Favorite TV Shows of 2021

Similar to many of you in 2021 (or I am assuming, please don’t make me feel bad for my life choices on my own website), I spent a lot of time watching TV. In fact, for the first year in recent memory, I probably watched as much or more TV than I listened to music. That underscores two points for these rankings. One, they are more detailed and thoughtful than you’re going to get with essentially any of the other year-end lists. Unfortunately, it also means that I started a handful of shows that I did not have time to finish before writing this. First, I’d like to shout out those shows, some of which I will be including in next year’s list, if they make it.

How To With John Wilson

Dexter: New Blood

Yellowjackets

For All Mankind

Resident Alien

I Think You Should Leave

We Are Lady Parts

Reservation Dogs

Masters of the Universe: Revelations

It’s a Sin

Even though I cannot honestly rank them among the other shows I watched, I wanted to make sure I spent time spotlighting them as they, their cast, and their crew deserve it. However, the top 20 is now upon us:

20. WandaVision

A show that I recapped as it was airing earlier in the year, WandaVision is a show whose ambition and playfulness with form made it one of my early favorites of the year. As the show went on, it started to feel like it actually started to play it a bit too safe given its ambitious beginnings. That being said, I still found myself enjoying the conclusion of Wanda and Vision’s story in WandaVision.

19. You

In its first season, the show was remarkably unsettling and that’s part of what made it interesting. Since that first season though, it has found itself In the precarious position of having to up the stakes. How do you do that when your main character is a serial killer though? The redemption arc seems out of the question (the narrative space needed to earn that feels untenable in a 10-episode format). You seems to be fully aware of that and leans into the implication that Joe will never change. What season three brought us was wild and consistently daring itself to go further. I can’t wait to see where season four goes.

18. Ted Lasso

What would have surely been in my top five the previous year does slip a little bit in its uneven second season. The highs (like the excellent funeral episode) were quite high, but by season’s end, the show felt more like it was setting up what appears to be an explosive third season. No, this was not an attempt to wade into the online discourse about whether Ted Lasso’s largely unrelenting optimism is sustainable over the length of its story. I don’t think it’s that simple. However, this was a commentary on the relative stasis of character development in the show’s second season after an excellent first season.

17. Cruel Summer

Sure, the acting could be uneven at times, the supporting character stories were largely an afterthought, but those last two-three episodes? Those episodes rival some of the best shows on this list. It’s a difficult and unflinching look at how power and influence distort relationships between people, especially older men and younger women. There are points (and truly whole episodes) that are uncomfortable watches, but the show’s ability to lay bare something that challenging to effectively tell in a short-form story is a marvelous feat.

16. Loki

The more I sat with this show, the more I realized that what interested me more about it than its other Marvel counterpart on this list is that it never abandons its ambitions. Perhaps that is because they more directly tie into the larger MCU than WandaVision’s format playfulness does, but Loki sees its ride through to the end.

15. High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America

The four-part Netflix series merely scratches the surface of the influence of African and African-American cuisine’s influence on America, but it does so with as much emotional depth and deft as any show on this list. It helps that Stephen Satterfield’s passion for how food, geography, history, and sociology intersect comes through at every moment, but sometimes High on the Hog’s most affecting moments were its quietest ones. The prayers before sharing meals and the walks and boat rides soaking up the history, and thoroughly feeling all of the emotion, the weight, that comes along with the creation of a project such as this. I was ecstatic to hear about it picking up a second season.

14. Chucky

As I get older, I find myself more and more enraptured by genre work than ever before. I rounded out my October by watching all seven (yes, you read that right, seven) Chucky movies. I found myself largely enjoying each one of those rides (well, except maybe three, but that’s just because Andy isn’t Andy). You can see where I am headed here. I managed to get myself interested in this largely because Don Mancini’s name continues to be attached to Chucky. As long as he keeps doing it, I’ll keep watching. Here’s the thing though: this show is really good. The acting may run into some of the same problems that Cruel Summer did, but Chucky manages to mine the horror genre for something new while refusing to abandon its Child’s Play roots. This is a Chucky series after all, so why wouldn’t the season end with him recounting each of his kills over the course of the show?

13. Girls5Eva

My dark horse. The show that made me realize how unjustly difficult I was on Sara Bareilles this whole time (look, I just heard “Love Song” too many times growing up, I’m sorry). Also, undoubtedly one of the funniest shows I watched this entire year. I still catch myself singing tracks from the faux-girl-group, Girls5Eva. Bareilles’ comedic timing on the show is only rivaled by how terrific Renee Elise Goldsberry is in return. The ensemble cast is rounded out by Busy Philipps and Paula Pell to form what at this point can only be referred to as a super team. The show will (thankfully!) return for a second season, but even if all we got was this first short season, I would’ve cherished it forever.

12. Starstruck

What an absolutely delightful show that seemed to fly under the radar at HBO Max. It is both created by and stars Rose Matafeo. She is yet another example of someone who seems to have a sixth sense of how to get more out of a scene comedically than just how the line is written. It’s a love story bookmarked by passing seasons and meetings between the show’s main characters. One of the show’s most interesting aspects is the way it lets us into the life of its characters without sacrificing the development of show’s core romantic relationship. Starstruck knows that its romance is its selling point but never wraps the identity of its show too tightly around it, which builds in just enough room for the show’s funniest moments (like Jessie working in a movie theatre).

11. Invincible

To pack in the amount of complex relationships, betrayals, and unearthing of conspiracy as Invincible did in its first short season was sort of astounding. Then when you pull back and think about their approach, it starts to make a lot more sense. It’s a show (based on a series of comics) that doesn’t so much subvert super hero troupes as embrace them and then plow right through them. All the drama of a soap drama and all the violence of John Wick with super powers.

10. Joe Pera Talks With You

There’s so much about this show that doesn’t make sense for it to work. It often operates like public access television (except on Adult Swim?), but it often does so with an earnestness that is moving. In this season in particular (its third), it dives deeper into Joe and Sarah’s relationship, Sarah’s anxieties, and Joe’s grief from losing his grandmother. It never opts for overly sentimental though, because that’s not what the show’s characters dictate. The episode after Sarah’s anxieties start to flare up, Joe tries to help her by showing her footage from his drone. That’s it. The whole episode. And every second of it works. The non-sequitur and absurdist humor are still there. Joe’s warming presence is enough to heat you up in a Great Lakes winter. Somehow, the show just continues to get better. It’s one of the few shows I don’t ever find myself thinking about what’s next, just that I am grateful for what we have gotten to this point. (Just an enormous shout out to Joe Pera, Jo Firestone, and Connor O’Malley for continuing this. It’s a balm in trying times.)

9. Dickinson

The only show on this list that actually dropped two seasons this year. One at its beginning and its final season as this year has concluded. As I begin the show earlier this year, it took a few episodes for me to sink my teeth into. The melding of modern storytelling with period piece settings and stories was jarring. But by the end of the first season, it had really taken off. The second and third season (the two that premiered this year) upped the ante on the first. The first season largely remained a story of Emily Dickinson. The further the show moved into its second season, the more it became a much larger story with Emily Dickinson buoying all these other shifting parts. The ambition of the show to take on that transition in storytelling was matched equally by writing, direction, and performance. Especially the latter. There truly weren’t any bad performances (notably how terrific Anna Baryshnikov is in the last two seasons), but Hailee Steinfeld is a star.

8. Mythic Quest

There’s nothing like a good ensemble in a sitcom. It’s the bedrock of any great sitcom (please don’t provide me with counter-examples and just let me have this one). Mythic Quest exemplifies that from the first name that appears in the credits to the last. It is another show that hit its stride in the latter half of its first season (and coincidentally another Apple TV+ original). That run continued as it comes into its second season with as clear a voice of any sitcom airing at the moment. The show is delicate enough to both explore the Mythic Quest work dynamics while spending time with individual characters. In this season, much of the time being spent with C.W. Longbottom. The show chronicles his rise and fall, the latter ultimately bringing him to where he is with the Mythic Quest crew. His journey largely mirrors the thematic motif of legacy in this season, again balancing the smaller stories with the larger ones with skill of TV’s best.

7. The White Lotus

The White Lotus is a show with another terrific ensemble utilized in a very different way than a show like Girls5Eva or Mythic Quest. The Mike White written and directed television series starts and ends with a murder but months after the show finished airing, I find myself thinking about everything in-between. The individual character moments executed with precision and abandon simultaneously by the likes of Jennifer Coolidge, Alexandra Daddario, Murray Bartlett, Connie Britton, Jake Lacy, and more. The animalistic score was enough to consistently set me on edge throughout the show while still getting me excited at the introduction of the theme song. That’s what The White Lotus did best though: present dichotomies, often simultaneously, and then build its story. It wouldn’t work for everybody, but Mike White made it work for him.

6. Mare of Easttown

A show that at many turns reminded me of Broadchurch. It’s a detective story, sure, but it’s also a story about a town and the people in it. It also features a nuanced and affecting performance from Kate Winslet. Right when you think the story is moving in one direction, it hits you with a curveball. And just because it is not always foreshadowed, doesn’t mean the show doesn’t know how to pull its emotional punches. It always does.

5. Only Murders in the Building

It’s hardly news, but Steve Martin is a treasure. He hardly needs to keep going and then suddenly Only Murders in the Building, the faux-podcast turned detective story, comes onto the scene and renews a lifelong love I have had of his work. Selena Gomez plays straight against Martin Short and Steve Martin’s comedy that finds a way to elevate the already fun work.

4. What We Do in the Shadows

How this show hasn’t run out of creative steam surprises me, but god, it really is as good as ever. Sure, we may not get any Jackie Daytona episodes this season, but the Colin Robinson focus in this season more than makes up for it. Mark Proksch is just outstanding. The jokes don’t change dramatically for him season-to-season, but he finds a way to offer an increasingly interesting performance as he searches the world for his origins. Even though Proksch’s performance in particular shines, there truly isn’t a bad performance in this ensemble: three years running now, the vampire sitcom tops its class.

3. Hacks

Three is a remarkably high number show on this list and yet this somehow still feels too low for this show. Hacks executes with a level of precision of a show that feels like it’s in its third season. I can’t write much more about Jean Smart’s performance in this show, but it demonstrates a depth that shows in this format (short comedies) rarely ever allow for. But Smart doesn’t care. She finds a space of emotional depth and nuance and plants herself there for duration of the show. It’s a sight to behold and deserving of every award she got and will continue to get.

2. Succession

Given the recency of Succession’s season-ending so recently, I am sure that many of you have read a number of essays, articles, and blog posts on the season’s end. I couldn’t believe it and yet it made all the sense in the world. The Ringer’s Alison Herman wrote a piece titled “How ‘Succession’ Pulled Off a Season of Near Stasis” that encapsulates my own thought process following the season’s conclusion. The more time I spent with the show, the more I found myself surprised how much I was enthralled by a TV show where over the course of a season, not much really changed. But that’s also the beauty (and ultimate ugliness) of Succession. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

1. The Underground Railroad

I could lament on everything Barry Jenkins does in this series. The lighting (and lack thereof) and the color are stirring in any given scene. The way he creates space for performance not just recitation. On top of that, the immaculate performance from Thuso Mbedu. But nobody wrote about this better than Angelica Jade Bastién. So to end this piece, I wanted to highlight hers.

There was a lot of good TV this year, which in the proclaimed “Golden Age of TV” (are we past that now?) isn’t totally surprising, but it’s still so welcome when the best decision often seems like a night spent at home. There was a number of good shows that didn’t even get mentions here unfortunately, like Schmigadoon!, Central Park, Sasquatch, Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K., Brooklyn Nine-Nine, and more. But I am looking to expand this year-end post next year to be able to accommodate all of the wonderful things happening on TV and hopefully spotlight even more of your favorites.

Until then, stay safe.