We’ve been stuck at home for a while, with the new Covid variant flaring up all around the world, working from home is as deeply integrated into our lives now than ever before. So, with all that time spent at home, we have more time on our hands to possibly binge watch many TV shows available on multiple streaming platforms. Here are some of the best TV shows of 2021 so far, as rated by BBC. It’s a good way to beat cabin fever.
The Underground Railroad
Based on the 2016 novel of the same name, The Underground Railroad is an American fantasy historical drama where it follows stories of people attempting an escape from slavery in the southern United States in the 1800s. It utilises a key plot element employing the literary style of magic realism. In reality, “The Underground Railroad” was a network of abolitionists, hidden routes, and safe houses that helped enslaved African-Americans escape to freedom in the early to mid-1800s. In the novel and the series, it is an actual railroad complete with engineers, conductors, tracks, and tunnels.
The White Lotus
The White Lotus “follows the vacations of various hotel guests over the span of a week as they relax and rejuvenate in paradise. But with each passing day, a darker complexity emerges in these picture-perfect travelers, the hotel’s cheerful employees and the idyllic locale itself.”
Feel Good
Feel Good is a British comedy-drama television programme created by Canadian comedian Mae Martin and Joe Hampson. It is a semi-autobiographical romantic comedy starring Mae martin as herself. The show follows the development of her budding romance with George, whom she met at a comedy club where Mae performs. George soon learns that Mae is a former drug addict. In the second season Mae’s career advances, while they also address trauma in their past after receiving a diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Ted Lasso
Ted Lasso is an American comedy streaming television series developed by Jason Sudeikis, Bill Lawrence, Brendan Hunt, and Joe Kelly, based on a character of the same name whom Sudeikis first portrayed in a series of promos for NBC Sports’ coverage of the Premier League. American Ted Lasso, a coach of college-level American football, is unexpectedly recruited to coach an English Premier League team, AFC Richmond, despite having no experience in association football. The series has drawn comparisons to the takeover of Chester City F.C. by American gridiron coach Terry Smith in 1999, who subsequently installed himself as first-team manager.
I Think You Should Leave
Actor Tim Robinson stars and. co-created this sketch comedy series, which sees him trying to get people to go away. In each segment, Robinson and his guests will do whatever they can to try to drive someone to leave. Robinson spent several years as a writer on “Saturday Night Live,” so you will expect to see a lot of guest stars which includes a number of SNL alumni.
Mare of Easttown
Mare Sheehan is a police investigator in a small Pennsylvania town. In a suburb of Philadelphia, Mare investigates the recent murder of a teenage mother while trying to keep her own life from falling apart. Mare is a local hero, having been the star of a high-school basketball championship game 25 years ago. She has also been unable to solve the case of another missing young girl for a year, leading many to doubt her detective skills. Her personal troubles include a divorce, a son lost to suicide, and a custody battle with her ex-heroin addict former daughter-in-law over Mare’s grandson. The series received critical acclaim, with praise for its story, characters, and performances. It earned 16 nominations at the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Limited or Anthology Series, Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for Winslet, Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Limited Series or Movie for Peters, and Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie for Nicholson and Smart.
Loki
Loki, the God of Mischief, embarks on an adventure that takes place after the events of “Avengers: Endgame.” After stealing the Tesseract during the events of Avengers: Endgame (2019), an alternate version of Loki is brought to the mysterious Time Variance Authority (TVA), a bureaucratic organization that exists outside of time and space and monitors the timeline. They give Loki a choice: face being erased from existence due to being a “time variant”, or help fix the timeline and stop a greater threat. Loki ends up trapped in his own crime thriller, traveling through time.
Katla
The catastrophic eruption of sub-glacial volcano Katla turns a nearby community’s world upside down as mysteries begin to emerge from the ice. A year after an eruption of the Katla volcano began, only a few people remain in the nearby town of Vík, persisting despite choking ash. A woman who disappeared 20 years prior shows up in the village looking exactly the same as she did back then. More people who have supposedly died in the past few years arrive in Vik, creating a paradox for those who knew them and reviving legends of “Changelings”. Meanwhile, a volcanologist from Reykjavik discovers the remains of a meteorite buried in the glacier while having to deal emotionally with the reappearance of his dead son. Through their interactions with the “Changelings”, the inhabitants of Vik are forced to find their own ways of dealing with their unresolved issues from the past.
Unforgotten
Detectives Cassie Stuart and Sunil ‘Sunny’ Khan try to solve a series of cold cases involving murders and historic disappearances. Series one through four follows the story of DCI “Cassie” Stuart’s personal life. During the historical cold-cases Cassie verbalises her driving motives: to find the truth of what happened and provide closure to the living, while possibly bring a criminal to justice. Cassie ultimately dies due to a traffic accident where the other driver is a criminal in the act of the crime.
Framing Britney Spears
Framing Britney Spears is a documentary about the famed singer herself. The film revolves around Britney’s career, her celebrity and popularity within American culture, and the conservatorship that she has been living under since 2008, which has sparked the fan-driven #FreeBritney movement. The documentary concludes with a list of individuals who declined to comment or be interviewed for the film, which include Spears’s family. Spears was also asked to be interviewed, but it was “unclear if she received the requests.”
WandaVision
Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany reprise their respective roles as Wanda Maximoff and Vision from the film series. Three weeks after the events of Avengers: Endgame (2019), Wanda Maximoff and Vision are living an idyllic suburban life in the town of Westview, New Jersey, trying to conceal their true natures. As their surroundings begin to move through different decades and they encounter various television tropes, the couple suspects that things are not as they seem.
Call My Agent
Andrea, Mathias, Gabriel, and Arlette are agents in the talent agency ASK (French: Agence Samuel Kerr). They juggle tricky situations and defend their vision of the business. They skilfully combine art and business, but sometimes mangle their private and professional lives. While struggling to save their agency after the sudden death of its founder, the four agents take us behind the scenes of the wild world of celebrity; where laughter, emotion, transgression and tears constantly collide.
The Investigation
Copenhagen Police’s Homicide unit, headed by Jens Møller, tries to solve the murder of Swedish journalist Kim Wall. In close cooperation with Ingrid and Joachim Wall, Head of Homicide Jens Møller and Chief Prosecutor Jakob Buch-Jepsen, Tobias Lindholm has created an authentic, nerve-racking and deeply touching series about the challenging and crucial work done by police officers, divers, Swedish cadaver dogs, marine scientists and volunteers to solve the killing of Swedish journalist Kim Wall. It is about the substantial and complicated task subsequently faced by the prosecution to convict the perpetrator.
Can’t Get You Out of My Head
Can’t Get You Out of My Head: An Emotional History of the Modern World is a six-part BBC documentary television series created by Adam Curtis. Like many of his previous documentaries, it explores and links together various topics such as individualism, collectivism, conspiracy theories, national myths, American imperialism, the history of China, artificial intelligence, and the failure of technology to liberate society in the way that technological utopians once hoped it might.
Resident Alien
An alien crash landed on Earth and hides in a remote Colorado mountain town. Assuming the identity of the town doctor in an effort to secretly wipes out humanity, his nefarious mission is threatened when he realises one of the townspeople, a nine-year-old boy, can see his true alien form.
Lupin
The story follows professional thief Assane Diop, the only son of an immigrant from Senegal who had come to France to seek a better life for his child. Assane’s father is framed for the theft of an expensive diamond necklace by his employer, the wealthy and powerful Hubert Pellegrini, and hangs himself in his prison cell out of shame, leaving the teenage Assane an orphan. Twenty-five years later, inspired by a book about gentleman thief Arsène Lupin his father had given him on his birthday, Assane sets out to get revenge on the Pellegrini family, using his charisma and mastery of thievery, subterfuge, and disguise to expose Hubert’s crimes.
