2024 in TV, Part No. 3

We move onto part three of our countdown by entering the top ten. Despite covering ten shows each of the last two days, we won’t be doing that today, instead going through the first seven of those shows. This might be the weirdest top ten you’ll see on any TV list this year, or maybe just something that reveals my tastes have become deeply middlebrow and stupid.

I like to think it just highlights my appreciation for comedy, which deserves as much respect as drama, and for well-structured episodic television. Too much of the Content Era of television involves highly-regarded “comedies” that aren’t funny or even trying to be, or eight-hour movies that don’t provide satisfying individual episodes on their own.

Whichever side of the fence you fall on there, we’re moving forward.

---

10. Matlock
Season 1
CBS

This ain’t your grandpa’s Matlock! Literally, because Andy Griffith is dead. Also figuratively, because the show has a lot more going on than a standard defense-attorney procedural.

Developed by Jane the Virgin creator Jennie Snyder Urman, the first wrinkle that tells us this isn’t the same show is the fact that Matlock is a show that exists in this universe. The second wrinkle is Madeline “Matty” Matlock herself– played by Kathy Bates, no less outstanding than you’ve come to expect from her. 75 years old, with a dead husband who gambled away all of their money and left her in debt, raising her grandson alone, needing to get a job at the big corporate firm Jacobson Moore so she can make enough to take care of her grandson Alfie, get out of debt, and finally get hers.

At least, that’s her story.

You may know there’s a twist there; if you haven’t seen it, I won’t spoil it for you. What I will say is that the twist adds a whole lot of dramatic tension, as Matty almost always has dueling goals each episode, sometimes in conflict with one another. (Nowhere is this more evident than when she’s finally put on the Wellbrexa team, and she has to decide if morally compromising herself and destroying the case of the young woman who’s brought a lawsuit against the big pharma company is worth her ultimate goals, for which she needs to prove herself on the team and earn the trust of the higher-ups.)

Even the opening minutes of the pilot hooked me; Matty’s sharpness and patience, her willingness and ability to use being overlooked as a non-threatening elderly woman to her advantage, immediately comes into play as she cons her way into the Jacobson Moore partner meeting and delivers them information on a case of theirs that will make them several million dollars.

Most of her work is with Skye P. Marshall’s Olympia, one of the three partners Matty suspects are behind what she’s trying to discover for her real mission. (The others are Jason Ritter’s Julian, who runs the big pharma team and is Olympia’s ex-husband; and his father, Senior, the managing partner, played by Beau Bridges with perfect command as a man who knows he can afford to be of few words because his word might as well be the word of God at the firm.) Matty also works closely with two junior associates on research and assisting Olympia– Leah Lewis as Sarah and David Del Rio as Billy. And she is, indeed, raising her grandson Alfie, who’s quite sharp and tech-savvy.

The individual cases aren’t always the most interesting part of this Matlock. (One notable exception is “Belly of the Beast,” Matty’s first time working a big pharma case, and in particular how it crosses up her, and our, moral sympathies.) That said, how Matty solves cases– both with insights no one else has, and by using her little-old-lady persona to get people to let their guard down– is continually intriguing, and Kathy Bates’ performance is every bit as good as you ought to expect from her. (The whole cast is solid; Marshall is probably the biggest standout as someone who knows she is in command but also knows that as a Black woman she has fought hard to get there and has to continue to fight and not show weakness to maintain that level of respect.)

While the next show on the list has more compelling week-to-week cases, Matlock has still become a must-watch here, as Matty’s dual life adds a lot of tension and drama to the proceedings, and the further she gets in, the more she finds herself asking moral and ethical questions about the cost of what she’s doing and if her goal in the end is really all worth it. And, again, Bates commands the screen whenever she’s on it every bit as much as you’d expect her to. This Matlock revitalizes an old, dusty premise with a fresh twist in the long-form storytelling and a fantastic central performance, and you don’t want to miss it.

9. High Potential
Season 1
ABC

In my eighth year of doing the TV countdown, I think I’ve only ever included three network procedurals on it. All three of them were this year. I told you the format was back.

Based on the French-Belgian series HPI, High Potential stars Kaitlin Olson as Morgan Guillory, harried single mom with a genius IQ and hyperactive mind who can’t seem to hold a job down. She’s currently working as a night-shift janitor at the LAPD, whereupon one night she studies the murder board while she’s cleaning… and makes a couple of changes that the detectives got wrong.

Well, once the cops come back in in the morning and figure out who the hell messed with their murder board, they bring in Morgan, and her explanation convinces Major Crimes captain Soto (Judy Reyes) to follow her instincts, pairing her up with Det. Karadec (Daniel Sunjata; I mostly know him as “Arriflex” from 30 Rock) to solve the case. After this and several of Morgan’s other observations at the crime scene prove correct and lead to catching the killer, Morgan gets signed on full-time as a consultant for the LAPD. With two conditions: One, child care. (Taran Killam plays her second ex-husband Ludo, father of her two youngest, and the department pays for him to care for the kids while she’s working.) Two, that Soto will look into the disappearance of her first husband, Roman, fifteen years ago. (Their daughter Ava is convinced Roman abandoned the family, but Morgan is certain he didn’t.)

It works because most episodes are fast-paced and with a lot of plot to go through, and because it’s all believable. Plausibility is important to a procedural. The fake-out suspects are plausible enough for us to take seriously, and the show hits a tricky note accurately with the cases, as Morgan catches things the detectives don’t not because they’re stupid, but because she’s hyper-observant and has so much hyper-specific knowledge. (In one case, for example, she finds a dead body buried in a greenhouse by observing that some recently-planted tomatoes are next to some plants they’re incompatible with, and the owner of the greenhouse would have known that.)

The cases are sharp and compelling week to week, even as the show has some of the network-procedural trappings, and Olson’s terrific in the lead and buoyed by a strong cast around her. (Even grumpy Karadec, who spends a couple of episodes in constantly-skeptical mode, comes around to valuing Morgan more and more and trusting her and her theories.)

Part of me feels silly having so many procedurals this high on the list, but it’s been a relatively thin year, and to be honest, each of these three has been a consistently fun and engaging watch week-to-week, with no real weak points. (Some episodes are better than others, to be sure.) There was never anything wrong with the procedural as a format; it just became stale and lazy over the years, and all three of the shows on this list inject it with some new life. That could be the breezy fun of Elsbeth and charm of Carrie Preston’s performance; or Kathy Bates’ outstanding work on Matlock and the dramatic tension that comes from her schemes and the secrets she’s keeping; or here on High Potential, with another great lead performance along with well-plotted and fast-moving cases and episodes that don’t have any time wasted. If you miss seeing smart people solve crimes and cases, you finally have some options that don’t suck.

8. Solar Opposites
Season 5
Hulu

Man, this show just doesn’t miss. After five seasons, I still don’t feel like there’s been any decline or staleness in the show. The long-form story of the Opposites having to raise the Pupa to terraform Earth, even as some of the Opposites (mainly Terry, somewhat Jesse) have become fond of Earth, continues. At the end of last season, the Opposites fled Earth as they became at risk of turning human from staying there too long. They’ve settled on the seemingly perfect planet Clervix 4, which, of course, we know won’t last.

The individual episodes continue with the Opposites attempting to deal with both relatively ordinary human activities (preschool, bullies) and higher sci-fi concepts (such as “Live Die Repeat Device” and “The What If?! Device”). Those individual stories are still a lot of fun, Dan Stevens is still having a blast as the new Korvo, and the show continues with some of its longer-form side stories. The story of the Wall has expanded into the backyard, and Glen’s Silvercops adventures take an even further, stranger twist. In addition, “The What-If Device?!” reveals a long-forgotten former member of the crew… and in the season’s final shot, a new enemy from the Opposites’ past emerges.

Well, final shot not counting the annual holiday episode, this time a sequel to the first Halloween episode.

I really don’t have much new to say about this show on its fifth season. The bright side of that is, that’s because the show has stayed so consistent throughout its run. (The one big change was the casting of Dan Stevens as Korvo starting in season 4, and he’s having so much fun and has made the role his own, that most of the time I forget Justin Roiland ever voiced the character.) The stories have never felt stale, the show has never felt uninspired or going through the motions, and really, there’s nothing much to write because I can’t point to anything that’s declining, and the show was one of the better ones on TV from the get-go.

At this point, Solar Opposites is pretty well-established, and if you’re already a fan, you’ll be very happy with this season. If you aren’t and you’re curious, you can just start from the top. (Or season 4 if you really don’t want to even hear Roiland’s voice anymore.)

7. Shoresy
Season 3
Crave / Hulu

Jared Keeso is 40, and he’s not trying to play someone younger than himself. The implications of that statement end up driving the heart of season 3 of Shoresy, as the team competes in the National Senior Tournament after having won the NOSHO: What do you do when it looks like your playing days are nearing an end? How do you go out, and what will you do next?

Before we get there, though, we have to get through the National Senior Tournament itself. That gets off to a rocky start, as the Blueberry Bulldogs suffered a rash of injuries in the NOSHO tournament. While everyone’s licking their wounds, Shoresy and Sanguinet have to get the team to get their heads in the game and play through for the Senior Tournament.

[minor spoilers follow.]

The tournament itself dominates the story and brings in a number of colorful characters as the Bulldogs’ opponents. With each episode focused on a different match, that means we get to see plenty of time off the ice, too. Sometimes that means interacting with the opponents, which can range from polite dinners to bar brawls. Sometimes that means dealing with the players’ personal lives, media appearances, endorsements, community engagement (Shoresy talking to a classroom of kids is never not funny), or just how they deal with management and the league. The politeness comes from dinner with the Charlottestown Reds’ “Gorgeous” Gord Gallant, widely regarded as the hottest player in the league and a pretty nice guy too. The Vaughan Canadesi, a team of cowboys of few words, have a notoriously dirty player on their team, and he takes a cheap shot at Shoresy late.

Shoresy plays through it… and then gets a(nother) concussion in the next game. And ownership is finally demanding he sit one out– the revenge match against the SOO Hunt, which really hurts– and start thinking about his future. And when the need to spark the troops while he’s inactive and in the bleachers arises… he starts a brawl.

That leads to his suspension for the championship, which the team appeals… and Nat breaks that Shoresy’s retiring after the tournament, much as he might protest otherwise or have wanted to keep it a secret. This leads to a surprising outpouring of support and appreciation for a player who was a pain in the ass for pretty much everybody not on his team (and most of the people on his team), as well as a few scenes that suggest what he might do next, whether that’s hockey media, coaching, or working with kids.

Shoresy continued to bring the great humor and the sense of what it’s like to be on a team that it’s been known for its first two seasons, but Shoresy’s own story as his playing days come to a close added some drama and poignancy that deepened the show beyond a mere comedy. (All the more surprising for a character whose primary purpose on Letterkenny was relentless shit-talking and fucking other players’ moms.)

And according to the season’s own closing titles, it’s officially the end of Shoresy: Part One. We’ll find out what Shoresy chose for his next stop in life in Part Two, which will be out pretty soon– the end of February if you’re in America; earlier in Canada.

6. Royal Crackers
Season 2
[adult swim]

Royal Crackers took a very good step forward from season 1 to 2, as creator Jason Ruiz and the writers figured out what really makes it work. Even though everyone talks about Smiling Friends, I think this is currently Adult Swim’s best offering.

One thing I’ve really enjoyed about Royal Crackers this season is that it’s even more committed to the weird, surreal, and supernatural than the last. For a show with a premise seemingly along the lines of a parody of Succession, turning that show’s family drama and power struggles into a much lower-stakes feud for control of a shitty cracker company in Bakersfield, it pretty quickly went off into its own strange thing.

Season 2 continues along that vein, with more stories about supernatural happenings in and around Bakersfield than anything like the business of running the cracker company. The reopening of the Bakersfield Mall after it was closed for being haunted reveals… well, it’s still haunted, and the ghost is quite murderous. Two separate stories involve encounters with the Utzi-Wutzis, a tribe of small cat-like humanoids on Catalina Island. Yet another features a strange race of underground mushroom-people and their plans to take over the surface world– which, of course, involves one of their own in a human disguise as an employee at Royal Crackers. And the finale involves a visit to the “Factory 6 Exclusion Zone” and a possessed dog.

We also get more flashbacks to Theo Sr. in his more… conscious days, as ever an insane and violent maniac and severe narcissist. That includes his violent tantrums toward the Board of Directors, his own bizarre interactions with the Utzi-Wutzis, as well as arguably the most monstrous thing he’s done in the season finale. No wonder the Hornsbys are so screwed up.

Matt, Stebe and Deb’s son, as quiet and unassuming as he is, continues to show that deep down, he’s the most badass and hardcore of the Hornsbys. (He’s a bit like Gideon Gemstone in that regard.) In the first episode, he resolves the Hornsby/Dennison feud swiftly and decisively. And when Stebe and Theo Jr. decide to drop him off in the woods in “Tracker,” as part of their (again, insane and violent maniac) dad’s tradition for the Hornsby males to go through a Night of Passage to make them men. Matt encounters his crush Holly and her group of delinquent friends, including her boyfriend Oscar. He keeps trying to impress them and failing, and then Holly’s friend Marcy goes into labor, and Oscar panics and runs away, and Matt rises to the occasion.

Above all that… Royal Crackers, no joke, had the single funniest scene I saw on TV all year. (It’s the one pictured above. I do find fart jokes funny, but it’s the before-and-after of the actual moment– both why Stebe does it, and what happens afterward– that make it the most “pause the show I’m laughing too hard, and then rewind it a few times until I stop laughing this hard at it” scene I saw all year.) That alone would be enough to elevate it, but it’s the fact that this show has stayed so consistently weird and surreal– while, goddamn it, making me care about this ridiculous family– that puts it so high on this year’s list.

5. Colin From Accounts
Season 2
Binge / Paramount Plus

A delightful show I only heard about upon its season 2 return. Colin From Accounts is an Australian sitcom starring real-life couple Harriet Dyer (American Auto) and Patrick Brammall (No Activity) as Ashley and Gordon, two people who meet cute… well, a twisted version of cute, anyway: On a whim while crossing the street, Ashley decides to flash Gordon (no pun intended, I can’t stress that enough), and, distracted by her, he takes off and promptly hits a small dog that’s escaped its yard.

They bring the dog to the vet, it’s got two broken legs, and they’re on the verge of just putting it down when they can’t bring themselves to, deciding to share care for the dog themselves. They decide to give it a proper human name, and decide “He’s Colin… Colin from Accounts. Colin from Accounts Payable, who’s working on the big merger.”

From there, naturally, their shared custody of the dog (which involves Ashley temporarily staying with Gordon since her landlord won’t allow pets) develops to getting to know one another, from very different worlds (she’s a nurse around 30, he’s a brewery owner in his 40s), and a romance blossoms… well, maybe blossoms isn’t quite the word, as it certainly hits a lot of fits and starts along the way.

By season 2, though, they are firmly a couple and living together, and navigating both of those experiences– first having to get Colin back from his new owners, dealing with an ex of Gordon’s, getting to know each other’s families (Ashley’s mother is the kind of terrible narcissist who sees a daughter as competition, and she’s dating a creep, too; Gordon’s family are more run-of-the-mill assholes), and things of that nature. (One of those things is that Ashley’s friend Meg starts dating a lady who’s sort of one of those hippie feminists, and I say “sort of” because she’s mostly an insufferable narcissist.)

Much like with Poppa’s House (although there hopefully with less real-life sex between the leads– it’s not The Strange Thing About the Wayanses), the real-life chemistry between Dyer and Brammall immediately translates to the screen. And while the show is quite funny, that chemistry may elevate it above what it has in simple comedic value. It’s not often sitcoms try the rom-com format, in part because a film can end at the Happily Ever After point. Colin From Accounts season 2 proves there’s life to the rom-com after the leads get together, and Dyer and Brammall make the occasionally halting, occasionally rife with conflict, but always sparking romance between Ashley and Gordon feel believable and real.

4. Bad Monkey
Season 1
Apple TV+

Bill Lawrence is back at it yet again, as he’s apparently responsible for about 2/3 of Apple TV+’s original programming lineup. This time, he’s at it with Bad Monkey, an adaptation of the dark-comedy crime-fiction novel of the same name by Carl Hiaasen.

Our story focuses on Andrew Yancy, detective in the Florida Keys currently on suspension (for, uh, shoving his girlfriend’s husband’s golf cart, with him in it, off a pier) and working as a restaurant inspector in the meantime. Vince Vaughn is absolutely perfect for the part; if I didn’t know this was an adaptation of a Carl Hiaasen novel, I’d think the character of Andrew Yancy was written specifically for him. One day, some fishermen bring in a severed arm. Yancy is tasked with delivering the arm to the morgue. And from there, once it’s identified as belonging to a man named Nick Stripling, he can’t let go his suspicions that something more sinister is going on with it. Those suspicions are fueled by Nick’s daughter Caitlin (Charlotte Lawrence), who thinks her father’s new, much younger wife Eve (Meredith Hagner) had him murdered for the money. Yancy starts digging in with the help of the also-suspicious morgue doctor, Rosa Campesino (Natalie Martinez), and the occasional, more reluctant help of his when-not-on-suspension partner Rogelio (John Ortiz).

Meanwhile, a man named Christopher (Rob Delaney) is developing a tourist resort on Andros Island in the Bahamas, which bothers several of the locals. Most notably, this story focuses on Neville Stafford (Ronald Peet), a young fisherman being displaced by the resort construction and the owner of the titular bad monkey, and the Dragon Queen (Jodie Turner-Smith), an Obeah-practicing woman who is highly respected and feared by the locals.

If you guessed that both of these stories would intersect and intertwine, and the mystery would be complex and twisty, and that Vaughn’s Yancy would get a ton of motormouthed quips and smart-ass one-liners along the way, you’d be spot on. And as Yancy and his allies continue to unravel that mystery, the connection between the arm in the Keys and the resort in the Bahamas, and as the pressure closes in on them and the stakes get higher, the show remains compelling and worthy of our attention, and a pretty funny time along the way, too, largely thanks to the writing and Vaughn’s performance (which isn’t to say the others can’t be funny, too).

It’s a bit of a shaggy story, with some elements that stand out as not being strictly necessary. Alex Moffat’s douchebag realtor building and selling an eyesore next to Yancy gives us some fun interactions between the two, but probably could have been cut; more glaringly, other than being the reason for Yancy’s current exile into restaurant inspection and one key moment in the realtor plot, Michelle Monaghan’s Bonnie seems to be part of her own, entirely different story that is only incidentally tied to Yancy and not really at all to the main plot.

Still, I can’t deny that I had a blast watching Bad Monkey. It’s a captivating mystery with way too much cheeky fun along the way to ever be a bad time. It’s the rare show with a well-plotted and high-stakes mystery that’s still fun and funny rather than just being a dour imitation of prestige TV. And in 2024, that’s enough to elevate it near the top of TV on the air. The show was also recently renewed for a second season, so more adventures with Andrew Yancy and company are forthcoming; the most likely source for a season-two adaptation is Hiaasen’s sequel to Bad Monkey, Razor Girl.

---

Tomorrow, we’ll get into detail with the best of the best– the top three shows of 2024. We’ll be coming in a little earlier in the morning to fill in our Thursday morning article slot, so keep your eyes peeled.