The Best Feel-Good and Feel-Bad TV of 2021

In 2021, the bar for good television felt like it was reinstated, after a year in which we took basically whatever we could get. When the pandemic hit, we were left with no movies, no theatre, no dance, no art shows; TV, even when it sucked, was an absolute lifeline. What else was there to do but sit at home, as a nation, and watch “Tiger King”? (Remember “Tiger King”?) We might have been out of the office, but the online water cooler was alive and kicking. It felt like everyone was watching everything, all the time. This year, although COVID was far from over, the vaccine successfully shifted things enough that most of us could venture outside with less fear. Television returned to being just another option on a much fuller plate. And yet, the TV offerings were still more than robust. (“Tiger King 2,” anyone?) This meant that we had to choose more wisely than before.

“Wisdom,” however, is subjective, and so is this list. By no means definitive, it’s merely a celebration of some of the shows that I enjoyed watching this year, including both feel-good and feel-bad options, in no particular order. TV can serve as an escape, and some of the following programs relaxed me, made me laugh, or even made things a little more dumb for an evening or two—which helped get me through when the world felt like too much to contend with. Conversely, some of the other offerings here were great precisely because they reminded me of how shitty things were, ably reflecting the world back to me. Even so, these feel-bad shows often left me feeling hopeful. There’s something invigorating and beautiful about art that pulls no punches. (Of course, I should note that the differences between feel-good and feel-bad aren’t always cut-and-dried—and are also, to an extent, subjective.) There’s some overlap here with this list written by my colleague Doreen St. Félix. Like Doreen, I discovered as I was compiling my picks that I watched a lot of HBO this year and not nearly as much network television, but, unlike her more drama-centric roundup, my focus tended to land on comedies, both light and dark. And, despite the current vogue for miniseries, much of my list, I realized, consisted of multi-season series. There must have been something reassuring to me, in this age of unrest and unknowns, about that sense of continuity.

“I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson” (Netflix)

This sketch show, whose second season aired this past summer, is maybe one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen, and I’m not even exaggerating that much. It feels totally idiosyncratic, more Living Theatre than “S.N.L.,” even though its creators—Zach Kanin and Tim Robinson—both wrote for the latter. Robinson, who also stars in many of the sketches, has a slightly crossed-eyed gaze and crooked smile, a combo which makes for comedy gold before he even opens his mouth. The skits often start with a normal, everyday setup (two drivers skirmish in a parking lot) and quickly descend into absurdity and chaos (“Do you know how to fucking drive?” “No, I don’t know how to fucking drive. I don’t know what any of this shit is, and I’m scared.”) If I have any complaints, it’s that the episodes, at about fifteen minutes each, are way too short, and there are only six of them per season. More, please.

“The Great British Baking Show” (Netflix)

Like a warm bath. During the pandemic, I started watching old episodes of this soothing baking-competition show, and by the time that Collection 9 began streaming this past September, I was all in. Unlike American cooking contests such as “Top Chef,” in which the participants seem ready to gouge one another’s eyes out with a dessert fork, “Baking Show” (which is known across the pond, where it airs on Channel 4, as “The Great British Bake Off”) is permeated by a spirit of collective good will. The contestants cheer one another on as they attempt to craft, say, a sablé Breton tart or a kiwi-lime-pie Pavlova delectable enough to satisfy the show’s punishing-daddy of a judge, Paul Hollywood, and his softer consort, Prue Leith. This season is worth watching if only to see whether it’s the gentle, curly-maned Giuseppe or the plodding, uneffusive Jürgen who comes out on top.

“Succession” (HBO)

If “Baking Show” reminded us what is good in humankind, then Jesse Armstrong’s satirical drama of the ultra-wealthy did quite the opposite, remaining an essential text on how blinkered and ruthless people can really get. On the show’s third season, the Roy siblings continued their attempts to please, impress, and undercut their media-mogul father, Logan (who, come to think of it, might actually be this show’s very own version of Paul Hollywood). Some viewers complained that the series was stuck in a rut. I didn’t agree, but there was also no question that the plot shifted into a higher gear toward the end of the season, when the gang departed to Tuscany to attend the nuptials of Caroline, the three younger Roy children’s semi-estranged mother—an occasion whose grimness was so masterfully conveyed that it made the wedding party in Lars von Trier’s “Melancholia” look like a Brazilian Carnival.

“Physical” (Apple TV+)

I really enjoyed this show, which stars a very good Rose Byrne as Sheila Rubin, a self-loathing, bulimic housewife in nineteen-eighties San Diego, who is hovering between the liberal ideals of her Berkeley years and the dawning ethos of the self-interested Reagan era. In the course of the first season (the show was recently picked up for a second), Sheila begins to build a career as a VHS-aerobics queen, and we come to understand the feminist promise of the burgeoning you-go-girl self-care industry as well as its toxic toll. Even though “Physical” takes place forty years in the past, it asks a still relevant question: What would it take for a woman to truly be free?

“PEN15” (Hulu)

The third season of this dramedy, which stars the thirtysomething Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle as awkward middle-school besties in the early two-thousands, continued to be both hilarious and poignant. Once again, we got crushes, makeouts, friend fights, and masturbation sessions to a computer printout of a boob; but there were also some explorations that ventured further afield, into the adult future, which appeared to promise plenty of its own sorrows and conflicts. (The bottle episode that followed a day in the life of Maya’s mother, Yuki, a Japanese immigrant, was a gorgeous Ozu-esque interlude.) I love this show and was sad when I learned that this would be its final season.

“The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City” and “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” (Bravo)

The most recent seasons of these “Housewives” iterations each focussed on the legal drama facing one of their protagonists: in “Salt Lake City,” it was Jen Shah, who was indicted in the course of filming for her alleged role in a telemarketing scheme, and in “Beverly Hills” it was Erika Girardi, whose estranged attorney husband allegedly embezzled millions from his clients in order to fund Erika’s life style. This intrusion of real-life stakes into the shows made for fantastic TV; it also performed a public service by reminding us of the hidden mendacity and unhappiness that might be lurking beneath the shiny spoils of the very wealthy.

“The White Lotus” (HBO)

A romp about class and colonialism from the brilliant Mike White. “The White Lotus,” written as a six-part limited series—though it was recently renewed for a second season—follows a group of rich white guests as they vacation at a Hawaiian luxury resort. Oblivious, awful, and, unfortunately, all too recognizably human, the tourists circle one another as well as the resort’s employees, whom they mistreat, in a kind of claustrophobic dance, until the show’s inevitable dénouement. A depressing, hilarious must-watch.

A Few More Notable Shows

• “Chillin Island” (HBO): a woozy, exploratory stoner’s delight,
  featuring hip-hop stars like Young Thug and Lil Yachty.
• “The Shrink Next
  Door”
  (Apple TV+): maybe the most Jewish show on TV right now, worth
  watching for Paul Rudd’s surprisingly comical performance as a pretty
  monstrous psychiatrist.
• “The Muppet
  Show”
  (Disney+): Jim Henson’s beloved puppet variety hour finally made it
  to streaming this year.
• “Mare of
  Easttown”
  (HBO): this gruesome, engrossing miniseries had some terrific
  performances, including by Kate Winslet as the titular police detective.