Tv in the present day is available in large parts, as anybody who spent seven-plus hours with the Beatles over Thanksgiving weekend can attest. However simply as a marathon jam session can yield a couple of tight singles, probably the most memorable TV remains to be typically the well-crafted particular person episode. As Mike Hale, Margaret Lyons and I finish one other 12 months’s binge as TV critics for The New York Instances, listed below are a couple of of the installments from 2021 that topped our private hit parades. JAMES PONIEWOZIK
‘Name My Agent!’ (Netflix)
‘Sigourney’
Greater than 30 European actors — together with stars like Isabelle Huppert, Juliette Binoche and Jean Reno — have graciously and sometimes mercilessly lampooned themselves on this French dramedy, taking part in purchasers or potential purchasers or offended former purchasers of the fictional expertise company ASK. On this Season 4 episode, an American stepped in, and Sigourney Weaver, talking greater than satisfactory French and taking part in herself as an totally charming manipulator, was flawless. (Streaming on Netflix.) MIKE HALE
‘Metropolis of Ghosts’
‘Bob & Nancy’
Loads of youngsters’s exhibits are cute however “Metropolis of Ghosts” can be stunning, and its poetic wistfulness about Los Angeles could be at dwelling on a premium cable drama. As an alternative it’s on this plucky, naturalistic cartoon about ghost-hunting youngsters who’ve a podcast. I cherished each episode of this present. However I picked “Bob & Nancy” as a result of it’s a couple of marionette theater, and thus it toys with concepts of animating the inanimate — wealthy floor for a present in contact with the spirit realm. (Streaming on Netflix.) MARGARET LYONS
‘Merciless Summer season’
‘Hostile Witness’
This teen kidnapping thriller took all of the hallmarks of prestige-y crime exhibits — break up timelines, darkish lighting, tangential secrets and techniques — and repackaged them with a kicky ’90s YA flare. It was one of many juicy highlights of the summer time. However exhibits like this are solely nearly as good as their finales, and “Merciless Summer season” managed the trick of each a contented ending and an exciting, darkish twist. (Streaming on Hulu.) MARGARET LYONS
‘Dave’ (FXX)
‘Someone Date Me’
Texting could be a crutch for TV exhibits, a means to make use of pop-up bubbles to provide characters phone-enabled telepathy. Not so on this playful, good half-hour, wherein Dave Burd’s up-and-coming rapper made (and misplaced) a date with Doja Cat. As the 2 musicians courted with their thumbs, “Someone Date Me” confirmed how context and time can change the which means and studying of the smallest on-line (mis)communication. Thumbs-up emoji! (Streaming on Hulu.) JAMES PONIEWOZIK
‘For All Mankind’ (Apple TV+)
‘The Gray’
Every season of this space-race different historical past is a multistage booster rocket. The slow-moving early episodes expend lots of gas, constructing power and narrative pressure till the present reaches escape velocity. (My aerospace engineer readers, I urge you to not fact-check my metaphors.) The white-knuckle Season 2 finale moved with the deftness of a docking maneuver, as a U.S.-Soviet battle on the moon and a threatened struggle on Earth required danger and sacrifice on two celestial our bodies and factors in between. (Streaming on Apple TV+.) JAMES PONIEWOZIK
‘Genius: Aretha’ (Nationwide Geographic)
‘Superb Grace’
‘Pose’ (FX)
‘Take Me to Church’
The music and group of the Black church co-starred in two praiseworthy hours of TV. The Aretha Franklin bio-series peaked because it targeted on the recording of the 1972 “Superb Grace” stay album at New Temple Missionary Baptist Church, fusing the artist’s previous and current in a crucible of soul. In “Pose,” a grim prognosis led Pray Inform (Billy Porter) again to his hometown and church group, each to confront the homophobia that drove him from it and provides voice to the music that sustained him. (Stream “Genius: Aretha” on Hulu; purchase “Pose” on Amazon.) JAMES PONIEWOZIK
‘Within the Darkish’ (CW)
‘Someplace Over the Border’
This CW drama a couple of blind girl and her buddies, who run a rescue-dog company and become involved in drug dealing and homicide, is not more than a serviceable thriller. However the rapport amongst its central characters, Murphy (Perry Mattfeld), Jess (Brooke Markham) and Felix (Morgan Krantz), has developed into one of many extra plausible and transferring portrayals of friendship on TV. When Murphy discovered herself stranded in a wierd nation, the energy of these ties was the muse of a taut and agonizing hour. (Streaming on Netflix.) MIKE HALE
‘Line of Responsibility’ (BritBox)
Season 6, Episode 5
Pressure and deception pump via the veins of this breakneck procedural a couple of British internal-affairs unit, and no present does cliffhangers higher. You might level to only about any episode; this one, with one of many heroes following a presumably soiled cop into an deserted industrial park as a result of that’s what the job referred to as for, was off the charts. (Streaming on BritBox.) MIKE HALE
‘Love, Loss of life & Robots’
‘The Drowned Large’
In simply 13 minutes, this elegant brief a couple of big’s corpse that washes up on a seaside in the future captures, in an ideal snapshot, humanity’s tendency to desecrate marvels, to behold a world-changing occasion and resolve merely to hold on. Primarily based on a brief story by J.G. Ballard, “The Drowned Large” is rendered right here in principally lifelike animation, with the enormous’s clean-shaven cheeks, tidy fingernails and muscular chest proven in aching element. In an period when so many exhibits simply mix collectively, this episode stands out for its gentle contact and unhappy creativeness. (Streaming on Netflix.) MARGARET LYONS
‘Making It’
‘All of the Holidays at As soon as’
Submit “Nice British Baking Present,” plenty of actuality competitors collection have gone away from the cutthroat in favor of the nice and cozy and fuzzy, and maybe no present is hotter and fuzzier than the craft competitors “Making It.” Every episode has its charms however “All of the Holidays at As soon as” was particularly thrilling, as a result of in contrast to a number of the present’s grander initiatives, crafting your personal Halloween costume is fairly commonplace fare, even for layfolk. The contestants’ giddy pleasure in presenting their creations to the judges was matched solely by my very own giddy pleasure at seeing their foolish and spectacular costumes. Jess gained together with her very good alien-abduction costume however when the whole lot is that this enjoyable, don’t all of us win? As a bonus, this episode additionally included Melañio telling a narrative a couple of bat in a bathroom, a story that can hang-out me for the remainder of my days. (Streaming on Hulu.) MARGARET LYONS
‘Mythic Quest’ (Apple TV+)
‘Backstory!’
Having provide you with among the best pandemic-inspired episodes of 2020, this video game-industry comedy is gunning for TV’s excessive rating in stand-alones. This installment gave the again story-obsessed sport author C.W. Longbottom (a splendidly blustery F. Murray Abraham) his personal flashback as a struggling sci-fi creator within the Nineteen Seventies — a humorous and poignant story of irony, skilled jealousy and success at a value. (Streaming on Apple TV+.) JAMES PONIEWOZIK
‘Nuclear Household’ (HBO)
Episode 3
Ry Russo-Younger’s three-part documentary about her lesbian moms and the sperm donor who sued them for parental rights, threatening to tug aside her household, constructed to a strong and eloquent conclusion. It each affirmed the significance of the battle her moms fought and questioned the assumptions of everybody concerned. (Streaming on HBO Max.) MIKE HALE
‘Oprah with Meghan and Harry’
One so hardly ever will get to obtain or ship a “flip in your TV proper now” textual content, particularly in my line of labor. So for that twin thrill alone this interview earned a spot in my coronary heart. It was the sort of programming that hardly exists anymore: a tell-all community particular wherein celebrities share real new data with Oprah, the patron saint of soul-baring. There have been Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, aglow within the California solar, decrying racism and candidly discussing psychological well being crises. Which might have been sufficient, however additionally they reset the royal narrative, gave Oprah eggs, fought again tears and gazed lovingly at each other — all whereas sitting in chairs bought by Christopher Knight from “The Brady Bunch.” Tv, child! I like you! MARGARET LYONS
‘PEN15’ (Hulu)
‘Yuki’
Mutsuko Erskine had by no means acted earlier than her daughter, Maya, forged her to play Maya’s mom in Hulu’s brutally humorous teen comedy. Typically daughter is aware of greatest. This showpiece episode, wherein an opportunity assembly with an ex-husband led Yuki to look down a highway not taken, was a wealthy vignette of an immigrant’s expertise and a delicate efficiency to cap off the position, actually, of a lifetime. (Streaming on Hulu.) JAMES PONIEWOZIK
‘The Simpsons’ (Fox)
‘The Dad-Emotions Restricted’
Who would have thought that the origin story of Comedian E book Man, executed partly as an affectionate sendup of a Wes Anderson movie, could be so pretty? (Streaming on Disney+.) MIKE HALE
‘Snowfall’ (FX)
‘All of the Manner Down’
This brutal and only-as-sentimental-as-it-needs-to-be drama a couple of rogue C.I.A. agent and a younger Black entrepreneur, companions within the crack wars in early Eighties Los Angeles, nonetheless doesn’t get sufficient consideration. That’s very true of the tales written by the novelist Walter Mosley, like this chilling, tightly packed episode about rage, revenge, gentrification and eager to go straight. (Streaming on Hulu.) MIKE HALE
‘WandaVision’ (Disney+)
‘Filmed Earlier than a Stay Studio Viewers’
A number of installments of this superhero psychodrama, set in a bizarro-world model of traditional sitcom codecs, might have made this record. However may as properly begin in the beginning, wherein Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) and Imaginative and prescient (Paul Bettany) performed home on a Fifties stage set whose made-for-TV perfection turned horrifyingly (and ingeniously) incorrect. (Streaming on Disney+.) JAMES PONIEWOZIK
‘What We Do within the Shadows’
‘On line casino’
“Shadows” is among the funniest exhibits on TV proper now, and “On line casino,” the place the gang heads to Atlantic Metropolis, was my favourite episode this season. Nandor (Kayvan Novak) turns into entranced by a “Huge Bang Idea” slot machine — “‘bazinga’ is the struggle cry of Sheldon,” he explains — and in excellent, cascading horror, this results in the whole dissolution of his understanding of the universe. “Shadows” is its greatest when the vampires’ grandiosity clashes with their vulnerabilities, particularly their excitability, and I’ll by no means see one other in-house advert on a resort TV with out pondering that it’s Colin Robinson’s favourite present. (Streaming on Hulu.) MARGARET LYONS