A Little Priest: The Best of 2021

My write-up of 2021, following 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020.

Given the challenges of filming during a pandemic, it’s amazing how much good TV aired in 2021. Last year, as COVID battered the industry, it was easy to limit my “best of” list to 10, with a handful of runners up. In 2021, I counted two dozen series I wanted to praise — even the “flawed but fascinating” ones. So get ready: counting down my top 24 shows of 2021, starting here with #24-#11, and saving the top 10 for next week.

24. The Chair (Netflix): I can’t think of a recent show I’ve so enjoyed that’s such a mess. A collaboration between actor-playwright Amanda Peet and screenwriter-scholar Annie Julia Wyman, The Chair has a novel premise and fastens upon any number of topical targets. As the first female head of the English Department at Pembroke University (a lower-tier Ivy League school), Dr Ji-Yoon Kim has an ambitious agenda: to make the department more inviting to faculty of color, to respond swiftly and responsibly to the needs of the student body, and to stem declining enrollment — an agenda that she’s forever stymied from carrying out. The Chair examines why English departments at schools like Pembroke are hemorrhaging students. It’s clear that a good part of it lies with the tenured faculty — most of them over 70 — who have no ability to connect with their Generation Z students and their progressive concerns. But the students hardly get off scot-free. Yes, they’re burdened by mounting debt and limited post-graduate opportunities, but that only causes them to flail in preposterous directions: creating controversy where none exists, brandishing wokeness as a weapon. There are times, though, when Peet and Wyman don’t seem to know what to do with those topics other than expose and parade them. Their determination not to “take sides” — their fear of trivializing the very issues they’re dissecting — make them seem at times almost resistant to forging a narrative. And although Sandra Oh is just as good as you would expect in the lead role, the excursions into Kim’s personal life — her efforts to raise her adopted daughter, her flirtation with a recently widowed teacher — come off as distractions. Not just distractions in terms of what you want to see, but distractions in terms of what she’s able to accomplish. (You’re left at times with a nagging suspicion that she could’ve done more over six episodes if she’d just been able to handle her babysitting and boyfriend issues.) The Chair takes on a host of satisfying topics, but the presentation is scrappy, and the dénouement unsatisfying. The narrative seems to suggest that Kim was doomed to fail, but was she really? Or was she merely so indecisive and preoccupied that she couldn’t effect any real change? The Chair seems so nervous about asserting anything — and so skittish about drawing conclusions (it won’t even take a stance on cancel culture) — it almost challenges you to like it. But perhaps that’s not such a bad thing: you walk away intrigued by themes and issues that lie beneath the text, that still need extrapolating and exploring — as in any good English class. It’s the kind of show that might lead to more good discussion at home than you actually witnessed on your TV screen.

23. Midnight Mass (Netflix): A new priest arrives at an island town and reengages a waning congregation with a series of miracles. But to what end? The latest from Mike Flanagan, whose 2018 Haunting of Hill House had been beyond reproach, it had a nice slow build that (literally, figuratively) caught fire in episodes 4 and 5 — and then Flanagan didn’t seem to know what to do. You’d think for a series that began with such earnest and effective world-building, he would have had a better solution than “burn it all down,” but over the final two episodes, reveals and reunions felt halfhearted, and the motivation of the priest — once it was finally, formally explained to us — seemed sketchy. And most damagingly, the dialogue — which had previously unspooled in expansive soliloquies — felt trite and rushed. In the fourth episode, two of the leads — expertly played by Kate Siegel and Zach Gilford — sat in her home and shared their hopes and beliefs about “what happens after we die.” The result was a pair of spellbinding monologues that laid bare not only the characters, but the very themes — the theological ambiguities that make people easy prey to promised-based messaging — that Flanagan was exploring. By the final episode, on the other hand, there was one exchange that pretty much amounted to “I think I killed my parents — will you forgive me?” “Sure.” I’m not saying that as the action sped up, I still expected the sort of poetic prose that had distinguished the earlier episodes, but I didn’t expect crucial confrontations to be treated as throwaway material either. But even when Midnight Mass was at its most disappointing, one thing was clear: you needed to watch, if just for Hamish Linklater’s performance as Father Hill. I’ve admired Linklater since discovering his work on The New Adventures of Old Christine, but I had no idea at the time how versatile and ferocious a performer he was. The last decade has proven (as Flanagan titles his final episode) a revelation; Midnight Mass is the best work I’ve seen him do, and a standout performance of 2021. Flanagan drew a direct line from religion — in particular, from religious zealotry and evangelicalism — to a different kind of mythology that plays with many of the same concepts, and Linklater fully captured that unsettling overlap between religious scripture and supernatural horror. As noted, Midnight Mass devolved into something less ambitious and impressive than I’d hoped for. By episode 5, I was ready to proclaim it one of the year’s top 5 series; by the time it limped to its conclusion, it barely cracked my top 24. But watch for the first five episodes, and especially for Linklater.

22. For All Mankind Season 2 (Apple TV+): In 2019, I praised Ronald Moore’s For All Mankind — a look at how technological, social and economic advances might have accelerated if the Soviets had beaten us to the moon — for skirting both the clichés of sci-fi and soap opera. The scenario Moore envisioned stayed close enough to actual history to keep it from becoming just another “alternate universe” mash-up, and the way all the subplots were tied to NASA’s exploration of space — and to setting up the mission that consumed the second half of the season — kept the various story-lines from descending into the tropes of serialized drama. Apparently, I should never issue pronouncements again; Season 2 embraced both sci-fi and soap opera. A whole lot of critics hailed it as superior to Season 1; I didn’t see it that way at all. In particular, some of the story-lines seemed so unrelated to the missions at hand — i.e., Joel Kinnaman’s onscreen wife purchasing a bar and sleeping with a younger employee — that it seemed like the creative team were often concerning themselves with giving everyone “something to do.” I missed the tight focus of Season 1. Not that the season wasn’t engrossing; I just didn’t find it as distinctive as its predecessor. What did distinguish it, though, was the final mission, in which a handful of story-lines merged into a closing episode of grandeur, power, suspense, triumph and tragedy. And although there are a few actors I find weak (I remain underwhelmed by Wrenn Schmidt, and was thoroughly unconvinced by Coral Peña, who I fear is going to prove focal in the upcoming season), Sarah Jones and Michael Dorman, as onscreen spouses and astronauts, stretched and soared across ten episodes in ways I wouldn’t have predicted a season earlier. And the other performers I most admire — Kinnaman, Sonya Walger, Krys Marshall and Jodi Balfour — were as impressive as ever, and given solid story-lines, at least on the professional front. (The personal story-line reserved for Balfour, as Deputy NASA Administrator Ellen Waverly, seemed emblematic of where Season 2 kept going wrong. She essentially treaded water on the personal front until mid-season, when she sought out and reunited with her ex-girlfriend from Season 1. And then they resolved to build a life together — until Ellen was offered a job as Head of NASA, at which point her girlfriend decided to be noble and break up with her, lest their relationship become a career-ending controversy. It felt static and clichéd; what’s the point of sending mankind rushing towards Mars if, on the homefront, you’re just going to fall back on the same stale story beats?) Was I a little underwhelmed by Season 2? Yes. Am I looking any less forward to Season 3? Not at all.

21. Lupin Season 1 (Netflix): French author Maurice Leblanc published his first story about gentleman thief Arsène Lupin in 1905; the character was ultimately featured in 17 novels and 39 novellas. George Kay and François Uzan’s TV series casts Omar Sy in the role of Assane Diop, a man whose life and character have been inspired by Leblanc’s literary creation, and who puts his knowledge as a master of disguise to practical use, as he seeks revenge on the evil industrialist who destroyed his father. Philip and I discovered long ago a mutual affection for capers: the minute characters start to execute a crime in plain sight, our eyes light up like — well, like those of someone who would have been addicted to Leblanc‘s stories. So Lupin, a series of increasingly impressive deceptions, was tailor made for us. And although I found Hervé Pierre’s antagonist too one-note villainous, both in the scripting and in the performance, Omar Sy imbued the title role with such smooth swagger that you forgave any missteps along the way. The writers were careful to vary their tricks. Once they knew we were wise to the sort of sleights of hand they were pulling, they did them in flashback — or, in one highly engaging case, across multiple episodes. So given that the blueprint was so dazzlingly designed, and exactly the kind of TV for which I have a soft spot, why is Lupin so (relatively) low on my list? Because of the final episode, which discarded the premise in favor of a chase scene that felt endless. So many pieces were set up that never came into play; you were left with an arsenal of Chekhov’s guns that never went off, and the bang you hoped for turned into a whimper. That said, I don’t regret a moment of time spent with the series. Quick P.S.: Lupin, during its first month, became the most-watched non-English series on Netflix at the time. But from what I could tell, a lot of folks watched it in English, in an overdubbed version that was provided. Don’t. Should you choose to watch (and you should), watch in French with English subtitles.

20. Unforgotten Series 4 (ITV, PBS): Make no mistake, Unforgotten remains one of the best shows on television: the rare procedural that truly engages you in the lives of the suspects and casualties. Series 4 was grounded by a strong cold case, one that embodied all the themes creator Chris Lang has been exploring since its premiere: the ways we spend our lives trying to reinvent ourselves, and the sad futility of running from our pasts. But that said, did I feel Series 4 lived up to the genius of Series 2 and 3? Not quite. Part of the issue lay in the fact that this series was fashioned as Nicola Walker’s swan song. (The actress had decided to move on after four series.) Her departure itself was well-handled; as events transpired (shockingly) to remove her from the investigation before the final episode, her team proved they could go it alone, and Walker’s co-star Sanjeev Bhaskar showed us that he was fully capable of anchoring the show in the years to come. (He also delivered a hell of a eulogy.) It was the lead up that was leaden. DCI Cassie Stuart seemed such a far cry from the character we had grown to love over the first three series. She was grim and angry and sabotaged anything that might bring her a little solace. It was almost as if Lang felt that the way to most successfully write out Walker’s character was to suggest that her story was fully told: that the last two cases had taken such a toll on her mental health, she would never regain her ability to sustain personal and familial relationships, nor find her way back to a level of happiness we hoped for her. It seemed an awful way to dispose of Walker’s character — by letting her die at her darkest. (Lang dangled a glimmer of hope that she’d be able to let a little sunlight back into her life — before it was cut shockingly short. But that didn’t help, and in some ways, it just turned it into a TV cliché: the promise of things getting better, just before they’re snatched away.) That quibble aside, Unforgotten Series 4 served up another highly enjoyable mystery, with well-drawn characters, smart police work, a flawless collection of guest actors and a satisfying solution. But I did think Walker — who’s capable of doing so much more — got short-changed along the way.

19. Mare of Easttown (HBO, Sky Atlantic): It wasn’t as good as critics said, but it was pretty great. Mare of Easttown was a splendid piece of television that never lost track of the fact that it was a piece of television. Throughout what might have been a dark and relentless seven episodes, it knew exactly what buttons to push to keep you invigorated: whether you were marveling at Kate Winslet’s impeccable accent (the mainstream media devoted more column space to her accent than to the contents of Biden’s Build Back Better plan) or laughing at Jean Smart’s tonal mishmash of a mother, who could go from harpy to home-wrecker in the blink of an eye. (I had a lot of trouble with Smart in this series, which I adored. Contrarily, I thought she was marvelous in Hack, which I didn’t care for at all.) There was both romance and thrills; the leading lady — dressed down as she was in her role as Mare Sheehan, a police detective in a suburb of Philadelphia — had two newcomers to town both vying for her attention, and midway through, there was an expansive set-piece — a shootout in a two-story house — that had you on the edge of your seat. It was an orderly narrative full of incident and familiar types: a stalking, an abduction, plenty of red herrings (including a neat string at the end) — plus that staple of detective fiction, the priest with a secret. And Mare’s home life, of course, was a train wreck: a son whose suicide she hadn’t come to terms with, a drug-addled daughter-in-law demanding custody, an ex-husband next-door who might be a pedophile. But creator and writer Brad Ingelsby kept a firm hand on it all, ensuring that nothing strained credulity, except one early scene where Mare planted drugs to discredit her daughter-in-law. (It resulted in her suspension, but then Ingelsby fell back on that well-trod trope: “I may be suspended, but that won’t keep me from working the case.”) Mare of Easttown was a crowd-pleaser in the best sense of the word, but I like my TV a little rougher around the edges: a bit less aware that it’s ticking off boxes. To its great credit, it was the rare crime drama where the identity of the killer felt truly convincing: not just in terms of motive and opportunity, but in terms of the themes the series had been exploring. But at the end of the day, I found Mare of Easttown such a slick endeavor that very little of it stayed with me; I digested it amiably, then pretty much forgot what I’d just sampled.

18. Superman & Lois Season 1 (The CW, BBC One): I don’t know of anyone arguing that the best TV right now is on the six major U.S. broadcast networks, so the fact that even a few network shows turn up here — among all the offerings from HBO, Showtime, Apple+, BBC, ITV, and even FX — is akin to a miracle. I haven’t enjoyed a Greg Berlanti superhero show this much since the second season of Legends of Tomorrow, five full years ago. Once Berlanti had Arrow, The Flash, Legends and Supergirl running simultaneously, his writing staffs began cannibalizing each other for ideas. Superman & Lois stops the slaughter. It feels fresh. It looks fresh. Returning Clark Kent to his Kansas roots, it assiduously sets up its iconic duo in their own universe — unencumbered by crossover characters and Easter eggs. I haven’t watched much of the Arrowverse in several years, but in December 2018 I tuned in to the CW “crossover event” Elseworlds. It was my introduction to Tyler Hoechlin and Elizabeth Tulloch as Superman and Lois, and honestly, they were about the only thing that made an impression on me. I was a devoted DC Comics reader from the late ‘60s to the mid-‘80s; Hoechlin and Tulloch were everything I dreamed Superman and Lois would be on the screen — they were the fulfillment of the Christopher Reeve-Margot Kidder pairing in Superman II. They had the sweetness, the smarts, the humor and the gravitas. And the chemistry. There were all kinds of things that didn’t work in the first season of Superman & Lois: supporting players introduced late season who made no impression; promising backdrops discarded at the drop of a hat; and story-line rewrites so clumsy, you could practically hear the gears shifting all the way from the writers’ room. But none of it mattered. The focus of Superman & Lois was on the family unit — Clark, Lois and their teenage sons Jonathan and Jordan — and every time the series found itself on shaky ground, it stabilized itself by returning to the Kents. It was the rare superhero show that truly seemed to prize character development over plot twists, although it had its share of those too. But what other Berlanti series could devote an entire episode to the lingering pain of a miscarriage, and relate it not only to the ongoing superheroics but to the dysfunctional family dynamics that had emerged because of them? Even if you know nothing about the Arrowverse, even if superheroes aren’t your thing, it’s still worth giving Superman & Lois a look. They’re a pair worth investing in.

17. Guilt Series 2 (BBC Scotland): At the end of the first episode of Guilt Series 2, Max McCall sits beside the police officer who's arranged for his early release from prison (in exchange for his help in bringing down kingpin Roy Lynch) and admits that, as far back as he can remember, he’s let single emotions define his life. At first it was fear, then — as he got older — greed. During the time he was in prison, he tried guilt, but he couldn't make it stick. Now, finally, he's settled on something that feeds him a "heavy fuel": revenge. That speech tells you pretty much everything you need to know about Series 2: both the themes to be explored and the storytelling style. A whole lot of characters are seeking retribution: some for incidents that have haunted them since childhood, others for wrongs only recently committed against them. And creator/writer Neil Forsyth isn’t going to be cagey about their motives: he’s going to lay it all bare. As with For All Mankind, Guilt was a show that I felt — in its sophomore season — lost something of what made it special. I enjoyed it for what it was, but what it was was less than what it had been. The first series — which commenced with a hit-and-run committed by two brothers in an Edinburgh suburb — was a heady blend of personal drama and invigorating plot twists: the rare series that grew both deeper and cheekier as it went along. Series 2 felt streamlined; it lacked the character complexities of its predecessor — it aimed straight for the jugular. I confess, I preferred how Series 1 kept you off guard by the very style of the story-telling, which was genre-fluid. The second series was at once more frenetic yet tamer somehow; the suspense lay in seeing who would get to whom first, and who would emerge with the upper hand. And Forsyth kept you off guard not by keeping motivations ambiguous (pretty much everyone was rotten), but with long-buried secrets that kept coming to light, linking the characters in unexpected ways. But if the series reduced to something more traditional in Series 2, let’s not ignore the value of the actors in elevating it. The formidable Mark Bonnar returned to headline it — his character at once steelier and scrappier than before — and Emun Elliott provided the same sort of support and balance that Jamie Sives had in Series 1. And the supporting cast — led by Phyllis Logan as the matriarch of a crime family (an actor's dream, no doubt, after dwelling in Downton for so long); Stuart Bowman, taking over (flawlessly) for Bill Paterson as crime boss Lynch; and Ian Pirie, as (see #19, above) the requisite priest with a secret — was uniformly strong. No word yet on a Series 3 renewal; I’ll be delighted to see it return, but Series 2 left Bonnar’s character in such a good place that should BBC Scotland decide to let the series go, they may do so with my blessing — guilt free, as it were.

16. The Kominsky Method Season 3 (Netflix): In retrospect, when Alan Arkin announced plans not to return to The Kominsky Method for its third and final season, the decision to up Kathleen Turner from a one-episode cameo to series regular was a no-brainer. You’ve got a show built on the camaraderie between two characters. Who better to establish instant rapport (not just with Michael Douglas, but with viewers) than one of his Douglas’s frequent costars, who’s long been an audience favorite? So although you can hardly say that the decision to bring aboard Turner was “inspired,“ it still speaks to the assured genius of Chuck Lorre. I quite liked the first two seasons of The Kominsky Method, but neither enough to break into my top 20. But frankly, 2021 was such a miserable year (for me personally, not for television) that I’m quite willing to let a little nostalgia cloud my better judgment. The reunion of Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner was pretty much all I needed to adore the show’s sendoff. The first two seasons were a tart treatise on aging, in a town that thrives on youth. Lorre didn’t have that hook in Season 3, so The Kominksy Method called for a bit of reinvention. It only took him one episode to transform the series from a bittersweet buddy comedy to a broad family comedy, and although the themes were a little less distinctive, the results were no less entertaining. It essentially became a romp about Douglas and Turner seeing their onscreen daughter to the altar, and to that end, Sarah Baker and Paul Reiser provided splendid support. If Lorre couldn’t figure out the requisite comic beats, he went sentimental. If he ran out of sentimental beats, he brought in a guest star and kicked up the Hollywood satire a notch. It was a shortened final season, as were several series that I admired this past year, but in content and tone, it felt unguessably right. Netflix released the third season on May 28, 2021, just as the U.S. had opened up vaccines to the entire adult population. At that point, there was a fleeting month — before the dominance of Delta — when we finally felt free to reconnect with old friends. And our real-life reunions were mirrored by the onscreen reunion of Douglas and Turner.

15. The Great Pottery Throw Down Series 4 (Channel 4, HBO Max): The Great British Bake Off had a solid season capped by an unsatisfying conclusion. (Why exactly was Giuseppe crowned the winner over Chigs? I still don’t know.) Pottery Throw Down seemed at least as entertaining, and far more satisfying. It’s easy to understand the appeal of the Bake Off: we all imagine we can follow a recipe, and we all love looking at — if not sampling — delicious desserts. But of course, we can’t judge the contestants the way Paul and Prue do; despite what they tell the bakers, presentation is the least of it. It’s mostly about the taste, which we ourselves aren’t privy to. With a purely visual show like Throw Down, there’s an inviting parity between judges and viewers. And part of the delight of the Throw Down is the unpredictability — both of the format and the projects themselves. Whereas Bake Off divides into three neat sections, each episode of Throw Down centers around a “main make,” which can take anywhere from a few days to an entire week. At some point during the week, the potters get a “spot test”: a brief and more technical challenge. But it’s the main make that consumes most of their time: the shaping and the drying, the trimming and the glazing — and of course, that most potentially destructive aspect of it all, the firing. Throughout the process, there’s room for inspiration — and potential for disaster. What you put into the kiln isn’t necessary what will come out — in some cases, that’s exactly the point; pottery is as much an intuitive as a technical art. And because all of the projects are fired together in the same kiln, if one potter’s project explodes, the damage to another’s nearby can be calamitous. Series 4 featured a splendid and varied set of potters; projects so striking as to be memorable (e.g., Adam’s “Little Gardeners” 3-D building in week 2); a clusterfuck of kiln collapse in week 6; some shocking departures (the double elimination in week 8 was a heartbreaker); and one dark horse contestant — who initially seemed in over his head — making it all the way to the finals. Elevating Series 1-3 “kiln man” Richard Miller to judge in Series 4, alongside stalwart Keith Brymer Jones, was inspired. Miller and Jones had good chemistry (unlike Jones and Sue Pryke in Series 3), and Miller managed to be instructive and encouraging while maintaining his composure, balancing Jones’s penchant for emotional outpourings. And new presenter Siobhán McSweeney settled in easily and amusingly — more entertainer than her predecessors: a precursor to the double-act Matt Lucas and Noel Fielding developed in their second series on Bake Off. After years of creative turnaround (two hosts and two presenters replaced over the first three series), this is clearly a team that has clicked: all three willl be back when the show returns on January 2.

14. The Cook of Castamar (Atresplayer Premium, Netflix): Gastronomically good: a twelve-course meal brimming with romantic entanglements, family secrets, political intrigue, illicit trysts, stayed executions, surprise pregnancies, last-minute rescues and reckonings — and nonstop plot twists. Every character came with decades of backstory, some of it revealed in flashbacks that — in some cases — upended everything you’d come to believe about their motivations; it was a scripted feast that kept you coming back for more. A Spanish-language period drama (set in early 18th-century Madrid) adapted from the 2019 novel by Fernando J. Muñez, the limited series was anchored by stars Michelle Jenner and Roberto Enríquez as the show’s mature yet star-crossed lovers, an agoraphobic cook and a widowed nobleman. But for me, it was Maria Hervás — as Amelia Castro, a young woman brought to Castamar as a possible bride for the Duke, only to be seduced and impregnated by the man seeking revenge on his family — who walked off with the show. (Hervás took home the 2021 PRODU Award — honoring the best of the Latin American entertainment industry — for Best Supporting Actress in a Series or Miniseries.) A delectable comedienne, she could go from victim to vixen and back again, as the script required her to do countless times. (In fact, it went one step further, letting her both be a victim and play the victim, and when she essayed the latter role, her barely audible whimpering — which carried only as far as whoever needed to hear it — was wonderfully funny.) She made the necessary transitions so seamlessly that, in a show where the demarcations between “good” and “evil” were swiftly established, Amelia refused to be so easily pegged. The Cook of Castamar boasted shirtless men and tight-laced women, lavish banquets and sumptuous production values. There was homosexual romance and interracial romance, not to mention the forbidden love affair at the heart of the series. Everything was forbidden, but no one could resist — least of all the audience. As with Lupin, this Netflix import — a soap masquerading as a period drama — was worth watching in its original language, with English subtitles.

13. Halston (Netflix): Halston took hits from both critics and audiences. Critics complained it lacked authenticity. But Halston wasn’t about historical accuracy; heaven forbid it drifted toward the dryness of a documentary. Halston was about the intoxication and the burden of celebrity. It was about how fame both overwhelms and defines us. And it was about star power: about one gifted artist paying homage to another. When Barbra Streisand took on Fanny Brice, did anyone really give a fig about facts? (Viewers had their own bone to pick, finding fault with Krysta Rodriquez’s Liza Minnelli. I thought she was uncanny; she captured her spirit, her drive and — most important for the purposes of the plot — her warmth. I had dinner with Liza in 1989 or ‘90. We both got progressively drunker and bawdier as the evening went along, and I don’t know when I’ve been so entertained by a delightfully down-to-earth legend. That’s exactly what I saw in Rodriguez: she was loyal and good fun and game for anything.) Halston was frank about the designer’s cocaine addiction and sexual proclivities, but this was a Ryan Murphy production: I expected that. I didn’t expect the teleplay to be so engrossing. Oh sure, plenty of the details were fictional, but for all the facts it got wrong, it nailed the fundamental things. You understood the impulses that drove Halston, and those that ultimately broke him. You got a good sense of why someone would choose to back him, and why they would eventually desert him. To its credit, the script didn’t linger over his descent, and it didn’t overplay his "rise from the ashes." It was discreet in its excesses. And sure, the flashes of creative inspiration that Halston had — seemingly moments before a runway show — were as preposterous as what we used to get in those ‘40s Warner Bros songwriter bios, where some stagehand would make an offhand remark and suddenly the composer and lyricist would be inspired to write a whole song on the spot, but that’s just part of the showbiz myth that we — like Halston — have always wanted to believe in. Halston caught the headiness and the heedlessness of creative power; it permitted us a voyeuristic wade into the deep end of the gene pool. And Ewan McGregor’s performance was, as the TV Academy realized, Emmy worthy. He let you see how Halston found his image and then lost himself in it, and in an eerie way, McGregor did the same. All the seeming contradictions of McGregor’s career — the disparate roles he’s chosen, as he’s balanced being artist and entertainer (and businessman); a certain artistic perfectionism that’s always felt in thrall to popular opinion — seemed to find expression in this role. He seemed liberated and unleashed, as decadently defiant as the man he was portraying.

12. Annika (Alibi): A lot of people couldn’t get past the conceit: that Nicola Walker — as Detective Inspector Annika Strandhed — occasionally broke the fourth wall, just as she had in the radio program that spawned this series. And indeed, as Philip and I began watching, we figured — once she looked at us and started chattering away — that there must be some “documentary” premise, à la The Office, What We Do in the Shadows and countless other shows. But no, you were simply invited into Walker’s world, and so, on occasion, Annika would regale you with a literary reference that the murder called to mind, or button a scene with a visual rejoinder, or merely express an observation that didn’t fit within the confines of the onscreen drama. I don’t know many actors besides Walker who could have pulled it off: who could seemingly give their all in a scene, but hold back a piece of themselves (often, the funniest piece) to share with the audience at the end — and without a trace of camp or contrivance. Walker made you feel like you were her best friend, tagging along at her job, getting the inside scoop on how the Glasgow Marine Homicide Unit — which investigates the corpses that wash up on the shores of Scotland — solves crimes. The Glasgow Marine Homicide Unit… It sounds so odd and improbable, but it worked with such ease. And Walker’s detective team — Jamie Sives, Katie Leung and Ukweli Roach — was distinctive and superior. A refreshing change from a lazy star vehicle like Vera, where the supporting cast gets less to do every season (where even audience favorite Kenny Doughty’s character isn’t allowed to make a decent deduction, because it might undermine the infallibility of his boss), Annika took care to surround its star by expert players, and to give them useful skills and entertaining personalities. There were good continuing subplots, the most prominent of which found Annika fretting about her teenage daughter — and when the daughter had to go into therapy, and Annika found herself attracted to the therapist (Paul McGann, at his relaxed best), the series soared in deliriously unexpected directions. We were a mere four episodes in, and Annika was already indulging in — and pulling off — the sort of bedroom-farce theatrics that more seasoned shows struggle with. (“Quick, we need to get you out of here before my daughter discovers you spent the night“ – while in the next room, the daughter is waking up beside her girlfriend, trying to figure out how to get her out of there before her mother discovers she spend the night.) Annika was Alibi’s highest-rated series in eight years; no word of a second series yet, but I choose to believe it’s inevitable. I couldn’t understand Walker deciding to leave a great vehicle like Unforgotten, but if the acting challenges posed by Annika were a contributing factor, I’m more than satisfied.

11. Grantchester Series 6 (ITV, PBS): I marveled at Grantchester through its first three series — the James Norton years, as it were. I marveled at its ability to balance weekly mysteries with ongoing character drama, and I marveled at the very conception of Norton‘s character, Sidney Chambers, a vicar in 1950's England. (He was tortured and self-loathing, but also the ideal father confessor: open-faced, reassuring and nonjudgmental — except when it came to himself.) And then I stopped marveling. Series 4 felt frantic: both in the way it wrote out Norton’s character after just two episodes, and in the way it introduced his replacement Will Davenport, played by Tom Brittney. And Series 5 seemed so hell-bent on using Brittney as a narrative successor to Norton that it didn’t realize how ill-suited he was for the role: as an actor, he had no capacity for brooding, nor could he siphon his varied story-lines through one consistent characterization. And Will was too new to the canvas to insert himself into the other characters’ subplots and imbue them with a commonality of purpose and tone. By Series 5, Grantchester had become a much more formulaic series. But Series 6 hits the reset button, first by figuring out what to do with Brittney. No, he can’t play “inner turmoil“ like Norton; his singular feature is that his imposing figure masks a surprising innocence. And that’s the character who’s refined in Series 6: the poor little rich boy who hasn’t grown up — and is only now starting to realize it. Where Brittney excels are in those moments when Will comes to understand the impact of his upper-class upbringing — not how much it decimated him (as Series 5 suggested), but how much it shielded him. And once series creator Daisy Coulam figures out what to do with Brittney, she figures out how to rebalance the show — essentially splitting Norton’s function between Grantchester's two MVPs (who had been there since the beginning): Robson Green as police detective Geordie Keating and Al Weaver as curate Leonard Finch. Series 6 lets Leonard link all the characters, as he’s accused of — and tried for — gross indecency. (Coulam takes an unflinching look at how homosexuals were forced to live — and harassed and prosecuted — in the 1950's.) And while Leonard keeps all the characters connected, it’s Geordie who gives the series its pulse and its drive. He takes us down an increasingly dark path. Series 6 recognizes that if the lead detective is going to be top billed, you’d better give him the sort of story-line that the top-billed vicar benefited from in the first three seasons. In Series 1, Sidney had fixated on his wartime trauma, and the more he fixated, the more unnerving the series became; Geordie fills that precise role in Series 6. We watch him come unglued, reliving his time as a POW in Burma, and that mounting unease informs our viewing. The themes swirling through Series 6 intersect in so many ways, you’re left a bit breathless. It’s a series about imprisonment and isolation: physical and mental, literal and figurative. All the characters are shackled: by their memories, or their upbringing, or the restrictions that society places upon them. And no one more than Geordie. As Geordie assumes Sidney’s Series 1 story-line — reliving and suffering the effects of his wartime guilt — Robson Green assumes star status not merely by virtue of being first billed, but by becoming the spiritual successor to Sidney Chambers. And with that seemingly simple but altogether staggering transformation, Grantchester is reborn. (I offer a fuller review of Grantchester Series 6 here.)

Next: my top 10 for 2021.

Enjoy reading about TV's best? Check out three similarly-styled posts: The Five Best TV Shows You Might Not Be Watching, Five Foreign TV Dramas You Shouldn't Miss and my latest, inspired by the death of my puppy Czerny, The 10 Most Comforting TV Episodes About Death. Or if you enjoy detailed looks at hit shows, check out my write-ups of Voyager Season 4, Cold Case Season 4, Gilmore Girls Season 7 (and the subsequent, ill-judged Netflix miniseries), Judging Amy Season 6, and fourteen essays devoted to all the seasons of the great nighttime soap Knots Landing, starting here. I also look back at Murder, She Wrote and pick out The 10 Best "Murder She Wrote" Mysteries. Or if you have a preference for sitcoms, I serve up my 10 Best Mary Tyler Moore Show Episodes, 10 Best Designing Women episodes and 10 Best Kate & Allie episodes; delve into Rhoda Season 3, Newhart Season 7, Maude Season 2, WKRP in Cincinnati Season 4 and Bewitched Season 2; pen an appreciation of the underrated Mike & Molly; and offer up some thoughts as to why The New Adventures of Old Christine took such a tumble in quality over its five seasons.