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 majority of the past year has brought with it 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 calendar switches over into its multi-holiday 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 year-end releases continuing as always, there should be plenty more to come. In the meantime, here’s what we’ve been watching so far in 2021.
Aaron Pierre and Thuso Mbedu in “The Underground Railroad”
Kyle Kaplan/Amazon Studios
A
The Black Church: This is Our Story, This is Our Song [PBS]
Feel Good — Season 2 [Netflix]
The Good Fight — Season 5 [Paramount+]
Tuca & Bertie — Season 2 [Adult Swim]
The Underground Railroad [Amazon Prime Video]
The White Lotus — Season 1 [HBO]
“I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson”
Adam Rose
A-
All Creatures Great and Small — Season 1 [PBS]
Brand New Cherry Flavor [Netflix]
Everything’s Gonna Be Okay — Season 2 [Freeform]
I Think You Should Leave — Season 2 [Netflix]
Last Chance U: Basketball [Netflix]
My Love: Six Stories of True Love [Netflix]
Never Have I Ever — Season 2 [Netflix]
Starstruck — Season 1 [HBO Max]
Ted Lasso — Season 2 [Apple TV+]
What We Do in the Shadows — Season 3 [FX]
“Reservation Dogs”
FX
B+
Acapulco — Season 1 [Apple TV+]
Back to Life — Season 2 [Showtime]
A Black Lady Sketch Show — Season 2 [HBO]
Central Park — Season 2 [Apple TV+]
Curb Your Enthusiasm — Season 11 [HBO]
Dickinson — Season 3 [Apple TV+]
Exterminate All the Brutes [HBO]
Foundation — Season 1 [Apple TV+]
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+]
Only Murders in the Building — Season 1 [Hulu]
Reservation Dogs — Season 1 [FX]
Rick & Morty — Season 5 [Adult Swim]
Shadow & Bone — Season 1 [Netflix]
Ultra City Smiths — Season 1 [AMC]
We Are Lady Parts — Season 1 [Peacock]
Wellington Paranormal — Season 1 [The CW]
A Wild Year on Earth [BBC America]
“Y: The Last Man”
Rafy Winterfeld/FX
B
The Baby-Sitters Club — Season 2 [Netflix]
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]
Kevin Can F*** Himself — Season 1 [AMC]
Miss Scarlet and the Duke [PBS]
Swagger — Season 1 [Apple TV+]
The Wonder Years — Season 1 [ABC]
“Outer Banks”
Jackson Lee Davis/Netflix
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]
Monsters at Work — Season 1 [Disney+]
The Mosquito Coast [Apple TV+]
Outer Banks — Season 2 [Netflix]
Resident Alien — Season 1 [Syfy]
Servant — Season 2 [Apple TV+]
Solar Opposites — Season 2 [Hulu]
“The Problem with Jon Stewart”
Courtesy of Apple
C+
Colin in Black and White [Netflix]
Coyote — Season 1 [CBS All Access]
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier [Disney+]
The Problem with Jon Stewart [Apple TV+]
“Firefly Lane”
Courtesy of Netflix
C
American Crime Story — Season 3 [FX]
Firefly Lane — Season 1 [Netflix]
Love Life — Season 2 [HBO Max]
What Happened, Brittany Murphy? [HBO Max]
Ewan McGregor in “Halston”
Atsushi Nishijima / Netflix
C-
The Equalizer — Season 1 [CBS]
Gossip Girl — Season 1 [HBO Max]
Night Stalker: The Hunt for a Serial Killer [Netflix]
Panic — Season 1 [Amazon Prime Video]
“The Morning Show”
Courtesy of Apple
D+
Catch and Kill: The Podcast Tapes [HBO]
Marvel’s M.O.D.O.K. — Season 1 [Hulu]
The Morning Show — Season 2 [Apple TV+]
Josh Duhamel in “Jupiter’s Legacy”
Adam Rose / Netflix
D
Jupiter’s Legacy — Season 1 [Netflix]
F
I Know What You Did Last Summer [Amazon Prime Video]
All of IndieWire’s TV coverage — including interviews, features, and podcasts — is available here.
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