I’m not gonna lie to you, this list is a ton of prep work. Listening to a bunch of albums is way easier than watching a bunch of TV shows (usually like 40-50 shows a year watched to completion). But how well do I actually do? Am I actually considering and giving you the best shows of the year?
I mean, I’m only one man, but I think I do well enough. Internet friend Mikey Tabletop has, for the past couple of years, done what Metacritic no longer does and aggregated just about every critic list of the best TV of the year, resulting in this spreadsheet. I managed to watch all of the top thirteen shows on it, and then 18 of the top 20 (I’m only missing Say Nothing, which would be my next watch if I had another week, and Slow Horses, which I would need to catch up on). My watching mostly consists of critical favorites, other various continuing series (I rarely drop a show, I don’t recommend this lifestyle), and then animation, which is often underheralded in features like these.
So this ends my features on the best of 2024. Stay tuned for a special bonus feature next Thursday, where I rank the 25 best songs of the decade so far.
20. Curb Your Enthusiasm
season 12
10 episodes (120 total plus 1 special)
stream: Max
Larry David (character) spends the entire final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm charged for the crime of giving water to a voter in line in Atlanta, Georgia. Larry’s accidental defiance of the draconian Georgia law makes him a national hero, but privately, Larry is still doing things like telling his gay lawyer that he and his husband have chosen the inferior surname for their newly adopted baby.
The season culminates in a courtroom scene where everyone that Larry has ever wronged testifies. Wait a minute.
While Curb Your Enthusiasm‘s twelfth season doesn’t quite have the juice of its peak years, it’s still absolutely got juice, and this is well-demonstrated in the finale. Larry (real person) has revisited Seinfeld on Curb before, and while this isn’t quite as transcendent, he manages to yet again reach across sitcom fictions to right his past wrongs.
19. Delicious in Dungeon
season 1
24 episodes
stream: Netflix
At first I was unmoved by Delicious in Dungeon‘s hook. Oh boy, a Dungeons & Dragons setting featuring fake cooking lessons about how to use monsters in your cuisine. How useful. But Delicious in Dungeon is more like a fictional nature program relayed to us through each episodic battle/puzzle the core party takes on and then also through, yes, the cooking program.
Especially with Studio Trigger going all in on the animation, it’s not hard to see why Delicious In Dungeon was maybe the most celebrated anime of the year. Though it can sometimes feel a little humdrum for a fantasy show, Delicious In Dungeon packs a punch when it counts, and eventually you already know so much about the titular dungeon’s wildlife that you’re invested even in the quieter moments.
18. Sound! Euphonium
season 3
13 episodes (39 total plus 2 films)
stream: Crunchyroll
What seems like a simple, cute show about high schoolers in their concert band club has always been more emotionally complex, making clear from the get-go that this is a series not about music and fun but about competition. It’s always been about making sure that a very large group of students has the same lofty goal for the organization, and all of the complicated group dynamics that emerge while holding that together.
This third and final season sees Kumiko and Reina take over the club in their senior year, and after the previous year’s failure, they (especially Reina) are dead set on winning the national competition. But discord ripples throughout the group as Kumiko faces stiff competition from transfer student and fellow euphonist Mayu.
This season takes the excellent first two seasons, in which Kumiko and Reina are first years, and flips it on its head: where Reina had been the young challenger to the club’s senior vanguard, Kumiko is now the challenged elder. Moreover, Kumiko is nagged all season about what she plans to do after high school. After an eight year wait for the next season, Sound! Euphonium finally ends its run beautifully.
17. Somebody Somewhere
season 3
7 episodes (21 total)
stream: Max
Somebody Somewhere concludes with its third season. What was once a story about Sam returning to her hometown of Manhattan, Kansas is now mostly about the ordinary moments in everyday life there.
There’s not a lot out there like Somebody Somewhere. Its gentle comedy and soft emotional punches really demand that you buy into these ordinary stories. This season, Sam finally thinks about getting romantically involved with a fellow Manhattan-ite. Joel adjusts to living with his new partner. Tricia keeps building her new business. Fred’s new wife is watching his health. These might sound like entries from your local paper’s society pages, but Somebody Somewhere treats them with respect, urgency, and perspective. It was a beautiful little show that will be missed.
16. House of the Dragon
season 2
8 episodes (18 total)
stream: Max
After a stop-and-start first season of context, the Dance of the Dragons begins in earnest. Game of Thrones has always done well with battles and war, but the all-encompassing horror of royal families warring with so many enormous, flying dragons gives House of the Dragon an unceasing sense of fear and paranoia that Game of Thrones simply didn’t trade in.
Which is not to say it’s outright better than Game of Thrones‘ heyday. But House of the Dragon is justifying itself despite not matching Thrones‘ intricate chessboard intrigue. House of the Dragon‘s success is in making its war maximally spectacular and the specter of its conflict even more dreadful than Thrones ever managed.
15. Dandadan
season 1
12 episodes
stream: Netflix
Okay, huge caveat here. Dandadan would actually be quite a bit higher on this list. But there are unwise scenes involving, uh, sexual danger in its premier and finale (both scenes in the Dandadan manga, of course), and they are just so wholly unnecessary to the proceedings. I just have to mention them in case someone bites on this recommendation and thinks I’m a freak! But Dandadan easily makes this list despite that because it is zany, adorable, and a visual feast.
Cool girl loner Momo Ayase (obsessed with spirits) and unpopular nerd Ken Takakura (obsessed with aliens) have an argument over which obsession is actually for real. Upon learning that both of them are, the two grow closer and closer as Ken’s testicles are stolen (yeah) and they keep falling into the same paranormal situations. Dandadan makes surprisingly great use of romantic tension, and otherwise it’s just a great (and unhinged) action show. Nothing out there is quite like Dandadan, and as long as you can look past its two bad moments, it will be rewarding, and I hear it continue its greatness in future seasons.
14. Oshi no Ko
season 2
13 episodes (24 total)
stream: HiDive
After its sprawling, unbelievable opener, Oshi no Ko‘s first season took on the Japanese entertainment industry, but it couldn’t settle down. So here, it’s welcome that Oshi no Ko‘s second season really feels like it coheres, spending the bulk of its time on a 2.5D stage play, and like in season one, it pulls back the curtain on the unintuitive collaborative process in the industry while also using the play itself – whose premier lasts three entire episodes – to dive directly into the heads of its characters. And after all this, Oshi no Ko throws us a bone by getting around to some of the questions that have laid dormant since that aforementioned series premier. It’s not quite as thrilling as the best moments of the first season, but in turn Oshi no Ko has become a more complete, more fully-realized proceeding.
13. Hacks
season 3
8 episodes (24 total)
stream: Max
Hacks – the story of a young comedy writer pushing legendary comedienne Deborah Vance out of the comfort zone of an eternal Las Vegas residency – has been great already, but its third season gets extra gas by really tearing into how Ava’s destructive relationship with Deborah is something she consistently chooses. Season two ended with the kind of parting shot that lets a series just end if it really has to, but Hacks uses its almost-reversion to its status quo to really observe why it keeps arriving back there. Hacks‘ greatest strength remains its performances. I’m sure if Satan wasn’t forcing The Bear into the comedy categories at every award ceremony it would still be cleaning up, and deservedly so.
12. Shōgun
season 1
10 episodes
stream: Hulu
It is impossible to ignore Shōgun‘s sheer execution. Its visual spectacle is well worthy of the Game of Thrones comparisons, and its performances – particularly Hiroyuki Sanada as Emperor-hopeful Toranaga and Anna Sawai as translator Toda Mariko – are probably just the year’s best. It is a constant wonder to watch, and while it can feel a little slow, Shōgun is more than sufficiently rewarding of your patience in the big moments.
A couple of red marks, though: The very ending lands pretty awkwardly, and new season orders means that Shōgun will move beyond its source material. Call me pessimistic, but I’m not envisioning a Leftovers-style success story for future seasons that set their own course. But hopefully I’m wrong.
11. Pachinko
season 2
8 episodes (16 total)
stream: Apple TV+
Pachinko, a twin-storyline series about A. a Korean family in Japan in 1989 and B. how the grandmother got through the twentieth century to then, continues apace, and this season focuses heavily on the past storyline, barreling towards the show’s great mystery: why do we never see Sunja’s eldest son Noa in the 1989 storyline?
Though there are fewer jaw-wide-open moments than in season one and the themes of Japanese subjugation of and discrimination against Koreans are relaxed for now, season two chugs dutifully along as perhaps the most casually excellent drama of the last few years. The 1989 story feels a tad neglected, likely so there’s enough left in season three to resolve things there, but the young Sunja story feels all the more rewarding with young Noa and Baek kicking around, first as they survive through the Second World War and then as they grow up during the Korean War.
Pachinko continues to quietly be one of the best shows on TV, but people continue to sleep on it because there’s no particularly hooky angle. It’s just really good stuff, is all.
10. English Teacher
season 1
8 episodes
stream: Hulu
English Teacher was the best sitcom of the year. You unfortunately should not watch it. Next!
9. Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End
season 1
28 episodes (12 in 2024)
stream: Crunchyroll
I understand that this is sort of by nature for a show about the merciless passage of time, but outside of the main cast, the first cour of Frieren lacked many characters that felt like they’d matter going forward. The back half of Frieren‘s first season aggressively corrects this by hosting a mage exam (think the first arc of Hunter x Hunter) filled with many compelling faces they’d be stupid to not have pop up again. And while the new characters and the competitive context are all a blast, what really pops is Frieren‘s (and Frieren’s) unique relationship with magic. Already, Frieren has perhaps established itself as the most essential anime of the decade so far, and anyone with any tolerance for anime really needs to get on top of it.
8. Fantasmas
season 1
6 episodes
stream: Max
Julio Torres’ (kinda) sketch show Fantasmas wins this year’s The Curse Award for Strangest Vibe. In the upsettingly near future, Julio navigates a kafkaesque nightmare search for government documentation, and sketch-like sequences depict the peculiarities of this near future, from absurdities in technology, media, and communication to surrealist nonsense.
A young woman who plays a superhero at a theme park engages with a superfan who is not aware of non-superhero stories. Julio speaks with his annoying and extremely tiny social media consultant. A food delivery driver reveals he has a shocking past involving a major cultural moment. Julio sucks at jumping rope and makes a disturbing proposal to his jump rope class. A middle-aged man uses Grindr as “L👀KING 4 TWINKS 2 SUCK” to lure in potential victims for a photograph of his dead Pomeranian. And that’s all just one episode. Fantasmas is disorienting and hilarious, but most importantly it gives you the sensation that the dumb culture it depicts is basically already here.
7. Smiling Friends
season 2
8 episodes (17 episodes total)
stream: Max
Adult Swim’s new phenomenon has returned with an even stronger season. Smiling Friends has always specialized in the upsetting (from vaguely to very), so they dial in even more on that aspect: a scary man demands that Charlie make him smile, the disgusting Jimble requests the Smiling Friends’ help in reelecting him as the President of the United States to stave off a challenge from the ever-threatening Mr. Frog, and Pim and Mr. Boss travel to the stylistically-confounding Spamtopia, where you are not allowed to look its residents in the eye and everyone talks like they’re in the Clock Crew (if you understand that reference, congratulations). On top of that, nearly every episode uses some kind of mixed media on top of the traditionally-animated characters.
Smiling Friends‘ natural-feeling dialogue (think Home Movies) paired with its disarmingly insane events remains a winning formula, and its creators have a passion for animation that derives from their history on the Newgrounds-era internet. The only problem is that eight eleven-minute episodes is agonizingly few.
6. Arcane
season 2
9 episodes (18 total)
stream: Netflix
Look, yes, League of Legends-based Arcane is great. Its first season was great, and its conclusive second season was worth the three year wait. It’s an enormous achievement in animation, it’s a rare Western-produced animated drama that’s adult in tone, and it’s an emotional powerhouse of a show with strong themes and great characters.
But Arcane‘s second season can feel pretty bumpy! If its story about a well-off society trying to find safety by controlling the people of its poorer neighbor feels prescient, that aspect does fall a bit by the wayside compared to season one. If season one felt logical, season two feels challenging not just by feeling more abstract but by being significantly more complicated, losing some of the simplicity that made the themes in its first season pop so hard. Its insistence on maximal seriousness in all moments with zero levity can feel a little suffocating. I cannot understate this: Arcane has a stretch of four episodes where three 9/11’s happen. The show’s (great!) original soundtrack cannot stop over-describing exactly what is happening on the screen.
But all of those dings can be taken positively, too. There are few shows, let alone animated shows, whose ambitions are as high as Arcane‘s, and at a time where even a masterpiece like Scavengers Reign will get unceremoniously canceled, it’s so awesome to see a studio really financially invest in animation.
5. X-Men ’97
season 1
10 episodes
stream: Disney+
X-Men might just be the best superhero property, but its cultural life has predominantly resided in live action films for the past twenty-some years, with some very dodgy (or worse) movies marring the legacy of the great ones while said great ones are already complicated by director Bryan Singer, whose “sexual assault allegations” tab on his Wikipedia page runs pretty long. But outside of just the comics, the X-Men really belong in Saturday morning cartoons. I loved X-Men: Evolution as a kid.
But X-Men ’97 revives Evolution‘s more operatic, less complicated predecessor from 1992, and ’97 absolutely goes for it, in all directions. There are a couple of duds, sure. Jubilee and Sunspot get trapped in a video game. There’s a whole thing about a Jean Grey clone and which one is real and what that even means.
There are some that are completely off the wall. Storm loses her powers and is tormented by a demon. There’s a whole thing with aliens.
And then there is absolute fucking gold. Professor X leaves Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters to Magneto, who pleads his case in front of the United Nations. There’s the incredible episode on Genosha. Someone actually utters the words “Magneto was right.”
Even when it doesn’t completely work, it’s just a blast to see a show set off on crazy plotlines with seemingly no inhibitions. There will surely be more seasons, although showrunner Beau DeMayo was removed from the show due to allegations and evidence of sexual misconduct. Can someone normal make some great X-Men content for the screen, please?
4. Ripley
season 1
8 episodes
stream: Netflix
In 1960, New Yorker Tom Ripley is approached by one Herbert Greenleaf, who has mistaken him for a friend of his son, Dickey. Mr. Greenleaf offers to pay Ripley to travel to Italy to convince his slacker artist son to come home. Ripley accepts and travels to Italy, but Ripley is a conman and has other mysterious designs for Dickey. Dickey graciously accepts Ripley into his home, but Dickey’s girlfriend Marge senses there is something off about Dickey’s friend Tom.
The water slowly boils for two episodes until Ripley produces steam in its third episode and never stops whistling. Ripley navigates an impossible web of lies, traveling across Italy to keep everyone fooled. Ripley is extremely stressful and suspenseful for an unbearable proportion of its runtime.
It’s also shot incredibly well, with each black and white frame feeling as meticulously planned as Ripley’s next step. Andrew Scott also turns in one of the performances of the year as Tom Ripley, giving him an unnervingly pleasant radio voice. Ripley is an incredible ride, and though I haven’t read the books (or seen the film, for that matter), here’s hoping that they adapt the subsequent novels so we can get back on.
3. Interview With The Vampire
season 2
8 episodes (15 total)
stream: AMC+
Interview With The Vampire‘s first season was great, but though its second season does largely lose Sam Reid’s great performance as Lestat, the first season’s New Orleans setting began to feel cramped, and Eric Bogosian had too little to do as Daniel.
So it’s perfect that at the end of season one, Louis introduced Daniel to his (fellow vampire) lover Armand, and he just got to the part in the story where he and Claudia left for Europe. Interview deals with a larger cast this time around, and it’s refreshing to not be so bound to the Louis-Lestat-Claudia trifecta.
Interview‘s second season is just stuffed with payoffs. What happens to the Théâtre des Vampires? What really happened during Daniel’s first interview with Louis? What’s this Armand fellow’s deal? What becomes of Claudia?
Again, I can’t claim to have a strong picture of how strong an adaptation Interview is, but I’m aware that the explicit queerness, Louis and Claudia being black, and the titular interview being a follow-up are all inventions of this series. They continue to be incredibly strong elements of the show, and with this second season being so rich with resolutions to our lingering questions, few recent seasons have felt as rewarding as Interview‘s second.
2. Baby Reindeer
limited series
7 episodes
stream: Netflix
Baby Reindeer tells the real life story of how creator, director, writer, and lead actor Richard Gadd was stalked and harassed by a serial stalker (who had been to prison for it before) and how this tied into his history as a survivor of sexual assault. That’s a lot. Baby Reindeer is not usually quite as heavy as all that sounds, and indeed the intensity of “Donny” navigating the puzzle that is Martha can even occasionally feel a bit fun. But Baby Reindeer does always feel psychologically heavy, even when Donny is navigating his budding relationship with a trans woman or pursuing his dreams of being a prop comic.
Baby Reindeer is an arresting piece of television, and it’s made watchable by Josephine Bornebusch’s powerhouse turn as Martha. Martha is endlessly fascinating to watch, and Bornebusch somehow keeps her schtick fresh across these seven episodes.
It also just feels amazing that Gadd processed this personal story of his into a series like this. Baby Reindeer might feel overwhelmingly intense, but that feels slightly less so because the show itself is also a great act of courage.
1. Industry
season 3
8 episodes (24 total)
stream: Max
After one of its central characters leaves the British investment banking giant Pierpoint to end the second season, Industry has become less attached to its original central setting, and this has sparked a sense of freedom in the show. Industry‘s monumental third season is less interested in the nuts and bolts of investment banking than ever, instead taking the time to send the central characters through the wringer and stare into their souls. Rishi has loan sharks threatening to chop off his limbs. Harper fully embraces her ability to be a bad person. Eric makes his choice between loyalty to his company and loyalty to his friend. Yasmin ducks the press as her horrible father goes missing. Robert wakes up next to a dead woman. And this all centers around newcomer Kit Harrington’s role as manchild billionaire Henry Muck (hrm) and his company (a Pierpoint client) attempting to go public.
These character portraits can be so stunning and strangely captivating that The Sopranos is perhaps the only apt comparison. Rishi has the entirety of “White Mischief,” of course. Robert has an intense trip on ayahuasca in “Company Man.” We learn a distressing amount about Yasmin’s real feelings about her missing father in “Nikki Beach, or: So Many Ways To Lose.” Everyone shines in finale “Infinite Largesse,” but it’s never felt like we had a clearer picture of Eric than we do there.
And “Infinite Largesse” leaves us in a confusing place. If season two’s finale dared the show to leave the confines of Pierpoint, this finale dares even further. I almost assumed this was it for the show, but a fourth season is confirmed. I trust no show more to continue to venture into the unknown.
Honorable Mentions
Abbott Elementary, season 3 & 4
BLUE LOCK, season 2
Bob’s Burgers, seasons 14 & 15
Fallout, season 1
Heartstopper, season 3
Mr. & Mrs. Smith, season 1
My Adventures With Superman, season 2
Shrinking, season 2
Silo, season 2
The Apothecary Diaries, season 1
The Bear, season 3
The Diplomat, season 2
The Penguin, limited series
True Detective, season 4
What We Do In The Shadows, season 6
Joey Daniewicz 