Best of 2024: TV Shows

2024 was the year of miniseries/limited series. Six out of the ten entries on this list were short and contained stories. As much as I love a good 22-episode multi-season show, those can be hard to get through when we only have the time and energy for maybe two episodes a night. It’s also easier for me to watch a miniseries on my own while Kaitlin is working on small business stuff.

Anyway, we watched a lot of good content this year. First, two short honorable mentions:

• Quantum Leap (2022) Season 2: I’m sad that this new iteration of Quantum Leap got canceled after two seasons, just as it was starting to find its feet. I still don’t think it was amazing, but it was pretty good, and it deserved better.

• Futurama, Season ???: I don’t know what season the most recent batch of episodes is considered, but it was definitely the roughest batch of episodes yet. I can’t help but feel like the show is on its last legs. That said, I thought it was better than most people gave it credit for, even if it was a little cringey for them to cover topics like NFTs and beanie babies (???). If this is truly the end then it went out on more of a whimper than a bang, but I’m still glad to have spent time with these characters.

10. MILF Manor / Frontier House

I know I’m cheating by listing two shows together, but hear me out: These are both reality shows, one of which is noticeably more trashy than the other — I’ll let you guess which one — and they were both recommendations from one of Kaitlin’s sisters. We also saw them in relative close succession, so they feel like one cohesive segment of our TV watching year.

Now, as a writer, I’m generally anti-reality TV. I stand with my script-writing brothers and sisters. However, every once in a while a truly bonkers reality TV show will come along that sweeps me off my feet and makes me think: What the fuck is going on???

Enter MILF Manor. I have seen the first episode of the first season an embarrassing number of times (i.e. more than once), and it always feels like I’m rubbernecking a horrific traffic accident. The idea, as you might have gathered from the title, is that a group of MILFs live in a manor and date younger men. The catch? Those younger men are each a son of one of the other MILFs. Which means there are eight MILF/son pairs, and they have to sit there and watch as their mom/son flirts with other sons/moms.

The “challenges” are also unnecessarily incestuous. The first one? Each mom puts on a blindfold, feels up the shirtless boys’ abs, and has to identify her own son. Somewhere, Sophocles is rolling over in his grave.

The second season dials back the incest a tad by ensuring that the young men are not the sons of the new MILFs. However, they take things in a weirder direction by eventually introducing the son’s dads into the dating pool, leading to some truly awkward dates with a MILF, a son, and his dad.

It’s easy to trash this show for being so trashy, but I admire it for knowing exactly how trashy it is. It’s not trying to be good, it’s trying to be so ghastly entertaining that you cannot turn away. Plus, some of the contestants are surprisingly endearing. The fact that I’ve already written about 250 words for a show I ranked number 10 is a testament to how much I truly enjoyed watching this trainwreck of a program.

Speaking of trainwrecks: Frontier House is a short series that ran on PBS in 2002. The idea is that three modern-day families will spend something like four months out in Montana living as if it were 1883. That means no electricity, no plumbing, no dishwashers, no ovens — basically, nothing that makes living easy. On top of that, the families have to cut their own firewood and raise all of the crops/livestock they need to survive. Oh, and to better reflect the varying affluence of 19th century homesteaders, one family gets to move into a pre-built log cabin, one family moves into a semi-built log cabin, and the third family — the Black one — has to build their log cabin from scratch.

This is PBS, so the narrator occasionally offers educational nuggets of wisdom (such as what life was like for homesteaders in the 19th century), but mostly this show is actively trying to kill its participants. The living conditions are somehow even more brutal than you can imagine, to the point where any time the narrator would say something like, “Most homesteaders in the 19th century would face (insert adversity of your choice),” then we knew one of the families was about to go through some things. On top of that, the show documents the disintegration of a marriage, which is just wild. Oh yeah, and 9/11 happened while they were filming.

Anyway, these two shows are far from quality television, but if you need some entertaining escapism in 2025, then check them out, for sure.

9. Ripley

I’m a big fan of Andrew Scott. I think he’s a great actor, and he seems like a pleasant human being. In other words, he seems very much like the anti-Tom Ripley.

Scott stars as Ripley in this eight-episode miniseries adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. It’s not a coincidence that the show drops the word “talented,” since this manifestation of Ripley is not some suave criminal mastermind, but more of an amateur. He makes mistakes when he tries to cover up his crimes, and then he has to find ways to cover up his cover-ups. He’s also not immensely charming.

The black-and-white cinematography is gorgeous, and it really made me want to go back to Italy. Steven Zaillian wrote and directed the whole series — you might recognize him from The Night Of  or Searching for Bobby Fischer — and I appreciated its slower pace. Not an edge-of-your-seat thriller, but definitely a slow burn.

8. True Detective: Night Country

Confession time: I haven’t seen any of the other seasons of True Detective. Sorry! But I was curious to check this out for two reasons: the remote Alaskan environment, and Jodie Foster.

Issa López directed and wrote (or co-wrote) all six episodes. I think she did a great job capturing the eerie vibes of fictional Ennis, Alaska, which is experiencing a period of unending darkness. It’s not a subtle metaphor by any means, but it’s an effective one. There’s a cold case that’s somehow connected to the current case, and López covers a good amount of ground in only six episodes.

The ending didn’t feel quite as satisfying as the build up, but I still found myself engrossed in the world and these characters.

7. Shōgun

I never read James Clavell’s doorstopper of a novel, nor have I seen the original miniseries from 1980. All I know about that first adaptation is that there’s no subtitles for the dialogue spoken in Japanese (!!!) and that the white character, John Blackthrone, is the main focus.

Thankfully, this new Shōgun understands that audiences won’t be turned off by subtitles, as the majority of the show ends up being subtitled. It’s also very interesting to see Blackthorne used as a pawn instead of being the main character he thinks he is.

Excellent performances all around, with special shout-outs to Tadanobu Asano, Hiroyuki Sanada, and Anna Sawai. I also love the shifting power dynamics as various players jockey for control. I’ve heard it’s like Game of Thrones but set in 17th century Japan, although I haven’t seen Game of Thrones, so I can’t confirm.

I think the only reason I didn’t rank this higher on my list is that there’s a certain coldness to the characters that keeps you at a remove. Each character has layers — often, what they’re actually doing and then a hidden/alterior motive — and I think that coyness made it harder for me to fully invest in them. But this was a very intriguing and well-made show, especially if you like royal dramas.

6. Doctor Who (60th Anniversary Specials & Season 1)

The naming conventions for Doctor Who seasons are always kind of wonky, but what I’m talking about here are the 60th anniversary specials that aired late last year starring David Tennant and Catherine Tate, which then transitioned into the new season starring Ncuti Gatwa and Millie Gibson.

The big draw here is that Russell T. Davies returned as showrunner. I loved Davies’ previous tenure of Doctor Who, and David Tennant is my favorite doctor, so having Davies, Tennant, and Tate back together was a dream come true. The three specials are a lot of fun — the first two episodes, in particular — and then Gatwa takes over and absolutely slays as the first Black and queer doctor.

I’ll admit: During the first act of most of the Season 1 episodes I often thought, “Has Doctor Who jumped the shark?” The premises felt a little too outlandish or maybe a little too on the nose. But invariably Davies would find a way to make the story interesting while also making a nice commentary on our world. It helps that Gatwa has more charisma than any one person should be allowed to have. My only complaint is how short the season is: a mere eight episodes, compared to the usual 10 to 13 episodes we had in the older seasons.

5. Review

I remember seeing ads for Review plastered on the walls of the New York City subway. It was a short-lived series that only produced 22 half-hour episodes, but holy shit — it’s incredible.

Andy Daly (a veritable that guy! of comedy) plays Forrest MacNeil, a dedicated critic who reviews human experiences on a five-star scale. And when I say “dedicated,” I mean dedicated. He’s not afraid to try cocaine, make a sex tape, or be a racist. The humor comes not only from the many ridiculous situations MacNeil willingly finds himself in, but also in the way that those experiences intersect/influence/connect with each other. There’s something close to a serialized storyline that happens over the course of these three seasons, and it’s pretty amazing.

If you like Nathan Fielder’s work — particularly Nathan For You — then you have to check out Review. I didn’t know until today when I was looking the show up on Wikipedia that it’s actually a remake of an Australian show called Review with Myles Barlow. I’m now very interested in checking that out.

4. The Underground Railroad

This was the most visually astounding show/miniseries we watched all year, even if the content was the most intense.

Barry Jenkins spends almost 10 hours over the course of 10 episodes adapting Colson Whitehead’s novel of the same name. We follow Cora (an incredible Thuso Mbedu) as she runs away from the Georgia plantation where she’s been enslaved. Meanwhile, Arnold Ridgeway (a quietly intense Joel Edgerton) has been hired to track Cora down and bring her back.

I can’t believe they filmed the entire series in Georgia, because there are so many locations that all look so different. The production values were unreal. Gripping, heartbreaking, extremely well done, and featuring beautiful music from Succession composer Nicholas Britell, The Underground Railroad is, in my opinion, Barry Jenkins’ greatest achievement.

3. The Curse

I have been on the Nathan Fielder train ever since I saw my first Nathan For You episode over ten years ago. I think he’s a comedic genius.

The Curse is Fielder’s first foray into explicitly scripted television, and it’s the first time he’s playing a character that isn’t a fictional (???) version of himself. I’ll admit: Going in, I wasn’t sure how much I was going to enjoy both of those aspects, but it turns out I shouldn’t have doubted.

Fielder and co-creator (and costar!) Benny Safdie have developed a taut, tense, cringey, funny, and sharp satire on the reality TV industry. The Curse is about a husband-and-wife team (Nathan Fielder and Emma Stone, who is unbelievably good) who host an HGTV-type show about building sustainable housing in the southwest. Safdie plays the director of the show, and the fun comes from seeing the various layers on display: We’re watching a show about a group of people making a show, and oftentimes the hosts will break or end a take and reflect on how they’d like to change a line or redo a scene — the start of the artificiality that’s injected into “reality” TV.

There’s also a lot of commentary on race, privilege, class, and gentrification. The titular curse is from a young Black girl who goes up to Fielder’s character, Asher, asking for money. All Asher has on him is a $100 bill, which he gives to the girl since the cameras are rolling. However, once the cameras are off, Asher goes back to the girl and asks for the money back. That’s when she curses him. Is it a real curse? Or is the threat of a curse just as bad as an actual curse? You’ll have to watch to find out.

2. Breaking Bad

We’re over 10 years late to the party, but hey, at least we finally showed up! This was our first time watching the series, and yep, I see what all the fuss was about.

Although I don’t think Breaking Bad is the greatest TV show of all time (for my money that’s still The Wire), it is undoubtedly one of the best. The character development is fantastic, and its eye for detail and nuance is impressive. There are also so many interesting and fun characters. While it’s heavy, it’s also surprisingly funny. The writing is consistently excellent, as is the acting. I feel like there isn’t much I can say about this show that hasn’t already been said.

We’ve already started Better Call Saul, and I can’t wait to keep making our way through the prequel series, especially since Bob Odenkirk’s Saul Goodman was one of my favorite characters in Breaking Bad.

We watched the last episode of Breaking Bad the afternoon of the election. Those two events are always going to be intertwined in my memory.

1. Interior Chinatown

Okay, first: I don’t necessarily think that Interior Chinatown — a 10-episode miniseries — is better than the 62-episode Breaking Bad. There’s also a certain amount of recency bias in effect here, since we just finished this miniseries last week. That said, I do think Interior Chinatown is the show I most enjoyed watching this year.

Kaitlin hit the nail on the head when she said that the show that feels most tonally similar to Interior Chinatown is Jane the Virgin. But whereas Jane the Virgin gently skewered telenovelas and featured well-defined latin characters, Interior Chinatown satirizes Law and Order: SVU through the lens of the East Asian community.

Willis Wu (Jimmy O. Yang — great) is a waiter in a Chinatown restaurant. He aspires to be something more, but he’s always relegated to background work. Then, one night, he witnesses a woman being kidnapped. The woman is later found dead, and the police investigate. That’s how Willis gets involved with the police, where he begins to discover more about the mysterious circumstances of his older brother’s disappearance.

I had read the novel before watching the show, and it’s wild to me how different the two are. You absolutely do not need to read the book beforehand, since there’s very little in common aside from the general premise. And while I liked the book, I loved the show. I thought it was funny, gripping, touching, and incredibly entertaining. I really clicked with it.

There’s also a ton of interesting things going on, not only in terms of race but also in terms of Willis’ world. As just one example: Lana Lee is a mixed race detective who gets assigned to the kidnapped woman case because of her supposed expertise in Chinatown, what with her being half Chinese. In the beginning of the show she tries so hard to assimilate, and it’s clear that she has no connection whatsoever to Chinatown or its people. Even so, she’s reduced to “the Chinatown expert.” However, over the course of the show, she tries to embrace that side of her identity, only to find that she can’t fully fit in with the Chinatown folks, either. She’s stuck in the middle with nowhere that feels fully accepting of her. That really struck a chord with me.

Anyway, I thought this show was fantastic and so much fun. It’s a shame that it hasn’t received more buzz since it was released last month. I don’t know if people just aren’t watching it, if Hulu isn’t promoting it, or if it got buried after the mess of the election — or all of the above! — but do yourself a favor and check it out.