The 20 Best New TV Shows of 2021

by Jason Dietz, Metacritic Features Editor – December 28, 2021

Above are the highest-scoring first-year TV series (including limited series) debuting in the United States between January 1, 2021 and December 31, 2021. Shows are ranked by Metascore (an average of grades from top professional critics on a 0-100 scale) prior to rounding based on scores as of December 24, 2021, and any programs with fewer than 7 reviews are excluded. One-off TV specials and made-for TV movies are ranked separately at the end of the gallery.

1 of 23 photo by Niklas Maupoix/HBO

82 Beartown [Björnstad] (HBO)

(#20) An HBO Europe original series (available here through HBO Max), the five-episode, Swedish-language Beartown is based on a novel by Fredrik Backman and centers on a struggling factory town that is pinning its hopes on its local junior ice hockey team that has just hired a former NHL star as its new coach. But Mighty Ducks, this is not. Instead of an uplifting, feel-good underdog story, the bleak Beartown depicts a violent crime and its many repercussions.

“Icy and enraged, it’s a sobering portrait of tragedy wrought from not only toxic masculinity, but from the equally noxious—and potentially more deadly—systems that nurture, amplify, and protect it.” —Nick Schager, The Daily Beast

Watch it on HBO Max (5 episodes)

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