The best TV shows to grace our screens in 2024
Rising high above the writers’ and actors’ strikes, streamers delivered a dizzying array of spectacular shows. Add these to your list for summer holiday viewing.
This year got better and better, confounding those doomsayers who could only see a calamitous future as TV recovered from the actors’ and writers’ strikes that brought Hollywood to a standstill, leaving gaping holes in the programming calendar. There was also an ominous back-to-the-future quality to the media landscape for a time with a permanent contraction in the streaming economy.
But the year quickly hit new heights, in fact, the era of “peak TV” continuing to flourish with a range of boundary-pushing new shows leaving the horrors of striking actors and writers in the cultural rear-vision mirror.
This was storytelling we may only have dreamed about in the already long forgotten era of free-to-air TV.
Baby Reindeer
Baby Reindeer appeared on Netflix almost out of nowhere, a seven-part series that was harrowing to watch but totally irresistible at the same time — and proved to be one of the best TV shows of this year.
It’s emotionally challenging, completely engaging, and acted with raw authenticity. In an unsparing portrait of a consciousness in meltdown, its central protagonist, a would-be stand-up comic, encountered a psychotic stalker, disconnected from reality, with delusions about being in relationship with him.
Adapted by Scottish comedian Richard Gadd from his award-winning one-man show Monkey See Monkey Do, the series recounted the true story of the way he was harassed and stalked for years, and a terrible sexual encounter with a would-be mentor that changed his life.
Curb Your Enthusiasm
The real Larry David, as he likes to call himself, finally had enough of the recalcitrant “TV Larry David”, ending what one critic, already in mourning, called “his excruciatingly funny, gloriously captious dissection of social mores and everyday minutiae”. It was a great farewell season. What hadn’t changed was the way David represents a kind of distorted mirror in which are revealed our true selves and certainly not least those human characteristics we despise and even fear.
David is 76 now and in the new season on Binge was looking it, even more quickly driven to anger, skinny and his legs oddly spindly, and aggressively out of touch. And hilarious. In a world increasingly constrained and socially regulated, we rejoiced once more in Larry David’s politically incorrect chaos, even as we marvelled at the way he has not been cancelled like so many other comics.
Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story
Thirty-five years after they killed their parents, the Menendez brothers were back in the public eye following the huge success of Ryan Murphy’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story. It’s a complex piece of Murphy storytelling, fictionalised to some extent while based on extensive research, campily exaggerated at times and oddly comic, but often highly moving. Like anything Murphy touches, there’s that affinity for the theatrical. He revels in the juxtaposition of the beautiful and the ugly and the violent.
And, of course, the series generated not only controversy but sparked yet new interest in the fate of the brothers.
Ripley
Ripley was Steven Zaillian’s tour de force for Netflix, an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s literary classic that turned it into a compelling black and white noir. Andrew Scott was an ice-cold Ripley, a sociopath with an unblinking stare, a master manipulator stalked unsuccessfully by Maurizio Lombardi’s Inspector Ravini. Beautifully photographed by Robert Elswit, this was exhilarating TV.
True Detective: Night Country
The True Detective anthology finally returned for a compelling fourth season on Binge after a nearly five-year hiatus, created, written and directed by Mexican filmmaker Issa Lopez. She took us north of the Arctic Circle. Jodie Foster was brilliant as edgy, tense police chief Liz Danvers, a cop with a bitter laugh and an intense sense of self-deprecation.
Shogun
Disney’s Japanese feudal epic Shogun was simply mesmerising, full of the most impressive cinematic set pieces, lavishly costumed, viscerally photographed, intellectually self-assured and proof, were it needed, that sophisticated TV storytelling is still going strong.
Supacell
The name Rapman you might ask? Why was it suddenly one of the most uttered in cultural circles and why was the man that owns the moniker being claimed as one of the freshest, most creative voices in TV?
Like Baby Reindeer, Netflix’s Supacell was the other complete surprise of the year. Created by Rapman, aka the British musician turned filmmaker Andrew Onwubolu, this was adventurous and enthralling, and beautifully watchable.
His Supacell took the black experience of South London, a reflection of the city’s evolving cultural identity, and meshed it with the world of sci-fi. The plot? A diverse group of young people become mysteriously stricken with a variety of superpowers. Supacell was raw and visceral, and unpredictable, propelled by the guerrilla-like energy that characterises Rapman’s earlier films but with splendid production values, superb photography, and a terrific cast of predominantly black actors.
Eric
Eric was a surprise too, a six-part Netflix series as compelling as its title was odd. A missing-child mystery and a procedural thriller carried out in the streets of a decaying 1980s New York. It’s the “Rotten Apple” for a generation of Americans, but which paradoxically is presented with an endearing touch of magic realism.
It’s also a dark night of the soul study of a man – a gifted puppeteer called Vincent Anderson, played by the mercurial Benedict Cumberbatch – looking for solace to compensate for his culpability in losing his son on the mean streets on his way to school.
Rebus
Ian Rankin’s Rebus made a welcome return in a new BBC series on SBS On Demand created by Gregory Burke, almost 25 years since John Hannah first brought the Edinburgh cop to the screen, and later the lugubrious Ken Stott.
Burke reimagined the character as a younger Detective Sergeant adrift in the city.
He was played by Richard Rankin (no relation to the novelist) with a hard, remorseless edge and a sardonic bitter smile, in a reimagined concept that was clever and entertaining. Watching Rankin’s surly Rebus again outweighed any literary deficiencies in the contemporary storyline.
So Long, Marianne
So Long, Marianne, from director Oystein Karlsen, also on SBS On Demand, was the television drama that explored the love story between the Canadian singer and poet Leonard Cohen and his Norwegian lover, who was such an important part of his life.
It was a relationship that began so tumultuously on the Greek island of Hydra, its legacy a handful of classic songs. And, as the series dramatised, even though their time together was characterised by chaos, uncertainty, disappointment, and heartache, it somehow endured despite the unhappiness it created for both. Anna Torv stole the show as the rather dissolute writer Charmian Clift, who with husband George Johnston were King and Queen of the expats and their intense, interwoven lives.
The Agency
Towards the end of the year, stories of deception, intrigue and betrayal were everywhere, led by The Agency, a taut, compelling, highly cinematic espionage thriller created by Jez and John-Henry Butterworth, with George Clooney and Grant Heslov among the producers. It featured a stellar cast including Michael Fassbender, Jeffrey Wright, Jodie Turner-Smith and Richard Gere, all splendid, and in top form.
It’s a stylish adaptation of French hit Le Bureau des Legendes centres, set primarily in a section of the Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure, or DGSE – France’s equivalent of the CIA. The new series, was directed with a kind of glacial elegance by Joe Wright, sharing with its counterpart a flawless sense of control over all its elements, and, if initially a little disconcerting, of low-key intensity.
The Day of the Jackal
Then The Day of the Jackal appeared, the third major adaptation of Forsyth’s bestselling novel, following the classic, painstakingly detailed 1973 film directed by Fred Zinnemann and a 1997 remake that starred Bruce Willis and Richard Gere.
Created and written by Ronan Bennett, it starred Eddie Redmayne as the shape-shifting hitman and master of disguise. What Bennett gave us was a slick, astutely engineered thriller, an entertaining orchestration of committed performances, stunt work, and fluid, sometimes mesmerising camera skills worthy of any Bond movie.
Say Nothing
Say Nothing was the gripping tale of clandestine operations in Northern Ireland during The Troubles, that three decades of violence and bloodshed. Adapted from Patrick Radden Keefe’s book, it was also an emotionally devastating tale of collective denial. And as suspenseful as a detective story.
Black Doves
Then Black Doves turned up. What a hoot. Starring Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw, this knockabout spy drama was full of outrageous situations, pithy dialogue and a plot so zany it was almost impossible to follow. But what high jinks. It even finished with Shane McGowan and Kirsty MacColl’s wonderful Christmas anthem.
I’m still humming it as we’re about to hit another great year of watching.