Anybody might be forgiven for struggling to recollect which TV exhibits aired in 2024. Whereas 2023 gave audiences the ultimate chapters of a number of beloved exhibits—Succession, Barry, Reservation Canine—this yr might have reminded them that Hollywood continues to be taking part in catch-up after the top of the twin writers’ and actors’ strikes. Studios are additionally clearly scuffling with the identical monetary and inventive points that the strikes highlighted: Many streaming companies hiked their costs and cracked down on password-sharing in reported efforts to chop prices; a number of additionally canceled or delisted their unique programming.
Nonetheless, amid a glut of middling reboots and delayed seasons, some standout tv arrived this yr. The record beneath is a snapshot of our favorites from 2024—the brand new and acquainted exhibits that made us chuckle over traditional sitcom hijinks, root for scrappy underdogs, or suppose extra deeply about our personal relationships. Whether or not they transported us to a different century or dropped us in the midst of a high-stakes work atmosphere, these are the sequence that saved our hope for TV’s artistic future alive.
Shōgun (FX)
James Clavell’s best-selling 1975 novel, Shōgun, has been tailored earlier than—however FX’s take made the acquainted really feel contemporary. The delicate historic drama, set in Seventeenth-century feudal Japan, follows three major characters: Toranaga (performed by Hiroyuki Sanada), a lord whose political affect appears to be waning within the face of power-hungry rivals; John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis), an English sailor who’s shipwrecked on Japan’s shores; and Mariko (Anna Sawai), a highborn translator who serves Toranaga. With its putting manufacturing design and genuine rendering of Japanese tradition, the present dazzled thousands and thousands of viewers over its first two episodes alone—and amassed a history-making haul on the Emmys. Shōgun crammed the Sport of Thrones–formed gap in my coronary heart; it’s the sort of epic storytelling that TV has been lacking, a big-budget swing that efficiently balances its bold scope with intimate emotional arcs. — Shirley Li
Anyone Someplace (HBO)
Anyone Someplace is a slow-TV masterpiece in miniature, during which nothing occurs till you’re all of a sudden watching an intense emotional breakthrough in what looks like actual time. The primary season launched us to Sam (Bridget Everett), a lady who moved again house to look after her dying sister. Now mired in grief, she comes to search out sudden solace inside her small-town Kansas neighborhood. Sam meets Joel (Jeff Hiller), a co-worker and pianist who turns into her platonic the whole lot; she begins singing once more at an underground queer cabaret night time; she mends bridges along with her household. The third and last season zeroes in on Sam’s sense of self-worth: how a lot she attaches to different folks, and the way a lot she lastly manages to rebuild for herself. I’ll deeply miss this stunning, naturalistic, bawdy, empathetic present. — Sophie Gilbert
{Couples} Remedy (Showtime)
This Showtime sequence, which paperwork the psychologist Orna Guralnik’s periods with {couples}, stays among the many most incisive and watchable examples of a style referred to by the author Eliza Brooke as “remedy voyeurism” in a 2021 Atlantic essay. The present’s persevering with attraction hinges largely on Guralnik; her calm demeanor and sharp analytical framing information the members (and the viewers) towards astute insights about their relationship patterns. In lots of circumstances, that includes revisiting companions’ previous experiences and analyzing their lingering results. In a few of Season 4’s most putting scenes—reminiscent of these involving two males who wrestle with the lasting penalties of 1’s childhood abuse—Guralnik helps her purchasers perceive how coping mechanisms developed beneath duress can start to undermine them. Viewers might not discover all of Guralnik’s classes new, however each breakthrough feels completely different. — Hannah Giorgis
Business (HBO)
Okay, I’ll admit it: I’m an Business bandwagoner who solely began watching the present this yr. When HBO’s drama a couple of group of younger workers at a multinational funding financial institution started in 2020, there was already a surplus of tales about the amorality of company tradition and the savagery of the rich. Did I actually want one other present tackling these themes? Seems, I did. Business is a propulsive watch loaded with brain-tickling finance jargon and complicated characters, a lot of whom appear poised to vary the establishment they’re working for just for the alternative to occur. Its third and newest season gives a pointy dissection of how work can develop into an obsession, the false guarantees of moral investing, and the limitless cycle of avarice to which stockbrokers (and maybe the remainder of us) belong. The world of latest finance is ruthless, Business posits, but it surely’s no entice. To these on the within, greed is a limitless good. — S. L.
Lioness (Paramount+)
“Finest TV” by definition implies high quality: well-crafted plot, believable characters, clever dialogue. Lioness lacks most of these items—so why, then, do I run to my TV on Sunday nights with such unbalanced enthusiasm? I believe it’s the present’s sheer preposterous spectacle. Ostensibly a drama about feminine CIA operatives charged with clandestine missions, Lioness is mostly a showcase for the film stars who signed on for Taylor Sheridan’s least-coherent manufacturing up to now: Zoe Saldaña as Joe, the chief of the Lioness program, bringing screaming to new heights; Nicole Kidman as Kaitlyn, a CIA official whose iciness is the foil to Joe’s yelling; Morgan Freeman because the secretary of state, offering a mouthpiece for Sheridan’s paper-thin takes on geopolitics. Plenty of issues blow up. Plenty of folks get shot. And, in an operatic show of diva hauteur, Kaitlyn tells a room filled with generals that the “dick-measuring” contest was over the minute she walked in. — S. G.
Abbott Elementary (ABC)
Abbott has proven itself to be an adept interpreter of the fun and frustrations that academics encounter in lots of public-school methods—and an energizing power for the printed sitcom as a format. This yr, the office mockumentary continued its deft explorations of the challenges going through Abbott’s academics and college students. It additionally dedicated even additional to traditional style conventions, serving up movie star visitors and holiday-themed episodes, and reinvigorating a well-known romantic-comedy trope: Might’s Season 3 finale noticed Janine (Quinta Brunson) and Gregory (Tyler James Williams) lastly get collectively, wrapping a multi-season arc of missed connections and bruised egos. Within the Season 4 premiere, which aired in October, Janine tried (and failed) to cover their relationship, whereas Abbott charmingly subjected the newly minted lovers to awkward hijinks of their very own making. Fortunately, Janine and Gregory’s romance hasn’t overtaken the present: The opposite academics have far more urgent issues to fret about, together with a ringworm outbreak that spreads sooner than any gossip. — H. G.
Gradual Horses (Apple TV+)
It wasn’t a incredible yr for drama, what with all of the sludgily paced trippy status miniseries and a Busby Berkeley–like parade of questionable true-crime re-creations. However Gradual Horses didn’t disappoint. In Season 4, Apple’s sly comedian thriller a couple of motley crew of MI5 rejects who preserve discovering themselves out within the discipline—regardless of their boss’s finest intentions—was higher than ever, introducing an enigmatic new villain (Hugo Weaving) and bringing River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) into better focus. Come for Gary Oldman’s Jackson Lamb, sweaty and malodorous and razor-sharp; keep for a few of the best-structured storytelling on tv. — S. G.
Fantasmas (HBO)
Within the first episode of Fantasmas, Paul Dano stars in a fake sitcom a couple of man who falls in love with an Alf-like alien named Melf. He causes a nationwide scandal by abandoning his household to marry Melf and, later, regains the belief of one in all his kids with Melf’s assist. None of this ever comes up once more, however that’s simply how this singular comedy works: Its six episodes supply a group of disparate sketches that immediate viewers to query what they’re watching. The present’s creator, the previous Saturday Evening Dwell author Julio Torres, brings in loads of his well-known mates—his Problemista co-star Tilda Swinton, as an illustration, voices the component of water—to discover a lot of his mundane fixations, together with the absurdity of coping with customer-service representatives and the unusual specificity of focused adverts. With its dreamlike tone and offbeat humor, Fantasmas might not be for everybody. It’s, nevertheless, essentially the most creative present I noticed this yr. — S. L.
Hacks (Max)
If Hacks had been only a formulaic office sitcom riffing on the aggressive affection between the comedy celebrity Deborah Vance (Jean Good) and her acerbic Millennial co-writer, Ava (Hannah Einbinder), I’d be down. Good is so magnificently regal, Einbinder so winningly sarcastic, that their dynamic simply pops. However in its third season, the Max present dug into late-night comedy’s sexist historical past in a method that made Deborah’s eventual ascension to her personal desk really feel each fraught and thrilling. Alongside the way in which had been subplots relating to offensive jokes, Ava’s personal ambitions, and Tom Cruise’s coconut desserts. The principle pull of the present, although, continues to be its ping-ponging, odd-couple vitality. (Paul W. Downs’s Jimmy and Megan Stalter’s Kayla additionally contributed heroically on this entrance.) — S. G.
We Are Girl Components (Peacock)
Might feels prefer it was a lifetime in the past, however I nonetheless keep in mind how excited I used to be to dig into Season 2 of this pleasant British dramedy—and to search out that it had gotten even higher. Season 1 launched Amina (Anjana Vasan), a naive however musically gifted nerd who joins the band Girl Components to get nearer to 1 member’s hunky brother. A lot to Amina’s shock, the sisterhood she finds via the group, which consists solely of younger Muslim ladies, proves way more transformative. Now she’s all in, however the cash-strapped musicians discover themselves at a crossroads: considering whether or not a elaborate file contract is actually their finest subsequent transfer. We Are Girl Components builds on its distinctive voice and magnificence this season with playfully pointed tracks like “Malala Made Me Do It” sending up Muslim stereotypes and intra-community expectations. Document deal or not, the ladies who got here out swinging with “Voldemort Below My Headband” stay as creative, irreverent, and unforgettable as ever. — H. G.
Social Research (FX)
Lauren Greenfield’s docuseries about Gen Z’s relationship with social media—which its members have by no means lived with out—might play like a horror film to folks. Greenfield, who has lengthy chronicled America’s evolving youth tradition, had the excessive schoolers she adopted file their cellphone screens, which suggests the sequence is full of troubling footage of in the present day’s teenagers passing fixed judgment on each other—and themselves—on-line. But Social Research isn’t an alarmist venture condemning youngsters for being too into TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram; as a substitute, it deftly examines how such platforms exacerbate timeless points. Greenfield’s interviews along with her topics’ mother and father reveal how jealousy, isolation, and anxiousness aren’t distinctive to Gen Z, and her phone-free roundtable discussions with teenagers show how conscious they’re of social media’s damaging results. Social Research means that the larger drawback is that the overwhelming litany of apps has been designed to make younger customers really feel self-conscious. Of their candid talks with Greenfield, Gen Zers show that they, as those who finest perceive how such platforms work, might sooner or later have the answer. — S. L
Love Island USA (Peacock)
To borrow from a buddy who peer-pressured me into watching the present’s whopping 37-episode run, “they actually put one thing completely different” on this summer season’s Love Island USA, a spin-off of the favored British reality-dating sequence. Earlier seasons had largely paled compared with the quirky unique. However Season 6 of USA featured a few of the franchise’s most charismatic solid members ever, who shaped relationships that resonated extensively: Social media was awash with surprisingly compelling clips from the Fijian villa housing the romantic hopefuls. Throwing a bunch of “attractive singles” collectively—and placing them on the mercy of an viewers that may vote them off—is hardly a brand new system. However the “islanders,” as they’re referred to as, appeared to precise genuine, susceptible feelings, regardless of the contrivances. Months later, this season’s standout contestants have retained their cultural endurance. Simply ask the NFL star Odell Beckham Jr., who’s been getting referred to as “Kordell’s brother” for the reason that youthful Beckham (and the season’s co-winner) joined the present. — H. G.
Rivals (Hulu)
Sure, Rivals is an adaptation of the epic, sex-laden 1988 novel by Dame Jilly Cooper, the queen of attempting to make horse-obsessed Brits attractive. Sure, it’s set within the high-stakes realm of … regional tv. Sure, it’s largely a couple of louche present jumper turned Tory politician who can’t preserve his pants zipped. The garments are simply on the precise facet of an ’80s-themed costume celebration, the rating is pure soft-rock Gruyère, and everybody appears to continually half-wink on the digital camera. And but, for such a high-camp, absurd present, it’s lethal severe concerning the matter of what ladies deserve. Following together with the bed-hopping and airplane-rocking shenanigans of the swaggering Rupert Campbell-Black (Alex Hassell), in addition to the saintly Taggie O’Hara (Bella Maclean), the smoldering Declan O’Hara (Aidan Turner), and the villainous Tony Baddingham (David Tennant), was essentially the most entertaining distraction from the yr’s unrelenting information cycle. — S. G.