Best TV Shows of 2021
Ranked by our critic's grades, best first.
ArcaneA video game adaptation with no bad episodes, and animation nobody else on television is attempting.Read the review
Only Murders in the BuildingThree lonely people solve a murder for a podcast, and the show is as much about the loneliness as the murder.
Squid GamePastel playgrounds, a debt crisis and a body count, and the whole world watched it in a fortnight.
The White LotusWealthy people ruin a holiday and several lives, and the staff have to keep smiling through all of it.
MaidPoverty as arithmetic, with an on-screen tally of every dollar and Margaret Qualley carrying ten hard episodes without once asking for pity.
Mare of EasttownA murder mystery whose real subject is a woman who cannot forgive herself, in a town nobody escapes.
Station ElevenA pandemic series released into a pandemic that chooses tenderness anyway, and improves on a very good novel doing it.
Abbott ElementaryA workplace mockumentary about Philadelphia teachers doing a hard job with no money, and the warmest, sharpest broadcast sitcom of its decade.
HacksA veteran Las Vegas comic and a cancelled young writer despise each other productively for four seasons.
Reservation DogsFour Indigenous teenagers plan to leave Oklahoma, and the show they are in is the best comedy of its years about staying.