Television will not be kept down. Given the ongoing emergency the medium produced an impressive number of first-rate programs in 2021, bearing no mark of the straitened circumstances under which they were produced. Nearly all also treat the pandemic as a thing of the past or some other reality entirely. Whether this is good social policy is hard to say, but it’s surprisingly easy to get used to this unrestricted other world, where people go about their business in unmasked, relaxed close quarters. It may be an illusion — COVID protocols seem to be more stringent and better enforced on a Hollywood set than, say, among the police department — but that is the business they are in, and each of the shows below has true things to say about who we are or might, mostly for the better, become.
‘Reservation Dogs’ (FX/Hulu)
Seminole Nation member Sterlin Harjo and New Zealand’s Indigenous Taika Waititi (“What We Do in the Shadows”) created this rich and remarkable, sweet and shaggy comedy, set in and around east Oklahoma tribal lands. Focusing on four teenagers bent on getting out of town by hook or by crook, it mixes ordinary local detail with a drop of daffy magical realism; takes you somewhere television never goes, without making a big deal it; and sidesteps the usual sensational tropes of onscreen adolescence while capturing its delicate romanticism.
‘Only Murders in the Building’ (Hulu)
Diversity comes in many forms, and there is something gratifying in the fact that two comedians in their 70s — Steve Martin, who co-created the show, and Martin Short — have delivered a broadly popular hit that feels energetic, youthful and physical while not looking away from age. Young Selena Gomez makes a perfect third partner in a mystery about people who love mysteries, with all the misdirection of an Agatha Christie novel. Better than the podcasts that inspired it.
‘Maya and the Three’ / ‘Kid Cosmic’ (Netflix)
Grand, quirky cartoon epics, comic yet genuinely suspenseful and thoroughly heartfelt. For all the teamwork animation requires, both series come across as highly personal. Craig McCracken’s ongoing “Kid Cosmic” applies a sketchbook aesthetic to the story of a desert truckstop community battling forces from space. Jorge Gutierrez’s stunning limited series “Maya and the Three,” which overcomes the aesthetic deficits of CGI animation through the creator’s mad design, applies an original twist to Mesoamerican gods and legends, wrapping love stories in apocalypse.