A note:
These are by no means the “best” shows of 2021, whatever that means. I don’t even know how you qualify what the “best” of anything is. These are my opinions. That’s it. Just my opinions!
As always, thanks for reading.
SPOILERS AHEAD. You’ve been warned. — NL
10. “Curb Your Enthusiasm” (Larry David)
Whenever Larry David decrees that “Curb Your Enthusiasm” should return for a new season, there’s always the curiosity of whether its jokes will play in whatever the comedy climate happens to be at the time (an especially tricky question considering the controversy currently surrounding one of the show’s stars, Jeff Garlin). David, of course, has never been one to bend to comedic norms. You’d certainly never in a million years think to call him “woke.” The man perfected his own idiosyncratic style with “Seinfeld” and has stuck to it stubbornly with HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” both of which rank as two of the funniest T.V. comedies of all time. Why tamper with a winning recipe? Alas, as David has grown older, grouchier, and wealthier, his world has shrunken. The Larry David of “Curb Your Enthusiasm” used to wrestle with real, everyday irritations: thoughtless in-laws, overbearing relatives, violations of everyday decorum. You know, the stuff that bugs the shit out of all of us. “Curb” has always unfolded within the rarefied community of West Los Angeles, but by the time L.D. was debating the etiquette that goes into traveling on a private jet in the show’s only intermittently amusing previous season, it was tempting to wonder whether “Curb” had lost touch with the problems that 95% of the people in this country have to deal with. Whatever David has done to recharge his creative juices — not that the last few seasons of “Curb” have been lacking for laughs, mind you— it was worth it. This new “Curb” is deliriously funny — as magnificently squirmy as the show was in its early-aughts heyday. After his “spite store” idea fell to pieces last season, David has been resuming with his regular routine: saying the worst thing at the worst possible time, and casually alienating everyone he encounters. This season, he’s pitching a new show around town, “Young Larry,” though he makes time to attend a living funeral for his friend, Albert Brooks (whose brother, Bob Einstein, played Marty Funkhauser, one of “Curb’s”most memorable side characters in its prime) when he’s not conspiring with Leon, offending Suzy, running into several versions of Bill Hader, or designing his ideal mini-bar . The button-pushing fourth episode — in which Larry attempts to get a Klansman’s hood dry-cleaned at a Jewish-owned business and lies to Woody Harrelson about owning a farm — is as shameless and bracing as the show has ever been, ably exploring the subtext of weaponizing stereotypes to the advantage of the oppressed. In the uproarious third episode, David saves a dire dinner party when he realizes that the two individuals seated at the middle of the table — one of whom, naturally, is played by the spectacularly insufferable Richard Kind — are incapable of sustaining a conversation that includes everyone in the room. L.D., the social assassin, takes it upon himself to remedy the dilemma, and dare I say, I believe he now occupies a similar status in the greater comedy community. David is a stalwart, a comedy institution in his own right, and a living legend with nothing to prove to anyone. “Curb” is officially back. The sensation of wanting to crawl out of your own skin has never felt so welcoming.
9. “Hacks” (Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, Jen Statsky)
American comedy currently exists in a fascinating state of flux. The frat-comedy stars of yore (Sandler, Ferrell, etc.) have basically retired with their riches, ceding the spotlight to a more progressive, less overwhelmingly male generation of performers. Comics like Tim Heidecker, Gregg Turkington, and Conner O’ Malley are pushing the comedy of antagonism to beautifully conceptual new extremes. And then, there is, of course, that tiresome contingent of old-timers who insist that it’s impossible to be funny these days because “you just can’t say anything anymore,” never mind the fact that comics like Lenny Bruce was actually arrested and jailed for violating obscenity laws, all because they dared to air out opinions more genuinely provocative than any of the tired, hateful shit that dudes like Dave Chappelle and Joe Rogen are regularly dredging up. “Hacks” is one of the year’s more exciting new comedies precisely because it’s a show about comedy, and the generational rift within the art form that only grows wider with each passing year. In one corner, we have Ava, played by newcomer Hannah Einbinder in a genuinely disarming, star-making performance. Ava straddles the line between Gen Z and millennial sensibilities: a writer, she’s sarcastic as a defense mechanism, but also not above tweeting out something perceived to be so insensitive that it costs her a job (in that way, “Hacks” is a more perceptive show about the politics of what some call “cancel culture” than any mind-numbing screed from Bill Maher that you’re going to find whilst scrolling through HBOMax). Ava eventually lands a job writing jokes for a once-great performer named Deborah Vance, who personifies the other side of the show’s comedic equation (Vance is played by the inestimable Jean Smart, who’s always been great, but enjoyed a particularly fruitful 2021 between this and “Mare of Eastown”). Vance is a kind of female Don Rickles: not so much an insult comic as someone who respects the art of a finely-tuned punchline. As such, Vance disdains comedy that’s too navel gaze-y or not “funny” enough (one can only imagine what Ms. Vance would have made of Lena Dunham’s “Girls”), and so much of the joy in “Hacks” is seeing these two incredibly different, incredibly funny women approach divergent ideas about life, getting laughs, and the messy grey area where the two bump up against each other. As a thirty-minute viewing experience, “Hacks” is lighthearted and intensely watchable: without skimping on moments of pathos, the show is breathlessly clever and packed with magnificently written gags, bon mots, and witticisms, as any series about professional funny people should be. One could make the uppity argument that it’s not the most probing series of 2021, whatever that means, but like the great HBO comedies that came before it, “Hacks” couches its most trenchant critiques inside an exterior that can seem fluffy if viewed from a distance, but one that, upon closer inspection, contains untapped depths.
8. “Midnight Mass” (Mike Flanagan)
In an era where most American horror exists at two ends of a proverbial curve — the grim, ostensibly “elevated” fare practiced not only by new-school maestros like Ari Aster, but also in joyless, “socially-minded” exercises like Nia DaCosta’s dire “Candyman” remake, which is to say nothing of outright schlock like “Malignant” and “Don’t Breathe 2” existing at the other end of the spectrum — writer/director Mike Flanagan occupies a uniquely appealing niche. In no way is the following statement intended as an insult, as I believe that Flanagan makes horror for the audience that exists in between that vast chasm separating those two demographics. In other words, Mike Flanagan makes movies for the middle. “Midnight Mass,” the spooky auteur’s latest limited series for Netflix, is unquestionably my favorite Flanagan project to date. It’s the kind of show where the screenwriter’s signature indulgences — the reasons that other, less patient viewers might think to tune out of — end up being the things I love the most about the experience on the whole. Flanagan has obviously been mentioned in the same breath as Stephen King many a time, but the comparison has never felt more apt than it does here, even considering the director’s film adaptation of the King novel “Gerald’s Game.” “Midnight Mass,” a rapturous campfire tale of religious zealotry and brutal Christian extremism, is a work that has no roots in any existing source material, much less anything penned by King. Nevertheless, the show feels so indebted to the creepy-cozy suburban dread of the “Pet Sematary” author that you’d swear Flanagan is channeling frequencies from the brain of everyone’s favorite beach-read scribe. “Midnight Mass” is also indebted to John Carpenter’s “The Fog” — another beautiful, superior slice of slow-burning coastal horror that unfolded against the bucolic New England countryside, in which an unseen menace makes its presence felt in a terrifying fashion — as well as the folk-horror efforts of Mario Bava (“Kill, Baby, Kill” in particular), and, of course, Tobe Hooper’s adaptation of “Salem’s Lot.” The island where “Midnight Mass” unfolds is populated by an assortment of colorfully sketched archetypes — most compelling are a venomous fundamentalist disguised as a sweet church lady, a Muslim cop who feels very much like an outcast in this paranoid, lily-white town, and a dog-loving, drunken reprobate who suffers a particularly cruel fate at Flanagan’s hands — but the writer/director writes ripe, florid dialogue for his cast like he’s asking them to read Tennessee Williams. What’s more is that Flanagan really believes in the rules of this universe, and he wants us to as well: like a great novelist, he creates an entire world from scratch, and invites us to bask in its dark shadows. “Midnight Mass” is an addictive, atmospheric gamble that pays off more often than not (lead actor Hamish Linklater has never been better, imbuing the hoary trope of “new-priest-in-town” with unseen layers of ingratiating danger). “Midnight Mass” won’t sway the unconverted to the Church of Flanagan, but it’s nice to see a show that understands that as far as bogeyman are concerned, Freddy Krueger’s got nothing on the Almighty.
7. “NYC Epicenters” (Spike Lee)
Almost every Spike Lee picture since September 11th, 2001 has wrestled, in some form or fashion, with the ripple effects of that awful day. This is true of the great director’s harrowing character study “25th Hour,” in which a drug dealer’s moral reckoning serves as a metaphor writ large for a city’s intolerance in the wake of an epoch-shifting event, and also his heist drama “Inside Man,” in which a Sikh bank clerk is apprehended by authorities with in a seemingly throwaway scene. Lee is careful to show NYPD officers violently manhandling the character’s turban: an ugly image that is inherently and undeniably political. As a poet of the city that never sleeps, Spike has remained sensitive to the tides of trauma and regeneration endured by the denizens of the metropolis he calls home, particularly since 9/11. Lee understands that New York is tough. New Yorkers are tougher. And yes, no matter what blows the city must endure — terrorist attacks, Coronavirus, Donald Trump, your friends who won’t shut up about Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “Hamilton” — they will emerge from the fracas with casualties, but in the end, stronger than they were before. “NYC Epicenters” is Spike’s ultimate exploration of 9/11, what it meant, how it affected the city on a macro and molecular level, and the cultural changes we’ve all been forced to adapt to ever since. Spike is careful to examine the disaster from a human P.O.V., as well as a political and sociological one. As incensed as “Epicenters” gets (and boy does it; this is arguably as agitated as Spike has been since “Bamboozled”), our director never forgets the immeasurable human cost of September 11th, even if the majority of the director’s trademark ire is reserved for the craven, war-mongering politicians who used the attacks to wage a billion-dollar conflict in the Middle East over “weapons of mass destruction.” This would be an easier pill to swallow if Lee didn’t include interviews hack neoliberal politicians like Chuck Schumer, but to his credit, the “Do The Right Thing” director rarely lets these individuals off the hook (Lee’s humorous grilling of an unamused Bill De Blasio is a series highlight). Somehow, Lee even manages to explore corollaries between the American climate post-9/11 and the age of COVID-19: once again, misinformation is rampant, bodies are piling up, and the only response that some citizen can muster to the mounting calamity is a sense of hateful nationalistic tribalism. Lee will always be a New Yorker, and “NYC Epicenters” refuses to look at our homegrown narrative through rose-colored glasses. Lee understands that part of being a patriot means calling out your government, your leaders, and your country if necessary, no matter how painful it might be for some folks to hear. After splitting his audience down the middle with the polarizing anti-war epic “Da 5 Bloods,” Lee has returned to unite a divided populace by looking back, with heroically unvarnished candor, on one of the darkest days in our country’s history. It’s a triumph of an already-triumphant filmography.
6. “Exterminate all the Brutes” (Raoul Peck)
The irony that we’ve only recently started to come around to the idea of having conversations about the history of colonialism at home and abroad is particularly appalling when one considers that the platform for so much of this discourse, social media, is current in the extreme. Conversely, the historical ripple effects that are rooted explicitly in the colonial mindset and its genocidal side effects (theft of land from the indigenous, for instance) are as old as time itself. This approach can feel like using an Apple watch to solve the mysteries of the universe. Fear not, though: the brilliant Raoul Peck has returned to tackle this exact subject with a galvanizing four-part docuseries, “Exterminate all the Brutes,” which could hopefully clarify and perhaps even correct the discourse surrounding the ongoing colonial dilemma. Peck’s masterful work blends vérité tendencies with elegant formalist artifice, blurring the line of categorization to the point where whether or not the director’s new work is a very long film or a series told in four chapters hardly matters. Peck’s latest, its title taken from a chilling line from in Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” doesn’t limit its focus to slavery in the Americas, or even to the Holocaust in Europe. Sure, one could easily fill the time slot that Peck has been afforded here with a heady dive into those subjects, but the filmmaker’s curiosity and grasp of history is much more far-reaching than that. “Exterminate all the Brutes” explores the troubling and unavoidable truth that our country was founded on the murderous displacement of nonwhite human beings; what’s more is that Peck, ever a restlessly inquisitive mind, wants to get to the heart of why Americans of a certain generation are skittish about discussing our nation’s terrible past without the use of some sentimental lens that allow them to place blind faith in authority figures who may not have their best interests at heart. Peck, who possesses an archivist’s eye for detail and a journalist’s sense of objectivity, presents us with a dazzling array of archival footage, and yet it’s the faces, from the series’ earliest, quietest moments, that I keep returning to. The pain in their eyes is pain that cannot be erased, in spite of the white imperialist initiative to do just that. “Exterminate all the Brutes” is also a work of revisionist autobiography, as Peck recalls the prejudice he experienced as a youth growing up in Haiti. The narrative is poetically interspersed with unsettling vignettes that re-imagine some of the most noxious examples of colonial violence across the spectrum of Western civilization (a la “The Act Of Killing”). In a nifty touch, Josh Hartnett shows up to embody assorted manifestations of every white oppressor throughout history, giving his best performance in years in the process. “Exterminate all the Brutes” is the opposite of a comfortable sit, but Peck, to his credit, understand that the time for the luxury of comfort has long since past.
5. “Ziwe” (Ziwe Fumudoh)
Ziwe Fumudoh, better known to most as Ziwe, announced her arrival into the cultural conversation of 2021 like a blazing hot-pink comet descending into earth’s tepid atmosphere. Calling what Ziwe does “cringe” comedy is not only inaccurate, it is actively misleading. Ziwe’s whole “thing” involves a kind of masterfully calibrated goading act: as a comic, she’s in the business of getting morons and hypocrites to expose themselves, as opposed to doing all the heavy lifting for them. That said, there is no self-serving, “look-at-me” theatricality to what this brilliant and intuitive performer does on a conceptual level: the hand-over-your-mouth awkwardness of “Ziwe” is slow-simmering and deliciously painful to watch. Or is it painfully delicious? The world of “Ziwe” is a fevered reflection of our host’s subconscious: everything is pink and frilly and fabulous, and the sets, which are funny in and of themselves, knowingly call attention to their own construction. “Ziwe” is essentially a fusion of a late-night talk show with an unusually irreverent variety program, which means we get sit-down conversations with famous guests (everyone from new-school stars like Phoebe Bridgers to the cantankerous Fran Lebowitz, who was a television fixture this year between her appearance here and her latest collaboration with friend Martin Scorsese, “Pretend It’s A City”) interspersed with sketches, throwaway bits, and music videos. The music videos are a highlight of “Ziwe’s” can’t-miss first season: there’s “Stop Being Poor,” a ready-for-the-club bop in which Ziwe channels miscalculated boomer frustrations through a syrupy auto-tune filter (insidiously enough, the erroneous sentiment that young people are poor because they’re lazy sounds more palatable when the message is nestled inside a dangerously catchy bubblegum-R&B tune), and the gloriously absurd “Wet Diaper (Goo Goo Gah Gah),” which skewers the pop industry’s fascination with sexualizing its young female stars. Much in the way that someone like Tim Robinson is capable of effortlessly summoning petty, short-sighted rage, like a human heat-seeking missile for public humiliation, Ziwe’s persona is that of a human magnet for toxic bullshit. Her interview with Lebowitz is squirm-inducing in the best of ways: anyone who is aware of Lebowitz’s tiresomely outmoded stance on trans issues will be afforded some schadenfreude as we watch the New York icon stumble into one self-incriminating verbal gaffe after another, with our host simply hanging back, all but smirking at the camera. That’s the magic of Ziwe’s shtick: she barely has to do any straining because she’s such a master at concocting “gotcha” scenarios for those with double standards to expose their own foolish behavior. Later in the season, a trip to a plastic surgeon reveals all manners of icky revelations about the unrealistic expectations our society have maintains for female bodies, while Ziwe’s unforgettable interview with Andrew Yang — who makes the baffling claim that his favorite subway stop in New York City is, wait for it, Times Square — is one of the most appalling things I’ve seen this year, in any medium. If there is any justice in this world, 2022 will be the year of Ziwe. She’s the icon we need, if not the one we deserve.
4. “I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson” (Zach Kanin, Tim Robinson)
2021 saw the cementing of a handful of truly exciting new voices in the greater comedy pantheon. None of these voices were louder or more demented than the one belonging to Tim Robinson, the depraved genius behind “I Think You Should Leave with Tim Robinson,” which has quietly become the funniest, most unhinged, and most essential sketch comedy program since the golden-age heyday of “Mr. Show.” Forget SNL’s easy potshots at Donald Trump and Joe Biden, which is to say nothing of the frustratingly uneven nature of the show’s current roster: “I Think You Should Leave” distills the very art of a comedy sketch to its puerile lunatic essence, cramming more tears-down-your-face belly laughs into its brief episodes than Lorne Michaels can currently manage to fit into an entire season of his perennial comedy series. And make no mistake, Robinson is the secret to it all: he may look like an IT guy or a driving instructor, but it’s exactly this unassuming Everyman energy that make his madcap outbursts so indelible. Robinson is part of a new comedy wave that includes Conner O’ Malley and Joe Pera; all three performers distill the black-and-blue malaise of Trump-era America into fictional avatars who, with the exception of the deftly understated Pera, are bubbling over with impotent male fury. A certain juvenile abandon defines the structure of Robinson’s show: it’s somehow broad and goofy without ever coming across as pandering, and it’s also genuinely bizarre without any of the gatekeeping that sometimes comes with the anti-comedy experience. Picking a favorite sketch from this season would be next to impossible, as there are too many highlights to count: a ghost tour that grows unbearable due to excessive profanity, an agonizing date at an unnerving themed bar, the “coffin flop,” and a country song that is upended by disturbing, out-of-place lyrics about bones, money, and worms. The in-house style of “I Think You Should Leave” is surreal in the extreme, to a degree that owes some influence to the Dada aggression of “The Eric Andre Show.” And yet, what makes Robinson’s show so essential is that it’s the farthest thing from absurdity for the mere sake of itself. Robinson has discussed his struggles with anxiety in interviews, and he’s almost preternaturally hyper-attuned to instances of embarrassment, discomfort, and social affrontery. In the topsy-turvy world that Robinson, co-creator Zach Kanin and the show’s writers have created, one insignificant faux pas can lead to a person’s entire world coming undone. In spite of its loopy, seemingly stream-of-consciousness structure, where sketches sort of beam in and out of each other a la “Mr. Show,” there’s a deft structure at play in “I Think You Should Leave”: some bits are as layered as anything you’d see in a streaming drama, it’s just that the structure exists in service of proudly nonsensical jokes about “sloppy steaks” and a children’s doll named Tammy Craps. Sadly, there are those for whom the free-form insanity of “I Think You Should Leave” will seem too over-the-top, too irrational, or just stupid for stupid’s sake. Don’t believe it: this is smart-dumb comedy executed at the level of high art. And yes, the bones are their money. So, in fact, are the worms.
3. “On Cinema At The Cinema.” (Tim Heidecker, Gregg Turkington)
The arc of “On Cinema at The Cinema,” Tim Heidecker and Gregg Turkington’s landmark of contemporary anti-comedy, is nothing less than one of the most rewardingly dense micro-narratives in the history of 21st century media. What began as an endearingly low-rent, self-produced Siskel and Ebert-style film criticism program has morphed, over twelve increasingly horrific seasons, a spin-off film (“Mister America”), and a phony criminal trial, into something that reflects the ugly, distorted underbelly of our greater American sense of disenchantment. It was both captivating and tragic to watch Heidecker’s deluded grown-up brat turn into a tyrannical, vaping mess of a human being, just as it was somehow enthralling to attempt to get into the head of Gregg Turkington, a self-professed movie buff whose encyclopedic knowledge of C-rate motion pictures that he deems “popcorn classics” masks a chillingly detached sociopathic nature (this should obviously go without saying, but Heidecker and Turkington are bravely embodying willfully unpleasant alter egos here, though their performances are so naturalistic and convincing that it’s easy to forget you’re watching actors act). The air is thick with tension and resentment on this new season of “On Cinema,” which exists as the flagship program of Heidecker’s new, Fox News-like HEI Network, a shoddy media empire that mostly exists as an excuse for the alter-Heidecker to peddle whatever his latest ill-gotten scheme happens to be. Any time the show’s hosts attempt to have a constructive conversation about movies, it quickly derails, devolving into shouting and childish name-calling. “On Cinema” is blessed with some of its most fruitful subplots from the year in television, including the unfortunate fate of Tim’s alcoholic wife Toni Newman, the state of his unlistenable crud-rock side project Dekkar, and Turkington wearing a mustard-stained white tuxedo for six weeks straight as an act of protest when Heidecker refused to let him discuss the most recent 007 adventure, “No Time To Die.” For the “On Cinema” faithful, if you are wondering whether or not the loyal Joe Estevez or the perpetually ill-fated Mark Prosch will show up — rest assured, they do. That said, if you, as a viewer, happen to be looking for any kind of halfway-cogent analysis on current film releases, stay far away from “On Cinema,” which is less about the ongoing state of the movie industry and more about two men’s respective mental breakdowns. Heidecker’s tantrums are theatrical and often legitimately frightening, whereas Turkington is a master of the passive-aggressive slow burn, as evidenced by his work under the alias of Neil Hamburger. There will be many for whom this is all too much: too mean, too cerebral, or not LOL-funny enough. If that weren’t the case, then “On Cinema” wouldn’t enjoy its reputation as one of the most important cult programs of our era. Heidecker and Turkington’s comedy is more memorably confrontational, and has more to say about the sad state of our national decline than any purportedly “political” farce I’ve seen, Sascha Baron Cohen included. I’ve yet to witness another work of televised comedy that captures our the feeling of our current 2021 hellscape with more deranged clarity. May these two men continue to create their weird, warped art for years to come.
2. “Succession” (Jesse Armstrong)
Every episode of this season of “Succession” is packed with the same alchemy of bleak, queasy comedy and nerve-obliterating stress that defines the experience of, say, watching a Safdie Brothers movie like 2019’s “Uncut Gems.” Granted, the poisonous, unreasonably affluent Roy clan are worlds away from the grubby strivers of the Safdie oeuvre — they are not, for instance, in the business of obtaining million-dollar opals by any unscrupulous means necessary. For all intents and purposes, though, the Roys have become prestige T.V.’s most watchable gang of privileged ne’er-do-wells. If nothing else, in spite of their unrelenting, vicious disdain for anyone who isn’t them (though, increasingly, in season three, said disdain has been directed inward), the Roys are a bit more subtle in how they tend to fuck people over. The stakes have never been higher than they currently are on HBO’s shamelessly entertaining dynastic black comedy/melodrama, and this last season contained some of the show’s most electrifying passages to date. Season two ended with Kendall planting a flag and declaring war on his father, while season three saw that titanic struggle unfold in all its messy, ego-fueled ignominy, from Kendall’s wince-inducing interactions with his P.R. team, to his slow-motion meltdown of a birthday party: a truly depressing milestone in a show known for turning social gatherings into spectacles of self-implosion. Kendall spent much of season three teetering dangerously close to the edge of oblivion, and yes, much was made about the demanding methods that actor Jeremy Strong employs in service of achieving this performance, but that doesn’t make it not one of the best examples of screen acting from the year in television. One of the joys of “Succession” is how the writers are able to shift our sympathies on a dime: Shiv, for instance, is no longer the most human of the Roy siblings, while Roman, ever the nihilistic court jester, embraced his status as an alt-right rich kid troll, a mantle that was violently stripped from him in the season’s emotionally obliterating finale, where Brian Cox’s lion-in-winter patriarch makes it crystal fucking clear just how much he hates his children. Hell, even poor Connor finally got a chance to assert himself as the most overlooked Roy scion, even if said assertion was realized in the most pathetic fashion possible. I would posit that “Succession” is mostly still a comedy in its third season — albeit, a daringly heartless one — and yet there are fewer laughs as the show has progressed, in which we as an audience begin to ask ourselves what exactly these avarice-drunk monsters are so busy stepping over each other to be fighting for. Theirs is a kingdom of cheap vice, and all that this surfeit of ambition has led to is the FBI knocking on the office doors of Waystar Royco, and the show’s one remaining mildly sympathetic character, the perennially outwitted Cousin Greg, has finally realized that he may actually “have no use for a soul.” Who knows what fresh horrors Jesse Armstrong and his writers will visit upon us in season four? I can’t wait to find out.
- “Painting with John” (John Lurie)
As with John Lurie’s flawlessly beatific public-access hangout series “Fishing with John,” one of my all-time favorite pieces of media in any genre, it’s hard to know what to call “Painting with John,” or how to categorize it in any conventional sense. Certainly, “Painting With John” is a show in which Lurie paints. This much is objectively impossible to deny. The six-episode series — which can be watched like a film, in one long sitting — also sees Lurie extolling his weird, one-of-a-kind philosophies on the act of creating art. Art is something John Lurie knows a thing or two about. “Painting With John” is also a show where Lurie spins yarns in his own inimitable, deadpan fashion; it might has well have been called “Storytelling With John,” but that’s not quite as memorable a title, is it? There is much joy in hearing the famously nonplussed Lurie recalling wild, seemingly too-crazy-to-be-true stories from his past like he’s ordering take-out. There was the time where Lurie went to bizarre and rather extreme lengths to procure a live eel for an album photo shoot in New York’s Chinatown. Then, there was the mysterious disappearance of an individual known only as Chicken Man from the tropical island that Lurie currently calls home. Alas, “Painting with John” is only incidentally about painting, just as “Fishing with John” wasn’t really about fishing in any meaningful way. All of which begs the question: why would anyone want to do something as reductive as put the great, one-of-a-kind John Lurie in any kind of box? Since he emerged as the gangly human embodiment of N.Y.C. Village sleaze in early Jim Jarmusch punk-beatnik masterworks like “Stranger Than Paradise” and “Down By Law” (which is to say nothing of his era-defining film appearances in everything from “Paris, Texas” to “Wild At Heart” to Martin Scorsese’s “The Last Temptation of Christ”), Lurie has been one of the most fascinating human beings currently living, almost more for what he chooses to leave unsaid than what he actually says. He’s a master of passive action: a figure of Zen cool who makes the art of doing as little as possible look alluring, in spite of the fact that his brain is constantly firing on all cylinders. Lurie’s art — whether it’s his painting, his musical output with the Lounge Lizards, or “Painting With John” — is defined by a sense of childlike wonder and mischief. Lurie simply does not see the world in the way you or I do, which is one of the reasons we love him and cherish his perspective. Part of the immense bliss of watching “Painting with John” is that we are afforded not only a look at how Lurie sees the world, but a portal into what makes him human. Lurie no longer the dangerous young hepcat he used to be: he’s old and frail these days, although he retains the sardonic wisenheimer’s countenance that’s served him well his entire career. Still, even if he’s a bit long in the tooth, “Painting With John” sees Lurie embracing the joy of his youth in ways that are truly moving, like when he wears silly things on his head and dances for the camera just to make the crew laugh, or the many scenes where he flies his drone around the island, hoping to catch some beautiful, unforeseen sight. “Painting With John” is quite the beautiful, unforeseen sight, and by far the show that I cherished watching the most in 2021.
HONORABLE MENTION:
“How To With John Wilson” remains the greatest piece of pandemic media created during the age of COVID-19, and the show’s second season was every bit as effortlessly inspired as its first. “Only Murders In The Building” was a breezily delightful hangout lark that felt like thumbing through a curiously involving, low-key New Yorker short story, in addition to providing us with the long-overdue spectacle of Steve Martin once again hanging out with his pal Martin Short.
I’m not usually one for reality television, but HBOMax’s “FBoy Island” might very well have been the most purely addictive program I consumed this year. Elsewhere, I mostly enjoyed Martin Scorsese’s “Pretend It’s A City,” which essentially unfolded as a kind of rambling, revealing, comically confrontational, occasionally problematic conversation told in seven chapters between the “Raging Bull” director and his famously quarrelsome friend Fran.
In spite of being an unquestionably grueling sit, Barry Jenkins’ “Underground Railroad” series saw the “Moonlight” filmmaker taking his mastery of rapturous cinematic poetry to new, astonishing heights, while Hulu’s “Pen15” ended as it began it: as one of the funniest and most poignant coming-of-age comedies since “Freaks and Geeks.”
The idea of a televised American remake of Ingmar Bergman’s “Scenes From A Marriage” never sounded all that great on paper, so it’s a testament to Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain’s career-best performances that the four-part HBO miniseries of the same name ended up being as heartbreaking and watchable as it was. HBO also made good with “Q: Into The Storm,” a deeply frightening docu-series that dove into the tides of treacherous misinformation that have come to define the QAnon movement.
Thanks for reading, everyone. See you in 2022. — NL
