“Transparent” (Amazon Prime) The splendid 2014 premiere focused on Maura Pfefferman (Jeffrey Tambor) and her late-life coming out as a transgender woman. Season 2, released Dec. 11, is more expansive — plumbing the identity quests of the Pfefferman clan and tracing the history of sexual-liberation movements — but every bit as gorgeous, gloriously messy and full of fractious, argumentative love.

(Read a review | Watch Episode 1 at Amazon Prime)

“Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” (Netflix) Robert Carlock and Tina Fey’s unlikely oddball of a sitcom was made for NBC but saved by streaming. Lit by the human glow stick Ellie Kemper, ably assisted by Tituss Burgess and Carol Kane, it was a daring feat: a trauma-survival story played for dark comedy. Though 2015 was the year NBC’s fabled Thursday comedy block died, “Kimmy” proved that sophisticated, screwy comedy is still — to quote its theme song — alive, dammit.

(Read a review | Watch at Netflix)

Mike Hale

I ranked the 10 best television series of 2015 by watching as much TV as possible, making a list of about 50 shows and then moving them up, down and around on a sheerly intuitive basis. No careful weighing of qualities here. All that matters in a list like this is how far a show moves the needle on your personal seismometer. Did the earth shake when you watched it?

In a time of burgeoning diversity across broadcast, cable and digital, “Jessica Jones,” “Master of None,” “Inside Amy Schumer,” “Jane the Virgin” and “Catastrophe” were strong contenders for this list. But none of them forced their way into the top 10.