog, and the Oscar nominations were so good people had to make up reasons to be mad at them. There were so many great films that picking winners for these awards wasn’t just difficult, it felt faintly insane. Films that might have swept other years barely got a look in. Even our full slates of nominees, linked at the bottom of the post, represent just a fraction of the greatness on offer.

Nevertheless, we did, eventually, painfully, manage to pick our winners. As with every year, we gave one award for each of the eight major Oscars: we care about most of the others (except for the fake awards like Best Original Song) but this post would be absurdly long if we picked those too. We each did out our personal nominees and then selected the winner by consensus, so the winners only come from films that both of us have seen and nominated, but we’ve each picked a personal runner-up regardless of whether the other has seen or nominated it. We also each gave a Special Achievement Award for something that doesn’t fit our other categories.

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Ciara Moloney and Dean Buckley Television

The Sundae TV Awards 2023

Some years, it can be a bit of a struggle to put together this introductory spiel, and some years the AMPTP has been so cartoonishly evil and buffoonishly overconfident in the face of one of the biggest strikes in Hollywood history that the Emmys were cancelled and rescheduled. In theory, these awards are a counterpoint to the Emmys, and we would usually have posted them a few days ago, the night before the “real” awards. Well, who’s real now, the Emmys? Not you! You’re not even happening ‘til January at the earliest and no one will give a shit because it’ll be Oscar season! You get nothing! You lose!

Fortunately for us, we won’t see the effects of the strike – or rather, the AMPTP’s refusal to give their workers’ fair conditions so long they needed to strike!!! – ‘til next year, because we’re here to pass judgement on the most recent TV season (June 2022 – May 2023). As well as the classic drama and comedy awards, we also have two awards for reality, variety and documentary television, including game shows, professional wrestling and whatever Eric Andre is doing at any given minute. We picked our winners by consensus, so only shows we both watched were eligible to win, but we each picked a runner-up, regardless of whether the other has seen it.

You can find each of our full slates of nominees at the bottom of the post. We recommend checking them out if you’re looking for recommendations.

(Also, we don’t normally say this and it’s never been a problem before, but just so no one can say we didn’t warn them: we thoroughly spoil the shows we write about. If you don’t want to know what happens in the final seasons of Succession and Barry, turn back now!)

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Ciara Moloney and Dean Buckley Film

The Sundae Film Awards 2023

In a lot of ways, 2022 wasn’t a “great year” for film, but that certainly wasn’t because it lacked great films. In fact, this was definitely the most competitive year we’ve ever had at the Sundae Film Awards and we genuinely considered tying most of the awards to reflect that. (We only tied one in the end.) We had a truly agonising experience picking our winners, and more than most years, you should check out our full slates of nominees at the bottom of the post, because there is nothing in there but great films.

The real reason 2022 won’t go down in film history is there was no one big story to tell about it. Instead, we had lots of little trends: semi-autobiographical films about the director’s youth (Aftersun, Armageddon Time, The Fabelmans), satires of the modern rich (Glass Onion, The Menu, Triangle of Sadness), movies that are mostly just people talking in one room (Three Thousands Years of Longing, The Whale, Women Talking), actors who appeared on Scrubs at the height of their movie stardom getting late career plaudits (Colin Farrell, Brendan Fraser). It was also a big year for poop, puke, piss, donkeys, stop-motion, and ominous concrete steps into dark. The last superstar actor and director on the planet each released a long-awaited blockbuster that helped to save theatrical distribution (Top Gun: Maverick, Avatar: The Way of Water) and dormant auteurs returned with the best films of their careers (Elvis, Tár). Sony released the biggest superhero flop of the year twice because of memes and a canny campaign launched an indie actress to the front of the Best Actress race.

Most shockingly of all, the Academy… actually did a pretty good job of nominating worthwhile films for Oscars? Excitingly for us, that included correctly noticing that an Irish-language film was one of the best of the year for the first time ever. Irish cinema has been building towards a breakout on the global stage for a while now, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to see this moment finally arrive and celebrate it in our own annual film awards too.

As with every year, we gave one award for each of the eight major Oscars: we care about most of the others (except for the fake awards like Best Original Song) but this post would be absurdly long if we picked those too. We each did out our personal nominees and then selected the winner by consensus, so the winners only come from films that both of us have seen and nominated, but we’ve each picked a personal runner-up regardless of whether the other has seen or nominated it. We also each gave a Special Achievement Award for something that doesn’t fit our other categories: this year, by sheer coincidence, both to animated films.

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Ciara Moloney and Dean Buckley Television

The Sundae TV Awards 2022

What a weirdly fantastic and fantastically weird year of television we’ve had. We said goodbye to previous award winners Better Call Saul, Better Things and Derry Girls, all of whom represented one of the two dominant themes of the year: good shows staying good. It’s Always Sunny? Still good. Taskmaster? Still good. Ted Lasso? Still good.

But Ted Lasso also represents the other theme: our extreme uncertainty about how to classify many shows as dramas or comedies this year. Some of it was new shows like Peacemaker, or new to us shows like Doom Patrol and Succession, that straddled the divide. But we also had favourites like Ted Lasso that seemed to shift from one to the other. While we put thought into our process and considered qualities like a show’s structure as much as or more than its tone, some of our decisions are likely to feel arbitrary or even absurd to you, reader. All we can say is: deal with it, because we are not explaining or justifying that shit every time.

And with that little bit of housekeeping out of the way, please enjoy as we pass judgement on the last TV season (June 2021 – May 2022). As well as the classic drama and comedy awards, we also have two awards for reality, variety and documentary television, including game shows, professional wrestling and whatever Eric Andre is doing at any given minute. We picked our winners by consensus, so only shows we both watched were eligible to win, but we each picked a runner-up, regardless of whether the other has seen it.

You can find each of our full slates of nominees at the bottom of the post. We recommend checking them out if you’re looking for recommendations.

Continue reading “The Sundae TV Awards 2022” →
Ciara Moloney and Dean Buckley Television

The Sundae TV Awards 2021

We’ll not beat around the bush: watching TV was not as fun as usual for us this year. It can already be hard to get excited about the quantity-over-quality glut of Peak TV when there’s decades of classic TV to watch instead. But less new TV was released than usual due to the pandemic, so it was harder to just skim the cream off the top, and lots of ongoing shows we love didn’t release a new season, so we couldn’t even turn to our old reliables. Also, GLOW got cancelled in the middle of production on its fourth and final season for either no good reason or in retaliation for cast members criticising the producers for sidelining the show’s characters and actors of colour. Netflix said it was because COVID restrictions made filming a show about professional wrestling too logistically difficult, which was very hard to take seriously considering how many actual professional wrestling shows continued filming throughout lockdown. This has nothing to do with why TV was less fun this year, but it was a bullshit decision and we’ll be mad about it for at least a decade.

But life finds a way and there’s still been some fantastic television over the last TV season (June 2020 – May 2021). Enough that we decided to expand the awards to include two new categories this year. We’ve previously used special achievement awards to honour television that didn’t always fit neatly into drama or comedy categories. On reflection, the majority of that television comprises a general category of TV – the largest category of TV, in truth – contrasted with the narrative fiction of conventional TV drama and comedy. Our new categories will celebrate the best of reality, variety and documentary television, including game shows, professional wrestling and whatever Eric Andre is doing at any given minute. We picked our winners by consensus, so only shows we both watched were eligible to win, but we each picked a runner-up, regardless of whether the other has seen it.

You can find each of our full slates of nominees at the bottom of the post. We recommend checking them out if you’re looking for recommendations. 

Continue reading “The Sundae TV Awards 2021” →
Ciara Moloney and Dean Buckley Film

The Sundae Film Awards 2021

We usually begin these with some reflections on the year that’s been, but you know how the last year has been and it would feel condescending to repeat. Half the films we anticipated we would be writing about this year at the start of last year didn’t even come out, and almost none of those that did got a theatrical release. We usually define the “film year” through a combination of Oscar eligibility, Irish release dates and our own gut feeling about whether a movie is part of a given cultural “season” or not. This year, it’s all gut feeling, so if you’re wondering why I Care a Lot, released February 2021, was eligible, but not Zack Snyder’s Justice League, released March 2021, it’s because we say so.

Just like every year, we gave one award for each of the eight major Oscars: we care about most of the others (except for the fake awards like Best Original Song) but this post would be absurdly long if we picked those too. We each did out our personal nominees and then selected the winner by consensus, so the winners only come from films that both of us have seen and nominated, but we’ve each picked a personal runner-up regardless of whether the other has seen or nominated it. We also each gave a Special Achievement Award for something that doesn’t quite fit the regular categories. You can see each of our full slates of nominees at the bottom of this post, which we strongly encourage you to check out if you’re looking for recommendations. There was a surprising number of great films this year, and we only got to award a small fraction of them.

Continue reading “The Sundae Film Awards 2021” →