The Best TV Series of 2021
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
Films Fatale will be plunging deeply into the television game early next year (once my best-of lists are finally released), so an introductory list felt a little necessary. Let’s face it: these last two years have seen us at home and binge watching TV possibly more than ever. What series have comforted us? Which have related with us? What TV shows couldn’t care less about all of that and sought to push themselves beyond the confinements of this ever-evolving medium? I find that the previous over-saturation being gestated by the overpopulation of streaming services is kind of disappearing, with our generation’s “stations” figuring their identities (and their audiences) out. We have some solid Disney+ material (consider WandaVision an honorary mention), Apple TV+ finally making some major headway, and Netflix figuring out some proper ways to get back into the race (while Amazon continues to be the silent assassin of streaming services: always strong, yet always forgotten). Then there are the old reliables of yesteryear (HBO, FX, et cetera) that prove that they’re not going anywhere. What services and series won my affection over the most this year? You’ll find some recognizable names back for more as well as some new shows that definitely garnered my attention (and begging for more). Here are the best TV series of 2021.
10. Ted Lasso
We need these feel-good comedy drama series now more than ever, if the recent revisitations of series like Schitt’s Creek and The Office (U.S.) on Netflix are any indication. The strongest power move Apple TV+ has made thus far is having Ted Lasso at all, and luckily the Emmy winning series continues to call the right plays in its second season. With the series’ signature heart still intact, the titular Lasso continues to represent all of us fishes-out-of-water as we face our own uphill battles. Lasso and AFC Richmond’s perseverances are the must-binge events to help bring us out of the darkness of 2021.
9. It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Somehow, even in year fifteen, FX’s comedy classic It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia continues to be strong. Perhaps at its most solid in years, Sunny maintains its cleverness and savage commentary, even through the offering of older concepts being reimagined via today’s lens (Lethal Weapon 7, anyone?). This late into the game, the gang are bold enough to keep trying to test the waters of how far they can go, including emotionally. Two seasons before, we had Mac’s moving dance. Now, we have Charlie’s lonely hour: a risky piece of humanization attributed to a member of one of television’s most vile troupes. How does this show not get overly stale? How is it even more fresh than a few seasons before? Sunny continues to be underestimated, even as a cult classic.
8. The White Lotus
Everything is A-OK in paradise, or so it may seem. Mike White finally has struck gold as a writer (nay, a creator) with The White Lotus: the kind of satirical television viewing that may bring out our most cynical sides during a time when we can’t be fortunate enough to be going to Hawaiian resorts. We look on these new guests like voyeuristic fiends, for as long as these travellers stay at their destination getaway, the more they open up whilst being locked in. It’s good to know that The White Lotus will continue to share the private confessions of different passersby as the series continues, because I can only sense that the show will go up from here; if this is a conceptual seedling, White may have the next best anthology series on his hands.
7. Reservation Dogs
We’ve been fortunate enough to experience Taika Waititi’s comedies from New Zealand, so to see him team up with Sterlin Harjo to bring the indigenous voices of America to a similar echelon with Reservation Dogs is incredible. Featuring the first all Native American cast and crew on a television series, Reservation Dogs felt like an opportune moment to have many unheard ideas finally being recognized. It goes beyond that as a coming-of-age tale with the facing of major life decisions amidst peril (and all of the oddities of life in between). We can only imagine where the Rez Dogs will go from here: a shake-up that has left the characters — and us — wondering what coms next.
6. Arcane
For far too long have video games been adapted horrifically; it’s terrible that the greatest works for quite some time have been mediocre at best. Enter Arcane: a brand new series attached to the MOBA game League of Legends. You don’t need to know a single thing about the franchise (take it from me) to enjoy this gorgeously animated, mightily impassioned series about sisters Jinx and Vi being torn apart by lore and building peril. This is it, folks. This is the bar. We’re only nine episodes into this thing, but I can foresee a new Avatar: The Last Airbender of our time through Arcane (although the latter is most certainly intended for older audiences); don’t be a fool and ignore this series because of its video game roots or animated style.
5. Mare of Easttown
During the height of true crime drama obsessions, television has tried to bank on this phenomenon by churning out murder tale after murder tale. Enter Mare Sheehan: a Philadelphian detective that will represent all of us viewers in this HBO miniseries. Anchored by Kate Winslet (who hasn’t been this good in a while), Mare of Easttown has all of the frills of your typical crime story with all of the weight that a pandemic-stirred time can bring. Sheehan’s personal rifts amidst the most grisly of actions is empathetic right here and right now: how many different crises can we muster?
4. Insecure
And just like that, Issa Rae’s Insecure is wrapped up as soon as it was finally making the waves that it deserved. All of her character’s (Issa Dee) internal dialogues arrive at a stirring conclusion: ten episodes with titles that try to promise us that everything’s going to be “okay” (particularly the grand finale that insists just that). If anything, Insecure taught us that nothing will be fine unless we make it so: our inner peace is for us to determine and maintain alone. Issa Dee’s next step is to be determined ambiguously. For Issa Rae, I can only hope for new projects now that we have all caught up (eventually) with Insecure.
3. Attack on Titan
2021 started off where the December of the previous year left off: with a brand new Attack on Titan. Half of season 4 has been out for nearly an entire year by now, and yet the horrors from within it never really go away, do they? By now, Eren seems like the very being he initially sought out to destroy, and Hajime Isayama’s worst fears (whilst writing the original manga series) are coming true: humans really are our own worst enemies. With the fates of civilization up in the air and the corruptions of a select few to rule us all, we look forward to the final portion of one of anime’s finest hours (although it may feel all too relatable in a damning way).
2. Succession
Once Kendall Roy pulled the rug from under us at the end of season 2, we thought we had Succession all figured out. Instead, we got a disastrous downward spiral, the usual games of deception, and an even more painful reminder that money equals power, and power can never be trumped. This time, the joke was on us, as the series somehow knows how to continue to play us (I’m still flabbergasted by the latest deceiver to wrap up this season). If Succession is television’s strongest contemporary satire (which, it is), then we have well passed the phases of mockery; this is the tragedy we will be facing from here on out, whether it’s that of the Roy family that continues to devour itself, or of ourselves (because these are the schmucks in charge).
1. The Underground Railroad
I sincerely believe that The Underground Railroad will be reflected upon time and time again after this year. Hell, it has already made (and even topped) enough best-of lists to prove that people have been paying attention. It’s impossible to ignore Barry Jenkins’ most unrelenting vision in this surreal, cinematic, poetic, abstract epic that shatters time at will (yet it never forgoes the severity of its subject matters). If anything, The Underground Railroad feels like a new form of television: the ability to revisit episodes and commentary that are told as cyclically as they are fragmented. The option to rewatch the entire series is as mandatory as revisiting select moments. Some episodes are told as hour and a half long opuses, while there’s even a short film portion that contains its own might. The Underground Railroad feels limitless and like an extension of the idea of the contemporary Golden Age of Television: we haven’t reached the end yet, because the medium still continues to be reinvented.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.