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 countingthe “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-viewingThe SopranosorThe 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 inSocial Distance
Created byHilary Weisman Graham, Netflix’sSocial Distancedid 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 inCoastal Elites
Coastal Elitesoccupies a very strange space in terms of genre and format — consisting of five monologues written by famed playwright and screenwriterPaul Rudnick, the HBO “special event” wasoriginally 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, andKaitlyn 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 outCoastal 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.
RELATED:Paul Rudnick on How ‘Coastal Elites’ Straddles the Line Between Theater and Film
Outstanding Achievement In Reality Television:Top Chef
Top Chefhas 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 byfinding 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.Songbirdmade 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, includingKJ 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 watchedHost, 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.Hostdoesn’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,Hostis currently streaming on Shudder.
RELATED:Why ‘Host’ Is the Only Quarantine Story That Connected In 2020
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 ofJohn 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 Wilsonis 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-creatorMartin Gerotold Collider’s Christina Radishabout his and co-creatorBrendan Gall’s ambitions forConnecting…, 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, whoreally 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 thatbrought in some unexpected guest starsand 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 proceduralBullwasn’t just hard to watch because ofthe ongoing and poorly resolved issues of sexual misconductwhich still hover around the show. Italsowas 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’sbeforethe 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.” Andthis 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, alotof broadcast shows found ways to acknowledge the pandemic in their storytelling, but CBS’s now-canceledAll Risewas 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, butAll Risedid a nice job of capturing that all-encompassing sense ofquiet.
