2024 in TV, Part No. 1

Continuing our tradition for the eighth straight year, which is a thought I find a little terrifying, we’re walking through the favorite shows I saw this year.

This year was a little weird, as the writers’ strike delayed a lot of productions and bumped some shows we might’ve expected to see to 2025. Not only were some of the shows that normally would’ve shown up this year delayed until 2025, but some other shows I’d been looking forward to that were originally announced for 2024 ended up being delayed as well. (Prominent among them: new projects from Philomena Cunk and Alan Partridge.) There was still good TV out there, of course, and these delays gave me some time to try shows I might not have otherwise, but all in all, I felt like the top tier of shows was far smaller this year than usual.

Maybe that’s why it’s taken me a while to get this written– I just haven’t been as motivated to sort through the pretty-good and differentiate between them, or say much about them. (There are a few shows and a few trends I will definitely have more to say about.) It’s a relatively flat list this year, with only three shows really standing out as the best of the best. (And one standing out as the very best in particular.) There were a lot of good shows I watched this year, and quite a few I looked forward to or burned through if that was the option, but maybe not as much creme de la creme.

Still, I did my best to rank them, to the extent that I did it once and said “Yeah, that looks right. Or close enough.”

I split this article into four parts, because that seemed like the best way to make it so that each piece was relatively even in length and also not overwhelmingly long. It’s not an even split in number of entries on each article, because I had more to say about some shows than others. And the final article is a little shorter, because I felt like three shows stood out above the rest this year, and I wanted to highlight them on their own.

As always, I’ll start with some odds and ends, because despite finding my way through (or through enough of) 30 shows this year, I still didn’t quite get to everything I intended to…

“Oops, I Ran Out of Time”

The Sympathizer – I rather enjoyed what I saw of this, but I think I only made it through two episodes. It just got crowded out of my schedule with so much else going on this year (in life as well as television)– every time I meant to pick it back up, something new I’d been meaning to see was out. It’s a shame, too; I’m fairly confident it would’ve rated better than a good number of shows on the actual countdown.

A Man on the Inside – Only two episodes of this one as well, which was solid so far if not riotously funny. Ted Danson stars in Michael Schur’s latest as a retired widower who takes a job with a PI to go undercover at a nursing home to investigate a theft. Fun premise, good cast, seemed pretty insightful about the lives of the elderly. It came out pretty late in the year, though, and I wasn’t able to get any further with all my other responsibilities and holiday obligations.

Nobody Wants This – I’ve heard some good things about this Kristen Bell / Adam Brody Netflix romcom sitcom, but I never had the chance to get around to it.

Rick and Morty: The Anime – Eh, well, I had it on my list because I think Rick and Morty has rebounded really strongly of late, with season 7 being their best in a long time, but… I have some disdain for the concept on more than one level, and it wasn’t really a priority for me. The list is already gonna have thirty shows on it; I don’t need to force myself to watch more TV if I don’t feel like it.

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Okay, with that out of the way, let’s start plowing through this list. We’re going to get through the first ten of the 30 shows I ranked today. The list contains everything I watched in full (or full enough, in the case of some high-volume shows), so, at least for the first couple of entries, it’s not necessarily an endorsement…

30. The Franchise
Season 1
HBO

Well, it’s here because I managed to get through the entire series. If this was a season-review article, the show would get maybe 2 stars out of 5.

I was already worried Armando Iannucci had lost his fastball after seeing Avenue 5, a show that failed to develop its characters in any meaningful way beyond as insult givers and takers, with disjointed plotting to boot, and that revealed that his brand of comedy needs more backbone behind it than that to work. Turns out, he was only an EP on this show, and Jon Brown was the creator and presumed showrunner. Well… that wasn’t an endorsement, either.

The biggest problem with The Franchise might best be expressed by these posts about Aaron Sorkin:

Similarly, The Franchise feels like it doesn’t bother to understand the superhero-franchise machine in a way to satirize it effectively. (Even the satire of easy targets, like the sexism in these productions and in their fan base, feels like it came from a Jezebel article circa 2014.) Perhaps more to the point is how little it develops its characters; we have scant little idea what actually motivates them to put up with all this nonsense. The closest we get is Daniel (Himesh Patel) in the finale echoing the punchline of the joke he told much earlier: “What, and quit show business?” Even so… why this aspect of show business? There are plenty of movies you can work on that aren’t beholden to all this crap. I read the show’s Wikipedia page, and the motivations for some of the characters described there (Daniel’s secret passion for superhero comics and cinema) barely if at all surface in the show. Aya Cash as Anita barely gets anything to do.

The lack of motivations make a lot of potentially good performances (Patel, Cash, Daniel Brühl as the director) wasted, and some of the characters themselves were quite poorly written beyond that. Lolly Adefope’s Dag shows up as the new third AD in the first episode, and seems level-headed in a way that many people involved in this production are not, and in a way that could make her the audience surrogate. Then, for the rest of the season, she consistently acts like someone who is too stupid and unprofessional to not have washed out of Hollywood by now.

I felt no sense of stakes until the event late in the penultimate episode. I felt no sense of real conflict (as opposed to everyone bitching about the studio’s latest mandate and then getting on with it anyway) until the last episode. The only characters with any clear motivations are Billy Magnussen’s Adam, who’s battling his insecurities that he doesn’t have what it takes to be an A-list leading man in action films, and is trying to prove he does; and Richard E. Grant’s Peter, a longtime highly respected theater and film actor, presumably here to lend some respectability to the film, who clearly just doesn’t care about it and is there to get paid and amuse himself.

Peter is consistently the funniest character in the show, which was startlingly bereft of punchlines. The most consistently funny segments (most often involving Peter) were the talking-head press interviews and segments over the end credits, the funniest of which is almost certainly due to something Nick Kroll (in a one-episode guest appearance) improvised. This feels like a corollary to Roger Ebert’s rule of thumb: “Is this movie better than a documentary of the same actors having lunch?” I’m not sure The Franchise would be, and those segments are my evidence.

The show has been cancelled. At least, this frees up Grant for my spinoff idea, a show that follows Peter around on different movie sets every week as he cashes a paycheck for adding some gravitas to the production, hassles his co-stars, says offensive things, tries to get fired, etc. Sort of a cross between Party Down and Curb Your Enthusiasm, but in the film industry. Call me, HBO.

29. Futurama
Season 12, or 9?
Hulu

I’m tired of trying to figure out the production disparities. I go with 12 here, because that’s the broadcast-season number; 9 is the production-season number, which involves calling the five original seasons four seasons and the Comedy Central years two seasons each split into two. Hulu calls this season 12, and they’re making the show now, so I’m following their lead.

Anyway, I don’t have a ton to say about Futurama. Each revival has never gotten to the point of being bad, but overall a little worse than the one before. Now, the best episodes are pretty-good to good, the average episode is okay, and the bad episodes are just an unpleasant slog. (This season, that dubious honor falls to “Quids Game.”)

It might only be my affection for it that keeps it above The Franchise, but it did have a couple of standout episodes in “The Temp” and “Attack of the Clothes,” as well as another good finale, which still continues to be one of the show’s stronger points. It’s been renewed for two more seasons past this one, at this time, so Planet Express will keep chugging on.

28. After Midnight
Seasons 1 and 2
CBS

I always liked the @midnight format, and reviving it for four nights a week on CBS seemed like a great idea. Taylor Tomlinson is a good host; I certainly prefer her presence to Chris Hardwick’s. The show often features lesser-known standups and performers, although occasionally they’ll draw some bigger and more established names who are very funny. (Since I don’t watch RuPaul’s Drag Race, the show also introduced me to my favorite new drag queen name: Bob the Drag Queen.)

The one thing that’s bugged me, though, is that the show seems to have been network-noted quite a bit as it’s gone on. There seems to be fewer and fewer time for actual games and riffing, more for monologues and interviewing (and already a ton of commercials to begin with). This was really blatant when Hashtag Wars got moved to the end of the episode, presumably because CBS viewer metrics suggested a lot of viewers turned off the episode after that; now they only do it once a week.

I stopped watching it regularly just because, well, it aired 106 episodes in 2024, and that’s a lot. And the meddling with the format seems to have deemphasized the games and riffs and made it not quite as fun as it was. But when there’s a lineup I really like, I put it on, and it’s still a good time. If you find yourself free in front of the TV every night around 12:37 AM Eastern, you could do a lot worse.

27. Poppa’s House
Season 1
CBS

This is hardly going to be a groundbreaking show, being a CBS sitcom with a laugh track and everything. The biggest selling point, naturally, is the chemistry between Damon Wayans Sr. and Jr. Senior plays Poppa, a longtime radio host whose flagging ratings lead the station to bring in a cohost, psychologist Dr. Ivy (Essence Atkins). And then when the station uses AI to generate promos of them, they quit and start their own podcast. (I think it’s called Pop and Doc, but I’m not 100% sure. If it’s not, it should be.)

Junior plays, well, Junior, married to Nina (Tetona Jackson) and with two kids, living next door to Poppa and frequently dropping in on him. He works for his father-in-law (Geoffrey Owens) doing some kind of vague white-collar sales and vice-president thing, but his dream is to direct and produce documentaries.

The format is nothing special, but the jokes are sharper than one might except for a CBS-laugh-track sitcom, and, again, the chemistry between Damon Sr. and Damon Jr. is unsurprisingly excellent and genuine. But not to shortchange Atkins (in particular) and Jackson, who both have good comic timing and great chemistry with their male foils.

Poppa’s grouchiness and being stuck in his ways could be stale, but after only eight episodes so far, it’s been a bit refreshing to see him grow out of it a bit– haltingly, of course– and admit where it really comes from. You’re never too old to grow. And never too old to star in a sitcom with your son– okay, that’s probably not true, but Wayans Sr. is only 64, so he’s got some good years left in him yet.

The outtakes over the closing credits each episode are also very funny, too. (While they do occasionally contain some of the funniest parts of the show, especially between the two Wayaneses, that’s not always the case and not to nearly enough a degree to warrant a comparison to The Franchise‘s similar situation.) It’s not a particularly ambitious network sitcom, but I’ve enjoyed every episode.

26. Animal Control
Season 2
FOX

Apparently this was a relatively big hit for FOX in its first season, and it continues to be solid throughout. There isn’t really anything new I have to say about the show that I didn’t say after season 1, but it’s solidly funny and the characters and their relationships continue to grow throughout, with the stories being the usual mix of animal-catching responsibilities, office hijinks, and developments in the characters’ personal lives. The show’s got a fun cast of characters, is back already for its spring season 3, and it continues to be fun and a good network sitcom.

25. Abbott Elementary
Seasons 3 and 4
ABC

I’m not a hater of this show or anything; I’ve just never felt like it’s as good as everyone else says it is. This was particularly true in season 3, which felt more disjointed and less funny than previous seasons. Season 4, however, was pretty hot right out of the gate and put up a strong fall semester (come on, what else am I supposed to call it?).

Janine’s flirtation with working at the district in season 3 ended the way we all knew it would; season 4 introduces the new wrinkle of gentrification, with a golf course being built nearby that’s bringing in new residents to the district (one of the show’s funniest moments was Ava’s reaction to the first white student at the school), and the compromises Ava and the teachers make to deal with the gentrifiers that can get the school the resources they need that the district’s funding won’t. Season 4 also introduces more of the characters’ outside lives, with Jacob’s brother and the extended Schemmenti family making an appearance, and a delightful cameo from someone you’ll absolutely recognize as Ava’s father. It’s not going anywhere anytime soon.

24. The Great North
Season 4 (and one Season 5 episode)
FOX

The first season was wonky, but the show found its footing after that and has been on solid ground ever since. There are some particularly fun episodes– Judy and Kima going to a student conference in Juneau and accidentally getting high and having a maniac adventure around the big city– but I think my favorite element of this show currently is the development of Beef, as he finally opens up to the idea of dating again and to having more experiences outside his stoic routine. The discovery of the family’s Aunt Dirt (Jane Lynch), hiding out in the family bunker for the last 60 years, and her increased presence, was very welcome too.

FOX’s scheduling of the show has been weird, as they ran 15 of the 20 season-4 episodes in the spring, dropped the remaining five over three Sunday nights in September, then premiered season 5 with one episode the Sunday before Christmas. I’m not sure if I should read anything into this.

23. Smiling Friends
Season 2
[adult swim]

I was finally convinced to check this out after seeing so many of my social media mutuals rave about it. It’s not my favorite, but it is fun, and each episode is a typically-brief Adult Swim quarter-hour. The premise is that the four characters– left to right in this image: Pim, Charlie, Glep, and Allan– work for Mr. Boss and his Smiling Friends business, whose ostensible purpose is to cheer up people who are feeling down.

Of course, this is Adult Swim, so the plots are rarely that straightforward. The show primarily focuses on ever-optimistic Pim and more realistic and cynical Charlie, and often, well, how Pim’s optimism gets them into messes. Some of the highlight episodes this season include Pim and Charlie’s abduction by aliens after Pim invites Charlie to his UFO sighting party. (“You said last week that you were super into UFOs, right?” “I’ve never said anything like that in my entire life.”) Another highlight is “A Allan Adventure,” the rare Allan-focused episode, as we see the lengths he’ll go to in order to do his job well, even when he probably shouldn’t. The finale, with the Friends building a snowman that comes to life, is another highlight, and hilariously, it’s given a title (“Pim Finally Turns Green”) and episode description that are completely inaccurate.

Like I said, I don’t love this show as much as everyone else seems to– spoiler alert, it’s not even my highest-rated Adult Swim show this year, and Rick and Morty didn’t even air in 2024– but it’s a pretty fun and silly time and you can get through each season in about an hour and a half.

22. John Mulaney Presents: Everybody’s in L.A.
Season 1 (or miniseries? or special?)
Netflix

During the Netflix Is a Joke comedy festival in May, Netflix produced six episodes of John Mulaney hosting a live late-night talk show– which, if nothing else, was a refreshing change to the format, between being live and bringing Mulaney’s particular sensibilities to the form, and the oddities that would result therein. The first such oddity was bringing in Beloved Character Actor Richard Kind as the announcer, and he unsurprisingly crushes both announcing duties and being hilarious on his own.

The show is a mix of pre-taped sketch segments (look for Stavros Halkias in the first episode’s sketches), call-in features, other odd segments (perhaps the oddest is Kevin Gage– I know readers of this site know who he is– doing a standup set in character as Waingro), and, of course, the volume of guests who pop over to the couch for some chitchat. Those guests are a mix of celebrities and comedians, and notable Los Angeles personae, like journalist Zoey Tur, famed prosecutor Marcia Clark (who finally got that win that eluded her 30 years ago about a month before the show aired), and seismologist and public authority on earthquakes Dr. Lucy Jones. You also get bits like Will Ferrell as ancient record producer Lou Adler, Andy Samberg as notable Lakers superfan James Goldstein, and a call-in from “Bob Dylan” (James Austin Johnson).

Some of the other segments are great even regardless of if they’re really comedy, such as the one in the third episode where Fred Armisen talks to a group of old punk rockers which features, among others, Lee Ving, Mike Watt, Exene Cervenka, and DJ Bonebrake. Even Armisen can’t kill the level of cool in that room.

While it’s still a talk show and thus only has so much potential, it’s such a weird and unique take on the idea that it actually feels fresh. As Jerry Seinfeld put it, “You’ve brought your amazing rehab zaniness to this show.” In any case, it was a delight to watch.

21. Grimsburg
Season 1
FOX

The latest offering from FOX’s animation block didn’t get a ton of buzz. (I think Krapopolis, which I found alarmingly generic and laugh-free for a Dan Harmon show, got a lot more.) This could be because of the relatively unknown creative team of Catlan McClelland and Matthew Schlissel, but the show also brings us Jon Hamm in his first full-time leading role since Drunk Advertising Guy Who Took the Exploded Man’s Trophies. (A season of Fargo doesn’t count. “As full-time?” “Sure.”)

Hamm plays Detective Marvin Flute, who has, in Draper-esque fashion, been retired from detective-ing and holed up drinking in a motel since he split from his family. His old mentor, Lt. Kang (Greg Chun in a great deadpan performance), recruits him back to the force to crack some of the murder mysteries in Grimsburg, which is apparently the murder capital of, more or less, the entire universe.

Also in tow are Marvin’s family he’s attempting to reconcile with– his ex-wife Harmony (Erinn Hayes), an anchorwoman who was raised by bears (“You’re culturally Bearish”), and loner / loser son Stan (Rachel Dratch), who’s hoping for Marvin and Harmony to get back together. On the force, besides the apparently preternaturally sexy (even in that parka) and possibly immortal Kang, we have Det. Summers (Kevin Michael Richardson), Flute’s new cyborg partner. (Not in the main cast, but in that photo, is recurring character Wynona, a mortician played by Kaniehtiio Horn– most famously Letterkenny‘s Tanis, but you may have seen her in Reservation Dogs as well.)

If all these sound like ridiculous try-hard character quirks, well, you’re not totally wrong, and I haven’t even gotten to Alan Tudyk as Dr. Rufis Pentos, described as “Marvin’s former music teacher turned nemesis,” who is about as ridiculous as that sounds. (Tudyk also plays Stan’s imaginary friend Mr. Flesh. You can probably guess who he is in the above photo.)

But you wouldn’t be totally right, either, because the show does manage to develop these characters in a way beyond their sitcom quirks, and tells some pretty fun stories along the way as well. There’s always a murder mystery in every episode, but usually with a lot of fun conceits in the storytelling. One episode, for example, features a documentary crew making a TV show about Marvin, and his insistence on getting everything right and getting the actor portraying him in reenactments to get his performance down takes up more time than solving the actual murder of the episode does. In another, a former child star is accused of murder, and Marvin has to solve the case despite everyone in town, including the judge, wanting to let her off because she used to be famous. In another episode, Marvin is fed up with Summers and has the department make him a robot clone of himself as his ideal partner… of course, the robot realizes Marvin’s human frailties are holding him back and decides to get around Kang’s rule against detectives going it alone by killing Kang.

The family life stuff provides more fun than expected, too, particularly with Stan, whose imaginary friend is troubling in that Ralph Wiggum “He told me to burn things!” way. Stan’s dream is to get his parents back together and join the Stable Boys Club at school, a club for kids whose families are totally stable and whose parents love each other and would never cheat on each other. You may have picked up from my phrasing that not all is as it seems there. On the flipside, Mr. Flesh is actively working to keep Stan maladjusted, because well-adjusted boys don’t have imaginary skeleton friends with fireballs for eyes.

It’s not quite a top-tier show, but Grimsburg was a pretty fun and engaging watch. As with many sitcoms, I’m looking forward to see if and how they improve the show to bring its best elements forward in season two, premiering in February.

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Come back tomorrow at the same time for part 2, where we’ll get into the top 20.