Welcome to July 2021. How are you doing? It's a question that has a lot more weight to it since March of last year, when we shut down the world as best we could to keep each other safe from the global pandemic that has, as of writing, caused the deaths of nearly four million people. Other things have been lost as well during this time — jobs, plans for adventure, hopes for the future, so much that goes beyond what mere words can capture. It's a different world now, but one constant remains true of the past, the present, and the future: There was so much stuff to watch.
In fact, over the last 16 months, there were at least 40 different film and TV projects made (not counting the "Imagine" video, because we're all a lot better off forgetting that ever happened) that didn't just shoot during the pandemic but were connected to it in some way. We're not talking about productions made during this time but set in an alternate Covid-free universe. Instead, we're looking at the broadcast network procedurals and sitcoms which added face masks to the wardrobe budget, the horror films shot by the stars themselves in their homes, and the monologue-based special event series produced for streamers. The productions that would never have existed, had a virus not changed everything.
To be honest, there weren't a lot of all-time greats amongst these projects — to quote my dad, "we had better get some good art out of this," but many of these will probably not withstand the test of time. But that's more than understandable. Much like the classic adage that “journalism is the first rough draft of history,” these shows and movies did their best to grapple with the wildness of the era while still in the thick of it, which is a near-impossible thing. As I wrote back in May 2020, while reviewing one of the best achievements of this particular genre, "There is a very understandable instinct to believe that trying to make sense of this will be best done with the help of hindsight; that we can't really know what's happening until it's happened. There's a reason a daily diary isn't considered a work of literature on the level of a memoir, after all. Truth takes time."
The pandemic is not over yet. But with vaccination numbers climbing and businesses reopening, it feels like a good time to look back on this era of film and TV, projects which might not have offered the pure escapism of binge-viewing The Sopranos or The Office, but did make a real-time effort to help us all make sense of a once-in-a-century global event. So let's look back on a period of time no one wants to ever repeat ever again, using the format of everyone's favorite thing: an awards show! (Please do not bring up Oscars viewership numbers at this time.)
Best One-Man Show: Mike Colter in Social Distance
Created by Hilary Weisman Graham, Netflix's Social Distance did its best to deliver a range of pandemic-set anthology stories, but the one that haunts me is the opening installment, "Delete All Future Events." Mike Colter, Luke Cage himself, carries the half-hour story of Ike, a recovering addict doing his best to stay distracted and sane. The drama gets pretty heavy-handed, but the raw, uncompromising way in which Colter takes on the material, and the blunt reality of how it depicts what it meant to work towards sobriety during this time, was hard to watch at times but also hard to forget.
Best One-Woman Show: Kaitlyn Dever in Coastal Elites
Coastal Elites occupies a very strange space in terms of genre and format — consisting of five monologues written by famed playwright and screenwriter Paul Rudnick, the HBO "special event" was originally conceived as a stage event. But Rudnick reworked it to tackle not just the political climate but the pandemic, Black Lives Matter, and more for a cast of notable greats: Bette Midler, Sarah Paulson, Dan Levy, Issa Rae, and Kaitlyn Dever. All of them bring their all to the material, but it's Dever who proves to be the real heartbreaker as Sharynn, a young nurse dealing with the pandemic at its very worst in New York. To get into why her monologue, which closes out Coastal Elites, is so tearjerking would be a spoiler, but what can be said spoiler-free is that it's proof of how Dever is currently one of our all-time best young actors, and fingers crossed the future is full of rich, exciting work that showcases her incredible talents.
Outstanding Achievement In Reality Television: Top Chef
Top Chef has always risen above most reality TV because of the way it generally manages to avoid getting distracted by the drama and instead stay focused on what matters — the food. Season 18, set in Portland, took this to a new level by finding a way to shoot safely during the pandemic, in ways that did create noticeable changes to the show's format... But honestly, the grocery shopping montages were always the most skippable parts of the episodes, and the choice to have a regular judging panel of some of the show's nicest former contestants evaluating the equally nice newcomers made this a warm and delicious hug of a season.
Movie I Was Least Likely to Ever Watch Thanks to That Nightmare Premise: Songbird
What if the pandemic, but it's years later and everything is so much worse! Nope. Songbird made headlines as one of the very first projects to go into production after the initial shutdown, but the film — about a dystopian 2024 where COVID-23 has reduced America to basically a police state — was honestly too much to consider watching during the darkest days of the last 16 months. Apologies to an intriguing cast, including KJ Apa, Sofia Carson, Craig Robinson, Bradley Whitford, Peter Stormare, Alexandra Daddario, Paul Walter Hauser, Demi Moore, but that's going to be a hard pass.
Outstanding Achievement In Horror, Pandemic-Produced or Otherwise: Host
So I confess that I have not actually watched Host, because when it comes to horror I am a giant scardycat. But Collider's own Vinnie Mancuso did and he loved it, calling it "the only quarantine story that connected in 2020." As he wrote last December:
Host, which I must repeat features a demon tossing women out of windows and lighting dudes on fire, felt the most real to me. Yes, it does start with the required banter about These Times, but its tension isn't built on top of it. Host doesn't ask if the audience is okay, it knows the audience is goddamn scared. It knows that something horrific has invaded our lives and, what's more, it knows the terror of facing it alone.
If you are not a scardycat and you want to check it out, Host is currently streaming on Shudder.
Best Thing I Saw That Probably Didn't Mean to Be About the Pandemic Originally But Ended Up Being Some of the Best Pandemic Art: How To With John Wilson's "How To Cook the Perfect Risotto"
Technically, mentioning this one in connection with the pandemic is a massive spoiler for the season finale of John Wilson's incredibly charming low-key comedy series, which embodied the concept of stream-of-consciousness with his rambling, yet elegant and detail-rich, narratives about life. But "Risotto" deserved to be mentioned here because of how well it captures, pretty much by accident, the way that the pandemic seemed to simultaneously creep up on us and also come out of nowhere. As with the other episodes of the HBO series, Wilson begins with a clearly stated objective: to make his landlady some risotto, as repayment for all the cooking she does for him. What evolves out of that is a beautifully rendered look at life changing in front of our very eyes. How To With John Wilson is not a documentary, but perhaps that's why it does a better job of capturing this very specific moment of history — by leaning into what it revealed about our united humanity at that time.
Best Intentioned But Unsuccessful Attempt to Capture Pandemic Life: Connecting...
When it premiered, co-creator Martin Gero told Collider's Christina Radish about his and co-creator Brendan Gall's ambitions for Connecting..., saying that:
We’re all going through it, at the moment, and it’s nice to see yourself reflected in media. It’s nice to know that what you’re feeling is not isolated to you and that you are part of a bigger community that’s all going through this. This show is a huge opportunity for catharsis and healing, all while having a good laugh, at the same time.
So last fall, NBC aired four episodes of this series about a group of friends trying to keep their circle together with video chatting, before removing it from the schedule. One element which made the show stand out was that each episode was set on very specific days of 2020, meaning that of all the titles on this list, it was the one to spotlight the reaction to George Floyd's murder and subsequent protesting the most directly. But despite its eagerness to engage with the realities of this day and age, something about the timing was just off.
Most Interesting Attempt By Broadcast TV to Take On the Pandemic: Grey's Anatomy
A lot of broadcast shows, especially procedurals, chose to let the pandemic be a present yet rarely important part of the storytelling, to the frustration of folks like Vulture's Kathryn VanArendonk, who really wanted Olivia Benson to be better about wearing a damn mask. Grey's Anatomy, though, put the pandemic front and center from the beginning of Season 17, and unlike other shows (ahem, The Good Doctor) never veering away from it. Not only did the titular star actually get Covid, but Meredith Grey's (Ellen Pompeo) recovery was woven into the ever-ongoing drama at Seattle Grace in unique ways that brought in some unexpected guest stars and created some sweet moments. The catharsis of the season finale didn't declare that the pandemic was over, but it did celebrate its characters for the way they survived it.
Most Bonkers Attempt By Broadcast TV to Take On the Pandemic: Bull
The Season 5 premiere of CBS procedural Bull wasn't just hard to watch because of the ongoing and poorly resolved issues of sexual misconduct which still hover around the show. It also was just a hella weird episode of television, tracking what happens when Jason Bull (Michael Weatherly) takes on a new case during the pandemic... Except that most of the episode, it turns out, is a dream/hallucination Bull's having after being infected with Covid — and that's before the show breaks the fourth wall to feature the cast on set lip syncing to "How Can I Be Sure" by The Young Rascals. Because it's a musical. Oh also, the episode is titled "My Corona." And this is what Bull's baby looks like. I don't know why I watched it, but I know that I needed to make sure you all knew about it.
Best Use of Zoom: All Rise's "Dancing at Los Angeles"
Again, a lot of broadcast shows found ways to acknowledge the pandemic in their storytelling, but CBS's now-canceled All Rise was an early adopter when it came to the all-Zoom format, revealing its potential for essentially the filmmaking equivalent of an epistolary novel. The only unifying narration came from a local DJ whose musical choices created a somehow uplifting tribute to the empty streets and hard-working courtroom employees of Los Angeles; there were so many qualities of life during quarantine that already feel like they're slipping from memory, but All Rise did a nice job of capturing that all-encompassing sense of quiet.
Show That Probably Didn't Need to Incorporate the Pandemic But Did a Nice Job of It: Everything's Gonna Be Okay
Everything's Gonna Be Okay had a whole other plan in place for its second season when the coronavirus hit, but creator/star Josh Thomas embraced the idea of a scenario where all of his characters would be trapped together for the show's return to Freeform. As he explained in an interview with Collider, "I really love the idea of locking characters in a house and keeping things small. That's what I want to do all the time." While one of TV's sweetest family dramedies would have still been exactly the sort of soul-healing TV we've needed recently without its pandemic setting, leaning into it (and adding the always welcome Richard Kind and Maria Bamford to the cast) was the right move, especially as it never overwhelmed the character-focused storytelling at which this show excels.
Best TV Cast Reunion: Happy Endings/Parks and Recreation (tie)
There were a number of these sorts of reunions, but these two did the best job at the following:
- Actually producing a scripted episode that felt in line with the original series while acknowledging current events.
- Coming up with good explanations as to why all the characters — including married couples — were not present in the same living space.
- Including a surprise cameo from Megan Mullally tied to a chair...
Wait, only Parks and Recreation did that last one. So maybe, technically, it wins. But both were very good.
Most Impressive Achievement In Convincing Bored Celebrities to Show Up on Set and Do Monologues*: Solos
Okay, these were not all technically monologues, but really, same difference. The Amazon original Solos, written by David Weil (Hunters), only touches briefly on the concept of a pandemic in its stories — honestly, it's on this list simply so that we can acknowledge its existence as a truly surreal moment of the last year: Only circumstances like these would bring together Anne Hathaway, Helen Mirren, Anthony Mackie, Uzo Aduba, Constance Wu, Nicole Beharie, Dan Stevens, and Morgan Freeman for an anthology series And while the sci-fi infused scenarios they're trapped in all feel like darker and less empathetic episodes of Black Mirror, the caliber of the cast makes it at least worth remembering that this show happened. (Ironically, given Solos' pervasive examination of the question of memory, it's been easy to forget.)
Outstanding Achievement in Bored Celebrities Playing Themselves: Staged
If you enjoy David Tennant and/or Michael Sheen (and honestly, if you don't, I don't know what to say to you), the opportunity to watch the two veteran actors and alleged friends spar with each other is a joy, even if it's happening over Zoom. Staged is on the face of things fiction, focusing on what happens when the play that Tennant and Sheen were planning to star in together — a new production of Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author — gets put on hold for, you know, reasons. Trapped in their homes with nothing to do, the two stars are encouraged by their director Simon (Simon Evans, who also co-created the series with Phin Glynn) to rehearse the piece together via the magic of video conferencing. Unfortunately, quarantine life and their mutual feuding ends up proving more distracting than poor Simon anticipated. But the self-satire on display is calibrated nicely, never once feeling indulgent, with plenty of amusing deep-cut references to reward loyal fans, not to mention the nice touch of featuring Tennant and Sheen's real-life partners Georgia Tennant and Anna Lundberg as, well, also themselves. Sorta. Without actually being friends with Tennant and Sheen, there's no way of knowing where the line between fact and fiction is, but that doesn't make this any less of a treat. Oh, and I didn't even mention the extremely meta Season 2 twist or the wild guest stars! (No spoilers, but it's an impressive roster.) Most importantly, while very very funny in places, there's still a very honest undercurrent of melancholy present throughout; not many of the shows and films on this list may age well, but Staged is one that could hold up in future years. (You can stream it now on Hulu!)
Outstanding Achievement In Capturing Self-Doubt and Loneliness: Bo Burnham: Inside
What stands out about Inside isn't the claustrophobia and isolation which permeate Bo Burnham's remarkable and haunting Netflix comedy special, but the side effect of those conditions which were all too familiar to so many creative people who floundered over the last year — the existential crisis of "what does any of this mean to anyone?" Hopefully, Burnham can take some comfort in knowing that by finding a way to use his voice to say what was happening inside him, he was speaking for so many of us. For while he seems skeptical about the idea of "healing the world with comedy," his work may have helped other people find the words they might have lacked. Inside might be one of the very best entries on this list, flat-out, and certainly one worth re-examining with more time and distance.
Still the Reigning Champion of Pandemic Television: Mythic Quest's "Quarantine"
When I reviewed "Quarantine" for its premiere in May 2020, I called it "TV's first coronavirus era masterpiece," and the thing is, nothing since has really managed to dethrone it. (With the potential exception of Inside.) Still, this special episode of Mythic Quest remains a perfect capsule of honest emotion, with solid jokes never compromising the very real feelings it captures, especially as anchored by Charlotte Nicdao's raw and real performance. Time helps heal a lot of pain, but hopefully none of us ever forget when the most scarce and longed-for currency out there was a sense of hope, or even just a hug. "Quarantine" remains a profound reminder of that period, a document that may help us explain to future generations what exactly all of this was really like. And if anything unites all of the above projects, it's a shared aspiration towards one goal: to entertain, sure, but also to remember.