Rounding up the best TV of 2021

Like the previous post “Film award candidates for 2021,” this will be an ongoing summary as I fill in my lists of last year’s best viewing.  I recently completed my survey of AppleTV+ programs, with comments on two shows that are a lock for my Best TV list, Dickinson and Swagger.  This continuing survey picks up from my prior posts on “Best TV this year so far” (from July), “New on the tube” (through August) and "Keeping up with the tube" (through November).

What to say about Succession (MC-92, HBO) that hasn’t been said many times over?  Can’t claim I was in on the ground floor, but I was an early adopter and promoter.  In its third season, the show has become a sensation, and now everyone seems to be in on the joke.  Except maybe Emmy-winner Jeremy Strong as Kendall, of the odious Roys (read Murdoch, Trump, or whatever repellant clan you prefer), matched in snark by his sister Shiv (Sarah Snook) and brother Roman (Kieran Culkin), but exceeded mightily by the family patriarch Logan (Brian Cox).  There’s also a clueless elder half-brother (Alan Ruck), doofus cousin (Nicholas Braun), and scheming husband of the sister (Matthew Mcfadyen in the Jared-like role), among many other would-be players.  All in turn dance on the strings of creator and puppet-master Jesse Armstrong.  As I’ve said before, this soap opera/satire about an obscenely rich family resembles watching scorpions in a bottle, bitterly amusing to watch them sting each other in the battle to take over the family media empire.  This season takes a few episodes to assemble all the pieces on its chessboard, but by the middle episodes the power plays and stratagems unfold nonstop in a comic “game of thrones,” toward a conclusion that begs for and teases another season to look forward to eagerly.

At opposite extremes of scale and personal likeability comes the second season of How To with John Wilson (MC-87, HBO), a show that deserves, and may need, more of a boost.  Wilson has been collecting New York street scenes for decades, humorous or pointed or eccentric vignettes of urban life.  Now he edits them in hilarious counterpoint to his musings on various offbeat themes.  Well, sometimes the theme is not so offbeat, such as “How to appreciate wine” or “How to invest in real estate,” but the approach always goes from the mundane to the metaphorical and even the metaphysical, such as in “How to be spontaneous.”  John is a strange guy with a funny-as-hell perspective on the world.  (I thought Painting with John, also on HBO, might be more of the same, but it’s a different John and not to my taste.)

If you liked Lost or The Leftovers, then you may find something in Station Eleven (MC-82, HBO), but I didn’t and I couldn’t.  I watched four episodes, but you couldn’t pay me to watch any more.  De gustibus non est disputandum.

If you like Olivia Colman (and really, how could you not?), you’re going to want to see her virtuoso performance in Landscapers (MC-79, HBO), scripted by her husband Ed Sinclair and directed by Will Sharpe.  This four-part true-crime police-procedural is more inventive and stylish than most, with strong streaks of humor and imagination, and canny cinematic fluorishes.  Colman plays a real woman convicted of murdering her parents and burying them in the back yard of their house, while continuing to draw their pensions.  As her husband and partner in crime, David Thewlis is a perfect match, accountant to her librarian.  They both cling to their delusions, and come across as sympathetic victims as much as hardened criminals, when the law catches up with them after 15 years and breaks up their folie à deux with 25-year sentences.  The series “spoils” the ending from the get-go, with other things on its mind than simply recounting crime, detection, and punishment.  The effect is more like a romance between two “fragile” people in a fractured reality.

Listening to Kenny G (MC-81, HBO) is one of those documentaries that fascinates even when the nominal subject has no antecedent interest.  Credit director Penny Lane for putting the subject in a wider and more illuminating context, as she did with Hail Satan? The transformation of Seattle teen-nerd sax-player Kenneth Gorelick into the “bestselling instrumentalist of all time” and worldwide phenomenon, the ubiquitous sound track of shopping malls and offices from here to China, has much to say about questions of musical taste, the music industry, and the history of jazz (and implicitly, race).  Is Kenny G himself becomingly modest and open, or blindly megalomaniacal?  It’s hard to tell, but he puts himself out there for you to decide.  And Penny Lane conducts a back-up chorus of contending voices, giving the viewer and listener lots to ponder.  Why does Kenny G’s music generate such visceral reactions, from the soothing to the enraged?  That’s a story, or several of them.  See for yourself.

Bathtubs over Broadway (2018, MC-78, NFX) is not a new film, but newly available on Netflix.  Steve Young was a longtime comedy writer for David Letterman, who lost his job when Dave turned the Late Show over to Colbert.  He had to find a new obsession to fill the “comedy-damaged” hole in his life, and it was a Late Show bit that opened the door to a collecting mania.  He entered the underworld of a genre called industrial musicals, which flourished from the Fifties through the Seventies, in which large companies commissioned lavish Broadway-style musicals to entertain, instruct, and inspire annual meetings of salespeople and others, one-time shows never meant for the public, whose production costs sometimes exceeded Broadway itself.  First Young collects the souvenir records and videos, then he tracks down surviving performers and composers of such wonders as Diesel Dazzle or The Bathrooms are Coming! (I defy you not to laugh out loud at one lady crooning “My Bathroom” into the mirror), finally immersing himself totally in an unknown showbiz world.  Plenty to laugh at, but also to celebrate. 

Another showbiz documentary with surprising resonance is Rita Moreno: Just a Girl Who Decided to Go for It (MC-77, NFX).  This film covers a career of continual reinvention, which escaped my attention aside from West Side Story, as she collected awards in film, tv, theater, and recordings, for the coveted EGOT sweep, going from ethnic marginalization to diverse popularity.  Centered on the vibrant 89-year-old dynamo, this film celebrates a long and successful career against the odds, which included all sorts of public advocacy.  Informative, inspiring, and well-put-together, Mariem Perez Riera’s documentary is a rousing eye-opener.
 
Still catching up with a few worthwhile shows from last year, such as Starstruck (MC-78, HBO), a screwball comedy about twentysomethings on the loose in London.  Co-writer and star Rose Matafeo – a standup comic (Horn Dog, also on HBO) from New Zealand – provides a mix of flavors, more tart than sweet, more manic than depressive, as heartfelt as it is ironic.  A drunken one-night stand with a man (Nikesh Patel), who turns out to be a famous movie star, evolves into something more when they keep meeting again, over the course of a year in six brief episodes, equivalent to a movie rom-com.  This show, soon to debut its second season, could fit into category #5 or #6 below, if it sustains the promise of its first.
 
I’m feeling rather contrarian this year, as many of Metacritic’s compilation of critics’ top ten lists (this list includes streaming channel) or its own ranking of critical consensus (this list includes brief descriptions) left me indifferent or antagonistic.  Clearly I have no taste for fantasy, sci-fi, horror, thriller, or most police procedurals.  (I suggest opening one or both of those tabs, for cross-reference and easy access to more info.)
 
By now, the categories of comedy and drama have broken down quite thoroughly, and any show is free to be as funny or sad, arousing or comforting, as it may want to be, whenever it wants to be.  Likewise, the division of series into hour or half-hour episodes.  And “reality tv” has smudged the line between documentary and fiction.  Still, there needs to be some sorting of apples and oranges (and kumquats), before picking one’s favorite fruit.
 
1) Prestige hour-long series:  Succession is the consensus top pick – no argument there.  White Lotus and Mare of Easttown definitely had their merits, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to recommend them.  I couldn’t be bothered to finish Maid, and I didn’t get past a single episode with these: The Underground Railroad, Only Murders in the Building, The Great.
 
2) Distinctive half-hour series:  I’m certainly on board with Hacks and Reservation Dogs, but my absolute favorite, an all-timer in my estimation, is Dickinson.  I really liked Ted Lasso but he hardly needs a boost from me.
 
3) Hoops heaven:  Particular favorites of mine are Swagger, a worthy successor to Friday Night Lights in situating youth sports within family and community, and Last Chance U: Basketball, a documentary series about juco players aspiring to move up to the big show.  Together, they’re the pick of the year for me.
 
4) Horny teen comedies:  A rich category, with new seasons of Sex Education and PEN15, now joined by Never Have I Ever.
 
5) Last-gasp rom-coms:  Love Life, Love on the Spectrum, and Couples Therapy.
 
6) British dysfunction junction comedies:  Feel Good, This Way Up, and Back.
 
7) British psychological crime stories:  Too Close and Landscapers.
 
8) Documentary series:  Ken Burns’ Muhammad Ali, Steve McQueen’s Uprising (companion to his outstanding Small Axe series), and 1971: The Year that Music Changed Everything.
 
9) Sui generis:  Bo Burnham: Inside and How To with John Wilson

Happy viewing, from last year to this!