Top 10 Favorite TV Shows of 2024

I didn’t give a fuck about TV in 2024.

Okay, obviously that’s not fully true. Some of the most moving visual narrative art across all mediums came from television. But it feels like I didn’t give a fuck about TV in 2024 because I could barely find the passion for TV this year.

I’m not quite sure where this attitude came from. Maybe some of it is the glut of TV finally catching up to me. Maybe it failed to live up to all the other mediums, quality wise, as I think TV had the weakest year of all the mediums I blog about. Maybe it was the bad taste of the strikes still on my tongue or the lack of shows we got because of said strikes. Maybe my taste is getting stranger. I don’t know.

What I do know is that you had to drag me to the couch to watch TV this year. But hey, I repeat what I’ve said in years past. TV should be allowed to be mid.

We’ve been living in the bubble of great TV now for so long that it should be allowed to take a break so the other entertainment mediums can pick up the slack. Maybe it only has to be a year or two, or maybe the bubble’s finally burst and entropy’s finally taking its toll. If you had told me a few years ago that TV was going to start going down the tube, I would’ve felt sad about that. Now, in the beginning of 2025, I’m actually somewhat relieved. I feel free from the burden of having to watch everything and it gives me enough room to stretch my wings and explore other things. Older movies and video games and all that good shit.

All that said, “bad” or “mid” are very qualified terms when it comes to modern TV. Most not-quite-great shows are still better than a lot of what’s out there, so let’s celebrate the good and list!

Runner-Up: Ren Faire

Ren Faire is a three part documentary series about the Texas Renaissance Festival, an event so large that it has its own incorporated city and police force among other civil services you wouldn’t expect a ren faire to have.

The leader of the festival is a man named George Coulam, a man who’s now pushing 90 who’s been running the fair for most of his life. He’s been sued by multiple former employees for sexual harassment, he published a book in which he claims that holistic medicine reversed his Alzheimer’s Disease, he lives in an extravagant house, he has a fondness for younger women and has profiles on multiple sugar daddy sites (ran by his assistant), he knows the exact date he wants to die, and he’s finally considering retirement.

It’s clear that he should’ve retired a long time ago. One of the many reasons he’s finally considering retirement is because he’s looking back on his life and regrets not finding somebody to love and love him back. This isn’t entirely true, as he’s flushed multiple marriages down the shitter thanks to his fierce commitment to his work, but it might as well be true.

However, that’s not the primary reason he should step down. The real reason is that he’s erratic at best and batshit insane at worst. He probably would’ve run the festival into the ground a long time ago, but luckily for him, the business apparatus around him is too slick to stop working.

So he announces he’s going to retire, and a succession battle begins. There are three main contenders. The first is Jeff Baldwin. Jeff comes from a creative theater background, and despite the fact that he’s been with the company the longest, people don’t trust him with the business side of the operation. I’m genuinely unclear if those suspicions are well-founded or not, but in any case, he is by far the most sympathetic person in the whole series. The second contender is Louie Migliaccio, who comes from wealth and business, and while he has some good ideas, it’s clear that he sees the festival as more of an asset than a living breathing experience. If Jeff can’t be trusted with the money, Louie can’t be trusted with the soul. Finally, there’s Darla Smith. Darla’s in charge of vendor relations, and while she seems competent on paper, but it slowly becomes clear that she can’t handle George himself like the other two can. The decision he finally makes is shocking in how not shocking it should’ve been.

HEY DOES THIS SOUND LIKE A MICROCOSM FOR ANYTHING YET???

The only reason Ren Faire isn’t on the list proper is because I thought some of the staged elements of it were too cute by a hair. But I’m always down for a documentary about some weirdos, even if it comes with a bit of existential dread.

Favorite Episodes: N/A as there are only three to begin with.

10. Smiling Friends

I wish I had a direct line to every other fan of this show, and if I could say one thing to all of them, it would be to beg them to not become like the Rick & Morty fans.

There was a slight hint of things heading in that direction. It’s a show on Adult Swim, so it’s going to appeal to a more niche audience. But I have a lot of friends who spend time in smoke shops, and the amount of reports I heard about Smiling Friends merch sitting next to or outright replacing Rick & Morty gear was alarming. Still, I don’t quite think it’s going to happen.

First and foremost, there’s a lot of humor that’s aimed directly at the kind of person who was indoctrinated into the Rick and Morty shitty fan cult in the first place. There are lots of jokes about not just games and gamers, but toxic online culture and the internet in general, all of which is depicted with an accuracy so precise that anyone with half a brain cell will know who’s the target.

There’s also the difference in storytelling, Generally speaking, Rick & Morty, a show that I’ll remind you is great but its reputation was ruined by its worst fans and its shitty now fired co-creator, takes a science fiction premise and goes to the most absurd place possible with it. Rick makes a love potion for Morty which leads to a zombie monster outbreak. Rick makes a machine that can take your unconscious body and use it to perform tasks while you sleep and the whole thing becomes a giant John Carpenter movie. Stuff like that.

Smiling Friends frequently goes in the opposite direction. Pim and Charlie get tasked with helping a mad scientist, and right as he’s about to create life, the scientist's brother storms in and kicks him out for not paying rent, not having a job, and generally being a loser. The gang gets kidnapped by aliens, who turn out to be a bunch of douchebags. Charlie goes to hell and discovers Satan is a vape smoking gamer who doesn’t care anymore. Rick & Morty finds humor in escalating the already absurd, and Smiling Friends mines its jokes by taking the absurd and grounding it in cold reality.

But really, I’m not afraid of Smiling Friends going the same Rick & Morty route because it’s never once pretending to be smart or conceptual. It doesn’t have any desire to elevate or transcend. Instead, Smiling Friends goes for the gut and embraces chaos and stupidity, and of course that’s meant to be a compliment. Season two proved that there’s much more gas in this tank, and I could see myself enjoying this show for a long time to come.

Favorite Episodes: “A Allen Adventure” “Erm, the Boss Finds Love?” “Brother’s Egg”

9. Girls5eva

Girls5eva deserved so much more.

The first thing it deserved was to not have been born on Peacock. On merit alone, Girls5eva could’ve been a hit. It’s got an incredible premise, it was funny, and with the right backing, it probably could’ve had a longer life than it had. But unfortunately, it landed on a streaming service whose business model seems to be holding old beloved shows hostage and burying or canceling the good original stuff it does have (except Poker Face). On top of that, it’s clear that once the show moved over to Netflix, it became clear that they were given a little more creative freedom.

But Netflix sucks too, and they recently canceled it.

We could continue to poo-poo streamers and the terrible decisions they make. But this is a best-of list, so let’s sing Girls5eva’s praises while we can.

Girls5eva was one of those shows that was always almost on my lists. (That’s actually a fairly common theme this year, but more on that later.) It’s not the best show that ever came from the Tina Fey/Robert Carlock camp, mainly in the storytelling department. But narrative was never their strong point, and it didn’t have to be one of the greats. It was funny as hell, the songs were incredible, its commentary on the pop world and in a lot of ways the culture of the late 90s and early 2000s that spat the members of the fictional pop girl group was always hyper-specific and in perfect lockstep with my memories, and it was always a bright spot in my TV watching life.

It also had one of the best casts in recent TV history. Paula Pell at her most glorious Paula Pell-iest, Busy Phillips playing one of the funniest dumb blondes I’ve seen in a while, Renée Elise Goldsberry, who I first saw in Waves, giving me whiplash every time with how well she can do both comedy and drama, and Sara Bareilles, who I first saw as the balloon guide in the gas leak season of Community, who’s understated but substantial presence served as a perfect foil to everyone else while being funny as shit herself. It was all golden.

But most of all, it’s a perfect tribute to a specific generation of a certain era. I wasn’t even 10 at the height of boy/girl band movement. I was team Backstreet Boys, but that was only because I was exposed to them first and it was some of the first music I was conscious of hearing. But it’s not a show about millennials, but the late Gen X-ers who made that music and consumed it. The generation that caught so much flack and bullshit because they weren’t into nu-metal and it was cool to shit on anything and everything marketed to girls. It’s a show about those who had to endure all that, and they deserve all the respect in the world.

Again, Girls5eva deserved so much more.

Favorite Episodes: “Bomont” “Clarksville” “Orlando”

8. What We Do in the Shadows

Speaking of shows that were almost always on my lists…

There’s a class of TV shows that are always “almost on my lists.” Typically speaking, they’re half hour comedies that have had a long run and are generally beloved amongst the more dedicated TV watching audience. Rick & Morty (once again, it’s a good show), It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia when that has a season, Silicon Valley, Veep. Stuff like that, the newest example of which is probably Abbott Elementary.

The ultimate example of one of these shows is What We Do in the Shadows.

Every year, I consider this show for my list, and every year, like most of the examples above, it’s one of the first shows I cut. It’s not because I don’t love it. On the contrary, I was a huge fan of the movie when it came out and a new season of What We Do in the Shadows was always something I greatly looked forward to. However, I’d always cut it and I wasn’t really sure why.

Then, in the series finale, the show essentially told me why, as it’s basically an episode of television designed to mock the entire idea of things needing to feel important.

This can’t be universally said about all the shows I listed above. Veep was ever-prescient and probably will be for the rest of time, and Abbott Elementary’s entire existence is a blessing and a quiet lovely critique of the public school system. But it’s hard to argue that What We Do in the Shadows was ever particularly impactful or consequential, and the finale makes it clear that this was very much a deliberate choice. It’s a show, after all, about a group of vampires who long gave up on their mission of taking over America in favor of sitting around on their asses, getting into petty squabbles, and just generally farting around. Its values were always on display.

Why does TV have to feel important? Or better yet, can a show have its own kind of importance by deliberately choosing not to be important? The answer to both forms of the question is probably “Shut the fuck up and laugh at the funny show.” But I’m a nerd. I write longwinded blogs on the internet. This is what I do. But now that I know I was probably wasting my time, a part of me wonders how many of my previous lists I would put this show on if I had this perspective earlier.

It doesn’t matter. What We Do in the Shadows was one of the most consistently funny shows in recent history, it has one of the best comedic casts of all time, and I’ll miss it dearly. Also, its last season was very good.

Favorite Episodes: “Nandor’s Army” “Come Out and Play” “The Finale”

7. Say Nothing

Okay, I won’t. Tee hee hee.

Favorite Episodes: “The Cause” “Tout” “Do No Harm”

6. We Are Lady Parts

I wasn’t sure that I wanted a second season of We Are Lady Parts.

Don’t get me wrong, I was more than open to the idea, and I’m always in favor of Nida Manzoor making things. But I felt like the odds were stacked against it.

There’s the practical matter that three years is a long time to go between seasons, and it might be difficult to recapture that spark when so much time has passed. (Though I imagine COVID played a big role in that delay.) Plus the first season works so well as its own contained little thing, and I didn’t know if there was anywhere left to go. Or at least not when it came to the music. The culture of Islam in the UK is always ripe, but season one ends with them more or less making it. Where do you go next?

The answer is obvious. While the examination of each women’s relationship with Islam and the culture around it is still very much present, an equally evergreen theme comes to the forefront. Specifically, the music industry is frequently a cesspool and capitalism destroys everything it touches! YAAAAAAAAY!!!!

Season one ends with them “making it” but in season two, they really make it. The show, thank god, has a nuanced view of “selling out” other than the general Gen X-ian “don’t do it.” Instead, it takes the stance that making money from your art is a good thing you shouldn’t be ashamed of. However, that doesn’t mean you have to be fully comfortable with everything that comes with it.

Success comes with obvious benefits. One of the band members is technically homeless before the halfway point of the season, and another is a mother who needs to provide for her family. When the opportunity comes, they can’t just sneer at it. But it also means they have to fire their good friend who’s already their manager, they have to do press they don’t want to do, they have to struggle even harder with the insecurities the spotlight brings to the surface, and they eventually have to decide whether or not they’re going to allow the label to fuck with their sound and the release of their music. Capitalism destroys everything it touches.

Of course this was where the show could go. This is where it was always going to go.

Season two isn’t without its faults. The plotting gets a little clunky in its efforts to fit in so much, and the timeline of everything that happens is a little difficult to buy, among other problems I could list if I felt the need to do so. But it’s easy to swallow because so much of what season two covers is done with such poise and nuance that it doesn’t really end up mattering. Getting older and feeling jealous of the second younger Muslim band that hits the scene in spite of your values. Grappling with the feelings of how you’re perceived dating someone outside your race, only to discover that you’re being exoticized by your new white crush. Grappling with being perceived as a lame aesthetically conservative mother when that’s not how you perceive yourself.

It’s all incredible stuff, and I’ll never doubt this show again.

Favorite Episodes: “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” “Funny Muslim Song” “The Reason”

5. Get Millie Black

Can I confess something to you all? I have mixed feelings on the detective genre.

By “mixed” I really mean mostly positive, but I’m always semi-reluctant to watch detective shows. A small part of it is ACAB, but I learned how to shut that part of my brain off for entertainment’s sake. It’s really the kind of story mechanics that the detective genre must thrust upon itself by the nature of their very premise. Detective stories involve a lot of people describing a lot of things that happen off-screen, and I would say that more than half the time the answer to the mystery isn’t as satisfying as the investigation itself.

Admittedly though, that only applies to the more insipid detective media. The good shit uses the framework of detective fiction to make a point or is more interested in saying something larger. Stuff like Get Millie Black. On the surface, it’s a show about a detective who tries to find a missing boy. It’s really a show about the ghost of colonization and racism.

Millie and her sister Hibiscus were born in Jamaica, and they were abused to no end by their mother when they were kids. Hibiscus caught the worst of it since, as a child, he still identified as a boy and was called by his deadname Orville. Hibiscus displayed “feminine” traits, so their mother beat her to no end. Millie fought back one night in defense of Hibiscus and their mother shipped her off to the UK.

Now adults, Millie’s a haunted detective who’s moved back to Jamaica and Hibiscus lives in squalor. It’s the same squalor that much of the trans community is forced to live in Jamaica, a country where, as of writing this, homosexuality is still a crime. Hibiscus could live in the house she grew up in with her sister, but she would rather live in the streets.

A boy goes missing. We’ll eventually learn that he’s been taken by a human trafficking network that’s located in the UK. Hundreds of years later, black bodies are still being stolen by the British.

But that’s not the only place where their influence still resides. Where did this tradition of homophobia and misogyny come from? The performance of masculinity is an issue that may may be inherent in us as a species. I don’t know and I’m not qualified to offer any theories. What I can say, however, is that it’s not inherent in the institutions we establish for ourselves unless there’s an underlying flawed morality on which that institution is built in the first place. To pull an example out of thin air, maybe you live in a small island nation with your own culture and beliefs, and then a group of people from the other side of the world that follow a religion that mandates killing gay people takes over your nation and works to erase that culture and those beliefs and replace them with their own. Then you let that fester for a few hundred years.

All the characters in this show are haunted by a life that seems just in reach. A life where they were treated with respect as children, and where they were allowed to love who they want to love and identify how they want to identify without the fear of being killed in the street or being thrown in jail. But that’s not the reality they live in.

Instead, they’re trapped in this one, doomed to be haunted by what could’ve been, and it’s this that makes Get Millie Black one of the better detective shows I’ve seen in a long time.

Favorite Episodes: “Hibiscus” “Holborn” “Curtis”

4. This is Where English Teacher Would’ve Been if I Weren’t Still in the Emotional Splash Zone of Recent Allegations

I had this list locked and loaded, and then the allegations against Brian Jordan Alvarez, creator and star of English Teacher, were published.

A lot of people believe in the concept of separating the art from the artist. I’m not one of them, and I don’t know how I feel about saying positive things about Brian Jordan Alvarez or his work at the moment. I also take issue with aspects of the Vulture piece that brought these allegations to light in the first place, but I’m not sure how important those objections are in the grand scheme of things.

So I’ll just say that English Teacher is a fantastic show, and I hope all of this works out so we can trust Brian again. But for now, I can’t do it.

3. Baby Reindeer

Baby Reindeer is probably the most talked about show of the year, or at least it was in certain circles earlier in the year. Even those who haven’t seen the show may have heard about the legal battle between the supposed real-life basis of star Richard Gadd’s actual abuser and Netflix, but that’s a can of worms I’m not going to get into.

You’re the kind of person who’s going to read a long-winded blog about TV shows, so that probably means you know about all the trauma aspects of the show. The intense shame and guilt that followed Richard’s stand-in Donny after not only his being stalked by Martha, but the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of prominent television writer. As of this writing, the real life identity of the abuser hasn’t been revealed, but I’m sure it’ll come out sooner rather than later.

The hype is very much real in how deep down the rabbit hole the show goes when tackling these issues. On top of this, there’s an extra added layer of nuance in that it also tackles what it means when this happens to you when you’re a bi-sexual man dating a trans woman in a deeply transphobic country and you still feel the need to perform some kind of masculinity. From what I can tell, the show handles these topics with extraordinary aplomb.

However, what really struck me about this show, what had me thinking it was going to be my number one pick for most of the year, is how deftly it attacks the topic of general self-loathing.

Someone, even a few people, made you feel like you were nothing. You hear it enough times or you feel it long enough and you start to convince yourself that it’s true. Then you internalize it so deeply that you put yourself in a state of paralysis. You accomplish nothing. You do nothing. You don’t feel like you’re of any value to anyone, including yourself. I’ve never been through anything as harrowing as what Richard’s experienced, but I’m familiar with the pattern, and Donny’s breakdown on stage stuck me like a knife.

We’re hitting a point where we’re on trauma overload. Or it just seems that way because there was a wave where every indie horror movie and video game was about trauma. But there’s a reason we keep going back to it, and when it’s handled with this much elegance, you want people to keep trying.

Favorite Episodes: “Episode 4” “Episode 6” “Episode 7”

2. The Pop Out: Ken & Friends

It was a live event broadcasted on a television platform. I’m counting it. I’ve also yet to write out my albums list. You can bet Kendrick will be on that list, and I’ll talk more about the substance of the beef when I write that up. It does matter here, but more tangentially because this is really on here because of how it changed the relationship I have with the city I live in. (Anthony Keidis voice) The city of angels.

Like a lot of east coasters who moved to LA, I have a love/hate relationship with the city. The love is there when I go to the taco stand in front of my grocery store and get a taco that’s better than any taco on the east coast, and as of writing this, it’s 72 degrees out while it’s snowing back home. But then there’s everything else. The failure of the city’s design and how it informs the way people drive and the fact that people have to drive so much here in the first place. The frequent shallowness of the culture. How a city can take so much urban space and mutilate it to such a degree that it becomes functionally worthless. You may recognize that feeling every time you enter a strip mall most other places. LA sometimes feels like a giant strip mall. Also as I write this, we’re on fire.

But hey, we have Kendrick!

What’s important to know here is that I’m very much a Kendrick fan and I’ve loathed Drake ever since the “Best I Ever Had” video premiered. The reasons why aren’t important, but the joy of watching Kendrick wipe the floor with Drake and his whole fanbase was a definite high point of the year. And so on that fateful Juneteenth, my roommate, who was born and bred in this city, and I sat down and watched The Pop Out as it streamed on Amazon.

The first act was okay. It was mostly dedicated to greener LA artists, most of whom have never had a platform this big. (I think Westside Boogie’s a little too established to have been in this block, but whatever.) The majority of the rappers performed to backing tracks and didn’t know how to be on stage. Still, there was an energy to it. All the artists were clearly thrilled to be there, and there’s something about all these local acts getting to perform at the KIA forum that made me smile. My roommate and I had a lot of criticisms, but at least for me, the good vibes were already there.

Act two was when Mustard— sorry, MUSTAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARD took over DJing duties, and the heavy hitters started coming out. Steve Lacy, Tyler, Roddy Ricch, former Drake collaborator YG. A tweet would make the rounds later describing the event as “the ‘We Are the World’ but for hating a guy”, and my roommate and I were cackling with every major artist who came out.

Then Kendrick took the stage. As did so many others, including the rest of Black Hippy, and the group photo is the main reason why this live-streamed concert made my list. Specifically, it was when Kendrick started talking about how the city’s been fucked up ever since the passing of Nipsey Hussle and Kobe Bryant, both of which happened during my tenure living here.

The day Nipsey was murdered, I left my apartment to walk to the grocery store when my downstairs neighbor came out and said someone shot Nipsey. We commiserated and told each other to take care. I walked to the store hoping he would make it, but when I came back, he was gone. Kobe died while I was in the early stages of moving out of that same apartment, and this mysterious disease called COVID-19 was starting to enter the American public consciousness. I haven’t been a sports fan since middle school, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say the news didn’t mess me up a little, especially now that I lived in a city where Kobe was and always will be a god.

I moved to LA in 2014. I was in the city for about six years when Nipsey was murdered. Six years and ten months when Kobe died. Not a whole lot of time in the grand scheme of things, but enough that I had a relationship with the city, and as soon as Kendrick said the city’s been fucked up since both of their passings, it felt like he revealed some truth I hadn’t noticed before. I knew he was right, and looking back at my time living here, in hindsight, something shrouded LA after their deaths, and whatever that something was dulled the city’s spark and made it numb. One might refer to that feeling as a haunting, but that implies that anyone can feel it. You could have only perceived it if you have a relationship with this place. I’d have only been here for six years. I could only feel it so much. To those who were raised here, I’m sure the weight of that loss was on a scale I simply cannot fathom.

Then Kendrick brought out everyone for the photo. It felt like the entire city was happy, and I was suddenly aware that because the city was happy, I was happy. That I cared about his place. For the first time, I felt entirely at peace living here, and it still feels like my relationship with the city is different. Finally, I’m proud to call this place home.

Favorite Episodes: N/A

1. My Brilliant Friend

I don’t know why it took me so long to realize that the closest comparison this show has is The Wire.

The Wire is a show about the system, and how it’s been compromised by people who use it for personal gain, be it career advancement or financial gain. The powers that be an the rich broke it, and the show examines how the shit rolls downhill. As long as the system can be abused for the sake of avarice and ambition, it’ll stay broken, and those subject to it will always be oppressed. Especially if they’re poor and not white.

My Brilliant Friend works in much the same way. Granted, it spans multiple decades and takes place on the other side of the world in Italy. But it’s also a show about how shit rolls downhill. Only this time, it’s not about how corruption takes that shit and gives it a push. (Don’t worry, that’s in the show as well.) Rather, it’s misogyny and all the forms it takes.

At the beginning of the show, the kind of misogyny Elena and Lila experience as kids is fairly obvious and easy to spot, even more so when men start to notice their bodies and they become self-aware of their sexuality as well. Then adulthood kicks in, and because we know where these two women came from and the kind of conservative society that, for better or for worse, informed their values and those of the people around them, we see how that misogyny informs who they are and how they treat the world around them.

We see resilience and strength, but also self-destruction on a scale unreached by most art in general that covers the same topic. Sometimes they’re aware of that misogyny, and sometimes they perpetuate it. Elena always saw Lila as this towering aloof figure she projected all her insecurities onto. Then, in the final season, we finally learn that Lila has a dissociative disorder. All the indifference Elena thought she saw wafting off Lila was actually a broken relationship with reality, and it finally dawned on her that someone needs to take care of her as well.

The two have children. Daughters. They see these same cycles repeat. It crushes them to see how much of themselves they see in their children, especially when one of them suffers an unspeakable tragedy.

I’m going to be an uncle to a baby girl in a matter of weeks, if not days. I was always enamored and heartbroken by this show, but now, seeing how much the male plague has affected these women throughout their whole lives, it rocked me to my core.

But it also reminded me that I’m going to have a role in shaping my niece, and I need to be on my A-game with this stuff to a degree I never have before. To help her navigate the world of men. It’s easy to hyper-fixate on the sexism, but that struggle is also a part of why Elena and Lila turn out to be fascinating powerful women who bring beauty and love into the world. Not that sexism should exist for the sake of turning out good people. If I could wave a wand and make all misogyny go away, I would in a heartbeat. But watching Elena and Lila be there for one another and suffer together and create this bond made me all the more excited to create that same bond with my niece. This show only further clarified how rewarding it’s going to be.

Favorite Episodes: “Earthquake” “The Cheat” “Restitution”

Honorable Mentions

• Abbott Elementary

• The Bear

• Craig of the Creek

• The Great British Bakeoff

• Heartstopper

• Mr. and Mrs. Smith

• Ripley

• Shōgun

• The Vince Staples Show

• X-Men ’97

Will Watch Someday

• Expats

• Industry

• A Man on the Inside

• One Hundred Years of Solitude

• Pachinko

  • As I nearly put this show on my list last year, I have no excuse for not watching the new season. Genuinely one of my biggest regrets of the year.

• Slow Horses

• Somebody Somewhere

• The Sympathizer

• I’m sure there’s more!