Looking Back at 2021, ‘Landscapers’ Finale, Winter on TCM
A rare lull from the glut of “peak TV” makes the Monday after Christmas (or the Monday before New Year’s, depending on your perspective) a relatively quiet one. ABC News takes a look back at 2021, while Netflix’s Death to 2021 adopts a more sardonic approach. HBO’s moving crime drama Landscapers ends its run, while HBO2 gives subscribers a taste of HBO Max’s more popular shows. Turner Classic Movies acknowledges the arrival of winter with a full day of winter-related cinema.
The Year: 2021
Special
Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts leads the annual retrospective of the highs and lows of the year that’s about to end. With many ABC News correspondents and a few expert guests, including Olympian Michael Phelps, weighing in, The Year looks back at major stories including the Jan. 6 insurrection and the ongoing pandemic as well as breakthroughs in vaccines and spqce flight and the best of pop culture.
Death to 2021
Special
Or you could indulge in this comedy special’s more bitterly funny look back, told in a mock-documentary style with archival footage enhanced by commentary from celebrities including Hugh Grant, Lucy Liu, Tracey Ullman, Ted Lasso’s Nick Mohammed, The Good Place’s William Jackson Harper, Stockard Channing and Cristin Milioti.
Landscapers
Series Finale
The spellbinding true-crime/love story ends as the trial of Susan and Christopher Edwards (the remarkable Olivia Colman and David Thewlis) begins. They take the stand to explain what happened the night her parents were killed and buried in their garden, and as events play out, we’re dropped into what appears to be an old-fashioned Western where the lines between good and evil were so much clearer.
Inside Monday TV:
- Winter on TCM: The chill is on in a daylong lineup of winter-themed films on Turner Classic Movies, starting early at 6 am/5c with Ingmar Bergman’s 1962 Winter Light and at 7:30 am/6:30c with 1968’s Oscar-winning historical drama The Lion in Winter, starring Katharine Hepburn and Peter O’Toole. Other highlights include a Bette Davis post-war romance, Winter Meeting (4/3c), from 1948, also the year of If Winter Comes (6/5c), a drama starring Walter Pidgeon, Deborah Kerr and Angela Lansbury.
- The Flight Attendant (10/9c, HBO2): To lure HBO subscribers to the HBO Max streaming service, the channel is offering the first two episodes of some of the streamer’s buzzier series throughout the week, starting with the Emmy-nominated comic thriller starring The Big Bang Theory’s Kaley Cuoco as a stewardess whose party-girl lifestyle hits turbulence after she wakes up next to a dead body (Michiel Huisman). As the week continues, viewers can sample Love Life, Doom Patrol, Hacks and the sci-fi sleeper Raised by Wolves.
- Kids Baking Championship (8/7c, Food Network): Hosts Valerie Bertinelli and Duff Goldman corral a dozen kid cooks for a 10-week competition, starting with a butterfly-cake challenge that gets some stomachs fluttering.
- Messyness (9/8c, MTV): The viral-video spinoff of Ridiculousness is back for a weeklong run, with Nicole “Snooki” Polizzi as host, savoring embarrassing clips with a panel including Tori Spelling, Adam Rippon and comic Teddy Ray.
