TV Show Excited to Watch in 2021（13）

Nine Perfect Strangers

Hulu

Big Little Lies fans, assemble. This is another adaptation of one of BLL author Liane Moriarty's works, and it brings back showrunner David E. Kelley and Nicole Kidman, the latter of who stars as the director of a wellness resort where nine (seemingly perfect) strangers check in for a 10-day retreat that doesn't turn out to be like what any of them expected.

The Old Man

FX on Hulu

Jeff Bridges, a major movie star who has yet to make a play for prestige TV glory, stars in this thriller about a retired CIA officer who wants to live "off the grid" but keeps getting pulled back into the shady world he thought he left behind. Adapted from a novel by veteran genre writer Thomas Perry, and co-starring John Lithgow, Amy Brenneman, and Alia Shawkat, the show—think True Grit meets The Americans—is still scheduled for 2021, even after Bridges announced during production that he'd been diagnosed with lymphoma.

The Other Two (Season 2)

HBO Max

It's been a long wait for the second season of this still underrated show, which first premiered on Comedy Central in early 2019. Hopefully the story of the two aimless 30-something siblings of a tween pop star will gain more of an audience on HBO Max where its amazing songs can be fully appreciated.

Ozark (Season 4)

Netflix

The final season of the tense Missouri-set money laundering saga will be nothing short of shocking, we expect. The Byrdes keep getting deeper in bed with dangerous people—now, the cartel boss Omar Navarro and the FBI—and it's only a matter of time until the blocks crumble beneath them, sending their family and associates into a freefall.  

Peaky Blinders (Season 6)

Netflix

Our Peakies! The biggest question at hand after a doozy of a fifth season in Steven Knight's English mob series is: Who betrayed Tommy Shelby and caused his plan to take out political rival and literal fascist Oswald Mosley to fail? (We have some thoughts.)

Pieces of Her

Netflix

Toni Collette leads the cast in this adaptation of Karin Slaughter's popular thriller about a woman who tries to stop an active shooter, and the effects it has on her relationship with her daughter, who feels she witnesses a change in her mother after the traumatic interference.

Station Eleven

HBO Max

This adaptation of Emily St. John Mandel's 2014 speculative novel, which followed a troupe of actors and musicians as they traveled an America ravaged by a flu pandemic, doesn't exactly sound like frothy post-2020 escapism. But, given the source material, it should be different from many of the more brutal dystopian tales of recent years. With Mackenzie Davis of Halt and Catch Fire in the lead role, Patrick Somerville (The Leftovers) serving as showrunner, and Hiro Murai (Atlanta) behind the camera, this should be a special one.

Stranger Things (Season 4)

Netflix  

The Hawkins crew has to figure out how to get Hopper out of Russia in the next season of Stranger Things, presumably digging into its '80s-ness with its own interpretation of the Cold War.

Succession (Season 3)

HBO

Who will win a kiss from daddy in this season of corporate heir war Succession? It certainly won't be Kendall Roy, who hung his father Logan out to dry on national TV in the last minutes of the finale over the gross misconduct handling Wayco Roystar's cruise ship scandal. We're delirious to know how this nuclear bomb will rattle the many circles of the loathsome, ultra-wealthy Roy family.  

Ted Lasso (Season 2)

Apple TV

Apple TV 's Ted Lasso, a fish-out-of-water story (based on an ad campaign), turned out to be a veritable hug of the series and one of the more surprising quality TV releases of 2020. With Jason Sudeikis' Ted—a jolly Kentuckian who is hired to coach the Richmond Premier League football club by its owner in a plot to humiliate her ex-husband—managed to win over his footie crew with infectious, if naive, optimism. Even after the finale's loss bumped the team down a league, there's so much potential in this puckish underdog story.