“American Vandal” – The Top 25 Programs of 2017, No. 9

If it weren’t for Mindhunter (spoiler alert: that one is in my top five), I would refer to this satirical take on such true-crime docuseries as Netflix’s own Making a Murderer as the streaming giant’s biggest and best surprise of the year. And if you told me a few months ago that I would be praising a mockumentary about a young geek’s efforts to prove that a nasty jock with a habit of drawing penises as his own personal graffiti art did not paint dicks on 27 cars in their high school parking lot -- the key clue being that the dicks on the cars did not have hairs on their testicles, which is a signature element of the jock’s dick drawings -- I would have said you were nuts (no pun intended).

Arguably the most original scripted project of the year, American Vandal was also buzzed about because the jock was played by Jimmy Tatro (pictured at top), a young man with approximately 2.9 million subscribers to his YouTube channel, Life According to Jimmy. I say bro is gonna be a star, though if you are under 20 years of age you in all likelihood already consider him one.

Tyler Alvarez (above left) as the determined documentarian and Grifffin Gluck (above right) as his sidekick were pretty awesome, too.

Interestingly, in terms of exposure one could argue that Tatro took a step backwards in moving from the super-mighty YouTube to the merely mighty Netflix.

We live in very interesting times, don’t we?

Previously in the Top 25 Programs of 2017

The Long Road Home -- No. 10

Ozark -- No. 11

Dear White People -- No. 12

The Middle -- No. 13

Godless -- No. 14

Crosswalk the Musical -- No. 15

South Park -- No. 16

Days of Our Lives -- No. 17

Dancing with the Stars -- No. 18

Carrie Underwood's Performance at the CMA Awards -- No. 19