Once again, we find ourselves already surprisingly further into a calendar year than feels appropriate. Even for those who don’t make it their sole mission to stay up-to-date with every new development in the TV world, the last half-year has brought with them a daunting number of series.
Some of those have been brand new shows, either the result of conscious release date delays or interrupted production schedules. Others have been series imports that enjoyed full runs in different parts of the world before getting a U.S. debut in 2021. And as the year continues to develop and the awards window switches over into a new phase, we’ve also seen the return of established favorites.
We try our best to help sift through the steady stream of newcomers every month (our monthly premiere overviews and Netflix highlights, to name a few), but there still always seems to be more than any casual viewer can keep track.
So we’ve been maintaining our annual roundup of all the TV reviews that IndieWire has published this year. To help keep everything organized in an informative way (fingers crossed), we’ve grouped each of our reviews by letter grade. (Since reducing an entire season of TV to a single classification is entirely arbitrary at best, we’ve linked each review to provide some more context.) Obviously, not everyone’s opinions are going to overlap perfectly, but we hope that this will help give some extra guidance to any prospective catchup plans.
We’ll be updating this regularly throughout the year as new series pop up. With the annual flurry of awards-aimed releases very much upon us, there should be plenty more to come. In the meantime, here’s what we’ve been watching in the early part of 2021.
“Tuca and Bertie”
Courtesy of Adult Swim
A
The Black Church: This is Our Story, This is Our Song [PBS]
Feel Good — Season 2 [Netflix]
Tuca & Bertie — Season 2 [Adult Swim]
The Underground Railroad [Amazon Prime Video]
Jean Smart in “Hacks”
Jake Giles Netter / HBO Max
A-
All Creatures Great and Small — Season 1 [PBS]
Everything’s Gonna Be Okay — Season 2 [Freeform]
Last Chance U: Basketball [Netflix]
My Love: Six Stories of True Love [Netflix]
Starstruck — Season 1 [HBO Max]
Charlotte Nicdao in “Mythic Quest”
Courtesy of Apple TV+
B+
A Black Lady Sketch Show — Season 2 [HBO]
Exterminate All the Brutes [HBO]
The Girlfriend Experience — Season 3 [Starz]
The Great North — Season 1 [Fox]
Love, Victor — Season 2 [Hulu]
The Mighty Ducks: Game Changers [Disney+]
Mythic Quest — Season 2 [Apple TV+]
Shadow & Bone — Season 1 [Netflix]
We Are Lady Parts — Season 1 [Peacock]
A Wild Year on Earth [BBC America]
“Invincible”
Amazon Prime Video
B
Dickinson — Season 2 [Apple TV+]
For Heaven’s Sake [Paramount+]
The Handmaid’s Tale — Season 4 [Hulu]
The Irregulars — Season 1 [Netflix]
Invincible — Season 1 [Amazon Prime Video]
Miss Scarlet and the Duke [PBS]
“Lisey’s Story”
Apple
B-
Bridge and Tunnel — Season 1 [Epix]
Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil [YouTube Premium]
For All Mankind — Season 2 [Apple TV+]
Love, Death + Robots — Season 2 [Netflix]
Master of None — Season 3 [Netflix]
The Mosquito Coast [Apple TV+]
Resident Alien — Season 1 [Syfy]
Servant — Season 2 [Apple TV+]
Solar Opposites — Season 2 [Hulu]
“Genera+ion”
HBO
C+
Coyote — Season 1 [CBS All Access]
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier [Disney+]
C
Firefly Lane — Season 1 [Netflix]
Ewan McGregor and Krysta Rodriguez in “Halston”
Patrick McMullan / Netflix
C-
The Equalizer — Season 1 [CBS]
Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer [Netflix]
Panic — Season 1 [Amazon Prime Video]
D+
Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K. — Season 1 [Hulu]
D
Jupiter’s Legacy — Season 1 [Netflix]
All of IndieWire’s TV coverage — including interviews, features, and podcasts — is available here.
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