2021: One Show For Every Kind of TV Viewer (Part 1)

I’m not a big fan of Top 10 Lists. Even when there’s this much TV, you end up with a lot of lists that look the same, and they all kind of assume a specific viewer. But there’s a fundamental problem with that task—not everybody watches TV for the same reasons.

Did that stop me from ranking every single show I watched this year? Of course not. I ranked all 44 shows I watched this year and gave a 1-minute chaotic review on each! I am a critic after all.

But here’s my point—people don’t turn to lists to contemplate what makes great art or to hear why one show resonated particularly strongly with their favorite critic. No, the people are looking for recommendations.

Some people watch TV to be transported, some want company while they fold their laundry, and some people are determined to watch the worst trash they can. We can all enjoy TV in different ways, so I broke down the year into 9 categories based on different kinds of TV-watchers:

1. “I only have time for one show”
2. “I’m not feeling great, I need a hug”
3. “Give me some excitement”
4. “TV is for laughing”
5. “2021 was apparently the year for space”
6. “I’m trying to look at something pretty”
7. “Quote/Unquote Good TV”
8. “I watch TV with a beret on”
9. “I looooove bad TV”

Let’s get cracking.

“I only have time for one show”

You only have a few hours to dedicate to the great American artform that is television, so let’s make it count. We get it, you have a life. Try not to rub it in.

The Candidates:

• Succession (HBO)
• Squid Game (Netflix)
• The White Lotus (HBO)

Squid Game was the biggest show of the year, by far. The Korean product follows 456 people, who are crushed under the weight of overwhelming debt, as they play a series of children’s games to the death for a grand prize that promises to lift them out of economic ruin.

I don’t think Squid Game is in the conversation for the best show of the year, but that’s not to say it’s a bad show—I wouldn’t be recommending it here if it was. The show offered a strong visual metaphor for the exploitation of capitalism, possibly the most obvious one to ever be this mainstream. It’s an easy binge, one of those shows you won’t want to put down, and everyone else has seen it. I mean, it’s kind of weird if you watched TV in 2021 and avoided Squid Game. That’s a conscious choice.

But it’s by no means groundbreaking. Its simple metaphor is both its greatest strength and also what holds it back from being one of the absolute best shows of the year. It’s not a show that you’re going to chew on for days, weeks, or months after you finish.

The same cannot be said for The White Lotus, which is ostensibly a murder mystery set on a tropical Hawaiian resort, but mostly uses that premise to explore wealthy elites and the replaceable labor class that serves to provide the illusion of tranquility.

The White Lotus is one of the most layered and complicated shows I’ve ever seen. It’s rich with satire both explicit and implicit, both hilarious (“Shouldn’t kill people, steal their land, and then make them dance. Everybody knows that.”) and poignant. There are many different ways to be a shitty person, and while everyone on the show occupies a different spot on the social food chain, they’re all eating off of someone else’s back.

All that said, Succession is the obvious choice for me here. The dramatic satire of the wealthy Roy family is a show that is both excellent and popular, dominating Twitter every Sunday night during its third season. All of the layered satire of capitalism that makes The White Lotus great is in Succession as well, but the latter rises to the next level with the way it’s able to make you see yourself in its terrible characters. No show in 2021 was able to build “Lean In Moments” like Succession, an anxious knot of a show—one that captures the existential dread we all feel as our systems of power collapse in on themselves.

Verdict: Succession

“I’m not feeling great, I need a hug”

Life is hard and you don’t need to add to that pressure. When you turn on your TV or open your laptop after a long day, you’re just trying to snuggle up with a show that will give you life and hope and joy.

The Candidates:

• Sex Education (Netflix)
• We Are Lady Parts (Peacock)
• Ted Lasso (AppleTV+)

Sex Education’s third season, the comedy-drama following multiple coming-of-age stories in a British high school, is its best thus far. The series has always been adept at using sex to talk about intimacy at large, holding space for many different sexual identities and preferences, while always focusing on the people involved and the importance of honest communication. While the first two seasons centered around Otis and Maeve’s sex advice clinic, the third season branched out and became a true ensemble showcase, developing some periphery stereotyped characters like Ruby into fully-fledged people.

We Are Lady Parts, a British comedy about an all-girl Muslim punk band, has the lowest barrier to entry out of any of these shows. It’s just one season—with 6 half-hour episodes, easy to knock out in an afternoon—and feels more like a movie than a TV series. We Are Lady Parts is snappy, fun, and has a lot of character. It reminds us all to follow our hearts and find confidence despite what anyone else might think.

Ted Lasso came out in 2020 at the perfect time, during the height of Covid, when all we really wanted was a dad to tell us that everything was going to be okay. Your mileage may vary on whether you appreciate that message coming from a folksy white dude, but if you’re open to accepting some of its flaws, I can guarantee that you’ll find something heartwarming here. At its best, it tells us that it’s okay to feel our darkest feelings, and that doing so isn’t a sign of weakness but actually strength.

Ultimately though, I’ve got to give the nod to Sex Education and the way the show holds empathy for all of its characters, even when they do things that we disagree with. It’s a beautiful thing to watch a show where you can appreciate growth in every single character.

Verdict: Sex Education

“Give me some excitement”

Or maybe you feel the opposite way. You aren’t overwhelmed by life, you’re bored. You want to watch something that makes you feel alive.

The Candidates:

• Servant (AppleTV+)
• Yellowjackets (Showtime)
• You (Netflix)

Welcome to the batshit crazy category. All of these shows are on another level, to varying degrees of success and seriousness.

It’s pretty hard to sum up what Servant is because, like everything from M. Night Shyamalan, it is a mindf**k, first and foremost. The Turners’ son Jericho died in infancy, but the grief has been too much to process for Dorothy, who cares for a doll as if Jericho is still alive. They hire a mysterious and creepy nanny who apparently brings the doll to life. Yeah, it’s bonkers.

After a winding first season that ended in a cliffhanger, the second season takes some time to find itself again, but by the end was just as wild and unpredictable as ever. Plus there are only 10 half-hour episodes, so it’s a low resistance binge.

Yellowjackets is a late entry into the “best of the year” conversation, but it belongs there. The Showtime drama follows the story of a high school girl’s soccer team in two timelines. In 1996, we follow the plane crash that stranded them in the wilderness on their way to Nationals, and the team’s attempt to survive in its aftermath. Presently in 2021, we follow some of the women who survived and were rescued 19 months later. While the crash is far behind them, they are haunted by the things they did to survive, which definitely seems to be some pretty aggressive cannibalism. Think Lost meets American Horror Story.

You, the Netflix stalker soap now in its third season, isn’t as intense as either Servant or Yellowjackets due to its campier tone, but it has plenty to offer in terms of completely unpredictable storytelling. The series has quietly become one of the smarter shows on TV, deconstructing everything about the genres it’s pulling from—romance, antihero, and true crime—while folding in new elements and tropes to put under its critically observant eye.

While the season is only halfway over, Yellowjackets is my recommendation if you want to be thrilled. There’s never a dull moment when cannibalism is involved and a special shoutout to some genuinely creepy performances from Christina Ricci and Melanie Lynskey that will keep you unsettled.

Verdict: Yellowjackets

“2021 was apparently the year for space”

Everybody’s going to space these days. Jeff Bezos is taking joy rides with Captain Kirk, and Elon Musk is paving the way for a Mars colony where he can create space slaves. We might as well start getting ready for our new reality.

The Candidates:

• For All Mankind (AppleTV+)
• Foundation (AppleTV+)
• The Expanse (Amazon Prime)

2021 gave us three excellent space-based shows, all taking place in radically different spaces. See what I did there?

For All Mankind is an alternative history show where the Soviets won the space race to the moon, and also there’s water up there! The show’s second season jumped forward in time, and it really pulled it off. The timeskip gave every character more depth and fleshed out a rich world as its history moves away from that branching off point. We felt the weight of those intervening 10 years in each character’s arc in a way that really elevated everything the first season was trying to accomplish.

The Expanse couldn’t be a more opposite vision of a space future. Now in its fifth (and best) season, the show has reached a boiling point with its long simmering revolution from the underclass who live in the asteroid belt and beyond, no longer content to be exploited by Earth and Mars.

Marco Inaros is the best villain the show has had, the kind of zealot who puts viewers in a moral quandary. He’s not wrong, but he’s definitely extreme. I don’t want to tone police oppressed minorities, but Marco objectively a terrorist. At this point, The Expanse has done the character development necessary to give each of its main cast their own individual story, and to give each one its own tone and flavor.

Foundation, based on the Isaac Asimov novels, jumps forward in time several thousand years, following the slow decline of the Galactic Empire, due to sociological factors put into motion and predicted by the mathematician Hari Seldon. It looks like a million bucks with a ton of beautiful worldbuilding (just like its companions in this category), one that feels like its future is as vast as the Empire itself.

There’s no wrong choice here really. For All Mankind probably had the best season in 2021, but if you have time to catch up on The Expanse, you won’t regret it. Plus, while it’s got that sweet Amazon money, it’s probably the most critical of the society Jeff Bezos would build up there.

Verdict: The Expanse

We'll finish these off in Part 2