‘Halt and Catch Fire’ (AMC) TV’s greatest romance this season was a love story about creation. The final season of this digital-culture origin story, which began in the early ’80s, took us through the popularization of the World Wide Web. But it also brought full circle the troubled partnership of Cameron (Mackenzie Davis) and Donna (Kerry Bishé), their passion for discovery rekindled by four magic words: “I have an idea.”

‘Lady Dynamite’ (Netflix) Things got weird in 2017. Television seemed at times to be dreaming, serving up ambitious hallucinations like “Legion” and “The Young Pope” as well as surrealistic curiosities like “At Home with Amy Sedaris.” The second season of Maria Bamford’s first-person comedy was the disorienting tops, using fractured storytelling to capture the experience of living and working with bipolar disorder from all angles. (All while working in a brilliant satire of Netflix, on Netflix.)

‘The Leftovers’ (HBO) The last season of this series about faith, loss and mystery was constructed like an octagonal chapel, each of its eight episodes a stained-glass window lit with emotion and humor. It may or may not have answered its central question — what happened to millions of people who vanished from the earth — but it was a powerful expression of the ways people soldier on through the unknown.

‘One Day at a Time’ (Netflix) You’d have thought they didn’t make them like this anymore. This reimagining of the 1970s comedy revived a staid genre — the socially conscious, three-camera family sitcom — by updating the characters and their problems. Centered on a Cuban-American family in Los Angeles, the new “One Day” also spotlighted working-class struggles and veterans’ issues, enlivened by crack performances from Justina Machado and Rita Moreno.

‘Twin Peaks: The Return’ (Showtime) Look, I can’t explain it either. Sure, the reunion of David Lynch and Mark Frost had a nominal plot: the odyssey of Dale Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) back from the otherworldly waiting room where he’d spent the 25 years since he last tasted cherry pie. But mainly it was a direct download from the subconscious of Mr. Lynch, who directed every episode: part horror story, part slapstick, all twisted fantasy. It was a well, to paraphrase the mysterious Woodsman, that descended deep and retrieved strange, intoxicating water.

The Best International Shows

Historically, America has supplied the rest of the world with television shows. But that longstanding trade imbalance is being redressed. And how. With specialty sites like Acorn TV, BritBox, MHz Choice and Walter Presents joining the major streamers, the deluge of foreign series on our screens matches and maybe even exceeds the flood of domestic shows impossible to keep up with in the first place.