The 10 series that made 2021 the best year ever for queer TV

Queeries is a weekly column by CBC Arts producer Peter Knegt that queries LGBTQ art, culture and/or identity through a personal lens.

2021 was not the best of times, but one genuine exception for me were all the hours I got to spend watching what has to be an unparalleled year for queer television. It wasn't too long ago that it would basically be impossible to make a top ten list for LGBTQ-themed series because there were only maybe three or four of them (and they weren't always good). But 2021 graced us with so many great queer shows that it was easy to make a list with zero filler. (Spoiler alert: no edition of RuPaul's Drag Race and only one of the many seasons of Ryan Murphy-produced television this year made the cut!) And every single one of them were both created by queer talent and starring queer actors — something that has unfortunately not always been the norm. So without further adieu, the 10 best LGBTQ shows — in alphabetical order — of what is probably the best year for queer TV yet:

Feel Good

The second (and sadly final) season of Canadian-born, England-based comedian Mae Martin's darkly comic Feel Good expressed so much in its raw, textured look at love and addiction. Starring Martin as gender-questioning recovering addict Mae as they try and make sense of themselves and their relationship with Charlotte Ritchie's George, what was ultimately so impressive about Feel Good was how deep it delved into the personal work it takes for humans to really coexist with one another — something many of us might need to be reminded of as we crawl our ways out of social isolation. (It also gave us yet another great Lisa Kudrow performance, which always feels good.)

The Other Two

We waited over two and half years for it, but was the second season of The Other Two ever worth our patience. Continuing to follow messy siblings Brooke (Canadian queen Heléne Yorke) and Cary (Drew Tarver) as they navigate the fame of their teen heartthrob brother (Case Walker) and talk show host mom (Molly Shannon), it served some of the most hilarious dialogue on TV while also being a dark, uncomfortably truthful take on family, fame and finding yourself. It also offers one of the most on-point depictions of contemporary gay life currently on TV via Tarver's Drew (one of the most tragically dysfunctional gay men the medium has ever seen and unfortunately therefore extremely personally relatable). 

Pose

On June 6, the historic run of the series Pose came to an end with one final hour of education, perspective, heart and a whole lot of sobbing. Over three seasons, the series gave us a powerful and urgent window into Black queer and trans experiences of 1980s and 1990s New York City. It also introduced us to a cast of tremendously talented trans actors, led by Mj Rodriguez (Blanca), Indya Moore (Angel) and Dominique Jackson (Elektra). Their collective performances as three women finding resilience, strength and love in the face of transphobia, poverty, racism, ageism and HIV/AIDS were elevated on so many levels, and the series leaves a legacy that will hopefully change the way trans folks are depicted in film and television — and hired for roles — forever.

Q-Force

Arguably the most underrated show on this list, do make your way to animated adult comedy Q-Force if you slept on it. It follows a group of undervalued LGBTQ spies who have been banished to a garage in West Hollywood for nearly a decade, never getting any substantial cases. They decide to go rogue, sending viewers on a hysterically funny ride that's easy to end up watching in just one sitting. It's also just so impressive in the sheer magnitude of queer talent assembled to make it happen (its writing and voice talent includes Sean Hayes, Wanda Sykes, Patti Harrison, Matt Rogers, Dan Levy, Niecy Nash, Fortune Femster and Jane Lynch, to name a few). Collectively, they make Q-Force feel like something that's never really happened before: a mainstream adult cartoon made for queers, by queers. 

Search Party

If this list were to be ranked, I suspect it would be the staggeringly clever Search Party that perched at its top. Its dark, absurdist humour went to new heights in a wild fourth season that feels inspired by Misery and The Silence of the Lambs. Finding Dory (Alia Shawkat) kidnapped by her twink superfan Chip (Cole Escola, truly giving us everything in their performance), the season marks a tonal shift for a series that has rather remarkably kept reinventing itself and features one of the best ensemble casts on TV. Its fifth — and final — season debuts in January (with John Waters, Jeff Goldblum and Kathy Griffin all joining the cast!) and there are few things I'm looking forward to more in 2022 (other than, ideally, the end of the pandemic).   

Sort Of

Canadian television made a major contribution to the queer TV canon this year with Bilal Baig and Fab Filippo's sharp, big-hearted comedy Sort Of. The series stars Baig (who was previously known best for their work in theatre, and whose deadpan delivery in Sort Of is one of its many great assets) as nanny Sabi Mehboob, who is given a chance to move to Berlin in pursuit of something more than their clearly unsatisfying life. But after the mother of the children they nanny gets in a serious bike accident, Sabi decides to stay put. In addition to being a phenomenal watch, the series offered two major better-late-than-never firsts: Sabi is the first non-binary lead character ever on Canadian television, while Baig is the first queer, South Asian, Muslim actor to star in a Canadian primetime TV series. What's more is the many brown, queer, trans and non-binary artists that the show features both in front of and behind the camera, something that clearly lent itself to the series' rich characters and complex authenticity.

Special

Certainly one of the most charming series of 2021, Ryan O'Connell's Netflix comedy Special came to a close with its second and final season this year. Adapted from O'Connell's memoir I'm Special: And Other Lies We Tell Ourselves, the series follows Ryan (played by O'Connell himself), a gay man with cerebral palsy discovering himself and his sexuality. With O'Connell in creative control (in addition to starring, he wrote most of the episodes), Special was able to create something that no other media ever really had before with respect to the intersections of sex, disability and queerness — and it did so in a deeply uplifting, thoughtful manner. While Special may be over, here's to it opening many doors for future storytellers.

The White Lotus

Queer writer and director Mike White has offered us so much in his two decades of work (see: the films Chuck and Buck and Beatriz at Dinner and the extraordinarily unheralded HBO series Enlightened), but it wasn't until The White Lotus that he was fully embraced by the cultural zeitgeist. White wrote and directed all six episodes of the satirical miniseries, which dissects toxic wealth and class entitlement as it follows the staff and guests at a tropical resort in Hawaii. Led by iconic performances from Murray Bartlett and Jennifer Coolidge (though really, everyone in the cast is amazing), The White Lotus was the show of the summer, and with good reason: it was a twisty, subversive — and at times deeply uncomfortable — ride we were all so lucky to go on.

We're Here

While the one million seasons of Drag Race that aired this year generally disappointed (the second season of UK being the greatest exception), drag had its finest television hours via the second season of HBO's wonderful We're Here. Following Drag Race alumni Bob The Drag Queen, Eureka and Shangela as they head to small communities across America to recruit residents for one-night-only drag shows, We're Here essentially perfected a subgenre of reality television. Through the often gut-wrenching subjects it finds in each community (particularly the extremely award-worthy episode set in Selma, Alabama), it offers audiences so much genuine emotion as it amplifies the true meaning — and joy — of drag. 

Work in Progress

As Abby — a self-identified "fat, queer dyke" living with depression and OCD — Work in Progress creator and star Abby McEnany has offered us one of television's most radically queer protagonists. It's genuinely kind of remarkable that we've gotten to a place in culture where this show gets to exist on a major cable network (Showtime, in this case). And in its second season, which was largely written by McEnany and Lily Wachowski, it not only exists but does so with such deep intelligence and humanity as it continues to follow Abby's messy journey to self-realization. The show definitely didn't get the kind of attention most others on this list did, so if you haven't seen it, do make it a priority for these final few weeks of the year.