TOP TV VIEWING OF 2021

Given my introduction in November 2020 of TV Thursdays, I thought periodic reviews rather than an annual summary of shows would cover our viewing recommendations. However, since Glen and I watched several excellent shows last year, I decided to give a list of unreviewed ones, organized by streaming service, in this New Year.

HBO

The Night Of (American) Pakistani-American college student “Naz” Khan is in the wrong place at the wrong time, as a seemingly innocent encounter later leads to his arrest for murder. From RogerEbert.com: the series “is about the immigrant experience in New York City, the cruelty of the criminal-creating establishment known as Rikers Island, a legal system in which guilt and innocence are often afterthoughts, and, ultimately, a fascinating mystery.” 

The Undoing (American) At the beginning we are voyeurs looking into the lives of the wealthy in New York City: their lavish homes, their illustrious careers — a paediatric oncologist, a therapist, a lawyer — and an elite private school. We’re not entirely comfortable, or even interested, in entering upper class American society. But when a mysterious woman joins a group of mothers to help with a charity auction, the plot gets interesting. Elena is audacious, baring her voluptuous breasts to nurse her infant in front of the prim women and flaunting her nudity in front of Grace. Then Elena goes missing. In a stellar cast, ever affable Hugh Grant plays the suspected perpetrator, Nicole Kidman his aggrieved wife Grace, and Donald Sutherland the imperious patriarch. 

NETFLIX

The Billion Dollar Code (German) Based on a true story, this courtroom drama tells of two German computer experts who take on Google in the 1990s for stealing their algorithm (patent infringement) that led to the introduction of Google Earth. Despite innovation and foresight in Germany, the ethos of Silicon Valley was gigabytes ahead of Berlin in envisioning a future in technology.

Dig Deeper: The Disappearance of Birgit Meier (German) is a docuseries about a photographer who goes missing in 1989. When the police put minimal effort into the case, presuming Birgit’s divorced husband must be involved, her brother Wolfgang — himself a police detective — brings together a volunteer team of authorities from different fields to spend almost 30 years unraveling the mystery. Reenactments are kept to a minimum; individuals relate their heartbreaking, first-hand experiences.

Lupin (French) is a fictional gentleman thief and master of disguise created in 1905 by French writer Maurice Leblanc. To update and enrich the saga for contemporary viewing, creator George Kay casts a Black, 6′3″ actor, Omar Sy, as Assane, the son of a Senegalese immigrant who was convicted years earlier for a crime he didn’t commit. Assane choreographs an elaborate heist at The Louvre to eke out the guilty party. This show is not for hard core realists, although it comments realistically on the ‘invisibility’ of immigrants in Paris. It’s a pastiche of implausible escapades, cool settings, plus a charming performance by Sy.

In 2018 we loved Money Heist (Spanish), in which a criminal mastermind plans a huge heist in the Royal Mint of Spain. The first season pits two clever characters against each other, while an outstanding ensemble cast contributes to the show’s depth. To summarize our view of the fifth and final season, replace ‘she’ with ‘the show’ in the lines from a familiar poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-82): “When she was good, She was very good indeed, But when she was bad she was horrid.” Still, our affection for the characters, especially The Professor and Stockholm, held our attention to the finale.

A school shooting occurs in Stockholm; police charge 18-year-old Maja Norberg with murder. Glen writes: Quicksand is a powerful and complex series, indeed one of the best we watched this year. The creators are smart enough not to explain the killings in terms of any one cause. Instead we get a number of contributing factors: bad or weak parenting, drugs, possibly mental illness, affluence gone wrong, and so on. Maja is a bit of a puzzle. It’s hard to understand fully why she keeps returning to Sebastien and even takes drugs at his parties. At times she seems like a saint or martyr in her capacity to care about him.

PRIME

The Investigation (Danish), dubbed “the submarine case”, is based on the brutal killing in 2017 of a young female Swedish journalist, Kim Wall, who went missing after going to interview a man on his homemade vessel. The docudrama takes us methodically through the detecting process of building a convincing murder charge against the prime suspect. From a review in The Guardian: “Much of the drama hinges on precision and detail, as well as the intricacies of the Danish legal system. In the hands of Borgen’s Tobias Lindholm, what might sound dreary becomes a clever exercise in building slow, steady peril.” Several individuals show their humaneness, especially the lead detective who keeps Wall’s grieving family apprised of every aspect of the arduous investigation. 

From Glen: the seven-part adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (1848) captures the serio-comic, satirical spirit of the novel and even finds a way to represent the chief metaphor of the novelist as puppeteer, each episode opening with an impresario controlling a merry-go-round of all the main characters riding horses. As we watch a captivating Becky Sharp (who is half French) charm her way up the rigid British social ladder, we are reminded of another reckless adventurer, Napoleon Bonaparte. History and fiction intersect on the field of Waterloo in a surprisingly accurate rendering of the battle, the British squares fighting off the French cavalry charges while Wellington’s Guards lie hidden on the reverse slope until they finally stand and turn back Napoleon’s Old Guard.

PBS MASTERPIECE + WALTER PRESENTS (through Prime subscription)

The Defence (Polish) A three year old girl disappears from her family home that has a house alarm set for 7 p.m. Her parents claim to have been together, inside, all night and heard nothing of a kidnaper. Police assume the offender is one or both parents and promptly arrest them. A proper investigation falls to the defence lawyers, who make the observation, repeatedly, that lawyers must do their utmost to defend their clients no matter what they think of them or their innocence/guilt. In this buddy show, a strong female character grooms a young male trainee. But Chylka is a divisive figure, with her sarcastic humour and brusque treatment (mistreatment?) of Kordian. Some viewers will find her annoying, others bold. As she’s at the centre, our level of engagement with her determines in part our opinion of this crime drama. 

Witch Hunt (Norwegian) is a series for and about women — and liberated men. The protagonist Ida doesn’t set out to be a crusader or to lose her job as CFO at a leading law firm for drawing attention to financial irregularities. Yet she does. Ida almost single-handedly challenges this corrupt, male-dominated company to the distress, even detriment, of her family.

Please add your favourite shows of 2021 in the comments below. And remember: you needn’t match my verbosity! •

P.S. Best wishes to everyone for health and happiness in 2022.

P.P.S. Shades of normalcy: we’re watching shows in our southwest home for the first time since March 2020.