100 Best 2024 Shows So Far

The Outlaws is an enjoyable BBC series that centers on the lives and misadventures of seven lawbreakers sentenced to 120 hours of community service. The felons can’t be more different from each other, but as they gather every day to serve, they slowly bond in the process. It’s a bit like The Breakfast Club and The Good Place in that sense, although subplots of crime and heist make it a dash more thrilling.

The characters may appear as caricatures at first (“Everyone’s a type,” as one of them puts it), but don’t be fooled: they’re all nicely fleshed out with every episode, and each back story adds a new depth to the series. Stephen Merchant (co-creator of The Office UK) stars in, writes, and directs the series.

In an interview, Conan compared Conan O’Brien Must Go to a travel documentary, except, he said, you don’t learn anything new or interesting. After watching the show, I can safely say that that couldn’t be further from the truth, though it is indicative of the kind of self-deprecating humor he employs throughout the show. What you learn from watching Conan hop from one country to another, improvising and befriending people from different parts of the world, is that it is possible to be both ridiculously funny and genuinely kind. Many comedians joke at the expense of other people—they’re willing to humiliate them, not themselves—but Conan is the opposite. He is always the butt of a joke. Even when he’s pointing out something inane, it’s his incredulity that we’re laughing at. Upon watching this four-parter, you also learn that no one can match, much less top, what Conan does.

Four college freshmen from different parts of the country come together as roommates to earn their bachelor’s degree, sure, but more than that, to explore their newfound independence, experiment with each other, and establish a sense of self that they can truly be proud of. In other words, they’re out to get an education, in every sense of the word. This is The Sex Lives of College Girls, a ten-episode series that delivers everything the title promises and more.

More than just a raunchy show (although it’s exciting in that regard too), The Sex Lives of College Girls is an earnest and charming account of what it’s like to navigate that murky, undefined space between youth and adulthood. This gives way to honest and sometimes brutal experiences, but they’re always balanced with the kind of fun, flirtatious hilarity that has long defined showrunner Mindy Kaling’s work (Never Have I Ever, The Mindy Project). Hilarious, relatable, and incredibly breezy, The Sex Lives of College Girls is one perfect binge.

Coming-of-age shows are practically Netflix’s bread-and-butter, but the working class side of Brisbane in the 80’s is a suburb we didn’t expect the international streamer to visit. Based on the semi-autobiographical novel with the same name, Boy Swallows Universe is centered on the precocious Eli Bell, whose age and curiosity naturally pushes him to try and figure out how he fits in the world. There are some magic realist elements, and the crimes escalate as we go further and further into the miniseries, but the show shines best when depicting the slow, day-to-day moments in Bell’s family. The show never judges them, nor does it totally excuse their actions. Instead, Boy Swallows Universe depicts a certain nostalgic compassion one could only have for their hometown, regardless of how downtrodden it is.

With the various police procedurals available online, it can feel like an oversaturated genre, at best. At worst, with the struggles the world has to do with regards to the justice system, police procedurals can glorify the institution. Criminal Record examines this, but it doesn’t give the easy answers other shows have when discussing the systemic failure of the police, especially when it comes to race, age, and sex. Peter Capaldi stands in as the old guard, though his skin-crawling presence keeps Dan Hegarty’s real intentions an enigma until the very end. However, it’s Cush Jumbo as the empathetic June Lenker that drives the show, with her persistence meeting Hegarty’s every move, and her frustrations mirroring the real rage the world feels with regards to past injustices. The way the two clash creates a novel rookie-veteran dynamic that makes Criminal Record so striking.

With a film version that didn’t live up to the hype of the original novel, Netflix’s adaptation of One Day released just in time to wreck the fans’ hearts all over again, but this time, it’s a good thing. The expanded runtime allowed Netflix to delve more into the moments in the novel, with each episode dedicated to a day in the year in Emma’s and Dexter’s lives, contrasting their respective worlds and opportunities available to them as different members of London society. And the couple is played beautifully by Leo Woodall and Ambika Mod, with a believable chemistry that isn’t formed in a single spark, but made in multiple moments. If you’re needing a good cry just right before Valentine’s Day, One Day is a superb slow burn romance to let those tears out.

With the success of Squid Game and Black Mirror, the concept of a game show as a makeshift solution to a dystopic world is interesting, but it led Netflix to create reality competitions to capitalize on the hype (Looking at you, Squid Game: The Challenge). This time, however, Thai Netflix takes a more unique approach with Ready, Set, Love. It’s more humorous, as Day fumbles each time she meets Son, and with the reality show being a dating show, there’s surely some romantic mishaps that would happen. But the show doesn’t forget the stakes behind the campy, candy-colored world– with Day doing all she can to secure her chronically ill sister’s healthcare and with Son dissatisfied in the utopic cage that is The Farm. Ready, Set, Love has plenty of the fun shenanigans expected for its romcom approach, but it remembers to empathize with the desperation and hardships that make reality game shows so compelling.

Some people can get totally desperate when it comes to their love life, but rarely does this desperation end up with summoning an ancient warrior princess spirit. My Undead Yokai Girlfriend plays on this desperation, hilariously juxtaposing modern day love troubles with an ancient demonic revenge plot, and the mix plays out in a fun and cutesy way, with Hachi understandably over-the-top stressed out over the fact he accidentally summoned and bonded with a yokai spirit that can drain his life force. As Hachi tries to solve this through smartphone technology and research, Izzy learns more about modern day Japan, all while they both evade Hachi’s police father assigned to investigate Izzy’s victims. It’s silly, but it’s fun, and surprisingly introduces Japanese mythology in an engaging way.

Upon first watch, it’s easy to relegate Fallout to the heap of video game adaptations that are all show and no substance. There’s the Twisted Metal adaptation that came out with zero fanfare earlier this year, and the Halo series that continues to divide fans and critics alike. Thankfully, Fallout escapes that curse: it’s genuinely good, not because it strains itself to remain faithful to the source material, nor because it strays too far, but because it builds on the existing world with plenty of imagination and original characters. These characters are complex, too, with conflicting morals that are challenged in interesting ways. Lucy is a principled do-gooder, but whether that’s because of her nature or privileged circumstance is continually questioned in the Wasteland. Maximus is a brave warrior you want so badly to root for, but his end-justifies-the-means approach complicates that urge. But probably the best thing about Fallout is its incisive commentary on the evils of capitalism. “The future is management” and “We are all products” are genuinely scary themes that could lead to the end of our world too.

Dark Matter may be a sci-fi series, the latest in Apple TV+’s ever-growing roster of the genre, but it’s tonally closer to the sexy, psychological thrillers that used to be so rampant in the early aughts. In the first few episodes, at least, it’s more invested in Jason’s relationship with his wife Daniela (Jennifer Connelly) and doubles as an interrogation of their marriage. Are they really happier together or do they secretly wish they could go back in time to reset their fates? Eventually, the series hews closer to its sci-fi foundations as Jason embarks on a nerve-racking journey to find Daniela and their son, Charlie (Oakes Fegley) amid infinite realities. It’s at this point where the show becomes truly exciting to watch: we see different (sometimes apocalyptic and other times utopic) versions of their life in Chicago and begin to wonder if a happy ending is still in the realm of possibilities or not.