The 21 Best TV Shows of 2021 (So Far) After a shaky start, 2021 has proven itself a banner year for bold and entertaining television. 2020 is a set of numbers that comes with more associations than we’d ever have imagined just over a year ago. It makes me wonder how we’ll remember 2021 — the year after the year when everything happened. For the first few months of the year, I admit that I briefly doubted the powers of the small screen, and predicted that we were entering a TV slump. The more new TV I reviewed, the more I was convinced that ambitious projects were being shelved during COVID, and networks and streamers were sending out the second string to hold us over until things got back to normal.