Best Television of 2021

Like everyone else I watched more television in 2021 than I intended to, but nowhere near enough to offer a comprehensive overview of every TV show worth watching. In addition to there being a surfeit of TV shows, there are also too many networks and streaming services. Who, besides TV critics, billionaires, and the most inert couch potato, can subscribe to every worthwhile streaming service. How many out there besides me signed up for free introductory weeks of a service and then rushed to cancel before the credit card got charged? All of which is to say, if you have a favorite show that is not on the following list, I’m sure you’re right and I’ll be happy to watch it of you pay my cable bill.

What I have not included on the list are great classic TV shows that I’ve rewatched when all I wanted to do was laugh. This includes the first five seasons of the Office, since they’re on the free part of Peacock, but also Seinfeld, The New Girl, and 30 Rock, all of which are on Netflix. Also not included on this list are: Tom Brady’s performance in the Super Bowl, dozens of music documentaries on Prime, Bob Dole’s funeral, the Red Sox play-offs vs the Yankees and Rays, and Jason Sudekis dancing again on “What’s Up With That” on Saturday Night Live. Great TV by all but not really fitting into the “best series” category.

1. Reservation Dogs

The most startlingly original show since “Atlanta,” to which it is often compared because it zooms in on a very specific community not usually presented on TV, in this case a group of disaffected Native American teenagers living on an Indian reservation in Oklahoma. What’s remarkable is that this is a show about teenagers in which sex barely comes up because they have more things on their minds than their hormones. These kids have gotten a raw deal but they have agency and make their own choices, for ill or good. It’s very funny, sometimes absurdist, occasionally tragic and I can’t wait for Season 2. (Hulu)

2. Succession

Rightfully hyped for its unsparing depiction of the billionaire class as experienced through the eyes of a dysfunctional family that controls a fictional media empire (e.g., the Murdochs or Redstones). Somehow the show’s central question (which of the four screw-up children will inherit the crown?) has sustained itself through three imaginatively-foul-mouthed seasons. Like Reservation Dogs, this is another tragedy that is really a comedy (or visa versa? not sure.) It’s certainly the most quotable show in years. (HBO)

3. Ted Lasso

Yes, this show about an American football coach recruited to run a British soccer team is good as everyone says it is. Impossibly sweet and inspiring, the show faltered a bit in its second season when it tried to make Ted vulnerable and human. Was it good enough to win all those Emmys? Probably not. But we still ate up every episode. (Apple+)

4. Gavin and Stacey

This is a bit of a cheat because the show originally ran from 2007-2010, and I only caught up to it this year. Gavin and Stacey are a young British couple (she’s from Wales and he’s from a nondescript London suburb) who navigate the hazards of interfering parents and friends, (including a very young James Corden, who co-wrote the show). It’s a very kind and affectionate look at modern middle class love. What’s occurring? (Amazon Prime)

5. Shtisel

An Israeli soap opera about Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem. I have no idea how accurately this depicts the Orthodox community, but it’s a fascinating look at a culture I knew little about. And surprise — everyone has the same problems across cultures: interfering parents, faithless husbands, bossy wives, status anxiety. But the series is deeper than most because it is preoccupied both with the loss of loved ones and the struggle to live a meaningful life that may not be what your society wants for you. (Netflix)

6. What We Do in The Shadows

The funniest straight comedy on TV features four deluded vampires and their under-appreciated servant, who all live uneasily in Staten Island, ostensibly plotting to take over America, but really just killing time. There are no deeper messages here except the continued inability of humans, undead or not, to comprehend the truth of their own reality. (FX)

7. Call My Agent

This is a jaundiced look at the entertainment industry (is there any other kind?) through the lens of a small Parisian talent agency. Real French movie stars (plus Sigourney Weaver speaking French) play self-absorbed caricatures of themselves, who make the lives of the agents miserable. (Netflix)

8. Only Murders in the Building

Apparently Steve Martin and Martin Short are best friends in real life. Huh? And they recruited Selena Gomez to appear with them in a pretty funny whodunnit set in an exclusive Upper West Side apartment building. I think this might be the first TV series that centers around the phenomenon of the murder mystery podcast (remember “Serial”?) Most of the humor is pretty broad but it’s redeemed by the pathos of the characters (especially the supporting cast), who are dealing with loneliness and disillusionment. (Hulu)

9. Curb Your Enthusiasm

Some seasons of “Curb” are funnier than others and Season 11 was one of the best. The challenge with the show is to have Larry David entrap himself in convoluted embarrassing situations that are not off-the-charts ridiculous, which it just barely managed to do, to hilarious effect. (HBO)

10. The White Lotus

A pretty devastating take-down of the privileged and entitled One Percent and their adjacent dependents, this is “Succession Lite.” Off on a gorgeous Hawaiian resort, the characters compete to see who can unintentionally wreak the most havoc on the lives of the staff that serve them. And yet we do have some sympathy for everyone caught in the system of wealth and dependency. (HBO)

11. Hacks

Jean Smart is a rich but on-the-verge-of-being-washed-up stand-up comedian in Las Vegas who takes on a young whippersnapper comedy writer as her assistant. Generational sparks ensue as the two protagonists fight and eventually learn to respect each other. (HBO)

12. Never Have I Ever

A wish-fulfillment trifle from Mindy Kaling dressed up as your basic teen angst teen comedy, in which a Indian-American teen somehow manages to attract two hunky guys, both of whom look to be about 30. It’s very pleasant, if slightly untethered to reality, because you know nothing really emotionally disturbing is going to happen. (Netflix)

13. PEN15

Two thirty-something comedy writers play 13-year-old versions of themselves, in the middle of a cast that otherwise seems age appropriate. I’ve never been a 13-year-old girl, and I know they are supposedly prone to histrionics, but this seems a little over the top. Yet I was drawn into the story and the emotional drama despite myself. (Hulu)

14. Stanley Tucci Searching for Italy

I’m not one to watch a lot of food shows, but this Anthony Bourdain knock-off is as sumptuous as it gets. Part pig-out, part Italian travelogue, I did learn quite a bit about both food and Italy. (HBO Max)

15 Fargo

I loved the first two seasons of Fargo, had qualms about the third and was mildly disappointed with this one, the fourth. The fundamental premise of the original Fargo movie and the first seasons of the TV show is that viciousness in the pursuit of greed will ultimately bring about its own ruination in the face of decency. As the seasons have gone on, the series has become more nihilistic, with less and less decency to go around. Chris Rock is good as a Black 1930s crime boss, Jason Schwartzman is not credible as the boss of the rival Italian gang. The show is beautifully shot and intelligently written but not realistic enough to be the tragedy it wants to be. (FX)

16. Bridgerton

Lots of sex, lots of costumes, and a Julie Andrews narration. The premise seems to be that if Jane Austen wrote porn this is what would emerge. Naturally it was a huge hit. (Netflix)

17. The Pursuit of Love

Based on an arch Nancy Mitford novel that I think I might have read but can’t be sure of. Mildly amusing tale of a charismatic eldest daughter in an extremely eccentric aristocratic British family and set before and during World War II. There are only three episodes so I don’t know if this should qualify as a series. If it had been longer I probably would have ranked it higher. (Amazon Prime)

18. The Chair

I watched ten minutes of this and turned it off because it seemed simplistic, exaggerated, and implausible — not the cancel culture premise, which is all too plausible, but the cluelessness of the college professors around whom the plot turns. I was then convinced to give it another try and it seemed to improve slightly so my final verdict is that this is “OK.” You can tell it’s written for a very general audience that doesn’t want to think too hard or deal with complexity, though, which is my main beef. (Netflix)

19. The Premise

An anthology show from The Office’s B.J. Novak. “Anthology” means each episode is completely fresh, with new characters and a new premise, like The Twilight Zone. The first episode, about a white liberal who accidentally videos police brutality while taping himself having sex, is an extremely amusing skewering of a certain type of self-satisfied, woke-adjacent would-be racial ally. The rest of the episodes were smartly written but also disturbing, which might possibly be the point? (Hulu)

20. Brooklyn Nine Nine

Brooklyn Nine Nine wasn’t my favorite show, but we always watched it anyway because it was light, amusing entertainment. Alas, in the immediate aftermath of the George Floyd killing, no cop show could simply be light entertainment because that would supposedly whitewash the police, so the final season revolved around police corruption and self-flagellation. Not funny. Too bad. This was a good show that deserved a better send-off. (NBC)

• Best TV 2021