The Best TV Shows Of 2021, According To Everyone
It's December, which means Best of 2021 lists are here. With so many lists out there, who has time to read all of them?
Turns out: We do. But because you probably don't, we rounded up all the Top 10 lists we could find, smashed 'em together in a big spreadsheet, and spit out overall Top 10 lists for the year's best TV shows, movies, albums, songs and books. You're welcome.
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The Top TV Shows Of 2020
10. 'It's A Sin' (Channel 4/HBO Max)
You'd expect a five-hour drama about the onset of AIDS in 1980s Britain to be a fairly gruelling watch - but "It's A Sin" is a Russell T. Davies creation, which means there's room for a sex montage to the soundtrack of cheesy medley 'Hooked On Classics' and a waiter peeing in Margaret Thatcher's coffee. And while the limited series is inevitably and unflinchingly structured around the devastating deaths of many of its beautifully drawn characters - young men gathering in London, hoping to live their best, freewheeling lives - Davies' profound love for them shines through.
Buy it from Amazon Prime Video
9. 'Only Murders In The Building' (Hulu)
Some television shows excel because of spectacular writing. Others float by with prestigious casts. There are shows with a strong, confident aesthetic and shows that dazzle with its twisty, wonderful plots. It's incredibly rare to find a television show that has all of those things at once. When we do, we call it a masterpiece.
[Mashable]
8. 'Squid Game' (Netflix)
With a dystopian "Battle Royale"-slash-"The Hunger Games" element at its core, extreme pulpy violence and a crushing anti-capitalist message all wrapped up in a sugary, pastel-coloured coating, this heightened hellscape of a show struck a nerve with its depictions of desperate civilians competing in death-trap-laden games in the hope of winning a prize-pot able to pull them out of crushing debt - subverting the simplicity of the childhood games the characters compete in to produce some of the most tense small-screen setpieces in recent memory.
7. 'WandaVision' (Disney+)
Let me tell it to you straight: there is no show that encapsulates the past year better than "WandaVision." Following Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany in their respective roles as Wanda and Vision, what started as Marvel's first made-for-TV outing ended up being a beautiful meditation on grief and sadness. Also, one hell of a nod to TV history. But beyond the surface level compliments (and the much-deserved praise of the brilliant Kathryn Hahn), "WandaVision" takes the top spot because it captured a piece of our humanity that we haven't quite been able to fully vocalize on our own as we deal with These Times.
[Esquire]
6. 'Mare Of Easttown' (HBO)
There can be a nagging tendency, when depicting "strong women," to atone for years of under-representation on the screen by turning them into invulnerable super women, conflating the two genres — drama and comic book — that should be kept separate. "Mare" stands out for its realistic depictions of this strength, highlighting not just the impressive resilience of its women, but the ways in which the need for this resilience takes its toll, both over time and in harsh, shattering moments. When those characters falter, or even break, it only serves to highlight that underlying strength; these are portraits written and directed by human beings with a deep understanding of how life works on the psychological margins.
5. 'Reservation Dogs' (FX)
Co-created by Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi, "Reservation Dogs" immerses us in a fully realized world from the outset, a place where hangout humor and magical realism nod hello on the street. As Elora and her buds try to scrape together cash, they learn lessons — sometimes under duress — from their elders, including Officer Big (played with mesmerizing equanimity by Zahn McClarnon). Frequently heartbreaking and always funny, "Reservation Dogs" is the coming-of-age comedy I never saw coming.
4. 'Hacks' (HBO Max)
Smart and Einbinder deftly pull off this two-hander thanks to their respective talent and excellent chemistry. Smart is at her peak here, moving from hilarious in one scene to quietly heartbreaking in the next. Deborah can be truly unlikable at certain moments, but the sensational Smart plays her with such subtlety and warmth that you still care about her—even though she has live fish pumped into her man-made lake. With a strong cast and some stellar directorial choices, "Hacks" is an absolutely necessary addition to your watch list.
3. 'The White Lotus' (HBO)
Through six episodes, shot in isolation at a Hawaiian resort, White spins a tightly constructed tale of class, colonialism, and casual manslaughter, though the dead body teased in its opening scene feels more like a grace note than a culmination. The guests at the namesake resort are cruel and oblivious, but pathetic — as in, possessing pathos — in their misery; the workers are exploited and angry, but with more depth than mere victims. Across the board, the performances are excellent. Pity the Television Academy voters who have to decide between Jennifer Coolidge and Natasha Rothwell next summer.
Buy it from Amazon Prime Video
2. 'The Underground Railroad' (Amazon)
"The Underground Railroad" would've been a breathtaking achievement in any year. But during one when white supremacists laid siege to our capitol and their allies in government banned educators from so much as mentioning the role racism has played in our nation's history, it felt as essential as any work of art could be. Nested within this epic escape-from-slavery narrative are trenchant critiques of the racialized violence that still persists, in the name of law and order or science or religion or, yes, even entertainment. Now, as then, the only reliable defense against such carnage is an unkillable drive to reach the end of the tunnel and step into the light.
[Time]
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1. 'Succession' (HBO)
With exquisite episodic structure, brilliant individual arcs building the serialized story, and a roar of razor-sharp retorts unparalleled since its predecessor ("Veep") left the airwaves — to say nothing of the impeccable performances and meticulous overall production — HBO's Emmy winner earns its online obsession and then some. "Succession" didn't need to reinvent the wheel in Season 3. It just needed to spin faster. And there's no stopping now.
Buy it from Amazon Prime Video
Honorable Mentions
11. 'Ted Lasso' (Apple TV+)
12. 'The Other Two' (HBO Max/Comedy Central)
13. 'Midnight Mass' (Netflix)
14. 'What We Do In The Shadows' (FX)
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A Note On Methodology
We wish we could say there was a super fancy algorithm that combed the internet and did this for us. But the truth is that the entity doing the internet combing was a human Digg Editor, and calculations were performed by an Excel sheet that ingested and re-ranked all the lists we fed into it (briefly: #1 ranked items received 10 points, #2 ranked items got 9 points... down through #10 ranked items, which got 1 point; items on unranked lists all got 5.5 points).
