TV Obsessive
Most Hotly Anticipated TV Show of 2021
Given the way that production of almost everything was halted in March of 2020, it’s hard to say for sure exactly what will be released in 2021. Some things have been announced. Others we hope for, and reasonably predict, barring unforeseen changes. Here are the TV shows we are most looking forward to in the coming year.
Andrew Grevas: Barry/Succession
This is a toss-up between Barry Season 3 and Succession Season 3. Both shows ended their sophomore seasons in 2019 with these perfect cliffhangers and several of their characters in these situations that really have the potential to define who they are moving forward. These were my two favorite shows of 2019 and I really can’t wait to see where they pick up next year.
Christopher Blackmore: Resident Evil
It’s no secret that Resident Evil is my favourite video game series of all time. If that wasn’t enough to make me excited, the images and direction this seems to be going in thrills me.
Simon McDermott: Justice League: The Snyder Cut
In a similar vein to Small Axe, Zack Snyder will also be breaking boundaries next year by being the first director ever to take a movie that has already been released and remake it the way he originally intended with a huge amount of additional budget. It became a running joke when #releasethesnydercut started to gain traction a few years back but no one could have predicted how it would snowball the way it has. The Justice League we got back in 2017 was disappointing, to say the least; it was a rushed patch-job after politics behind the scenes ruined the production and this was reflected in the short runtime. The fact that Snyder has another opportunity to do justice to the most important team in superhero culture with a four-hour series is astonishing.
Brien Allen: Foundation
It’s not overstating the case to say that the Foundation series by Isaac Asimov is, well…the foundation upon which all modern hard sci-fi is written. The original trilogy of novels were published in the early 1950s, and everything from Star Wars to The Expanse shares snippets of its DNA. Beloved classic that it is though, it can be pretty dry. Of course, Asimov’s I, Robot was also written in that same timeframe, and that was turned into a summer blockbuster action movie starring Will Smith in 2004. So let’s not be hasty.
The books are set approximately 50,000 years into the future. Mathematician Hari Seldon has developed a new science, psychohistory, which he has used to predict the impending fall of the Galactic Empire. Seldon creates two Foundations that will use psychohistory to guide humanity through the transition and “shorten the darkness,” as the trailer puts it, from the predicted 30,000 years to just 1,000 years. The novels jump through that span, peeking in on a series of “Seldon crises” in which the First Foundation must overcome some obstacle and transform itself into the next phase of the plan.
The aforementioned trailer is amazing looking. No doubt the special effects will have benefitted from filming being shut down from March to October due to the pandemic. This first season (hopefully there will be more) looks like it will just cover the first chapter, “The Psychohistorians,” in which a young, new mathematician joins Seldon’s team just as he is arrested and tried by the Empire for treason.
Asimov’s daughter, Robyn Asimov, is serving as an executive producer, so expect this one to be handled with loving care it deserves. Thus far, Apple TV+ has only said that it will be released in 2021. No fixed date has been set yet.
Runners up: Cobra Kai Season 3 (Netflix) and Blade Runner: Black Lotus (Adult Swim).
Derrick Gravener: Search Party/WandaVision
HBO Max has set next month to unveil Season 4 of Search Party, which I’m sure you’ve gathered is a favourite of mine. In a meta-twist with Dory (Alia Shawkat) now missing, will she be found? And more importantly, will she get a book deal? In a strange twist of fate, I’m also rather gitty for Disney+’s WandaVision. I’m not a person for the Marvel-verse or anything superhero-related, but this looks delightfully genre-bending and has Elisabeth Olson and Kathryn Hahn, so yeah sign me the heck up!
Caemeron Crain: Better Call Saul Season 6.
I feel like most everything in this category should maybe have an asterisk next to it, because it is hard to be certain what TV we will actually get in 2021 given the state of the world. But I sure hope we get the final season of Better Call Saul. What will happen with Kim? With Gene? And how will this ending line up with the beginnings of Breaking Bad? There are big risks that lie in relation to that last question, but the creative team behind Better Call Saul has done such a bang-up job so far I have to believe they are going to pull this off. I’m stoked for more episodes of Barry, looking forward to more Righteous Gemstones, and kind of can’t wait for the continuation of the absolutely bananas narrative of Raised by Wolves, but if your heart is not aflutter with anticipation of the closing episodes of Better Call Saul I have to assume you just don’t watch it.
