2021, My Year In Random TV

Montage of TV and YouTube Shows — Clockwise (L-R) ‘Squid Game,’ ‘River,’ ‘Friesian Horse,’ ‘Lady Colin Campbell,’ ‘Clarkson’s Farm,’ ‘Cobra Kai’

Wouldn’t necessarily say that my 2021 list is a “best of,” since I hardly have seen everything. About all I’ve watched of the new broadcast-network shows is two episodes of The Big Leap. I didn’t hate it, but I’ve never managed to get back to it.

I have a Roku on all my TVs. I have a stripped-down app-based version of my cable, and a handful of streaming services, so you could say I’ve cut the cord. And aside from NFL games and occasional cable news, I watch almost no linear TV (and even some of my NFL games come via NFL Sunday Ticket).

So, all that being said, here’s what caught my attention in 2021.

Clarkson’s Farm (Amazon Prime Video)

Hands down, my favorite new show of 2021, evidenced by multiple viewings of the entire thing. Click here for my full review, but here’s a taste:

If you watch nothing else unscripted between now and the end of the year, let it be Clarkson’s Farm.

As a fan of Jeremy Clarkson’s previous shows — the BBC’s auto-centric Top Gear, and Amazon’s globe-hopping (and auto-centric) The Grand Tour — I had a pretty clear idea about Clarkson.

He’s big, British, bombastic, belligerent, and the proud owner of fast cars, terrible teeth, politically incorrect opinions, and only intermittently justified but still generally unshakable self-confidence. He’s also incredibly funny.

But then Clarkson discovered farming, and a whole new side of him appeared.

Out of that has come Clarkson’s Farm, the eight-episode first season of which is available at Amazon Prime Video.

Cobra Kai (Netflix)

Came a bit late to this Karate Kid follow-up, but thoroughly enjoyed it. Wrote about it here; below find a sample:

My writing mentor, writer/producer David Milch, gave me a nugget of writing wisdom that’s become somewhat of a mantra: the story is not in the rock but in the ripples, not so much in what happens, but what happens because of what happens.

Cobra Kai lives entirely in the ripples, exploring the rocks thrown into people’s lives, especially in their youth, that made them who they are, and the ripples into the future from the rocks they threw — and continue to throw — themselves.

Choices have consequences; injuries leave scars; old joys never fade entirely, and neither do old hurts. This flies in the face of the modern notion of complete self-actualization.

In this age of the atomized individual, many fancy themselves as self-creations, able to disentangle from the past and shoot forth into the future, all shiny and new.

To a degree, that can happen. But it’s also true that all of our choices and actions continue to live within us. We don’t need to be dominated by the past, but it can’t be wiped away either. And, sooner or later, the choices we made and the things we did, good and bad, circle back.

Squid Game (Netflix)

Like the rest of the world, I loved the Korean drama Squid Game. I didn’t know what to expect when I tuned it, but it won me over. The whole article is here; excerpt below:

Some reviewers have agreed with [series writer/director] Hwang [Dong-hyuk] in saying that Squid Game (available either dubbed in English with Korean subtitles, or in its original Korean with English subtitles) is a criticism of capitalism and the wealthy’s exploitation of the poor.

It’s not exactly subtle that the money the characters are playing for drops into a giant piggy bank over their heads, to the accompaniment of chirpy chiptone music.

But, it’s not that simple.

No matter how dire the circumstances, each character has the freedom to make choices. The fact that many of them made bad choices that landed them in this circumstance doesn’t mean there weren’t, or aren’t, still options.

In the fight for survival, some act nobly, some with cowardice, and others with outright malice — and some aren’t what they seem at the beginning.

The game also purports to offer each player a fair and equal chance — a good reminder that, if we’re honest with ourselves, we really don’t want life to be fair and for each of us to get just what we truly deserve.

YouTube: River, Lady C, Friesian Horses

Starting during lockdown, the YouTube app on my Roku gets a lot of use. Sometimes it’s my first stop in the morning — when usually I’m looking for a new video from one of these three channels. They seriously rival Dr. Pimple Popper as my fave regular YT stops.

River

A new channel (only begun in 2021), it features the rather enigmatic River, a young, flamboyant Englishman, whose chatty, campy style belies a quick wit, a deep intelligence and as he says, an old soul.

He talks a lot about the latest antics of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex — Harry and Meghan — about whom I care very little. But he’s just so entertaining about it. Then he’ll go off into commentary on contemporary events and fashion and philosophical musings.

There’s just about nothing on his personal life or other career pursuits that I can find. He mentions this or that in videos, but a clear picture has yet to emerge.

Reality TV should find him (if he’s willing); he’s a star in the making.

Lady Colin Campbell

Another British-royalty commentator, Lady C (a k a Georgie Ziadie) has a fascinating backstory (click here for a Vanity Fair profile; and here for a piece that details her complicated upbringing).

Born into a prominent Maronite Catholic family in Jamaica, an unspecified “genital defect” caused her family to try raising her as a boy (genetically, she’s female), until a sympathetic grandmother paid to have the defect corrected when she was a young adult.

An adoptive mother of two boys; a socialite and an author of several books about the British royals, Campbell currently owns Britain’s Castle Goring, the former home of Lord Byron.

While long and sometimes rather tiresome on the misdeeds of Harry and Meghan, her videos are also a fascinating source of insights about European and world history, politics, society, various royal clans, her experiences with narcisissts, writing and the vagaries of celebrity (including lawsuits).

Friesian Horses

Especially during lockdown, I appreciated videos that gave me the sense of the great outdoors, and this one did the trick. Rider and horsewoman Yvonne Horjus is behind this channel, centered on a breeding farm for Friesian horses in their native area, the Friesland province in the Netherlands.

Sturdy and mostly black, with feathers on their feet and luxuriant manes and tails, Friesians are popular horses for carriage driving and dressage, and have appeared in many movies.

With her own riding career somewhat curtailed because of rheumatism, Yvonne — who speaks some English on camera, but subtitles her videos in English — has built the channel up to 306K subscribers, plus other social channels and merch, under the hashtag #FollowtheHerd.

It really took off with the saga of Yvonne’s horse Uniek and her foal, Rising Star. When Uniek’s foal Star was stillborn, by chance, a nearby farm had an orphaned foal. He’s not Friesian — instead he’s a bright chestnut KWPN, or Dutch Warmblood — but Uniek took to him immediately. Fans of the channel have gotten to watch Rising Star grow up.

Around him and Uniek are the other Friesian mares and their foals, other Friesians on the farm, the chestnut KWPN gelding Sjors (who, despite not having his full equipment, is perfectly happy to play the protective role of herd stallion), the feisty Dartmoor-pony stallion Johnny, and the farm’s other critters.

Most of the videos are very pastoral — just horses being horses out in the field — and Yvonne is a warm, natural presence.

Rising Star is weaned now, but here’s a look back when he first arrived: