The Reds Best of Streaming 2021

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: We’ve reached the last days of 2021 (touch wood they’ll be quiet and uneventful!) and this week’s theme will be looking back at the past year and looking forward to the next. Today, the Reds are going to give our top streaming programs of 2021. 

My picks are from Apple +, which I didn’t even subscribe to until my friend Chris Holm raved so enthusiastically about FOR ALL MANKIND I had to give it a try. I did the one-week freebie thing, thinking I would slam the whole two seasons, but this show was simply too good to devour in one bite - and admittedly, I can’t start watching at 7pm and stay up until midnight anymore. FOR ALL MANKIND is what author Mary Robinette Kowal calls “punchcard punk;” an alternative history of the space race starting in 1969 when the Soviet Union, not the US, puts the first man on the moon. If you like APOLLO 13, THE MARTIAN, HIDDEN FIGURES or any 1970s film where couples try to negotiate the changing relationships between men and women in that era.

If you’ve already seen and loved FOR ALL MANKIND, I recommend reading Kowal’s “Lady Astronaut” series for a similar-but-different alternate future take.

What are your picks, Reds?

HALLIE EPHRON: I’ve pretty much cherry-picked what’s on Netflix and Amazon Prime. I can watch and re-watch any season of The Great British Baking Show. It’s calming and mesmerizing in equal parts. I also enjoy any of the British documentaries hosted by Lucy Worseley. Maybe this is why I start watching at 7:30 pm and I’m asleep by 8:00. What I wish I could find to stream are all those wonderful episodes with Sister Wendy talking about great works of art - I love art history. I wanted to like but could not: The Chair. 

 

 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: We are GLUED–and I mean GLUED–to Succession. Riveted and mesmerized. Every character is the worst person imaginable. The writing is SO brilliant, it is beyond writing. I cannot tell you how much I love this.  Ah. Fantastic. We cannot even bring ourselves to watch anything else.  (I think it’s on HBO+, but I never know these things.) 

 

 And we are parceling it out, not bingeing.

 

 Next is The Landscapers. Jonathan is watching 1883, but I cannot bear it (I’m sure it is fabulous, and it is shot beautifully, but after 10 minutes I was crying and sad) so I write while he is watching. And I am SO eager to see the new MAGPIE MURDERS on Masterpiece!  We also loved Line of Duty, and that was total immersion TV for me. SO terrific.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: We’ve given in to almost all the streamers now, I think, because people will keep recommending things on services that we don’t have!! So, working backwards, a couple of weeks ago we finished INVASION which was good and really different. Also on Christmas Eve we finished HAWKEYE which is great fun if you’re a Marvel fan, and Christmasy. 

Julia, thanks for reminding me about FOR ALL MANKIND, which we started but got distracted and didn’t finish. TED LASSO and ONLY MURDERS IN THE BUILDING got us through the summer.

 

JULIA: It just keeps building and building, Debs. The second season ending had me dying for Season 3, which, as is typical these days, has a very uncertain premiere date. What else? 

DEBS: LUPIN was fun. I hope they make another series. Then the new season (maybe last?) of LINE OF DUTY, which was so gripping and fabulous. And back in January last year, season 2 of A DISCOVERY OF WITCHES. So excited that Season 3 is coming up!

And somewhere in there we watched every single episode of SCHITT’S CREEK, which I think saved our sanity.

 

LUCY BURDETTE: You know I am not up on things, so we are still slowly making our way through Foyle’s War. We are up to 1944, so I think the end is coming! We are also watching season six of Shetland, as we have travel plans to go there next August. Fingers crossed so hard… And the last two nights we watched LOVE ACTUALLY, which is always good, no matter how many times I’ve watched. I am always so sad to see it end. It was brilliantly done with a brilliant cast. Waiting eagerly for the next season of the crown and Borgen. Oh I almost forgot to add Ann Cleeves’ THE LONG CALL. We enjoyed those episodes a lot. If you haven’t seen MARE OF EASTTOWN, best TV this year!

RHYS BOWEN: I’m with Hallie. I’ve binged every Great British Baking Show. So calming. Also Gordon Ramsey on his adventures. I haven’t binged much else since Riverton— apart from old British mysteries and comedies like The Vicar of Dibley.

 

JULIA: It's your turn, dear readers. What was the best streaming show you watched this past year? 

Ode to Horizontal Hold

HALLIE EPHRON: Following on from last week, talking about TV shows, I offer this a first-world whine: Television used to be so simple. You plugged the TV in (to a wall outlet!), turned it on, jiggled the rabbit-ears, and voila! There were shows you could watch and they were (wait for it…) free! 

Yes indeed, I even miss those features of analog TV like "horizontal hold." Remember when you turned it on and the programming hours were over, and up came an image of an Indian head... and it didn't occur to anyone that the imagery was inappropriate.

Then along came cable. I never succumbed. I survived without watching  a single episode of THE SOPRANOS or THE WIRE.

Now there's streaming, too, and a million shows that people talk about but that I have no idea where to find or whether I should care. 

In our house, we have Xfinity WiFi/Internet which includes "Basic cable" – the stations we could get with rabbit ears plus an incredible number of useless channels. The only ones I ever watch are PBS. For this I pay nearly $100 a month.

We have a ROKU on our set, a mysterious gadget that my son-in-law (God bless him) installed. On it, we have a subscription to Netflix. I cannot do without "Stranger Things" and "GLOW". Plus all of Sherlock and Poirot and NCIS and Midsummer Murder. Yes, overall worth the $9 a month.

Hoping I'd find Scott and Bailey I added Acorn (sadly not on Acorn) which costs me another $5 a month. It has "Vera"and "The Detectorists," which I find sublime, but otherwise there's not so much.

So along comes "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" and I am seduced into adding Amazon Prime. Yay, And soon I'm going to watch "The Americans." Plus I love being able to watch movies like "Lord of the Rings" in 20-minute bursts, about all I can take of all that marching and shouting and fighting. Not too bad for another $10 a week (and there's the free shipping).

Except it turns out there are a ton of shows and movies you can get THROUGH Amazon Prime but you have to pay extra. Feh.

So now I am officially done. NO MORE FEEDS. To NBC, SHOWTIME, CBS and HBO and all the rest of you out there that want me to pay another $10+ a month for the pleasure of streaming your programs, take your siren song and go. Enough already! Even though I know I'm missing the Christine Baranski in the spinoff of "The Good Wife." And "Big Little Lies" which people tell me I'd love. And "Project Runway." And...

So today's question? Are you cabling or streaming or just plugging in? Is there one source you couldn't give up?

Netflix?

Hulu?

Amazon Prime?

HBO?

Acorn?

Showtime?

What am I missing??