The 21 best TV series to stream so far in 2021

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Dramas with substance
Thrillers, uncomplicated and with actual thrills
Off-the-wall drama with fun and smarts
Documentaries that tell strange stories of our recent past
Reality TV with real substance
Laughs, offbeat and off-kilter

Dramas with substance

The Investigation (HBO/Crave)

In 2017, Swedish journalist Kim Wall disappeared after boarding a submarine constructed by Danish inventor and entrepreneur Peter Madsen, intending to write an article about him. The point of The Investigation is to drain melodrama and sensationalism from a fictional – but steeped in fact – account of the case. It’s a slow-moving, slow-burning six-part drama that is a variant on the Scandi-noir template.

It’s a Sin (Amazon Prime Video)

It’s A Sin has the energy and charm required to grip you with the story of a group of young men who arrived in London in the early 1980s and began living as openly gay. Series creator Russell T. Davies sets out to celebrate with loads of sizzle and fun, before AIDS looms over this community and anger and loss become dominant. To call it a rollercoaster is an understatement.

It’s A Sin follows four friends living in London during the AIDS crisis.Courtesy of Amazon Prime

Beartown (HBO/Crave)

The Swedish series Beartown (with English subtitles) comes from HBO Europe and will resonate profoundly in Canada. Based on the 2017 novel by Fredrik Backman, it’s about hockey and the sport’s meaning, and about sexual assault and how that affects the survivor, their family, friends and community. It feels like a warm hometown drama yet it becomes harrowing.

Beartown is about hockey and the impact of sexual assault.Calle Sjölin/HBO / Crave

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Thrillers, uncomplicated and with actual thrills

Bloodlands (Acorn TV)

Bloodlands is a new Irish-noir drama, made by BBC, created by newcomer actor/writer Chris Brandon and produced by Jed Mercurio (Line of Duty, Bodyguard). Set in the wintry and jittery Northern Ireland of today, it’s a fast-paced mystery-thriller steeped in paranoia about the past.

The four-part series Bloodlands stars James Nesbitt and Charlene McKenna.BBC/AcornTV

Bad Banks (CBC Gem)

Bad Banks (in German with English subtitles) is as much about espionage as banking. In this gripping, no-nonsense mini-series, a seemingly sensitive and whip-smart young woman turns amoral rogue banker, working secretly to destroy her colleagues and, perhaps, upend the whole German economy.

In Bad Banks, a young woman turns rogue banker.Courtesy of CBC Gem

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Off-the-wall drama with fun and smarts

Teenage Bounty Hunters (Netflix)

Teenage Bounty Hunters is a little miracle of wit and acidic snark, with a healthy dose of satire aimed at rich, white Evangelicals that never goes too far in the direction of outright sneering. Woven into this action-filled milieu is a hilarious portrait of the lives of the teenage twin heroines at school and home.

Blair (Anjelica Bette Fellini) and Sterling (Maddie Phillips) play twins in Teenage Bounty Hunters.TINA ROWDEN/NETFLIX

Pretty Hard Cases (CBC Gem)

Pretty Hard Cases is way more than a wacky cop show. A fascinating hybrid of cop show, comedy and socially aware big-city drama, it makes a lot of cop-show content seem irritatingly out of touch.

Kelly Duff (Adrienne C. Moore of Orange Is The New Black) and Sam Wazowski (Meredith MacNeill of Baroness Von Sketch Show) are unlikely buddy-cops in Pretty Hard Cases.CBC

Summertime (Netflix)

Summertime, set in an Italian coastal town (it’s in Italian with English subtitles), is about that summer where the lives of a small group of young people are changed forever. It’s all a bit dopey and soapy but the texture of sun, sand and softness on the Adriatic coast is so real you can taste it and feel it.

Summertime is a love story that takes place on the Adriatic coast.Courtesy of Netflix

Lupin (Netflix)

Lupin is a wonderfully intricate and propulsive five-episode series (in French with English subtitles). Inspired by the “gentleman thief” character Arsène Lupin, Assane Diop (played by Omar Sy) pulls off a spectacular heist as revenge against a rich white family that caused his father’s death.

Lupin stars Omar Sy as Assane Diop.Netflix

Flack (Amazon Prime Video)

Flack is about the public-relations professionals at an upmarket (read: expensive) firm in London. It is delightfully cynical, but sometimes bittersweet, funny and occasionally outright brilliant. Especially about the often loathsome clients these characters are paid to babysit, promote and protect.

Anna Paquin, left, and Lydia Wilson star in Flack, a darkly comic series about the PR industry.Courtesy of Amazon Prime

Behind Her Eyes (Netflix)

The miniseries Behind Her Eyes is beautifully made, tonally distinct and exceptionally well-acted. It is gripping and slightly sinister from almost the start and fuelled by an off-kilter erotic charge that only begins to make sense in the context of its strange ending.

Simona Brown stars as Louise in Behind Her Eyes on Netflix.Nick Wall/NETFLIX © 2020/Netflix

Sky Rojo (Netflix)

Sky Rojo (in Spanish with English subtitles) is all lurid neon, fast-paced action and filled with suggestions of sex and violence. It is not, however, as superficial as that brief description hints. For all its colour, car chases and Tarantino-esque whiffs of sadism, the eight-episode series is a vivid, thundering denunciation of the sexual exploitation of women.

On the island of Tenerife, three women are employed as dancers and sex workers at a high-end nightclub and brothel.TAMARA ARRANZ/Netflix

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Documentaries that tell strange stories of our recent past

The Lady and the Dale (HBO/Crave)

The Lady and the Dale is full of colourful storytelling. The Dale was a three-wheeled, two-seater automobile launched in 1973 and promoted as slick, safe and cheap to run. It was presented as the creation of a business whiz named Elizabeth Carmichael, who was in fact known to authorities as Jerry Dean Michael, a con artist long sought on multiple fraud charges. Taking the name Liz Carmichael wasn’t part of the fraud though because she was a transgender woman at a time when nobody understood that concept.

The Lady And The Dale tells the detailed story of Liz Carmichael’s extraordinary life.HBO / Crave

Fake Famous (HBO/Crave)

Fake Famous, made by first-timer Nick Bilton, a former tech journalist, amounts to an experiment. But, really, it’s a dare. Can Bilton and a small team find three unknowns and make them very famous via Instagram? Can he make them seem like big-shot influencers who get paid to peddle products and get lots of free stuff?

Fake Famous explores the industry of social media influencers through an innovative social experiment.HBO / Crave

How it Feels To Be Free (CBC Gem)

How it Feels to be Free covers the careers of Abbey Lincoln, Lena Horne, Nina Simone, Diahann Carroll, Cicely Tyson and Pam Grier. It’s a scorcher, a fabulous journey to that place where art and activism meet in the stories of these Black women artists. It was years in the making and you can see why – there is a ton of amazing archival footage of impassioned performances and movie scenes and scathing political speeches.

How It Feels to Be Free tells the story of six trailblazing performers: Lena Horne, Abbey Lincoln, Diahann Carroll, Nina Simone, Cicely Tyson and Pam Grier.documentary Channel

Murder Among the Mormons (Netflix)

Murder Among the Mormons hooks you from the get-go. In the early 1980s, Mark Hofmann claimed to have discovered a cache of documents and letters that would change the core belief system of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS). In the small world where such documents are collected, and in a church where history is vital to belief, he was a sensational figure. Then one October morning in 1985 there were two explosions in Salt Lake City and the community was both rocked and terrified.

Mark Hofmann plays a renowned collector of rare documents who becomes a victim of the bombings in Murder Among the Mormons.Courtesy of Netflix

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Reality TV with real substance

Blown Away (Netflix)

Blown Away is one of the most peculiar and obscure but praised series on Netflix. A Canadian production, it’s an artisanal-glassblowing competition. You can make almost any activity into a competitive reality show, but glassblowing artistry is not the first thing that comes to mind. And yet it works, and has received much international attention.

Blown Away imposes the sheer weirdness of the reality-TV format on a highly skilled, highly technical creative process.Courtesy of Netflix

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Laughs, offbeat and off-kilter

Ginny & Georgia (Netflix)

Ginny & Georgia is dazzling entertainment, one layer of it Degrassi dipped in acid, another layer mom-and-daughter conflict comedy, plus painful coming-of-age story all wrapped in a mystery. Another angle to absorb is the fact it features a vast army of very good Canadian actors.

Ginny & Georgia stars Diesel La Torraca (Austin), Brianne Howey (Georgia) and Antonia Gentry (Ginny).Courtesy of Netflix

Norsemen (Netflix)

Norsemen is an outrageous spoof of Vikings and other series – let’s throw in Game of Thrones – celebrating the derring-do of warriors and pillagers. Set in the village of Norheim in the year 790, the comedy tilts toward Monty Python in the sheer absurdity of solemnizing these bloodthirsty, primitive people.

Norsemen is absurdist, occasionally gross and beautifully original.Courtesy of Netflix

The Communist’s Daughter (CBC Gem)

The Communist’s Daughter is a very droll farce that really has no point apart from fun, frolics, jokes about the 1980s and the ineffable struggle of a teenage girl who wants to fit in but is held back by her communist parents. It doesn’t make a blind bit of sense but that’s fine. It’s deranged enough to detain you for a splendid escape.

Sofia Banzhaf plays Dunyasha McDougald in The Communist's Daughter.Courtesy of CBC Gem

Us (CBC Gem)

Us is based on the novel by David Nicholls. The four-part series is a true gem; warm, humane and rooted in a very relatable kind of middle-class existence. A couple on the verge of a breakup are about to embark on a trip around Europe with their teenage son before he goes off to university. The drama is so lugubrious that its charms are very bittersweet, and it takes a wee while to grasp the true fun of it.