10 Best TV Shows of 2024 — Critic’s Picks

This is how you do a reboot — by reinventing. Eyes rolled upon learning of a revival of the Andy Griffith courtroom classic. Eyes opened when a twist revealed the title is a subterfuge, and this clever legal drama is really about a grieving granny (the marvelous Kathy Bates) on a secret mission of justice. Folksiness is a facade, because this in-name-only Matlock means business.

… and What We Do in the Shadows. Paris never looked more gloriously ghoulish than in the ravishing second season of Anne Rice’s Interview With the Vampire, where the immortal vamps join a 1940s Grand Guignol theater troupe, balancing horror with eternal desire, while the final season of What We Do in the Shadows went for the jugular with macabre hilarity.

Paris never looked better than during the two weeks of the summer games. Equestrians at Versailles! Beach volleyball with an Eiffel Tower backdrop! The City of Light gleamed with athletic vigor (Simone Biles and the women’s gymnastics team, Katie Ledecky in the pool, to name a few), and we’re still cheering.

Warm and wise, HBO’s humane gem about finding community in the Kansas heartland ended its three-season run with characteristic grace, laughter, music and a few tears. “Sometimes you gotta go away to come back and realize where you’re supposed to be,” Sam (Bridget Everett) told her bestie Joel (Jeff Hiller). This show always felt like home.

… and Bad Sisters. The monkey business in Bad Monkey (adapting Carl Hiaasen to a riotous T) was TV nirvana, with Vince Vaughn in top wisecracking form as a disgraced Florida detective tracking a twisted caper to the Bahamas. The second season of Bad Sisters from Ireland, weaving outrageous farce from sibling tragedy, was almost as much fun.

Often hard to watch, and harder to forget, this cringe-inducing British import about a wannabe comic (Richard Gadd adapting his one-man, allegedly autobiographical show) and his relentless stalker (Jessica Gunning, stunning) was the year’s sleeper buzz magnet. Gadd’s harrowing, unsparing story is drenched in psychological pathos.

A terrific buddy comedy that bridges its generation gap with brilliant showbiz satire, the Emmy winner aimed high in Season 3, when stand-up legend Deborah Vance (the peerless Jean Smart) plotted to “shatter the glass hip” of the ageist TV industry with a crusade to land a coveted late-night gig. With young protégée Ava (Hannah Einbinder) by her side, there’s no stopping this golden gal.

In a great year for espionage drama (Mr. & Mrs. Smith, The Diplomat, The Day of the Jackal), nothing topped the exciting and poignant fourth season of the wry spy dramedy about a ragtag team of MI5 rejects. Jonathan Pryce was heartbreaking as a former master spy whose escalating state of paranoid dementia made him a liability.

Correction: We wanted and needed a rom-com this sexy, smart and scintillating. Give this witty charmer an “A” in chemistry — between “hot rabbi” Noah (Adam Brody) and snarky agnostic sex podcaster Joanne (Kristen Bell), whose unlikely but oh-so-witty romance elevated the genre with its culture-clash comedy and a supporting cast for the ages.

This is how you do a remake. FX’s majestic adaptation of James Clavell’s blockbuster novel about feudal 1600s Japan focused less on the “barbarian” outsider from Europe and more on the political intrigue and deadly power plays in an ancient, exotic culture. A fabulous throwback to the glory days of maxi-sized miniseries (the first Shogun aired in 1980).