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Television in 2021 produced some of the decade’s most distinctive viewing: prestige dramas, sharp comedies, international hits, animation, and documentaries that treated their subjects with unusual ambition. For DocumentaryTube readers, the documentary and nonfiction standouts deserve particular attention, but the strongest overall list also includes the scripted series that defined the year.
This is a list of the best seasons and limited series that aired during 2021—not only shows that premiered that year. That distinction matters: Succession and Ted Lasso, for example, were returning shows, while The Underground Railroad and Maid were limited series. The selections combine critical consensus, major awards, and lasting cultural impact rather than pretending there was one objective winner.
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The best TV shows of 2021
| Show | Format | Why it stands out |
|---|---|---|
| Succession season 3 | Drama | Razor-sharp family and corporate tragedy |
| The Underground Railroad | Limited series | Ambitious historical drama from Barry Jenkins |
| Mare of Easttown | Limited crime drama | A deeply human investigation led by Kate Winslet |
| Reservation Dogs season 1 | Comedy-drama | Funny, moving Indigenous coming-of-age story |
| Hacks season 1 | Comedy-drama | A brilliantly acted clash between two generations |
| The White Lotus season 1 | Social satire | Darkly comic portrait of privilege and resentment |
| Ted Lasso season 2 | Comedy | Warmth balanced with a more serious emotional range |
| It’s a Sin | Limited drama | Powerful five-part story about friendship and the AIDS crisis |
| Only Murders in the Building season 1 | Mystery comedy | An unusually effective blend of murder mystery and sitcom |
| Arcane season 1 | Animation | Visually inventive fantasy with substantial dramatic weight |
1. Succession season 3
HBO’s corporate-family tragedy remained television’s most precise study of power, humiliation, and inherited wealth. The Roy siblings are constantly negotiating alliances, but season 3 makes clear that their rivalry is also an addiction: each character wants freedom from the family while still craving approval from it.
Its dialogue is viciously funny, yet the comedy never neutralizes the damage these people cause. The season’s escalating corporate battle gives the show a propulsive plot, while the quieter scenes reveal how little emotional vocabulary the Roys possess. Succession was an AFI honoree and later won the 2022 Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series.
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2. The Underground Railroad
Barry Jenkins’s adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s novel is one of 2021’s most visually ambitious limited series. It treats the Underground Railroad not simply as a historical network but as a literal subterranean railway, using speculative imagery to explore the realities of slavery, escape, memory, and resistance.
The series is deliberately composed rather than hurried. Long takes, controlled camera movements, and striking landscapes give each episode the weight of a chapter in an epic film. It is difficult viewing, but its formal imagination prevents the story from becoming a conventional historical reconstruction. With a Metascore of 92, it was among the year’s highest-rated scripted television titles.
3. Mare of Easttown
Kate Winslet plays Mare Sheehan, a detective in a struggling Pennsylvania community where a murder investigation collides with old grief, family conflict, addiction, and local suspicion. The mystery is compelling, but the show’s real strength is its understanding of how a small town remembers every failure.
Mare is neither an infallible investigator nor a conventional television hero. She makes mistakes, lashes out, and sometimes uses police authority to avoid confronting her own pain. The supporting cast gives the series a dense social world, and the finale provides an answer to the central crime without treating the community’s trauma as solved. TVLine placed it first on its 2021 list, and AFI named it one of the year’s notable programs.
4. Reservation Dogs season 1
Sterlin Harjo and Taika Waititi’s series follows four Indigenous teenagers in rural Oklahoma as they try to leave town while dealing with grief, boredom, friendship, and family expectations. The premise sounds like a familiar coming-of-age comedy, but the show’s perspective makes it unusual: the community is not background scenery, and the characters are not reduced to symbols of hardship.
The humor is deadpan and occasionally surreal, while the emotional turns arrive without warning. The young cast has an easy ensemble chemistry, and the series allows its characters to be selfish, ridiculous, loving, and confused. It was an AFI honoree, ranked highly by Metacritic, and appeared near the top of TVLine’s year-end list.
5. Hacks season 1
Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder drive this comedy-drama about Deborah Vance, a veteran Las Vegas comedian, and Ava, the younger writer hired to refresh her material. Their relationship begins as a professional collision but gradually becomes a tense negotiation between two women who recognize uncomfortable parts of themselves in one another.
Hacks is interested in the economics of comedy as much as in its jokes. Deborah’s success has required ruthlessness, while Ava’s moral certainty is repeatedly tested by ambition and insecurity. The result is a show with excellent comic timing and a surprisingly clear view of age, gender, celebrity, and creative compromise.
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Mike White’s resort satire turns a week in paradise into an elaborate study of class resentment. The wealthy guests arrive expecting service, privacy, and emotional comfort; the employees are expected to absorb their demands without showing the strain. Every polite exchange carries a second meaning.
The series moves between comedy, mystery, and social horror. Its ensemble structure lets the show examine entitlement from several angles, while the Hawaiian setting is more than a postcard backdrop. The White Lotus was an AFI selection and won the 2022 Emmy for Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series.
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7. Ted Lasso season 2
The second season of Apple’s football comedy retains Ted’s optimism but refuses to treat optimism as a cure-all. Ted’s anxiety becomes central, and the series gives more attention to the emotional lives of Roy Kent, Rebecca Welton, Jamie Tartt, and the rest of the club.
That expansion makes the season less dependent on Ted’s charm. Some storylines are uneven, but the show’s generosity toward damaged, difficult people remains its defining quality. It won the 2022 Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series and was also an AFI honoree.
8. It’s a Sin
Russell T Davies’s five-part drama follows a group of friends in 1980s London as the AIDS crisis changes their lives. The series begins with exuberance—new apartments, parties, music, and sexual freedom—before showing how fear, misinformation, and institutional neglect spread through the community.
Its emotional force comes from the contrast between ordinary young lives and the scale of the crisis confronting them. The characters are not introduced as historical examples; they are friends with ambitions, rivalries, jokes, and unfinished plans. The series premiered on Channel 4 in the United Kingdom on January 22, 2021, and on HBO Max in the United States on February 18. Metacritic gave it a 91.
9. Only Murders in the Building season 1
Steve Martin, Martin Short, and Selena Gomez play three residents of a New York apartment building who become amateur true-crime investigators after a suspicious death. The show understands both the pleasure and absurdity of consuming murder stories for entertainment.
Its central trio works because their personalities are sharply opposed: Charles is guarded, Oliver is theatrical, and Mabel is skeptical. The mystery supplies real momentum, while the building creates a rotating cast of possible suspects and comic complications. The first season earned a 2022 Emmy nomination for Outstanding Comedy Series.
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Based on the League of Legends universe, Arcane could easily have been a marketing exercise. Instead, it became a sophisticated animated drama about class division, political power, technology, and two sisters pulled apart by violence.
Its painterly visuals and expressive character animation are the obvious attractions, but the writing gives the spectacle lasting value. The series builds a coherent world without requiring viewers to know the game, and its emotional conflicts remain legible beneath the fantasy mythology. It premiered on Netflix on November 6, 2021, and received an 86 Metascore.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.The best documentaries and nonfiction shows of 2021
For documentary viewers, 2021 had several essential releases that sit slightly outside the main scripted-TV conversation.
The Beatles: Get Back
Peter Jackson’s three-part documentary uses newly restored footage and audio from the Beatles’ January 1969 recording sessions. Rather than presenting a compressed rise-and-fall narrative, it gives the band room to be playful, irritated, inventive, bored, and occasionally brilliant. The result is an unusually intimate portrait of collaboration under pressure. It received a Metascore of 85.
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Muhammad Ali
Ken Burns’s four-part biography uses interviews, archival footage, photographs, and Ali’s own voice to follow the boxer’s life beyond the ring. The series connects his athletic achievements to race, religion, war, celebrity, and political conviction. Metacritic gave it an 88, making it one of the year’s strongest nonfiction television releases.
Last Chance U: Basketball
This season of the Netflix documentary series moves to East Los Angeles College, where coach John Mosley and his players pursue a championship while navigating financial pressure, family obligations, injuries, and uncertain futures. The basketball is compelling, but the series is really about the narrow margins separating opportunity from disappointment. It earned a 90 Metascore.
Bo Burnham: Inside
Inside is technically a musical comedy special rather than a conventional television series, so it is best treated separately. Made alone during the pandemic, it combines songs, sketches, video experiments, and self-interrogation into a portrait of isolation and online performance. Metacritic ranked it first among its 2021 television results with a 96, though its format makes comparison with a documentary series or scripted drama imperfect.
Other excellent shows worth adding
- WandaVision: A Marvel series that uses changing sitcom styles to explore grief and denial.
- Squid Game: A tense South Korean survival thriller and one of the year’s biggest global television phenomena.
- We Are Lady Parts: A funny, energetic music comedy about an all-women Muslim punk band.
- The Great season 2: A more confident and expansive continuation of Hulu’s irreverent historical satire.
- The Other Two season 2: A sharply observed comedy about ambition, internet fame, and family.
- What We Do in the Shadows season 3: One of television’s most reliable ensemble comedies, with its vampires becoming even more dysfunctional.
- Maid: A serious Netflix limited drama about a young mother escaping domestic abuse and poverty.
- Midnight Mass: A thematically ambitious horror limited series about faith, guilt, addiction, and fanaticism.
How the list was judged
“Best” depends on what a viewer values. Critical scores favor formal ambition and consistency; awards often recognize performances and broad industry consensus; cultural impact can elevate a show that critics did not rank highest. Metacritic’s 2021 television database contained 201 eligible results and excluded titles with fewer than seven critic reviews. Its highest-scoring conventional scripted entries included The Underground Railroad at 92, It’s a Sin at 91, Reservation Dogs at 89, Hacks at 87, and Arcane at 86.
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FAQ
What was the best TV show of 2021?
There is no official single winner, but Succession season 3 is one of the strongest overall choices. It appeared on major year-end lists and won the 2022 Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series.
What were the best documentaries of 2021?
The leading nonfiction choices include The Beatles: Get Back, Muhammad Ali, and Last Chance U: Basketball. Bo Burnham: Inside is also essential, although it is a musical comedy special rather than a conventional documentary series.
Was Succession a new show in 2021?
No. Season 3 aired in 2021, but the series began earlier. This list includes the best television seasons that aired during the year, not just programs that premiered in 2021.
Which 2021 show is best for animation fans?
Arcane is the clearest recommendation. Its striking animation is matched by a serious story about class, politics, technology, and family conflict, and it earned an 86 Metascore.
The Bottom Line
The strongest overall 2021 picks are Succession season 3, The Underground Railroad, Mare of Easttown, Reservation Dogs, and The White Lotus. Documentary viewers should begin with The Beatles: Get Back, Muhammad Ali, and Last Chance U: Basketball; together they show how much the year’s best nonfiction television could achieve through archival access, patient storytelling, and close attention to real people.
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