Review: 10 best TV shows of 2024
It was pretty, pretty, pretty sad saying adios this year to comedy's top Scrooge Larry David on "Curb Your Enthusiasm." Likewise, the merry bloodsuckers of "What We Do in the Shadows."
And I'll really miss Tom Selleck and the Reagan cop family who began their 14th and final season on "Blue Bloods." Also, I'm still not over how Kevin Costner left "Yellowstone." That was evil -- and it was also another show that got the boot.
Admittedly, series favorites like "Abbott Elementary" and "Only Murders in the Building" carried on in high style. Ditto to season 2 of "Squid Game." And what a bonus that "Hacks," "Industry," "Somebody Somewhere," "Shrinking" and "Slow Horses" actually stepped up their wily games. Even season 3 of "The Bear" was way better than its detractors claimed.
But let me ask you something: Don't you prefer something original to putting oldies on perpetual repeat? "Ripley," "Presumed Innocent," "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" and "The Day of the Jackal" are all based on better, less padded movies. I love seeing the great Kathy Bates take over the Andy Griffith role in a retrofitted "Matlock" -- but please! The same shows winning Emmys year after year is becoming a drag.
To change that stale mindset, I've tried to limit my "10 best" list to those shiny new things that made their debuts in 2024 and gave us something fresh to shout about.
10.'Fallout'
TV shows carved out of video games are usually boring, or worse. Not "The Last of Us," the exception that proved the rule, and -- woo-hoo! -- not "Fallout," a gem of an eight-episode series set in a post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, where survivors live in underground vaults and play dangerous games. All hail the reliably fantastic Walton Goggins in the dual roles of Cooper Howard, a former 1950s cowboy star canceled for alleged communist ties, and The Ghoul, the noseless, irradiated remnant he becomes 200 years later. Let Goggins be your guide for this wild ride of action, scares and giggles that springs surprises you don't see coming.
9. 'Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story'
You can pick at the flaws in Ryan Murphy's sensationalized 10-part limited series about the conviction of the Menendez brothers, Lyle (Nicholas Alexander Chavez) and Erik (Cooper Koch), for the 1989 murders of their parents, José (Javier Bardem) and Kitty (Chloë Sevigny). But the fifth episode in which Koch as the imprisoned Eric talks directly to the camera in one unbroken take for 33 minutes, detailing his alleged abuse at the hands of his father, is TV at its mesmerizing, muckraking best, a tour de force for Golden Globe acting nominee Koch and a persuasive argument to reopen the case against the brothers.
8. 'Black Doves'
Spy stuff has rarely been done with such delicious naughtiness and by such a dazzling cast. The six-episode series stars Keira Knightley, oozing class and sophistication as the wife of the U.K.'s secretary of state for defense (Andrew Buchan).
When she's not raising their two kids or off with her lover, she's selling state secrets to the highest bidder with the help of a friendly, gay triggerman (the ever-fabulous Ben Whishaw) at the icy behest of one Mrs. Reed (the priceless Sarah Lancashire of "Happy Valley"), who heads a spy syndicate called the Black Doves. Intrigued? How could you not be. It's an action-fueled gem.
7. 'A Man on the Inside'
The always welcome Ted Danson knocks it out of the park in this docu-sitcom -- if there is such a thing -- as a retired widower, still mourning the death of his wife, who goes undercover in a nursing home to help a detective (Lilah Richcreek Estrada) catch an in-house jewel thief. The story is inspired by a real case that happened in Chile, but Danson, 76, and show creator Michael Schur, who paired wonderfully on "The Good Place," bring laughs and touching gravity to this Americanized, one-of-a-kind series that respects the crime-solving seniors, played by a livewire cast that includes Stephen McKinley Henderson, Sally Struthers, and John Getz. It's impossible not to cheer them on.
6. 'True Detective: Night Country'
As a crime anthology series, "True Detective" always starts from scratch with new characters and stories. And the show hit the jackpot in season 4 under knockout showrunner Issa López by adding double Oscar winner Jodie Foster as a nail-tough sheriff in an Alaskan town that stays dark half the year. That adds chilling supernatural elements to the mystery when the sheriff and her deputy (Kali Reis) bring untamed female energy to the case when eight missing scientists from an Arctic research center show up crammed together naked and frozen in the ice, their faces contorted in terror.
5. 'Nobody Wants This'
Come on, everybody wants this. The year's best and most beguiling new sitcom (it concerns the unlikely attraction between a smarta-- LA podcaster played by Kristen Bell and a hot rabbi played by Adam Brody) -- comes from the skill deployed by show creator Erin Foster, daughter of pop maestro David Foster, to turn clichés on their cringey little heads. Above all, credit the sweet-and-sizzling chemistry between Bell and Brody -- they are just plain irresistible -- who radiate the rare kind of charm that keeps "Nobody Wants This" on full bubble over 10 half-hour episodes.
4. 'Disclaimer'
A great film director, Alfonso Cuarón, and two Oscar-winning actors, Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline, combine to create TV fireworks. The seven-part series pivots around a novel, self-published by a retired teacher (an Emmy-worthy Kline), that readers believe tells the real story (set 20 years in the past) of how Blanchett's filmmaker cheated on her husband (Sacha Baron Cohen) with Kline's teen son (Louis Partridge) and then turned her back when the boy drowns trying to save her young child. Treading the thin line between truth and fiction, "Disclaimer" raises the bar on what TV can do when it's firing on all cylinders.
3. 'Baby Reindeer'
Show creator and magnetic star Richard Gadd shook us all up with this spellbinding, semi-autobiographical series about how he, as a London bartender and struggling standup comic, was stalked and sexually harassed by a frumpy, middle-aged lawyer (an unnerving, unforgettable Jessica Gunning). Of course it's not a simple as that, even after the lawyer sends the man she calls "baby reindeer" -- a reference to her favorite childhood toy -- 41,000 emails, hundreds of tweets and 350 hours of voicemails. In seven half-hour episodes, Gadd builds one of the best and most audaciously original series of the year -- the kind you never forget.
2. 'The Penguin'
Tired of "Dark Knight" overkill? Me too, until this high-style, high-octane series cut its own original path into the saga by virtually ignoring the Caped Crusader to focus on Oswald "Oz" Cobb, aka The Penguin. Oz's mob ties leave him little time to harass The Batman, as he did in the 2022 film blockbuster of that name.
Colin Farrell, who becomes unrecognizable in his character transformation, brings ferocity and feeling to Oz as he tries to cope with Sofia Falcone, the vengeful daughter of Gotham's top crime family. She's played for the ages by Cristin Milioti, whose virtuoso villainy is Emmy-worthy. Watching Milioti and Farrell tangle makes for one of the most potent and perverse pleasures of the TV year.
1. 'Shōgun'
Can 18 Emmy wins be wrong? Not this time. Based on the 1975 novel by James Clavell (it's not entirely new, as the novel was previously adapted into a 1980 miniseries as well), this historical epic emerges as the indisputable event of the streaming year. Set during a looming civil war in feudal Japan, circa 1600, this 10-episode series stars the great Hiroyuki Sanada as Lord Yoshii Toranaga and the luminous Anna Sawai as Lady Toda Mariko, the translator whose scandalous love for imprisoned British sea captain John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis) threatens to topple an empire. From first scene to last, the scope and intimacy of this thundering odyssey leaves you breathless. That's what I'm talking about.
