The Best TV Shows of 2021
HONORABLE MENTIONS: GENERATION (HBO Max), GIRLS5EVA (Peacock), IT’S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA (FX), THE OTHER TWO (HBO Max), ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING (Hulu), PEN15 (Hulu), SAVED BY THE BELL (Peacock), WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS (FX)
10. BRIDGE AND TUNNEL (Epix)
Refreshingly low concept, a series about people just living their lives in Long Island in 1979 was one of my favorite shows of the year. Created by Ed Burns (and very much exploring similar grounds that his films previously explored), the series knows the old school appeal of watching attractive young people grow up in all of its mundanity. The series is at its best when multiple people argue with each other and the Long Island accents come together to create a beautiful symphony of complaining. I nicknamed the series “Long Island ASMR”.
9. SEARCH PARTY (HBO Max)
Search Party is one of the most consistent shows of the past decade, and it’s fourth season boasted some of its strongest guest stars yet (Susan Sarandon, Cole Escola, and Chloe Fineman, all perfectly insidious) and an intriguing horror tone as Dory (one of TV’s best antiheroes) continued her horrifying descent into hell. The series also deserves props for creating one of the funniest sight gags I’ve ever seen on television with the titular “infinite loop”.
8. EVIL (Paramount Plus)
Refreshingly high concept, Evil is the most insane show on television. It takes the best parts of The X-Files and Twin Peaks and melds it into something that’s effortlessly strange and wholly entertaining, and that was just the first season. The second season doubled down on two of the best aspects of the show: “monster of the week” episodes that thrillingly end with ellipses and impressively creepy scares. This show even does commentary well, with scathing indictments of Amazon, privileged white women, and copoganda that feel vital in a sea of half-assed attempts by other series. The show’s biggest strength? The chemistry between Katja Herbers and Mike Colter, who are easily the steamiest coupling on television.
7. THE WHITE LOTUS (HBO)
I’ve been a Mike White fan for years and love his specific brand of incisive cringe comedy. The White Lotus might just be his strongest, most concise work yet (I consider Enlightened his best work, but that series had much more on its mind). A sunny acid bath of privilege, the miniseries is hilariously uncomfortable and ruthlessly indicts every single character as class lines violently blur in the titular Hawaiian resort. White assembles an impressive ensemble, with Jennifer Coolidge playing the apotheosis of clueless white ladies and Alexandra Daddario’s deceptively complex freelance writer who’s found a quick means of reaching the brass ring. It’s easy to compare The White Lotus to that other HBO show about rich people, but there the tragedy is epic and Shakespearean: here it’s small and insightfully mundane.
6. CHUCKY (USA)
The second best genre TV show of the year is a direct sequel to one of the most famous horror film franchises of all time. Chucky is an deliciously unholy mix of horror and comedy that manages to be the best teen drama of the year, the second best (see #3) horror show of the year, and boast one of the best performances of the year (it’s a voiceover performance to boot). Credit to longtime Child’s Play shepherd Don Mancini for bringing fantastic set design and De Palma influenced camera moves to a playfully queer, scary, well-placed slasher series that also has some of the most impressive practical effects I’ve seen on television. The real star of both the original Child’s Play and this sequel series is, of course, Brad Dourif in the titular role and he’s never been better in this iconic role he’s inhabited for 33(!) years.
5. IT’S A SIN (HBO Max)
Russell T. Davies’ Cucumber and Banana was the most vital queer drama of the 2010’s and here Davies has already made a claim for the 2020’s with It’s A Sin. Like his previous series, Davies once again refuses to go for any easy answers when interrogating the experiences of queer people, always angling for the more complicated parts of any given story. This tale about the AIDS epidemic in 1980’s England takes an eye to the allies who took care of those suffering, the sexual politics of living through that era, and the unforgivable failings of the British government. It’s searing, important television that wrecks you when you least expect it (a Russell T. Davies specialty).
4. HOW TO WITH JOHN WILSON (HBO)
The first of two great filmic achievements on television this year, How To with John Wilson kept on displaying effortlessly brilliant documentary filmmaking in its second season, with fantastic visual gags, surreally entertaining tangents, and monologues that probe philosophical and emotional issues with resonance. “How To Remember Your Dreams” is one for the ages.
3. MIDNIGHT MASS (Netflix)
The best genre show of the year, the best horror show of the year, and Mike Flanagan’s magnum opus. His strengths in the past have lied in making Stephen King adaptations (Gerald’s Game, Doctor Sleep) and with Midnight Mass, he’s made the best Stephen King adaptation that Stephen King never wrote. It’s verbose, yes, but its monologues allow as much character expression as possible before they start unexpectedly dropping like flies. The last two episodes are some of the scariest and emotionally devastating I’ve seen on television in a long time and, unlike Stephen King, he actually manages to land the perfect ending.
2. SUCCESSION (HBO)
Once again the most consistent prestige drama of the last couple of years. The third season saw Matthew Macfadyen come to the forefront in a surprising, yet inevitable way, giving the best performance of the year. The finale is a heartbreaker as well, with Kieran Culkin almost showing Macfadyen up.
- THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD (Amazon Prime)
Barry Jenkins takes his direction to this Colson Whitehead adaptation and finds some of the most beautiful images ever seen on television. Jenkins finds the beauty in his subjects (in closeups and POV shots) in his films Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk and continues that trend here, finding beauty in the margins around America’s original mortal sin. Fascinatingly, his POV shots are used exclusively for the most horrific moments of the series (to capture the perspective of a man being burned alive in the first episode and to put the viewer inside the head of a malignant racist in the fourth) while the closeups are used to capture the arresting faces of leads Thuso Mbedu and Aaron Pierre, among others fleeing slavery. The pain of these atrocities is felt within the viewer, but the beauty and strength of those who endure it is what they end up physically witnessing. Jenkins is aware that the horrors on display don’t need any over explication, and that the hope and love the characters display with their own faces and bodies is ultimately what we should be left with at the end of this masterwork.
