It was a year of decisions, most of them clear-cut and easy, but when it came to choosing the “best” new shows of 2024 — a far more subjective choice than anything that appeared on a general election ballot — it’s been a tough call. This has been a quality year — ergo, the following list, presented in random order, shoehorns 18 series into 10 more or less themed slots. (And the list, which already excludes fine shows ongoing from earlier years, could easily have been longer.) Though Hollywood — post-pandemic, post-strike, post-whatever — has been in something of a slump, somehow great TV keeps happening. Less than great TV happens, as well, obviously, but there are more than enough blessings to count.
Is there anything definitive that might be said about these shows, some cultural movement that might be extracted from them? No. There are big historical dramas, avant-garde comedies, dual-reality science fiction series, cheeky period romps, true crime, personal tales in political frameworks, an eccentric comic mystery. And more. What they share is the sense that they have been made with evident commitment by people — people with a point of view, even a vision, not by an algorithm or artificial intelligence. (They call it AI, so you’ll forget about the artificial.) They’re humanistic, for want of a better word. And, for what’s it worth, they are all to my taste, which means that some of them have already been canceled.
