Ranking Every TV Show of 2021, Part I: #s 108-95

Need proof that the COVID-19 pandemic is over? I only watched 108 TV shows last year.

OK, I’m kidding, at least on the first part. But as the omicron variant rages and hospital admissions soar troublingly toward their 2020 levels, it’s vaguely comforting to know that television remains, well, there. I’m not interested in (or capable of) qualitatively comparing an entire year of an artistic medium against past annuals, but quantitatively speaking, TV is still a powerhouse. Sure, my total of 108 shows looks a tad inferior compared to the 124 I watched in 2020, but I still think it’s a pretty healthy (i.e., unhealthy) figure.

Were all 108 series good? Of course not. Were most of them watchable? Pretty much. The ensuing list, which will be revealed over the course of the next five days (concluding with the top 10 on Friday), is decidedly not a bell curve; once we reach the top 70 or so, we’re pretty much in “I’m glad I saw that” territory. That, of course, doesn’t make these rankings any less infantile, which is also what makes them fun. So clock out, strap in, and turn on your streaming device of choice as we explore the vast and varied year that was.

Obligatory reminder: While the volume of television I consume is considerable, I can’t watch literally everything. (A non-exhaustive list of returning series that I lapsed on in 2021 includes Goliath, Narcos: Mexico, Shrill, Frayed, and Central Park. I also started a handful of series like Heels, Them, and Halston before resigning.) So yes, I’m sure that one of your favorite Danish crime dramas or precious Peacock comedies doesn’t appear in these electronic pages, and for that I do not feel remotely guilty. Reach triple digits on the number of shows you watch per year, and maybe then we can talk.

Let’s get to it. Here follows the ranking of every TV show I watched in 2021:

Tier 11: Shows I actively disliked
108. I Think You Should Leave (Netflix, Season 2; 2019 rank: 101 of 101). You were expecting something else? I’ve written in the past how aggressively I despise this wildly popular series, and I have no particular interest in further illuminating the same thoughts. (When I suggested the possibility of an expanded piece on Twitter, I was predictably told to get lost.) This isn’t a TV show. It’s a collection of random sound bites and aspirant memes, prepackaged for maximum gifability. Of all of the insufferable sketches that constituted its second season, the most widely shared was probably the shot of Tim Robinson slathered in excessive old-man makeup while muttering, “I don’t even want to be around anymore.” I know how he feels.

107. Girls5eva (Peacock, Season 1). I feel slightly bad about despising a series that stars four hard-working women over 40. But every time I watch a Robert Carlock show, I’m left with the impression of a sociological approximation of what it might be like if we all assumed a particular premise was funny, rather than it actually being, y’know, funny. Off-key for me.

106. Lisey’s Story (Apple, Season 1). Congratulations to this year’s winner of the “Most talent assembled in service of a piece of garbage” award. Forget the Stephen King pedigree or the wildly overqualified cast, which is led by Julianne Moore, Clive Owen, and Jennifer Jason Leigh. What’s truly mystifying is that all eight episodes of this lurching, lugubrious series were directed by Pablo Larraín, the gifted filmmaker of movies like Jackie and No. But while Lisey’s Story features one (1) memorable setting—an underworld beach populated by wayward souls—it’s otherwise a deeply risible work, with an overheated tone and a misshapen grasp of character. That it’s so awkward is disappointing; that it’s so boring is unforgivable.

105. Behind Her Eyes (Netflix, Season 1). Hey, at least this one isn’t boring. For its first few episodes, Behind Her Eyes gestures toward being a legitimately interesting series about passion, obsession, and an attraction that just might turn fatal. It then collapses spectacularly, abandoning any interest in emotional nuance in favor of chaotic, feebly executed suspense. It’s most memorable for its double-twist ending, an absolutely bugfuck conclusion that doesn’t provoke disbelief so much as laughter—the kind where you immediately text your friends, “Did you see that finale haha wtf?”

104. The Morning Show (Apple, Season 2; 2019 rank: 54). Never mind, this wins the award for most talent in service of utter trash. But seriously, what the hell happened here? The first season of The Morning Show was uneven, but after a bumpy beginning, it progressed into a genuinely complex reckoning with patriarchal power structures and a culture of complicity. Season 2 gestures toward similar themes but does so in bizarrely obtuse ways, struggling to develop any sort of thesis statement—it’s about racism! it’s about cancel culture! it’s about COVID!—until settling on a clumsy, tone-deaf message of, “Nobody cares what you think.” Maybe not, but I’m still gobsmacked at the shrill performances of Jennifer Aniston and Mark Duplass, while I’m simply confused by the pinballing inconsistency of a hard-working Reese Witherspoon and a rather less strenuously engaged Steve Carell. (Billy Crudup remains an oasis of delight, joined periodically by the spiky Greta Lee.) Clunky and haphazard, The Morning Show desires to preach any number of incoherent talking points, but only one comes through with any clarity: Don’t kill off Gugu Mbatha-Raw.

103. Nine Perfect Strangers (Hulu, Season 1). I give up; the Talent/Garbage award is apparently split across infinite series. But seriously, look at this cast! Nicole Kidman plays a Russian self-help guru with a clouded past! Michael Shannon sings! Regina Hall… honestly, I have no idea what the hell Regina Hall is doing here, which mirrors my feelings toward the show overall. As someone who defended the unnecessary but enjoyable second season of Big Little Lies, I was intrigued by another David E. Kelley adaptation of a Liane Moriarty novel. But whether it’s the fault of the source or the show, Nine Perfect Strangers is simply inane, squandering the gifts of its remarkable ensemble (Melissa McCarthy! Samara Weaving!) in the service of piddling intrigue and cockamamie pop psychology. “It doesn’t make any sense” is a boring critique, because stories don’t need to make literal sense to be absorbing. But when they don’t make emotional sense, they become a waste of time.

Tier 10: Shows I passively disliked
102. The Irregulars (Netflix, Season 1). The premise—a ragtag group of scrappy teenagers get embroiled in a devious conspiracy in Sherlock Holmes’ London—has potential. But the execution of The Irregulars feels awfully kid-lit. The actors are tentative, the characters are two-dimensional, and the supernatural shenanigans are muddled and lack oomph. There’s a version of a good show in here somewhere, but while parts of it are gratifyingly weird, irregularity can’t rescue a series from its own ungainly execution.

101. Run the World (Starz, Season 1). It feels grossly reductive to describe Run the World as “Sex and the City, but with Black women.” And yet, what’s the hook here? Certainly not the characters, who are largely functional, and whose supposed #BFF camaraderie feels forced. A few subplots centering on women in the workplace acquire a shiver of resonance, but for the most part, this well-intentioned, weirdly flat series feels like a setup in search of a story.

100. Panic (Amazon, Season 1). Again, narrative plausibility is not a prerequisite for artistic entertainment. So when I tell you that the plot of Panic—about a gaggle of high schoolers who battle in a Fear Factor-style competition in the far-flung hope of attaining a life-changing prize and that they also maybe murder each other in the process—is utterly preposterous, that doesn’t render the show worthless. The problem is that Panic’s characters are only marginally more believable than its story. Olivia Scott Welch does solid work as the lead (yes, that’s West Side Story’s Mike Faist as one of her rivals), but the series’ ostensible focus on small-town suffocation and impoverished struggle is too blurry to be affecting. That might be salvageable if the events themselves were staged with actual élan, but, well, Squid Game this ain’t.

99. Dear White People (Netflix, Season 4; 2019 rank: 91). After an alarmingly steep drop in quality between Seasons 2 and 3, it made sense for Dear White People to reinvent itself for its final go-round, and it’s difficult to imagine a more severe rejiggering than, “Let’s continue to examine modern racial issues while also paying tribute to ’90s musicals and also adding a futuristic framing device.” So it’s a bummer that Season 4 falls so flat, because the execution here is just flat-out bad. The songs are staged with minimal style (and feature appalling lip-synching), the future-set scenes feel perfunctory, and the messaging about the importance of Black art feels tired rather than vital. As always, the series earns high marks for ambition, but when it comes to nuts-and-bolts writing, it flunks out.

98. What If… (Disney, Season 1). There’s a kernel of intellectual integrity to What If, which toys with the existing lore of the Marvel Cinematic Universe in playful, semi-childish ways. Structurally, the premise allows for the possibility of imagination and experimentation, with largely self-contained episodes that aren’t obligated to conform to the rigors of a franchise that basically operates as a perpetual series of end-credits teasers. And yet, with the exception of a legitimately dark installment contemplating the fate of Benedict Cumberbatch’s Doctor Strange, there’s no real sense of risk to the series. Our preexisting knowledge of the characters (some of whom are voiced by their usual on-screen counterparts, including the late Chadwick Boseman) is designed to create a preliminary emotional attachment, but it actually has the opposite effect; because we already know these people, their misadventures scan as trifling outtakes rather than actual developments. The animation is competent, and it’s nice to hear some of the actors again, but the promise of anything-goes storytelling ultimately proves phony. The only compelling question it asks is, what if Marvel made an animated superhero series and didn’t do anything interesting with it?

97. City on a Hill (Showtime, Season 2; 2019 rank: 77). Oof. Sure, the first season of City on a Hill felt like Quality Drama Lite, but it at least carried a frisson of intrigue in the antagonistic partnership between Kevin Bacon’s racist FBI agent and Aldis Hodge’s idealistic prosecutor. Season 2 abandons any pretense of dramatic nuance, replacing it with a grab bag of cheap twists, thin characters, and clunky proselytizing. Bacon still has a good deal of fun (Hodge is largely hamstrung, though not as severely as Amanda Clayton, playing a homemaker-turned drug dealer), but the writing is too stiff for the themes to acquire any force. I pronounce it guilty of mediocrity.

96. Tuca and Bertie (Adult Swim, Season 2; 2019 rank: 74). This is one of a handful of shows on this list where I appreciate what it’s trying to do without responding to it at all. Tuca and Bertie has valuable things to say about friendship, work, and sex, and I applaud it for saying these things in the context of a zany and intricately designed universe. But watching it mostly feels like a chore.

95. Clarice (CBS, Season 1). Sure, it’s an obscenely mercenary attempt to capitalize on fans’ preexisting affection for one of cinema’s greatest characters (as for that cannibalistic psychiatrist, don’t worry about him, and definitely don’t say his name), but there are times when Clarice threatens to become interesting. Rebecca Breeds is, to put it mildly, no Jodie Foster, but she’s a sympathetic presence, and her relationships with her fellow feds generate some classic platoon-picture charm. But when it comes to intensity, the series fails on pretty much every level: as a self-contained mystery, as a continuation of Silence of the Lambs’ “women in a man’s world” dynamic, as yet another study of the thin line between investigative brilliance and obsessive madness. Clarice feels predictably in thrall to its predecessors: too fearful to carve out its own identity but too weak to perpetuate its predecessor’s urgency. It’s a trainee posing as the real deal.

Coming later today: sex workers, time hoppers, sad sorcerers, and train conductors.