It is remarkable – not to mention impressive – that, given all the turmoil of 2021, we were treated to such a terrific year of culture. As with 2020, there was endless innovation shown in every art form, as performers found ways to create within the restrictions placed on them. The difference this year was that, alongside lockdown-devised albums, remote theatre performances and the like, we were also treated to the hefty backlog of films and TV shows originally intended for the year before, from No Time to Die to season three of Succession. And, for a while at least, there was the return of full-throated live performance, from West End shows to music festivals.

In this week’s newsletter we’re highlighting some of the best culture from 2021, chosen both by me and by you. There are no rankings here; the Guardian has already done that pretty extensively across film, music, TV, games, stage and art. Instead, it is more of a celebration of the great culture that you probably caught (Dune, It’s a Sin) and those gems you almost certainly missed (unearthed recordings from the birth of 80s Chicago house). Thank you for all your great recommendations, and I hope you have a very merry Christmas.

Film

The Guide’s picks

For gargantuan big-screen spectacle at a time when the future of the cinema itself was being questioned, it is hard to look past Denis Villeneuve’s Dune. Right at the other end of the scale, was the hilarious and cringe-inducing low-budget comedy Shiva Baby. Its lead, Rachel Sennott, is a superstar in waiting. Pablo Larraín’s psychological horror-comedy Spencer was the year’s most audacious and divisive film, a Sandringham-set Rosemary’s Baby with Kristen Stewart’s Princess Diana in the Mia Farrow role. And on the documentary front, two very different films leaped out: MLK/FBI’s gasp-inducing uncovered history of institutional skullduggery, and Questlove’s joyous 1969 concert film Summer of Soul (... Or, When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised).

Reader picks

Best film of the year for me is The Power of the Dog. Loved the cinematography and the slow pace, and the acting was brilliant. It’s a film I’d watch again to catch the subtleties. Jane Campion is a superb director, kudos to her.

Suzanne Gauthier

Must see: Coda! Would return to the theatre for that one, again and again.

CG

I thought Minari was splendid: beautiful, original, moving and hilarious. Excellent acting as well. What more could you want?

Yvonne Durie [Further reading: Minari star Steven Yeun spoke about the film as well as his love of the great Bong Joon-ho, in an interview earlier this year]

My favourite film was Another Round, which I’m sure will get lots of votes!

Karen Beesley

Music

The Guide’s picks

Surely 2021’s most gorgeously produced album, the daring, bracing, vast-sounding Sometimes I Might Be Introvert saw north London rapper Little Simz deliver on a decade’s worth of promise. Shame’s taut and propulsive Drunk Tank Pink was my favourite of the many British post-punk/noise-rock albums that landed in 2021 (although Black Midi’s John L remains the most thrillingly out-there track I heard this year). Promises – Floating Points, Pharoah Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra’s lovely ambient-electronica-jazz hybrid – was perfect aural escapism in a frenetic year. And for pure jangly catchiness, it is hard to look past the Canadian outfit Kiwi Jr’s Cooler Returns, positioned perfectly between the Strokes, Parquet Courts and Pavement.

Reader picks

The Solution Is Restless by Joan as Police Woman, Tony Allen and Dave Okumu. Created music, not simply constructed.

Niall O’Donnell

Under the Conditions by LeRon Carson. Not sure if this really counts as new since Carson died in 2016, but a lot of these tunes are previously unreleased, made at the birth of house music in Chicago on the lowest of lo-fi equipment. This is amazing stuff, up there with Virgo, Mr Fingers & co, back at the start of Trax, DJ International, Underground, Mitchbal and all the other seminal labels.

Mike Firth

Pressure Machine by the Killers.

Rosa Bartlett [Hailed by the Observer as their best album in years]

Cleo Sol took over from Max Richter for my own personal lullaby.

Maggie Chute [Further reading: as well as her own soothing soul-jazz, Cleo Sol also found time to make yet another album with the prolific collective Sault, which found its way on to the Guardian’s best of 2021 list]

Isles by Bicep got me through lockdown.

Suzanne Stockton

TV

The Guide’s picks

Although I am still not convinced it quite stuck the landing, Russell T Davies’s deeply affecting Aids drama It’s a Sin is the show that stayed with me the longest this year. The ridiculously consistent Succession has to be mentioned in any end-of-year sum-up, while the pitch-black satire of The White Lotus more than deserved its sleeper-hit status. It was a great year for small-screen documentaries: the Beeb’s policy of just letting Adam Curtis crack on with things bore fruit with his most ambitious series yet, Can’t Get You Out of My Head, while Steve McQueen’s doc about the 1981 fire in New Cross, south London, Uprising, served as a sobering postscript to his drama series Small Axe. And two British comedies – Jamie Demetriou’s fantastically daft Stath Lets Flats and Liam Williams’s note-perfect coming-of-age series Ladhood – returned with new outings that somehow improved on what had come before.

Reader picks

I learned about the Netflix series Somos from the Guardian. It’s about a Mexican town that is slowly taken over by drug traffickers, and it’s brilliantly done. Lives are upturned and destroyed by a wrong turn, a misplaced word, an unintended glance. It’s terrifying, tragic, subtle and with some superbly subdued performances from mostly unknown actors. A worthy addition to the year’s best.

Andrew Downie

The best series, without doubt, and not just because I live in Bristol was Stephen Merchant’s The Outlaws. Great cast, great writing, funny, serious, political and riveting.

Josephine Eliot [Further reading: earlier this year, Stephen spoke to our magazine Saturday about his “low rent western” The Outlaws, and also walking through a plateglass window at a party hosted by Sarah Silverman]

There was a recent spate of very good BBC dramas running in four-to-six parts. Showtrial was first class.

Sheelah Kehoe

Unforgotten’s Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar are the best double act on TV – bar none. Continuing the Nicola Walker theme, a shout for Annika – a quirky police procedural shown on Alibi, set in Scotland with her as the eponymous detective inspector. She breaks the fourth wall constantly, drives a boat to work, and references Viking words and customs to make sense of the plot. Completely oddball, but rather charming.

Rob Mansfield

I loved The White Lotus, and of course Succession!

Elaine Dunlap

Time by Jimmy McGovern, starring Stephen Graham and Sean Bean. Amazing story and acting from this impressive duo.

Louise Carr

Podcasts

The Guide’s picks

At a time where podcasts have somewhat lost that buzzy, blockbuster quality, Tortoise’s addictive catfishing investigation Sweet Bobby was an exception, harking back to the glory days of pods such as Serial. The film-maker Adam McKay hosted the engrossing Death at the Wing, which recounted the tragic deaths of high-profile basketball players in the 80s through the prism of Reaganism, while Karina Longworth’s old Hollywood podcast You Must Remember This had a particularly great season on Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. My favourite of the “people amiably chatting” genre this year was film pod The Big Picture, which seems to have come into its own in lockdown, with its lively “movie draft” episodes, director top fives and zingy back and forths from hosts Sean Fennessey and Amanda Dobbins.

Reader picks

World Service’s Deeply Human. Great presenter and subject.

Maggie Chute

Sweet Bobby came late in the year, but was a fantastic listen. The mic-drop moment in episode three was worth it alone. It’s been left tantalisingly open for a follow-up, but I was left counting down the days between episodes.

Rob Mansfield [Further reading: the Observer’s Miranda Sawyer was just as hooked by Sweet Bobby]

I like boring history podcasts, so it’s Rex Factor.

Suzanne Stockton

Books

The Guide’s picks

The Guardian’s books of the year list is an absolute monster this year, covering everything from Sally Rooney’s Beautiful World, Where Are You to Warren Ellis’s imaginative music biography, Nina Simone’s Gum. You can explore the whole thing here, helpfully divided into categories from politics to food. Meanwhile, the Observer has handed its books of the year list over to the experts, with authors ranging from Bernadine Evaristo to Kazuo Ishiguro highlighting their favourites from 2021.

Reader picks

Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkeman. To call this a book about time management is a whopping understatement and a major injustice. It gets to the heart of our existence and what, individually, our place here is – it’s part self-help, but a bigger part life philosophy. I defy you not to find something in here that will make you reassess the way you live your life.

Rob Mansfield

Civilisations by Laurent Binet, translated by Sam Taylor. Mary Bailey
[This does sound fascinating: a counter-factual novel imagining what would have happened if the Incas had settled in Europe]

My favourite book published this year was A Bright Ray of Darkness by Ethan Hawke.

Karen Beesley [Further reading: we interviewed Ethan for his first novel in 20 years, as well as his unlikely love of Doris Kearns Goodwin]

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