It was a year when we hoped we would return to normality, but normality still eludes us. Film and television once again rose to the challenge in 2021, providing us with entertainment that either spoke to the times or provided escapism, or both. And the best of it wasn’t normal at all. From Squid Game to The White Lotus, from James Bond’s shocking goodbye to Shang-Chi’s game-changing arrival, it was very much not business as usual. And while we yearn for normality to return to our lives, it’s provocative, stimulating material we want on our screens. We certainly got it.

Netflix, July

“Absolute rule is going to take a strong stomach,” says narrator Mr Peter Dinklage (who, as Game Of Thrones’ Tyrion Lannister, had tyranny in his bones) in this documentary series that takes a sideways look at dictatorship. Via a subversive, sardonic approach, this isn’t a dry re-telling of history. It’s downright chilling.

BBC iPlayer, February

All Mr Adam Curtis’ work is overwhelming and this – a series of films subtitled An Emotional History Of The Modern World – was exactly that. It attacked our feelings from the start, leaving us enlightened, a little shattered and, as usual, trying to fend off the pessimism with hope. An epic.

Netflix, January

For all his showmanship, sometimes Mr Martin Scorsese likes to present things just as they are and this, his celebration of legendary wit Ms Fran Lebowitz, lets her – literally – speak for herself. Lebowitz is on fine form, cycling through New York observations old and new as an enrapt Scorsese guffaws relentlessly. It’s infectious.

Netflix, September

Forget about its staggering success, about the endless column inches, about those wild record-breaking Netflix stats (in your face, Bridgerton!), Squid Game, Mr Hwang Dong-hyuk’s supremely violent attack on capitalism, deserved it all for being unpredictable, exciting, mind-boggling, eye-popping television. Season two is on its way, because of course it is.

HBO/Sky Atlantic, April

Ms Kate Winslet has always been great, but her work in this crime thriller, a murder investigation in smalltown Philadelphia, cut through in unexpected ways. And all the way to the bone. It’s a powerhouse performance in a beautifully stripped-down drama. You live through it with her and the grime sticks. It’s hard to scrub it off.

Netflix, September

The third season of Ms Laurie Nunn’s taboo-smashing comedy drama ramped things up. It was as cutting as ever, but with even greater depth and a revelation in the form of musician Dua Saleh, playing non-binary student Cal. It’s been a groundbreaking show from the start, but its greatest achievement is that it continues to be so.

HBO/Sky Atlantic, October

Succession singlehandedly brought back the water-cooler moment. Even with many of us still working from home, that continues to be the case, as season three seized control of Twitter on a weekly basis. Even more uncompromising in its viciousness, it was also often devastating. We’ve never cared so much for such awful people. What a fantastically bloody mess.

HBO/Sky Atlantic, July

For more than 20 years, Mr Mike White has been making some of America’s most skin-curdling, cringey, biting films and TV show. But The White Lotus, his dark and hilarious satire about entitlement, privilege and colonialism, was a cultural breakthrough. It was as perverse as it was incisive – and you’ll never look at a suitcase the same way again.

C4/HBO Max, January

You cry throughout It’s A Sin, out of anger, sadness, joy – and sometimes all at once. Having revolutionised TV with Queer As Folk and resurrected Doctor Who, Mr Russell T Davies poured everything he had into this semi-autobiograpical drama, which confronted the UK’s Aids crisis head on. It’s an essential document of an era and its humanity is heartbreaking.

Disney+, December

Sixty hours of footage were shot of The Beatles making their Let It Be album in January 1969 and Mr Peter Jackson’s series is like time travel. It is an incomparable joy to see the band just being, magically creating classics out of thin air, while Ms Yoko Ono reads a newspaper. And every second of the rooftop finale is thrilling.

Mr Denis Villeneuve pulled off a miracle here, making a big-budget adaptation of Mr Frank Herbert’s wild sci-fi novel on his own terms. Not only did he film the supposedly unfilmable, but he made a movie that all but redefines awe. Highlights include those (literally) all-consuming sandworms and a slimy Mr Stellan Skarsgård, but its Villeneuve’s vision that engulfs and entrances.

Mr Daniel Craig’s swan song was as finite as it gets, going out in style and with lots of bangs, in thrall to its own legacy while unafraid to make left turns. We had a show-stealing Ms Ana de Armas and an ingenious use of magnets, but Craig himself elevated this. More human than ever, here, finally, was a Bond to feel for.

This was a breath of fresh air for Marvel, an origin story that didn’t tick off the usual boxes and an Asian-led spectacle that respected its roots. Mr Simu Liu more than holds his own, while exhilarating fight sequences on buses and buildings set your adrenaline on fire. All this and dragons, too.

If Free Solo, the heart-stopping documentary about rock climber Mr Alex Honnold, had you on the edge of your seat, this one shoves you off it. Twenty-three-year-old Canadian Mr Marc-André Leclerc free solos (no ropes) on remote frozen mountains, not for glory, but out of compulsion, escapism and freedom, mostly from himself. Your jaw won’t close.

Mr Edgar Wright is as obsessive about music as he is about film – evidenced by how he weaves one into the other in everything he does – and this, marrying the two, is infinitely more vibrant than your average music documentary. Sparks are impossible to box in and this playful, lively tribute does them justice. It’s bursting with love.

Ms Jane Campion has taken Mr Thomas Savage’s 1967 novel and turned it into pure cinema. The story is set in 1925, but Campion’s adaptation is a compassionate tale of toxic masculinity that feels absolutely contemporary, diving into grey areas while her camera swoons over the Montana mountains. It runs around the mind long after it ends.

Mr Shaka King’s crime drama about the unbelievably young chairman of Illinois’ Black Panther chapter is illuminating and horrifying, but it’s the two leads who hit hardest. Mr Daniel Kaluuya, as Fred Hampton, is appropriately magnetic. Mr Lakeith Stanfield, as the confused FBI informant who betrays him, is furtive, unsure, jittery. Thoroughly arresting stuff.

Mr Lee Isaac Chung’s plaintive, gentle, but nevertheless gut-punching exploration of the rotting American Dream feels like a dream itself, as a South Korean immigrant family struggle to make a success of things in Arkansas. It is soulful, pretty and poetic, with surprising forays into absurdism, most entertainingly from Ms Youn Yuh-jung’s renegade, riotous grandma, Soon-ja.

A startling debut film from England’s Ms Rose Glass, this troubling tale of religious fervour is horror at its best. No cheap jump scares, nothing hokey – just pure psychological terror, with a couple of sequences that will scar you and an astonishing performance from Ms Morfydd Clark. The film quivers and quakes. It’s all wonderfully upsetting.

Ms Arianne Phillips is one of Hollywood’s most notable costume designers, as you’ll know if you’ve seen Hedwig And The Angry Inch, A Single Man and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood. This MR PORTER production, made in collaboration with Philips, demonstrates why she’s so influential in fashion and how she’s just as much a storyteller as her directors. It fizzes with style.