Top 10 TV Shows of 2024

Greetings, reader!

As is tradition, my final post of the year was my top 10 list of the year's greatest movies, and my first post of the following year is my top 10 list of the previous year's television shows. A series doesn't have to have started in 2024 in order for it to qualify, but all of the shows will be judged solely based on the season/episodes that they released in 2024. Out of the many instances of quality TV that the year provided, these are my favorites!

Here are my honorable mentions: Dune: Prophecy (Season 1), Exploding Kittens (Season 1), That 90's Show (Seasons 2&3), The Acolyte (Season 1), The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (Season 2).

10. Star Wars: Tales of the Empire

Yep - against odds, the better of the Star Wars spin-off shows from this year that I got around to watching was this funky little show. A sort of dark-side spin on the Tales of the Jedi series from two years ago, Tales of the Empire is a show that would not work for many viewers, as I can easily see how many fans might see it as extra or pointless, which is probably why it flew under the radar. For the specific kind of nerd viewer that I am, however, the show works wonders with its fascinating worldbuilding and lore connections.

Tales of the Empire builds bridges between various eras in the Star Wars timeline, in its stories told via the lens of two delightfully obscure characters from the franchise's mythos. The episodes focusing on Morgan Elsbeth (Diana Lee Inosanto) shine a light on the in-universe changes from the Clone Wars, through the reign of Empire and all the way to the post-Return of the Jedi era, all through the lens of one character, while the episodes focusing on Barriss Offee (Meredith Salenger) offer an in-depth look on the mysterious Inquisitors, the moral dilemmas between the Jedi order and the Empire, and a perspective on the fallout from Order 66. Like I said, a real treat for my kind of fan!

9. Futurama (Season 12)

During the previous year, Futurama returned to our screens after being off the air for years, and the new season ranked second in my post of 2023's best TV shows. Now that the dust had settled, I'm forced to consider that I maybe overrated it just a little, due to being so generally excited about such a nostalgic show being back. You see, the second post-reboot season aired this year, and while it was definitely good, it's not top-3-of-the-year (or even top-5-of-the-year) worthy.

Don't get me wrong, there's plenty to enjoy in the 12th season of the beloved animated sci-fi sitcom, but it's also not Groening comedy at its best. Some episodes, like Quids Game and Beauty and the Bug, are quite lazy and even generic, but others, like The Temp or Otherwise, are engaging, cleverly written and hilarious (most episodes fall somewhere between these extremes, in the category of 'enjoyable if not mind-blowing'). My personal favorite of the season was, to the surprise of absolutely no one, the coffee-driven Planet Espresso, which was just a blast.

8. Star Trek: Discovery (Season 5)

This Star Trek spin-off aired its fifth and final season this year, and like most of the show's run, it showed tons of potential but didn't fully live up to it. The final season started off solid, gave us some awesome episodes like the time-traveling nostalgia blast Face the Strange amidst some weaker ones, got fairly intense towards the end - and never entirely took off. The series finale Life, Itself embodies the show's run quite well: there's a lot to like, but you can't help but feel that it could've been better.

I'm still ranking Discovery this high, because when all is said and done, I'm a sucker for Star Trek and while this season certainly isn't the franchise at its best, it's also far from its worst, and there's plenty to enjoy. Yes, the season could've been masterful if the writers had gone for more dramatic bold strokes and more creativity in their writing, but still - the cast is awesome, the core themes of the franchise hit hard, the villains were interesting, and plenty more.

7. Saturday Night Live (Season 49B-50A)

SNL ranking higher than usual is, more than anything else, indicative of 2024 being a slightly lesser TV year than the exceptionally good couple of ones before it (it's okay, it was a slightly above-par movie year and the best music year in a long, long time (I also got engaged, so really 2024 would be the best year of all time even if all the TV was Big Brother reruns)).

You see, SNL is largely consistent in its inconsistency from year to year - with each new season, there are some great hosts and some who bomb, some amazing musical guests and some worth skipping, many hilarious skits and many forgettable ones, and the world's most original people commenting that "SNL isn't funny anymore like it used to be" (it's funny because they said that 10 years ago and 20 years ago and 30 years ago, and I guarantee that they will look back on 2024 as the golden era in a decade or two while getting pissed at the new cast).

This year was a typical, if slightly above-average (I thank the 50th season hype and the endless free setups for satire provided by the Presidential election) SNL year. At its worst, the political satire was a bit too status-quo for my taste, but at its best, they broke some serious ground (guest host Ramy Youssef calling for a free Palestine in his opening monologue was one of the year's quintessential TV moments, as was new castmember Emil Wakim's Weekend Update segment on the Middle East). Humor-wise, we got future-classic skits like Domingo, as well as the pre-election cold opens with Dana Carvey returning to play Joe Biden while Andy Samberg hilariously guest-starred as Doug Emhoff and Bowen Yang somehow pulled off J.D. Vance.

As mentioned above, it was an exceptional music year, and the star-studded selection of SNL musical guests made the most of it: from Dua Lipa to Billie Eilish, from Sabrina Carpenter to Charli XCX, all of the year-defining pop divas had their moment in the spotlight, with my personal favorite being Chappell Roan. Her performance of Pink Pony Club might honestly be my all-time favorite SNL musical performance - it's hard to describe why, but I got the strongest sense that if I had still been in the closet when I watched it, seeing it would've made me realize my bisexuality (it's ironic that watching a beautiful woman perform a song would cause an "oh right, I also like men" reaction, but something in the combination of the beautiful costumes, set design and choreogaphies as well as Chappell's stage presence and the song's substance and arrangement just really spoke to my queer heart). It was especially great to see an artist I respect so much performing so confidently after the year she had had with all its setbacks - totally unrelated, Bill Maher can go fuck himself.

6. Squid Game (Season 2)

After three long years, South Korean megahit Squid Game got its second season, and it was worth the wait. With different strengths and weaknesses than the first season, Squid Game 2 took the plot into many unexpected directions, the large majority of which really stuck the landing. Fascinating new characters were introduced, while a few key ones from the first season reprised their roles.

The games themselves took up less screentime than in season 1, but honestly, it didn't matter - the dialogue and build-up in between, really building the drama and tensions between the characters while zeroing in on the show's social criticism and political metaphors, was a smart choice. Really fleshing out multiple interesting villains, all of which came to life thanks to some killer acting performances, also made the season's events all the more drastic. In addition to the praiseworthy storytelling choices, Squid Game 2 also gained a lot from its production values, with elements like cinematography and set design being every bit as sublime as they famously were in the first season.

5. Star Trek: Prodigy (Season 2)

Hell yeah! The better out of the two new Star Trek seasons to air this year, the sophomore season of animated spin-off Prodigy was fun as hell. The delicate balance between zany episode-of-the-week adventures and subtly built larger plotlines was just right, the main characters continued to captivate viewers' hearts with their growth, and the connections to larger Star Trek lore ranged from neat to insanely cool.

The twenty-episode season had no totally bad instalments, with even the lesser episodes feeling like a worthwhile viewing experience, while the best ones (like the universe-jumping Cracked Mirror or the epic finale Ouroboros) were much better than many fans (me included) could've imagined a show like Prodigy to ever get.

4. Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV

Well, here we have the darkest, bleakest, most hard-to-watch TV product of the year. Shining a crucially important light on an issue that was horrible but necessary to learn about, Quiet on Set is a documentary series about the various controversies surrounding childrens' television, and specifically Nickelodeon, in its heyday. Leave it to humanity (toxic men, specifically) to ruin something as pure as kids' television, because as you'll find out from watching this series, what went on behind the scenes was severely messed up.

Through various interviews, testimonies and other evidence, we find out about a generally toxic culture, and about a few specific monsters who worked with kids for all the wrong reasons and left countless child stars traumatized. We see how the perversions of acclaimed producer Dan Schneider found their way onto countless shows, where the child actors were being sexualized in ways that many didn't even realize for years but definitely did the job for the pedophile community. In addition to Schneider, the truth about dialogue coach and child rapist Brian Peck was as hard to watch as it was important to learn - the fact that these men went on with their jobs without any fallout for decades, because of how skillfully they wielded their power, is a grave testament to how much work needs to be done in our society to put an end to such horrors.

As depressing and painful of a viewing experience Quiet on Set was, it was also a moving one - victims like Drake Bell, Bryan Hearne and countless others finally got their story told, after being living alone with their pain for so long. The interview where Bell talks about the trial, where countless big-name Hollywood people showed up to support the child rapist and no one showed up to support the underage victim, made me so incredibly furious at the world and really underlined how important it is for these stories to be told. Maybe one day we'll learn, and I hope the victims find some degree of peace after all they went through.

3. House of the Dragon (Season 2)

It's tradition for me to have one generally disliked item, one that I'm deeply defensive about, on any given 'Best of the year' list. In last week's post about 2024's best movies, it was Joker: Folié a Deux, and today, it's the second season of Game of Thrones spin-off House of the Dragon.

It's hard to make this point without sounding like a boomer ranting about today's youth with their TikTok brains, but really - if you crave eventful twists at every turn and don't have the patience for slow-paced build-up, that's obviously completely fine, but maybe you just aren't the target audience for this series then. I get how this season would've been frustrating for that kind of viewer, but I think people turning such a subjective complaint into an objective criticism of the series / saying the writing is terrible because the pacing isn't ideal for what they would like is a bit unfair.

Remember, when Game of Thrones first aired, the pace (especially around season 2 and 3) was very slow, and for a viewer like me, it was slow in the exactly right way. It took the time to adapt the key points from the source material instead of rushing them, and the multiple episodes worth of dialogue-heavy build-up always made the eventual payoffs feel more epic. Somehow, that series got a pass for it a decade ago, but this one doesn't. Back then, people who felt Game of Thrones to be too slow for them simply said "Oh, this isn't really for me" and didn't watch it and didn't call the show terrible, but now, viewers feel entitled to call the writing of a brilliant TV series terrible just because they chose to watch the type of series that was never made to satisfy a craving for constant rapid-movement game-changing events.

I loved this season of House of the Dragon - the production values were off the charts, the cast was pure fire, the dialogue was clever and engaging, and having read the Fire and Blood book it's adapted from, I'm 100% confident that the payoffs in season 3 will be worth the necessary build-up in season 2. To me, demanding big events from every episode just seems ridiculous, because I've seen shows like that - and not only are they less good than House of the Dragon, they fall flat precisely because the 'big events every episode' formula leads to none of the events feeling like anything.

2. Arcane (Season 2)

Arcane's second season was also its final one, which I have mixed feelings about - on one hand, the show's multi-faceted characters, intricate worldbuilding and complex lore had the potential for more exploration and storytelling, but on the other, I respect the hell out of writers who don't milk their shows for all their money but rather set out to do a certain amount with nothing extra. Of course, if I ever want more of this world, I could always start playing the video game it's based on - although I've heard that starting League of Legends because you liked Arcane is akin to starting to use crystal meth because you liked Breaking Bad.

In any case, the second season of Arcane ruled just as much as the first one. It begins with a dramatic and emotional aftermath to the bombastic events of the season 1 finale, proceeds to take us on a journey filled with psychologically fascinating character building, gripping moral dilemmas, and deeply emotional payoffs. The final moments of the season's sixth episode The Message Hidden Within the Pattern had me crying my eyes out, and was easily the greatest individual TV moment of the year (on par with the Worm Ride sequence from Dune: Part Two and the outro to Childish Gambino's Cruisin' as contenders for the year's greatest moment in all art and media).

1. Shogun

Based on James Clavell's book from 1975, Shogun is the kind of series that if you've seen it, I'm nearly positive that you won't need an explanation for my ranking of it at first place. This historical drama does everything so incredibly right, from engaging plotlines and layered characters to sharply directed action sequences and beautiful scenery captured by expert cinematography, that it would feel wrong to call anything else the year's best TV series.

Taking place in the early 1600's, Shogun follows an already complex power struggle between various regents in feudal Japan, which is made even more complicated due to the Portuguese (who, at the time, were the only European nation to have found Japan, and were keeping its location secret from their rivals in order to monopolize the trade route) - and then becomes even more complicated when an English ship happens to wash up on the Japanese coast, finding themselves in a strange new land. The culture clashes, from their religious dimension to the fascinating look at language barriers, make for some of the most intriguing television in a long time, with the brilliantly multi-faceted plot keeping the viewer hooked. Schemes upon schemes are unraveled, with everyone playing their own agenda, and the show truly feels like a gift that keeps on giving.

Shogun is cynical and brutal at times, but beautiful and romantic at others, encompassing many types of great TV in one, ultimately consistent work of art.

Thank you for reading! Tune in next week for my top 10 most anticipated movies of 2025.