The year is just about over — which means my birthday is coming very soon, in case you forgot — so like the rest of the greats, I’m sharing my Best Of list for 2018.

Not all of this stuff is new, but it’s all stuff I discovered in this calendar year and think you should discover in the next one.

Music

Lights performing “Giants,” 2018 Juno Awards. CBC

• One of my perennial favorites, Barenaked Ladies, didn’t do a new album this year (their latest, Fake Nudes, was released November 2017), but they were inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame this spring. That’s not what this list item is about, though. I went to Vancouver (a city that would make the list if I was including places) to see their induction at the Juno Awards, where I discovered Canadian artist Lights. She doesn’t have a new album this year either, but four studio albums and acoustic versions of several will keep new fans busy for a while.
• The Milk Carton Kids, another musical favorite of mine for several years, toured with a band for the first time in support of their album, All The Things I Did and All The Things I Didn’t Do. Also their first album with a band, it’s a refreshing yet familiar sound for these all-around talented guys.
• All right, so Barenaked Ladies may not have a new record this year, but Steven Page, inducted into the Canandian Music Hall of Fame alongside his former bandmates, did. Discipline: Heal Thyself, Part II, is a followup to 2016’s Heal Thyself Park I: Instinct, and an excellent listen for any fan, new or old. Page has been on tour across North America and the UK with no sign of slowing down in the new year.

Television

• 

  Esther Povitsky and Benji Alflalo in “Alone Together.” Freeform

• If you’re in your late twenties, single, and still trying to figure out what you’re doing, Freeform’s Alone Together was a surprise TV find. Unfortunately, this series, produced by The Lonely Island, was canceled, but not before two seasons and twenty episodes made it to my living room.
• You can’t go wrong with Amy Poehler. For real. She has elevated some great new artists to at least one season of TV success as she takes steps to becoming the next Lorne Michaels, and I’m very excited to see what she brings us in 2019. Actually seeing her face on TV, though, is made better only by that face being next to Nick Offerman’s, and the relentless positivity of Making It was a welcome addition to the summer schedule.
• New this year? No. New to me? Also no. Deserving of a mention on this and every list? No doubt no doubt no doubt. For fans (and cast and crew) of Brooklyn Nine Nine, 2018 included one very long 24 hours between Fox canceling the series and NBC reviving it for a sixth season.

Movies

Gilda Radner on “Saturday Night Live,” 1976. Broadway Video

• A more pretentious man may have called this section “Film,” but that same person wouldn’t have put Solo: A Star Wars Story on his list. Solo is just a fun movie, the way Star Wars was a long time ago… in 1977. It certainly had some setbacks during production, but it’s hard not to watch this movie with the same grin that Han has the first time he flies the Millennium Falcon.
• If you want to temper your grin with some crying, Love, Gilda (making it’s TV debut on CNN January 1) is the film for you. This look at the life of one of Saturday Night Live‘s first breakout star, Gilda Radner, draws you in with her humor and then… well, you’ll see. Narrated in her own words, thanks to archive recordings and diary pages read by some famous faces inspired by her work, this is an intimate look at one of TV’s brightest, fastest-burning stars.
• Somewhere in that happy medium is Won’t You Be My Neighbor?, an uplifting documentary on Fred Rogers, the man behind “Mister” and featuring the people who knew him best.