We’re ranking every TV show of 2021. If you missed the first installment, you can find it here.
Tier 9: Possibly marginally interesting
94. The Girlfriend Experience (Starz, Season 3; 2017 rank: 46 of 108). If the first season of The Girlfriend Experience was about demythologizing the mystique of sex work (and proving Riley Keough’s star bona fides) and the two-for-one second season was about the dangerous costs of possessive obsession, Season 3 is about… neural net technology? Data mining? Brunettes posing as blondes? I don’t mean to be glib, but there’s an alarming disregard for narrative coherence on display here, which is maybe meant to be a bold storytelling choice but which really just serves to dilute any thematic impact. Stories of messy relations between sex workers and their clients are always interesting, and Julia Goldani Telles certainly has screen presence, but this latest batch of episodes inspired by the (coughs, overrated) Steven Soderbergh feature is far too detached and off-kilter to hold viewers’ attention. I hope this isn’t the end of this strange, experimental series about body commodification and the literal price of desire, but new showrunner Anja Marquardt (taking over for Lodge Kerrigan and Amy Seimetz) has shifted things in a bizarre, thoroughly unpersuasive direction. Sex work is indeed work, but a show about it shouldn’t feel this impersonal and cold.
93. The Falcon and the Winter Soldier (Disney, Season 1). The concept of “What if Captain America were Black?” is one rich with philosophical possibility and narrative complexity. It’s also a question that Disney and Marvel, with their four-quadrant imperative and crowd-pleasing instincts, are wholly incapable of tackling with any real insight. Politically speaking, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier only glances at the suggestion of advancement as it in fact relentlessly confirms the safety of the status quo. (For a far more thoughtful take and race and vigilantism in America, see Watchmen.) What’s left, then, are two solid performances from Anthony Mackie and Sebastian Stan in the service of rote superhero antics, all of which unfold without distinction. With its perfunctory action and passable banter, the series is perfectly fine, which is what makes it such a missed opportunity.
92. Losing Alice (Apple, Season 1). Make no mistake: This series, about a successful female director who recruits a vivacious young actress to star in an erotic thriller opposite her husband, is absolute trash. But it is very watchable trash, with a gripping penultimate episode that majestically blurs the line between simulation and reality. That hour, which involves the filming of a single-take sex scene, is so provocative, it has the unfortunate consequence of blotting out the rest of the show, which starts off as a tantalizing mystery before succumbing into overheated silliness. It’s a mess, but in that single moment of glory, at least it’s a memorable one.
91. Little Birds (Starz, Season 1). Speaking of overheated, this miniseries (inspired by short stories from Anaïs Nin) is basically an eroticized take on Casablanca. That’s a catchy hook, and Juno Temple easily holds the center as an American heiress with a porcelain face and a spine of steel. But despite some evocative visuals, Little Birds never really works on the level of either plot or character. It’s more of a vibe than a TV show, concocting a feverish atmosphere of violence and desire, then getting lost in its own maze of tawdry sex and conspiratorial intrigue. That sounds like a blast in the abstract, but there’s no substance behind the silky façade.
90. Ragdoll (AMC, Season 1). I do not believe that I needed yet another series about a deviously brilliant serial killer and the obsessive cops who cross all sorts of legal and ethical lines in their frantic attempt to catch him. Still, despite its familiarity, Ragdoll earns points for sheer excess; some of the brutality on display is inventively ghastly. (The title derives from a freshly discovered corpse that’s been stitched together with body parts of various victims. As I said, it’s a lot.) And while the cat-and-mouse machinations are as tedious as they are ridiculous, Thalissa Teixeira and Lucy Hale both bring a measure of humanity to their tortured gumshoes. (Henry Lloyd-Hughes is rather less successful as a mentally ill detective with a personal connection to the killer.) Still, the story is preposterous, and it’s hard not to perceive the whole enterprise as warmed-over David Fincher. That moldering corpse is a metaphor as well as a plot point; if all you’re doing is mashing existing genre fare together, you aren’t offering much that’s new.
89. Dr. Brain (Apple, Season 1). The premise here—a sociopathic doctor, played by Parasite’s Lee Sun-kyun, develops a machine that allows him to “brain sync” with newly deceased bodies, then begins to take on some of their attributes—carries some pulpy promise, all the more so when you realize that the director is Kim Jee-woon, whose I Saw the Devil is one of the more arresting thrillers of the past decade. But despite Kim’s talents for provocation, Dr. Brain is ultimately too silly to be involving. Its mystery is glutted with too many side characters, and its set pieces are pedestrian rather than exciting. At one point, the hero essentially turns into a cat, complete with night vision and the ability to jump from great heights and land on his feet. How do you make that dull?
88. Rick and Morty (Adult Swim, Season 5; last year: 98 of 124). I’m not in the mood. It is what it is.
87. The Luminaries (Starz, Season 1). Wasting Eva Green would seem to be impossible, but this miniseries, about “astral twins” (played by Eve Hewson and Himesh Patel) whose fates are conjoined, nearly pulls it off. It’s a preposterous piece of hokum (created by Emma screenwriter Eleanor Catton!), and it never comes close to earning the sweeping sense of grandeur that it clearly aspires to. And yet, no show featuring Green as a manipulative fortune-teller can be entirely devoid of pleasures, and while The Luminaries never succeeds as a piece of drama, it’s often watchable for its strenuous ambition. Very little about the series makes sense, but at least it fails to make sense in interesting ways. Still, next time, let’s give Miss Penny Dreadful a role more worthy of her talents, shall we?
86. The Wheel of Time (Amazon, Season 1). There’s stuff to like here: gorgeous landscapes, expensive-looking production design, Rosamund Pike. And yet, this obvious Game of Thrones aspirant is too enamored with its own complicated mythology to work as actual entertainment. Most of the cast is stiff, and the focus on world-building overwhelms the thinly drawn characters. There’s still a chance The Wheel of Time will get good—and lord knows, there’s plenty of source material to draw from—but for now, it plays like a guided tour of a fantasy world as opposed to actually inhabiting that world. Pretty costumes, though!
85. Snowpiercer (TNT, Season 2; last year: 87). It would be foolish to expect a cable television show to remotely approach the heights of a Bong Joon-ho picture. That just isn’t happening. And with those modest expectations in mind, Snowpiercer grows a bit more confident in its second season, feeling more like a legitimate final product as opposed to a tentative introduction of a new world. Its apex comes in its fifth episode, a standalone hour featuring Jennifer Connelly that verges on actual greatness. Unfortunately, that’s the exception; for the most part, the show treads water, progressing with competence and periodic bursts of flair without ever cohering as a piece of drama or action. Season 3 premieres tonight, and I’ll be watching, which I suppose is a testament to its adequacy. Maybe someday it’ll hit the skids, but for now I keep riding that damn train.
84. Tribes of Europa (Netflix, Season 1). This is essentially an extremely low-budget version of The Wheel of Time, in that it’s far more invested in articulating the details of its fantastical dystopia than in illuminating its characters. It’s also far less impressively designed, with cheap-looking effects and half-hearted environments. And yet, there’s a certain scrappy charm on display, best exemplified by Oliver Masucci (from Dark) as a roguish bounty hunter; nothing he does is especially logical, but at least he does it with a smile and a dash of vigor. The show also features one of the funniest lines I’ve ever heard during a sex scene, one that compels me to keep my eye on Melika Foroutan going forward. Strictly speaking, Tribes of Europa isn’t good television, but sometimes it’s more important to be weirdly memorable.
Coming tomorrow: Horned kids, horny teens, angsty superheroes, and super-bad criminals.
Jeremy Beck is the editor-in-chief of MovieManifesto. He watches more movies and television than he probably should.