The Best TV Shows of 2021 (So Far)

Network: Apple TV+

Season: 2

Genre: Psychological horror

Where to Watch: Apple TV+

Horror is hard to get right in feature films, but it’s even more rarely executed well in series television: How many plot twists and jump scares can you pull off before it all becomes repetitive and predictable? Servant, one of the underrated gems of Apple’s foray into the streaming service wars, is impressive for just how cleverly it’s sustained its Hitchcockian air of suspense over two seasons. Over and over, something seemingly otherworldly happens, followed by a surprisingly plausible explanation that places the story back in the realm of reality—and then something else bizarre pulls you back toward the supernatural.

In Servant, an affluent Philadelphia couple buy a lifelike doll in order to cope with the death of their infant son, and drift so far from reality that they hire a stay-at-home nanny, Leanne (a delightfully strange Nell Tiger Free). Then one day, the doll seems to become a real living child, drawing the Turner family into a strange world of cults, private investigators, and sting operations that becomes dizzyingly surreal in the second season. Executive producer M. Night Shyamalan occasionally directs episodes of Servant, as does his daughter Ishana Night Shyamalan, who has inherited his gift for slow, carefully timed reveals and artfully disorienting camera angles. —Al Shipley​​​​​​​

Network: HBO Max

Season: 1

Genre: Dark comedy

Where to Watch: HBO Max

One of the joys of television casting is seeing someone whose career-defining role will live forever in syndication subvert their image in darker cable fare. Ray Romano will always be the relatable family man of Everybody Loves Raymond, but on Made For Love, he’s “Herbert the pervert,” a widower who has a strained relationship with his estranged daughter and a disconcertingly loving relationship with Diane, a sex doll.  

But Made For Love belongs to Cristin Milioti as Hazel Green-Gogol, brilliantly building on her breakout role in the 2020 film Palm Springs and once again playing a woman who’s trying to escape the holding pattern of an artificially repetitive life. As the wife of a controlling billionaire who’s secretly implanted a chip in her brain to see and hear everything she does, Milioti navigates a world with no privacy, while supporting players like Romano and Dan Bakkedahl provide levity in the near-future dystopia. —Al Shipley​​​​​​​

Network: Apple TV+

Season: 2

Genre: Science fiction

Where to Watch: Apple TV+

The first season of For All Mankind, the Apple TV+ original series charting an alternative history where the Space Race between the US and the USSR never ended, wasn’t a failure to launch but didn’t chart a giant leap either. The series (created by Ronald D. Moore, showrunner of the 2004 Battlestar Galactica reboot, Matt Wolpert, and Ben Nedivi) premiered in November 2019 as one of the streamer’s debut titles. For All Mankind took a while to find its footing, as early episodes often felt like a redux of The Right Stuff. Starting with the show’s third episode, it deepened its premise, fully embracing its alt-history status and becoming fantastically compelling the more it deviated from established fact and dove into its own, new mythology.

The sophomore season of For All Mankind jumps to the early 1980s as both countries have further colonized the moon. What was once an apartment-sized base has now shifted into an expansive compound under the “might is right” militarization ethos of the Reagan administration. This continued development causes more problems between the two countries, and it’s only a matter of time before long-simmering tensions start to boil, resulting in a series of conflicts that makes the Cuban Missile Crisis look tame. 

As anxieties mount, Moore, Wolpert, and Nedivi never lose sight of delivering deeply compelling character work and never-wasted plotting amongst the galactic drama and fantastic performances from its ensemble cast. There’s not an unimportant second in this show; the most minor plot details always come back in new and unexpected ways. These tiny pieces end up culminating in one of the year’s best season finales, as the series ties together several storylines in a hopeful yet emotional gut-punch. Then, as if these spectacular events weren’t enough, the show delivers a “one more thing”-esque teaser that would make Steve Jobs blush. 

For All Mankind took its time, but the show’s second season is a soaring achievement—one that’s reflective of the giant leap Neil Armstrong spoke of decades ago. —Al Shipley

Network: Freeform

Season: 1

Genre: Teen drama / thriller

Where to Watch: Hulu

Cruel Summer tells the fictional story of a kidnapping scandal that grips the country in the mid-1990s, with missing teenager Kate (Olivia Holt) becoming a tabloid fixture alongside O.J. Simpson and the Menendez brothers. But what makes the sordid tale more gripping is the odd structure of the series, constantly jumping between three timelines in 1993, 1994, and 1995. In each episode, you see Kate and the classmate implicated in her case, Jeanette (Chiara Aurelia), age two years and grow up in the public eye, tormented by the strange sequence of events that you have to slowly piece together through the fragmented narrative.

Though Cruel Summer takes place in Texas, Midwestern actress Andrea Anders is just about the only cast member who speaks with a strong Southern accent, lending a campy edge to her scenes as Kate’s privileged and self-absorbed mother. The leads, however, lean all the way into their transformations from optimistic tweens to teens with complicated lives, as the story jumps forward a year and the music cuts from the happy grooves of Spin Doctors to the discordant disaffection of Mecca Normal. —Al Shipley​​​​​​​

Network: Amazon Prime Video

Season: Limited series

Genre: Fantasy historical drama

Where to Watch: Amazon Prime Video

We’re living in interesting times. Since the premiere of HBO’s Watchmen, which details the horrific events of the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, we’ve been inundated with more and more Black trauma in our entertainment. From Amazon Prime’s Them to HBO’s Lovecraft Country to the litany of Tulsa documentaries and TV specials, our history is being told, again and again. Only, we’re highlighting the darker sides. The sides where Black bodies swing from Southern trees (strange fruit, indeed), are used to pick cotton and clean plantation homes, and are overall discarded as less-than-human. After watching the work Barry Jenkins put into this Amazon Prime series, I am glad to say that I might be out of the Black Trauma section of entertainment for the foreseeable future, but at least this was a great watch.

Based on Colson Whitehead’s 2016 novel of the same name, The Underground Railroad tells the story of Cora, a runaway slave in an alternate universe where the Underground Railroad—the network of safe havens and hidden paths that helped slaves escape to freedom—is an actual railroad, complete with trains, conductors and the like. That switch doesn’t necessarily change what happens in the world; that brutality against Black bodies is front and center—but in Barry Jenkins’ hands, scenes sing. The beauty he creates on-screen is unmatched; he knows how to construct a captivating image, or let a shot linger a hair longer than expected, allowing moments to sting or shine properly. I found myself aligned with Thuso Mbedu’s performance as Cora. The best way to not repeat history is to learn from it, which means having to sit through many terrible aspects of American life. Mbedu’s Cora bottles up the pains of this period, taking that violent hate and using it as fuel to keep her journey on the Railroad going. It’s a lesson we should all learn sometime, and one I’m down to take in if Jenkins is the conductor, but after this ride ended, I don’t want—or need—to consume this much Black trauma anymore. Help us out, Hollywood. —khal

Network: Netflix

Season: Part 1

Genre: Mystery thriller

Where to Watch: Netflix

Whether it’s Robin Hood, Neil McCauley, or Dominic Toretto, audiences love a good thief and an even greater score. The heist genre has existed for decades, resilient in its ability to stay endlessly engaging, entertaining, and fresh. But every once in a while, a project comes along and threatens to steal away the crown, becoming the dominant force in the genre—and it’s impressive how effortlessly Netflix’s Lupin got away with it. 

French novelist Maurice Leblanc’s gentleman thief debuted in 1905 but isn’t as much of a household name as other literary creations from the same era. You’re likely more familiar with the manga and anime series Lupin III than any of the Leblanc books. This factor works in favor of Netflix’s French import, as the titular character doesn’t even appear in the series. Instead, in an inspired take, Lupin serves as the influence for Assane Diop’s (Omar Sy) thieving, wherein he uses anagrams of Lupin’s pseudonyms as cover for his jobs. As for the true nature behind those scores, the tragic depth of Assane’s motivations is pieced out in fragments through the series while exploring his status and race as a Senegalese immigrant. It’s a dynamic wholly original to this Lupin tale, and the series is so much more robust and compelling because of it.

Equally mesmerizing is Sy, who elevates the charm he so effortlessly radiated in 2011’s The Intouchables to another level. Not since Danny Ocean or Rusty Ryan have we seen a thief as charismatic and enjoyable as Sy’s Assane. His sheer confidence and presence are magnetic, and you only grow fonder of him as the series continues and the stakes get higher and higher.

We’re only a few weeks away from getting the second half of Lupin’s first season. The execution of those next five episodes could make the series fall flat on its face. Yet even if they end up lacking, the first half of Lupin is so good that it’s already stolen a spot on our list of best shows in a fitting feat for the master thief. —William Goodman

Network: Amazon Prime Video

Season: 1

Genre: Adult superhero

Where to Watch: Amazon Prime Video

If you’re late to the game, 2021 is the year animation finally got the respect it deserved. No, this isn’t the kind of wise-cracking rabbit cartoon from your youth. Invincible is an all-out superhero action flick split into eight episodes and wrapped in a mystery that will blow your mind come season’s end. Literally, heads explode. Based on the comic book of the same name from The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman, Invincible follows a similar mold to Amazon Prime’s sister superhero hit, The Boys. Blood, guts, and a character-driven plot carry 17-year-old Mark Grayson (Steven Yeun) from unexceptional high school dorkiness to high-flying hero as he discovers his powers, where his father Nolan Grayson (J. K. Simmons), a.k.a. Omni-Man, the world’s greatest hero comes from, and how it all makes life as a teenager even more complicated. So stop pretending like you don’t still watch cartoons and get watching. Trust, it wouldn’t be on this list if it didn’t belong. —Nate Houston

Network: Disney+

Season: Miniseries

Genre: Superhero sitcom / drama / mystery

Where to Watch: Disney+

Kudos to Marvel for bucking their trend, at least for the first half of WandaVision, which oddly became the beginning of the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s Phase 4. It was actually a risky gamble; given that Wanda and Vision’s story effectively ended in Infinity War, the immediate puzzle was, “How the HELL is Vision still walking around, and where the hell is his Inifnity Stone?” With that puzzle being easy to solve, the real question was, “What is WandaVision trying to say?” There is where we had a lot to unpack.

WandaVision is a lot of things. Immediately, it’s an homage to sitcom television. Like most great comic books, we’re given a question; in this show’s case, the task was to figure out where Wanda and Vision are, why they are strolling through these sitcom tropes through the ages, and what the point of it all was. When you realize that this series is, essentially, Wanda’s most severe coping mechanism, it hits different. How do the most powerful beings in the universe cope with the loss of a loved one? If they have been dealing with loss for their entire lives, and have the ability to ensnarl entire cities to create a sitcom utopia, they might just turn a quiet New Jersey town into their own soundstage. It’s a sad, frustrating tale, especially when it has to become a more typical Marvel property, but the inventiveness of some of the modern era’s comic book writers and the situations they put characters in is applauded. With Captain America The Falcon and the Winter Soldier letting Marvel’s bromantic duo roll up its sleeves and swing at everything in their way, WandaVision at least showcases that Marvel can dare to be different, even if it’s just a comic book series. Even if it ends up course-correcting it’s oddness by series’ end. It’s a fascinating experiment in the MCU, one that hopefully inspires other creatives to bring the excitement of the comic book medium to Marvel’s massive library of properties. —khal

Network: FX

Season: 4

Genre: Crime drama

Where to Watch: FX on Hulu

Since Snowfall co-creator John Singleton’s death in 2019, one of his final projects has continued to thrive, adding an awesome chapter to his legacy. With each passing year, social media buzzes more loudly about whether Snowfall has caught up to The Wire or even surpassed it, and while those debates still feel premature, the FX drama’s fourth season at the very least made the gap between them smaller (with all due respect to Michael Hyatt, who’s given powerhouse performances in both shows).

Only two years(!) have passed in Snowfall’s four-season story so far, but the show’s power is in simply letting the crack era unfold in Los Angeles one day at a time, as the violence has steadily escalated from the show’s first season. Season 4 saw many storylines come to a head, with Franklin’s enemies getting dealt with before Teddy starts cleaning up loose ends. Series lead Damson Idris’ star-making performance as Franklin Saint has deepened over time, as he’s grown from an ambitious young dealer to a kingpin who walks with a cane and makes grim choices to ensure his own survival. —Al Shipley