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Back with another monthly watch list recap!

Once a month I send out a list of everything I watched the previous month to give you some ideas of things to add to your own watch lists, so I’m here to share the rundown of all of the stuff I watched in December.

Also note that I only include seasons of TV shows that I finished in any given month — if it’s still on or I’m still currently watching it, then I’ll include it when it’s over.

RELATED: Everything I Watched in November 2023

You’ll find that my reactions to things lean positive, because 1. I actively try to seek out stuff that I expect to be entertaining, has been well reviewed and/or has value to me — I’m not just going to watch the most popular show on Netflix because everyone else is if I don’t think I would like it — and 2. I’ve given myself more leeway recently to give up on shows that I’m not enjoying (here’s the list of all the shows I dropped last year). I used to force myself to finish things even if I hated them, which is truly unnecessary and a waste of time.

Keep scrolling for the list of everything I watched in December 2023 (and here’s the list from November if you want more ideas for things to watch):

I thought that this season of “GBBO” was a return to form of sorts. Though I would still like for the challenges to be simplified and for the bakers to be given more time to complete them — I don’t know about you, but I’d find it much more fulfilling to see them deliver impressive, completed bakes instead of the rushed, incomplete failures we often get — but ultimately this was a fun watch. I loved the co-host swap and thought Alison Hammond was a very welcome addition to the tent. I was also very happy with the winner!

While this didn’t hit in the same way as the David Beckham doc did, it definitely scratched the same itch and was a solid watch. Over the course of four episodes, we see British pop star and notorious bad boy Robbie Williams look back at his career through never-before-seen footage, memorable performances and a lot of personal ups and downs, and it was nice to see how much he’s matured, how much he’s learned from his mistakes and how settled he seems to be in his life now.

I mean, I just loved this movie. All three central performances are fantastic — Julianne Moore and Natalie Portman both deliver yet again, while “Riverdale” alum Charles Melton was a revelation — and it makes me happy that putting a movie like this on Netflix is exposing it to such a major audience. If this had been released in theaters, it would’ve been seen by much fewer people.

I’m not being dramatic when I say that the second season of Paris Hilton’s reality show is one of the most essential seasons of reality TV we’ve gotten in recent years. It’s such a study on modern celebrity and reality TV and the artifice of LA and WASPs and family dynamics and money, and I can’t believe it’s all on camera. You see the real Kathy Hilton on this show, and there are some truly revelatory conversations between Kathy and Paris, as well as Paris and her sister Nicky, that kind of knocked my socks off. You have to read between the lines a little bit, too, but, like, even just seeing the way that Paris slips in and out of the character she’s created for herself mid-sentence sometimes is fascinating to me. I almost want to rewatch it.

This show hasn’t gotten much attention online that I’ve seen, but it was a genuinely fun romp that feels like “The Gilded Age” meets “Bridgerton” with a splash of “Gossip Girl” thrown in. It follows a group of young American women who travel to England and find themselves in a variety of romantic entanglements.

In the lead-up to the release of this Timothée Chalamet-starring musical prequel, I had no intentions of ever seeing it, quite frankly. I love me some Timmy, but I just wasn’t convinced it was a necessary movie. But once it came out, both the word of mouth and the reviews skewed surprisingly positive, so I decided to check it out — and I was pleasantly surprised! It was fresh and fun and heartwarming, the music ended up being pretty solid and the story was an inventive take on a character we all know. There’s a lot of talk about Hollywood not producing movie stars anymore, but Timothée is a pretty objective example of that not being true. He can do it all.

God, what a show! This, to me, is TV in some of its finest quality. Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey were fantastic in this sexy, thrilling miniseries that centers on their characters’ decades-long off-and-on romance that stars in the ‘50s during the time of McCarthyism into the height of the AIDS epidemic. It’s incredibly well-done and certainly one of the best shows of 2023.

During the initial “Hunger Games” craze, I was absolutely obsessed with the books and the movies, so when I heard that author Suzanne Collins was working on a prequel, I was all ears. I ended up not finishing the book itself (I don’t even know why — shit happens!), but I was nonetheless excited about its film adaptation. Even though it was a little long for my taste (its runtime is over two and a half hours), it proved to be a worthy follow-up. Entertaining, twisty and full of compelling characters, it kept me on the edge of my seat (though I did have some hyper specific complaints about some of the things that happened in the story that I won’t get into here to avoid spoiling it). Viola Davis was particularly great as the mastermind behind the Hunger Games.

I feel bad giving this season of “Winter House” a thumbs down, but I’ve sat with it and that’s just how I feel about it at the end of the day. There were too many people coming in and out of the house every episode, I don’t have an emotional attachment to the slew of “Below Deck” people, I was exhausted by the Danielle/Alex/Jordan drama by the end of it and the Sam and Kory stuff just made me kind of sad, honestly. The reunion was a head-scratcher, too. I either think they need to streamline the casting a bit or call it a day on “Winter House” for right now.

The back half of the final season of “The Crown” delivered in ways that I didn’t think the Diana-focused first half did. While it was far from perfect (don’t get me started on the Prince Harry casting…), I found the Prince William and Kate Middleton origin story to be quite fun and the last episode featuring cameos from the younger versions of the Queen was pretty stunning. I’ll miss this show!

This upstairs/downstairs show that takes place in the late 1800s is so addicting, and I’m thrilled that we’re getting a third season of it (there was some worry that we wouldn’t because of HBO’s recent slew of cancellations and cutbacks at their parent company — this is an expensive show to make!). The stakes are mostly low (but don’t tell the characters that), which makes this show what it is. I love it so much.

I threw this on while unpacking Christmas tree ornaments at home, and it was fine! Nothing to write home about, but Kacey Musgraves’ performance of “Can’t Help Falling in Love” was beautiful. And I do love that Riley Keough is already making Graceland available for things like this now that she has control over it.

One of the newsletters I subscribe to (I wish I could remember which one!) called attention to this docu-series about the International Science and Engineering Fair, and it is such a delight. It follows a group of insanely smart high school students as they work on their science projects with the hope of qualifying and presenting at ISEF, as well as the people that help them along the way. Serena McCall, an iconic teacher at a high school in Long Island, is a clear standout, and she’s had tremendous success with her students at the event over the years. If you ever watched that spelling bee documentary from the early 2000s “Spellbound,” this is basically that but for science.

My family and I were enthralled by the series above and realized that before the show was a documentary film with the same premise from a few years earlier, so we also watched that and it hit the exact same way as the series did.

What a story. What a film. What performances! I really, really loved this adaptation of the Broadway musical of “The Color Purple,” which I saw with my family in a packed theater on Christmas day (highly recommend seeing this one in theaters). The central four performances here — Fantasia Barrino Taylor, Taraji P. Henson, Danielle Brooks and Colman Domingo — are as good as it gets, and all four of them should at the very least be part of the awards conversations this season. Fantasia’s version of the show’s marquee song, “I’m Here,” is breathtaking, and I’m just so incredibly happy that she’s having the moment she’s having via this movie. It’s so deserved and so overdue. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house during the film’s gorgeous final scene, too.

This was a nice companion watch after seeing “The Color Purple” that features individual sit-downs with Oprah Winfrey, one of the stars of the original film adaptation who executive-produced the musical, and some behind-the-scenes footage from the set. Nothing groundbreaking here, but a few nice moments that made it worth watching.

I hadn’t heard about this four-episode docu-series that came out last spring about the world of professional mermaiding until my friend Samantha Bush started posting about it on her Instagram Story, but I’m so glad I watched it. It was the perfect, feel-good, quirky watch that spotlighted some pretty special people. Most of the professional mermaids in this series have chosen this path for pure reasons that will warm your heart, and it’s a really great watch.

While the big twist of this three-episode true crime series could be seen from a mile away, it’s still a compelling story that does an excellent job of getting into the history of segregation and racism in Boston and how that impacted this famous murder case. Really thought-provoking and well-done.

The more that I think about it, the more I realize I just did not really like this movie. Penelope Cruz is phenomenal as wife of Enzo Ferrari, but otherwise this fell flat for me. There’s an extreme lack of context which takes away from the perceived stakes of the story, and it just wasn’t what I expected it to be.

I was consistently behind on this season of “Survivor,” which I finished binging over the holidays, but it was a relief that it ended up being a pretty solid showing after what I considered to be a few lackluster seasons recently. I still think that there are too many twists involved and I’ve found myself having a harder time connecting with the cast members for some reason, but ultimately I’m just so happy this show is still kicking and delivering some genuinely surprising and exciting reality TV moments.

My brother has been talking about this four-season comedy for years, so I finally decided to binge it this fall — and I’m so glad I did. Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney are fucking hilarious together as a couple that winds up building a life and family together after a one-night stand in London results in pregnancy, and the show does such an impressive job of balancing humor with emotional punch and some social commentary thrown in for good measure. Highly recommend this one if you’re looking for a new sitcom-length show to add to your media diet.

I know a lot has been written and said about Emerald Fennell’s latest film starring Jacob Elordi and Barry Keoghan and it’s been quite divisive, but I finally watched it the other day and absolutely loved it. I found it to be thrilling and original and thought it provided some incisive commentary on class. It was also beautiful to watch. I could see why some might think that it valued aesthetic over storytelling, but I thought it did both well. It might not have reached “Promising Young Woman” level, but that’s quite a high standard to be held to.

“Poor Things” is getting a lot of exciting attention this awards season, and I’m glad I can finally see why after seeing this on New Year’s Eve. Emma Stone delivers a tour de force performance as Bella, who is the subject of mad science experiment by Willem Dafoe. I don’t want to say too much more about the plot if you haven’t seen it, because I went into it not knowing much about what the movie was actually about and I’m kind of glad I did, but Mark Ruffalo is awesome as one of Bella’s suitors and it’s just such a spectacle that you must see on the big screen.

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