The 10 Best TV Shows and Movies of 2021
Everyone knows the best time to post a year-end list is 21 days into the new year
Okay, I know I’m late (lots of stuff has been going on lately, and I refuse to blame it on myself) but, at last, here is the list of my favorite shows and movies from 2021. It was a great year for both movies and TV and I had trouble narrowing it down to just 10 each, but I eventually managed it. So here we go!
Television
Note: In order for shows to qualify, they had to air their finales in 2021. So while some year-end shows like Yellowjackets or Station Eleven might have made the list, their finales aired in 2022, so they didn’t qualify (but maybe next year………)
10. Only Murders in the Building (Hulu)
I’ve already written at length about this in this newsletter, but Hulu’s murder mystery/comedy starring Martin Short, Steve Martin, and Selena Gomez is just perfect comfort food TV. The show, which follows three New Yorkers as they investigate a possible murder in their apartment building and start a true crime podcast, is nothing profound, but it’s also not trying to be. It’s a comedy with great acting, an intriguing plot, funny jokes, and great characters it’s easy to care about. What more do you need?
9. The White Lotus (HBO)
This series, from Mike White, is literally just about a bunch of rich (mostly white) people at a fictional Hawaiian resort being awful to everyone around them and the people who have to deal with them. The direction and writing are sharp, and there are great performances throughout, most notably from Euphoria’s Sydney Sweeney (whose character reinforces my belief that teenage girls are the scariest people on the planet), a heartbreaking Natasha Rothwell, a manic Murray Bartlett, and queen Jennifer Coolidge as a devastated widow, who will luckily be coming back for a second season (along with Aubrey Plaza!!!). Some people had issues with the ending, but without spoiling anything, I’ll just say that there was really no other way it could have ended.
8. The Underground Railroad (Amazon Prime)
Adapted from Colson Whitehead’s novel of the same name, The Underground Railroad is far and away the most gorgeous television series I’ve seen, maybe ever? The word “cinematic” tends to be a loaded term when applied to TV, but between Barry Jenkins’ direction, James Laxton’s cinematography, and Nicholas Britell’s score, I think this show earns that descriptor. The show, which follows Cora (Thuso Mbedu) as she escapes from a Georgia plantation on a literal Underground Railroad, definitely takes its time (most of the episodes are over 60 minutes), but I was engrossed the whole time, and the show has so much to say that I’m still thinking about it. I really wish Amazon had released it weekly instead of dropping it all at once, letting it gather buzz as it went along, but I’m still impressed that this show got made at all, so bravo.
7. What We Do in the Shadows (FX)
What We Do in the Shadows might just be one of the funniest shows on TV right now. The series, spun off from the 2014 movie of the same, follows a dysfunctional group of vampires (and their human familiar) living on Staten Island. Season 3 managed to keep the comic energy of the show going strong by expanding the mythology of the world and introducing us to new creatures (gossipy gargoyles! sirens! hellhounds!) and taking us to new locations (in one of the funniest episodes of the series, the group takes a trip to Atlantic City with devastating consequences). This season also managed to combine the rapid jokes with an emotional core that really didn’t become apparent until the finale. The whole cast is great, but Matt Berry as the always-horny Laszlo continues to be the show’s MVP.
6. Hacks (HBO Max)
Jean Smart stars as Deborah Vance, a big-time female comedian with a residency in Vegas who needs some new material to stay relevant. In comes Hannah Einbinder’s Ava, a young TV writer who was recently “canceled” for making a joke in poor taste on Twitter and who is hired by her and Deborah’s mutual agent to write new jokes for her. It’s a tightly plotted, well drawn character study about two women from different generations learning to respect each other, and when the show focuses on that (and not some of the “lol millennials” humor that can get a little cringey), it really sings. The best comedies are funny while also investing in their characters, and this show excels at that. Einbinder is good, but Smart deserves all the awards (which she’s basically already gotten). Bring on season 2.
5. Midnight Mass (Netflix)
In horror’s golden boy Mike Flanagan’s newest Netflix series, a man (Zach Gilford) returns home to his small island town just as a new young preacher (Hamish Linklater) appears. He might not be who he says he is, “miracles” start to happen, and chaos ensues. Don’t let the monologue-heavy first few episodes scare you off; the back half of the series is truly insane, and unlike anything else I’ve seen on TV. This series has a lot going on, dealing with grief, religion, and faith, and the finale is simultaneously beautiful and astonishingly bleak. If you’ve got religious trauma and are in the mood for some horrifying, feel-bad TV, this is the show for you.
4. Search Party (HBO Max)
A show about self-involved millennials inserting themselves into a missing persons case just to feel a sense of purpose sounds like it should be insufferable on paper, but Charles Rogers and Sarah-Violet Bliss’ series is sharp, devastating, and hilarious, and season 4 was no different. The season follows an always-excellent Alia Shawkat as Dory, who has been kidnapped by a crazy fan (the hilarious Cole Escola), and her friends, who are trying to find her. The fact that the show is still as sharp as it’s always been in its fourth season (and its fifth and last, which will definitely be making it onto next year’s list) is a testament to its writing and excellent cast. The season also featured some great guest turns from Susan Sarandon, Busy Phillipps, and Ann Dowd. I can’t wait to see what the show creators do next.
3. The Other Two (HBO Max)
After airing its first season in 2019 on Comedy Central, this hilarious comedy finally returned for a second season on HBO Max without missing a step. The series, which follows tween pop sensation ChaseDreams (Case Walker) and his two much less famous siblings (Drew Tarver and Heléne Yorke), is laugh-out-loud funny (it’s also super gay, filled with jokes you know had to be written by actual gay people). Season 2 takes things a step further by focusing more on the characters’ mom, Pat (Molly Shannon), as she starts her own talk show and becomes a mega-famous cross of Oprah and Ellen. This show is just a perfect combination of specific jokes and hilarious performances, with a joke-per-minute density not seen since Veep or 30 Rock.
2. Succession (HBO)
America’s favorite horrible family is back, baby! I won’t write that much about this season here (since I’ve also written about it previously in this newsletter), but I will say that this remains both one of the best-written comedies and dramas on TV right now (even if Jeremy Strong would disagree), and the acting this season was top-tier as always. Even if the first few episodes were a little meandering, the back half was as strong as the show’s ever been, with an incredible finale.
1. Mare of Easttown (HBO)
Detective shows are a dime a dozen these days, but no show really stuck with me this year more than Brad Ingelsby’s mystery series about a detective (Kate Winslet) investigating a young girl’s disappearance in the small Pennsylvania town of Easttown while dealing with grief of her own. Everything about the series is just executed impeccably, from the writing to the career-best performances by Winslet, Evan Peters, and Julianne Nicholson, and the last shot of the finale is a perfect grace note to an excellent series. We won’t be getting a season 2, and for that I could not be more grateful.
Honorable mentions: It’s a Sin, Invincible, Mythic Quest, Ultra City Smiths, Squid Game, Evil, How To with John Wilson
Movies
For a movie to qualify for my list, it had to actually be released in theaters or on streaming in 2021, not just at film festivals, so movies that might make my list when I can actually get to see them (like The Worst Person in the World or Petite Maman) will be counted as 2022 movies.
10. The Mitchells vs. The Machines
When the world’s technology goes rogue and threatens to take over the world, the only people who can stop it are young film nerd Katie Mitchell (Abbi Jacobson) and her family. So much just works for this movie, including the great acting (Olivia Colman is fun as the evil AI), the humor, the clever writing, and the refreshingly nuanced take on technology’s place in modern life. This is just an incredible charming movie that you can’t help but like. Plus, you’ve gotta respect an animated family movie that’s not afraid to reference both Greta Gerwig and Portrait of a Lady on Fire.
9. The Matrix Resurrections
Bold, messy, ambitious, and human (like the best of the Wachowskis’ work), Resurrections is basically just two and a half hours of Lana Wachowski trolling, and I loved it. It’s fun to see OG cast members Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss come back, and newcomers Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Jessica Henwick are great too. Is this a perfect movie? No. But it’s fun and unabashedly romantic and takes a sledgehammer to the idea of what a blockbuster can and should be, and it’s thrilling. Out of the two big-budget meta sequels that came out in December, this is far and away the more interesting one.
8. Licorice Pizza
I wasn’t sure if I was going to like this, since Paul Thomas Anderson’s movies are pretty hit or miss for me (I love Boogie Nights, but many of his other movies don’t hit the same for me), but I was shocked by how much I enjoyed this. I won’t get into the Twitter discourse here, but this is essentially just a chill, fun, charming hangout movie with a couple of great performances by Cooper Hoffman and Alana Haim (she needs to be a movie star stat!!!), and I was vibing with it the whole way.
7. Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar
Kristen Wiig and Annie Mumolo, reuniting to write their first movie together since Bridesmaids, star as the titular Barb and Star, best friends who go to a Florida resort and end up getting caught up in an evil plan involving mosquitoes. Barb and Star is a throwback to movies like Austin Powers, when studios weren’t afraid to make movies that are both dumb as hell and hilarious. It’s a shame I didn’t get to see this in theaters, since this is the hardest I’ve laughed at a movie in a while. Come for hilarious antics, non-sequiturs, and Jamie Dornan singing a power ballad to a group of seagulls, and stay for an affecting look at female friendship (and culottes).
6. Titane
Julia Ducournau’s batshit crazy body horror involves a horrifying car accident, brutal murders, and a woman having sex with a car—and that’s only the first 25 minutes of the movie. There is so much going on in Titane, and the movie doesn’t so much thoughtfully explore ideas about womanhood, bodily autonomy, and gender as it does just throw everything into a blender to see what happens, but it’s truly unlike any other movie I watched this year, and I’m still thinking about it months after I saw it.
5. The Green Knight
David Lowery’s adaptation of the titular 14th century poem is beguiling, unnerving, and starkly beautiful, and I was riveted the whole time. Dev Patel plays Sir Gawain, who after cutting off the Green Knight’s head, must go on a quest to find the knight and have his head cut off in return. It’s a gloomy, dark movie, but there are plenty of moments of light and weirdness that cut through, and the ending is actually an improvement on the ending of the original story. Plus, it’s got the best talking fox since Antichrist.
4. Dune
This two-and-a-half-hour sci-fi epic is essentially just worldbuilding and setup for Dune Part 2, but I still loved every minute of it. The special effects are amazing, the score by Hans Zimmer is typically great, and the cinematography by Greig Fraser and directing by Denis Villenueve are beautiful. I saw it in IMAX, and that was 100% the way to see this behemoth of a movie. I’m sad we’ll have to wait so long for the sequel (they haven’t even started filming yet) but I can’t wait to see what they do with it.
3. West Side Story
This is another one I was skeptical about going in, but I was surprised by how much this blew me away. It shouldn’t be a surprise that Steven Spielberg can direct a good movie, but this adaptation did so many things right (changing the order of some of the songs, changing who sings what, making some tweaks to the characters and dialogue) and is a masterclass in how to update and modernize a work while still keeping its essence intact. Rachel Zegler and Ariana DeBose are stars, and the musical numbers are thrilling and electric.
2. The Power of the Dog
This Western, written and directed by Jane Campion, is a wonder of screenwriting. Benedict Cumberbatch plays a mean rancher who has to deal with his brother (Jesse Plemons) when he marries a widow (Kirsten Dunst) and invites her and her son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) to live with them. As we watch the resentments and toxic masculinity on display, the puzzle pieces start to make sense, and by the end everything clicks into place and you realize what you’ve been watching. It’s a brilliant magic trick of a movie, and I’m dying to go back and watch it again.
1. Pig
Nicolas Cage plays a lonely hermit with no companions except for a truffle pig, whom he has to find when she gets stolen. You may think you know what movie you’re going to get, but you’re probably wrong. What follows is not a John Wick-style brutal revenge mission, but rather a meditation on loss, love, grief, food, and human connection. It’s simultaneously devastating, beautiful, and hopeful, and no other movie this year touched me more than Pig did.