I watch more television than anyone I know — and even I can't pretend to have seen enough to compile a comprehensive end-of-year top 10 list. What I can do is run through a list of the best things I've seen, and why I like them so much. And also, to note a trend or two that seem unique to the current year. If you're looking for great TV to binge over the holidays, consider this a quick guide.
One show that may not make many 2024 top 10 lists, because of its last-second arrival, is the return of Squid Game. Season 1 of this South Korean drama series premiered on Netflix three years ago, and was a surprise but well-deserved hit. Season 2 doesn't drop until the day after Christmas — but I've previewed it, and it's a worthy successor. It expands the focus, the perspectives, even the number of games, and is as brutal, yet as beautifully photographed and intensely acted, as the original. And speaking of beautifully photographed, let's give a nod to another Netflix series, Ripley, the most stunningly shot TV series I saw in 2024.
The best nonfiction shows I saw all year? Beatles '64 on Disney+, and Leonardo Da Vinci on PBS. The best talk shows? HBO's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver and Netflix's John Mulaney Presents: Everybody's in L.A. The best scripted drama and comedy shows? Many were returning series with strong outings in 2024. The latest season of FX's Fargo, with Juno Temple and Jon Hamm, was stunning, surprising and impossible to forget — my favorite series of the year.
Season 2 of Netflix's The Diplomat, starring Keri Russell as the U.S. ambassador to Great Britain, built to a point where it was almost too tense to watch, and ended with a cliffhanger guaranteed to make Season 3 even more of a thrill ride. The latest season of Hulu's The Bear, about workers in and around a newly launched high-end Chicago restaurant, disappointed some, but not me — I ate it all up, especially the final episode.
On the lighter side, the 2024 season of another Hulu series, Only Murders in the Building, was a comedy triumph, giving Meryl Streep an unexpectedly rich role to play, and play with, on TV. And the latest season of Max's Hacks gave Jean Smart the same thing. She's wonderful — and that show's cliffhanger ending promises another great season to come there, too.
Two series ended in 2024, with noteworthy finales. HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm, the long-running Larry David comedy, went out with much attention and fanfare. The Paramount+ series Evil went out with very little. Both were very intelligent, entertaining shows that I watched, and looked forward to, every week until they ended. So farewell and thanks to Curb and Evil.
And hello to a lot of new shows that really made strong first impressions. If you like dramas about intrigue involving politicians or spies, 2024 was a banner year. Black Doves, on Netflix, had Keira Knightley as a very clandestine spy, and she and it were really good. The Madness, starring Colman Domingo as a TV pundit accused of murder, and on the run — a sort of updated version of The Fugitive — also is on Netflix, and is even better than Black Doves. And best of all is The Agency, a new spy series on Showtime and Paramount+ that stars Michael Fassbender, Jeffrey Wright and Richard Gere. It's rolling out weekly at the moment, and is another of the great shows I've seen this year.
HBO's The Penguin surprised me, very pleasantly, with its plot and intensity, and with its impressive leading performances by Colin Farrell and Cristin Milioti. Netflix's Nobody Wants This, a sort of 21st-century Bridget Loves Bernie, was surprising too — funny and tender and romantic in all the right measures. Also deserving of mention, and definitely worth watching: FX's remake of the miniseries Shōgun; Netflix's A Man on the Inside, starring Ted Danson in yet another excellent TV series; and Agatha All Along, the imaginative, very musical Disney+ sequel to WandaVision.
Watch enough of these great shows — as I did — and you'll notice some recurring patterns. Some of the same actors popped up in very different places. Jamie Lee Curtis returned as the unstable mother on The Bear — but she also played a ruthless hit woman in Prime Video's The Sticky. Jodie Turner-Smith, whom I singled out for her great acting in Bad Monkey as the Dragon Queen, shows up as the female lead in The Agency — and is amazing again, in a completely different type of role. And Tracey Ullman, who was so funny as Larry David's unwanted live-in girlfriend on Curb Your Enthusiasm, also showed up at the end of Black Doves, playing a very serious, potentially lethal adversary to Knightley's undercover spy — and, for Ullman, a drastically, impressively different type of role.
Another trend I noticed was how many shows in 2024 featured actors of a certain age — not just in toss-away or clownish roles, but in meaty parts that these veteran performers elevate even higher. I've mentioned some already, from Gere to Streep, but I saw more on TV in 2024 than in any year in decades. These include some of the best performances in some of the year's best shows: Martin Short and Steve Martin in Only Murders; Helen Hunt and Christopher Lloyd in Hacks; Sally Struthers in A Man on the Inside; and Margo Martindale in The Sticky.
I'm happy to see them all working, and thriving, even in a year when the TV terrain has been tougher to navigate — not only for those working in the medium, but those of us watching it. I'm also happy to have seen so many good and great shows in 2024, even if I know I've missed many more.
To sum up, I want to talk about a scene that comes up near the end of my favorite show of the year. It comes near the end of my favorite show of the year, Noah Hawley's Fargo. A mysterious and lethal killer visits a suburban home, intending to kill the family within, but is greeted instead with disarming kindness. The father hands him a cold bottle of orange soda, then clicks it against his own. The killer replies with a short and simple phrase — but it's a phrase that captures perfectly my overall attitude towards television in the year 2024.
"A man,' he says, slowly but appreciatively, "is grateful."
Copyright 2024 NPR
