The 20 best TV shows of 2024

From an electrifying action thriller with Keira Knightley to Ted Danson's latest sitcom and a brutal Japanese period epic, we pick the year's greatest programmes to stream right now.

The third season of this show set in the intense word of high finance pushed its morally ambiguous characters to their limits, brought in timely issues including sexual abuse and climate change, and finally exploded its own premise, with spectacular results. Marisa Abela and Harry Lawtey added layers to Yasmin and Robert. She dealt with not-unreasonable guilt over her father's death, which left her a poor little princess. More than ever, Robert seemed adrift, a sad professional failure at Pierpoint, the investment bank they work for. Kit Harington was a dynamic addition to the cast as a charming, manipulative aristocrat and founder of a green startup company, who unsettles both of them. The season ended (spoiler here) with the demise of Pierpoint and such an extreme severing of ties among its players that it felt like a series finale – but not so fast. Another season is in the works, which will mean rebuilding the characters' lives. In this instance, blowing things up to start over is the mark of a great, confident show. (CJ)

Available on Max in the US and BBC iPlayer in the UK

This may be the gentlest show on the list, but that doesn't make it any less powerful. The latest sitcom from The Good Place creator Michael Schur reunites with him star Ted Danson, who plays a retired architect, struggling from the loss of his wife, who finds a new lease of life when he gets hired by a private investigator to go into a retirement home as a mole and help investigate a jewellery theft. What Schur does so expertly is balance sitcom sweetness with a moving and occasionally quietly devastating study of the trials and tribulations of old age, from loneliness and mental deterioration to the loss of one’s peers and friends. Which isn't to say it's bleak either, though: the home's residents, as played by a whole host of stellar Hollywood veterans including Sally Struthers, Stephen McKinley Henderson and John Getz, are full of verve. In our youth-obsessed world, you only hope A Man on the Inside's success is a reminder to producers and executives that there's an appetite to see more shows anchored by senior talent. (HM)

Available on Netflix internationally 

There are plenty of spy shows out there, but only Black Doves has Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw, who give this savvy action thriller an electrifying boost. The plot is unlikely but absorbing. Helen (Knightley) is married to the British Minister of Defence and for a decade has been spying on him for a mercenary company called the Black Doves. When her lover is murdered, her old colleague Sam (Whishaw) is called in to protect her. The series weaves in their harrowing backstories and establishes a touching friendship between them, never losing sight of the intrigue, which seems to place an assassin around every corner. Sarah Lancashire adds a sinister note as their Black Doves handler. Working for the Black Doves makes Helen and Sam sellouts to the highest bidder, but remarkably, the show builds sympathy for them, especially for Sam and his broken relationship with his former partner, Michael. And like all good spy stories, this one is about more than suspense, taking on love, loyalty, fake identities and global politics. (CJ)

Available on Netfilix internationally

This is the second consecutive year this Australian rom-com has appeared on our "best of" list – and arguably it has only got better. After all the "will they, won't they?" of the first season, Sydney-ites Ashley and Gordon are now an established item – and that's where the angst really kicks in. The joy of this show is how exquisitely true-to-life it is in dissecting the trials and tribulations of a relationship, from negotiating your other half's family to feelings of sexual rejection, with situations that feel only mildly exaggerated for humorous effect. Plus, alongside the both charming and sometimes poignant performances of real-life couple Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall, the supporting cast of characters is inspired, among them Helen Thomson as Lynelle, Ashley's brilliantly self-involved mother, who has become a kind of anti- #MeToo activist to Genevieve Hegney as Chiara, Gordon's mid-life-crisis-beset business partner. And, of course, Zak and Buster Feddersen as the titular Colin, the stoic border terrier on wheels who acts as the show’s weary, all-seeing witness. Give them an Emmy – or a chewbone – forthwith. (HM)

Available on Peacock in the US and BBC iPlayer in the UK

This extraordinary and fearless series, based on Patrick Radden Keefe's rigorously reported 2018 book, refuses to play things safe. The fictionalised drama dares to take us inside the minds of the highest ranking IRA members in 1970s Northern Ireland as they justify terror and murder as political weapons. At its centre is Dolours Price, who along with her sister Marian served a prison sentence for their part in a London car bombing. (Marian Price has announced that she plans to sue Disney+ because the show also depicts her shooting Jean McConville, a mother of 10 who was abducted and disappeared, which Price has always denied doing. Dolours died in 2013.) The actors bring the characters to life with passion. Lola Petticrew captures the earnest conviction of the young Dolours, and Maxine Peake is especially stirring as the older Dolours, who regrets some of her past actions and wonders what she actually accomplished. Along with its tense drama, the series is intimate and infused with thoughtfulness. (CJ)

Available on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK

This year, Apple continued to throw a lot of money at glamorous A-lister-led shows that hardly seemed to make a ripple in the cultural conversation, but it was this trusty, self-deprecating British espionage comedy-drama, based on Mick Herron's books about a group of MI5 rejects, that continued to represent the channel at its best. Now in its fourth series, the mixture of wry British humour and high-stakes action is more perfectly-calibrated than ever, while the cast keeps accumulating excellent new recruits, from Ruth Bradley as straight-talking MI5 security "dog" Emma Flyte to Hugo Weaving as the villainous Frank Harkness. Indeed, while Gary Oldman's dishevelled spy chief Jackson Lamb and Jack Lowden's gung-ho River Cartwright are the lynchpins, the glory of Slow Horses is just what an ensemble piece it truly is. And in a streaming world where few shows get more than a couple of seasons, the good news is that it has already been renewed for a fifth and sixth. These underdogs are really having their day. (HM)

Available on Apple TV+ internationally

No one is more surprised than I am to find Rivals on the Best Of list. It's not artistic and it's not ambitious, but this adaptation of Jilly Cooper's 1988 novel about sex and power among the well-bred denizens of the fictional English county of Rutshire may be the year's most entertaining escapism. The series works mainly because of how gleefully the actors take on their over-the-top characters, in a world of country estates and 1980s excess. The standouts include David Tennant as the sleazy owner of a television network, Aidan Turner as a highly-paid but discontented presenter and Alex Hassell as a Thatcher-era Sports Minister, lover of nude tennis and of many women. Full of shifting alliances, secret affairs, and sex in every indoor and outdoor place imaginable, the show is a thoroughly engaging romp. Cooper recently told the New York Times that her goal in writing the novel Rivals was simply "to cheer people up". Its on-screen counterpart couldn't have landed at a better time. (CJ)

Available on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK

This 10-part contemporary update of the 1971 novel by Frederick Forsyth about a globetrotting assassin is the glamorous flipside of Slow Horses but equally as compelling. Eddie Redmayne plays the hitman, and has a lot of fun with some of the prosthetically enhanced disguises he's required to don, while making The Jackal an intriguingly cryptic personality, as he switches from sincerely tender-seeming family man to cold-blooded killer. And Lashana Lynch is every bit the match for him as the agent on his trail: it's pleasing, indeed, just how morally compromised her character Bianca is, guilty of callousness that makes you gasp and makes James Bond look like Mary Poppins. In fact, though, the writer/creator Ronan Bennett (who was also behind Netflix's Top Boy) has given the series a distinct Bond film vibe, from the stylish opening credits with their jazzy torch song theme tune to masterfully-filmed action sequences like a Munich car chase. But, more surprisingly, perhaps, the less high-octane domestic drama also compels, with Spanish actress Úrsula Corberó doing committed work as The Jackal's suspicious, conflicted wife. Blockbuster TV drama at its best. (HM)

Available on Peacock in the US and NOW in the UK 

The second season of this sharply-written show remained masterful at blending global politics with personal drama, and added shrewd twists that kept it surprising. Kate Wyler (Keri Russell), the reluctant US Ambassador to the UK, seemed like the smartest person in any room. But it turned out that she misjudged a few little things, like who bombed a British warship, just how high her own ambition is, and how much she relies on her partnership with Hal (Rufus Sewell), the husband she almost left. The political intrigue is polite yet explosive, as Kate learns that political players from the US and UK were complicit in the bombing. And some of the best moments are hard-nosed tete-a-tetes between Kate and Hal as they debate whether she should go after a job the White House is dangling in front of her: Vice President. Allison Janney is steely as the current Vice President, Grace Penn, whose unflinching conversations with Kate about women and power are among the show's best scenes. A jaw-dropping reversal sets up season three. How that will land in a different political landscape is an open and fascinating question. (CJ) 

Available on Netflix internationally

The TV empire of super-producer Ryan Murphy has been on a downward curve for a while, artistically at least, churning out increasingly tawdry, sensationalist series at a rate of knots – such as, this September, the latest instalment in his Monsters franchise about famous killers, which focused on the Menendez brothers. But earlier in the year, he showed it could still produce intelligent, perceptive drama with this study of waspish writer Truman Capote and his coterie of high society female friends. Writer Jon Robin Baitz's script zones in on Capote's fall from grace in the mid-1970s after the publication of an excerpt of his in-the-works novel Unanswered Prayers, which contained scandalous, only thinly-veiled portraits of his close confidantes. Tom Hollander is simply astonishing as Capote, capturing the voice, the mannerisms, the caustic superiority and the child-like neediness, while the Swans are each superbly realised, with varying degrees of hauteur, by the likes of Naomi Watts, Chloe Sevigny, Calista Flockhart and Diane Lane. The series ultimately lands as a study of a particular world of "old money" in its death throes of relevance – and the fact that it manages to find pathos in the characters' fates, despite their frequent moral ugliness, is testament to its novelistic nuance. (HM)

Available on Hulu in the US and Disney+ in the UK

It would have been enough if the fourth season of True Detective had done nothing more than use the unforgettable word "corpsicles" for murder victims frozen in ice, but this revamped series did much more. Jodie Foster is galvanizing as the acerbic police chief in a small Alaska town, who leads the investigation into an increasingly creepy multiple murder case. Set at a time of year when the sun doesn't rise for a fortnight, the show is beautifully shot in midnight blues that let you feel the chill and draw you into a world where high-tech scientists live side by side with locals with supernatural beliefs. You could spend hours teasing out the Easter eggs and connections to the original 2014 season of the show, as many have. But no need for that context. Writer and director Issa Lopez has reenergised the franchise in a way that makes it fresh and captivating from eerie start to jaw-dropping finish. (CJ)

Available on Max in the US and Now in the UK

As soon as Game of Thrones ended in 2019, conversation turned to what could succeed it – cue many fantasy series, including Amazon's Lord of the Rings spin-off and HBO's own official Thrones prequel House of the Dragon, vying to take its place. But five years on, its most convincing successor has turned out to be a show without any fantasy credentials whatsoever – but rather a historical drama about real-life 17th Century Japan that nevertheless channels Thrones' harsh worldview, epic visuals and keen interest in the business of political manoeuvring. Based on the historical novel by James Clavell, which was already made into a hugely successful miniseries back in the 1980s, Shogun centres on John Blackthorne (played by the Richard Burton-esque Cosmo Jarvis), a British sailor who is shipwrecked on the Japanese coast and gets wrapped up in a battle for power between members of the country's ruling council. What follows is at once gorgeously shot, brilliantly acted, and unflinchingly brutal, the characters' various machinations occasionally erupting in violence that pulls no punches. The cast, too, are uniformly brilliant, from Hiroyuki Sanada as embattled council member Lord Yoshii Toranaga to Anna Sawai as Blackthorne's translator, and lover, Mariko. And while it was originally intended as a limited series, such has been its success, FX has announced plans for two further seasons. Let's hope they can live up to the standards set by this one. (HM)

Available on Hulu and Disney + in the US and Disney+ in the UK

Richard Gadd's autobiographical horror story seemed to land on Netflix out of nowhere yet has become, deservedly, one of the year's biggest, most talked about and unsettling hits. Gadd created and plays a struggling comedian named Donny Dunn, who befriends Martha. She comes into the bar where he works, fantasises a relationship between them and goes on to harass him with emails and almost ruin his life. Jessica Gunning is amazing as she makes Martha both threatening and pitiable in her delusions. Tension builds to an excruciating point through the series. Donny is also repeatedly sexually assaulted, in stomach-churning detail, by a man who is a television producer promising to help his career. The show caused a controversy when viewers searched the internet and discovered Fiona Harvey, who they alleged was Martha's real-life counterpart; she has since given media interviews and is now suing Netflix for defamation, negligence and privacy violations. Putting aside those real-world aftershocks, Baby Reindeer is confessional art at its most captivating. (CJ)

Available on Netflix internationally

Last year, HBO's The Last of Us ended the tradition of sub-par video game adaptations with a gripping rendering of the bestselling action-adventure title. And now here's another screen translation of a post-apocalyptic gaming franchise, which is arguably even more successful: an eye-poppingly stylish and slyly funny take on the Fallout series, which imagines a world devastated by nuclear war where some people now live in shiny underground vaults. British actress Ella Purnell leads the cast as a bright-eyed Vault 33 resident who is forced on an eye-opening mission up to the Earth's surface to rescue her kidnapped father – where, in this future Wild West, she comes into contact with a nervy soldier (Aaron Moten) and a bounty-hunting "ghoul" (Walton Goggins) among others. Co-produced by Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan, the makers of the inferior but not dissimilar Westworld, it is an impressively immersive experience which lives up to the source material while finding its own narrative groove. Meanwhile Purnell is a real star in the making, and Goggins is revelatory in a performance that stretches across two timelines. (HM)

Available on Amazon Prime internationally 

Andrew Scott is spellbinding as the lethal con man Tom Ripley in this Hitchcockian version of Patricia Highsmith's novel The Talented Mr Ripley. Set in Naples and Rome in the 1960s, the show's dramatic black and white, shot by the Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Elswit, perfectly captures the beautiful shadowy world Ripley inhabits as he ascends from a small-time grifter in New York to a denizen of la dolce vita. As Ripley usurps the identity of his idle rich friend Dickie Greenleaf (Johnny Flynn), a single shifting look on Scott's face can reveal layers of the character's deceptions. Flynn, Dakota Fanning and Eliot Sumner are all brilliant as the people Ripley feeds off. In a style far different from the sun-drenched, memorable 1999 film, Steven Zaillian has written and directed a series as enthralling and visually glorious as they come. (CJ)

Available on Netflix internationally

No show has stirred the emotions more than this year than this adaptation of David Nicholls' era-spanning British romance. It follows the up-and-down relationship of two friends, Dexter and Emma, from university onwards, by catching up with them on the same day, 15 July, every year for 20 years. Beginning in the 1980s, it makes for a glorious nostalgic trip for viewers of a certain age, complete with a winning, carefully curated soundtrack of period appropriate pop songs. But at heart what makes this work is the captivating performances of the two leads, individually and together: Leo Woodall, building on the promise he showed in season two of The White Lotus, makes the arrogant, upper-crust party boy Dexter convincingly irritating but also sympathetic, while Ambika Mod, who first came to attention in 2022 medical drama This is Going to Hurt, is on star-making form as the fiercely intelligent but vulnerable Emma. Be warned though: if you don't know what happens, then be prepared for some tears. (HM)

Available on Netflix internationally

One of the least likely premises for a series has led to one of the year's most delightful surprises. Clive Owen is wry as the Sam Spade, the private investigator created by author Dashiell Hammett and now relocated from seedy 1940s San Francisco to 1960s small-town France. Instead of mimicking Humphrey Bogart's celebrated tough-guy Spade from The Maltese Falcon (1941), Owen smartly delivers a character who is shrewd and emotionally cool but also sometimes befuddled, especially when trying to master the French language. There are intricate personal relationships ­– a glamorous lover (Chiara Mastroianni) and a young girl who becomes Spade's ward – and of course murders he can't help but investigate in a lush country town where unregenerate Nazis linger and scheme. Director Scott Frank (The Queen's Gambit) makes the show crisp and suspenseful. Owen makes Spade his own, a man with a heart beneath his considerable sangfroid. (CJ)

Available on AMC+ in the US

It's rare that a TV show can be credited with having a tangible impact on government business – but such was the case earlier this year with this brilliant British miniseries, focusing on the national Post Office scandal, which saw more than 700 post office branch managers wrongly charged for false accounting, theft and fraud because of a failed computer system.  When it aired in the UK in January, it immediately caused huge reverberations, and prompted the Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to announce he would bring in a new law to "swiftly exonerate and compensate victims". What Gwyneth Hughes' four-part drama does so brilliantly is to thread together the human stories of the many upstanding victims – among them the titular Alan Bates (Toby Jones), who became the postmasters' leader in the fight for justice – and contrast that with the inhumane bureaucracy that they came up against. The show's impact proves that, for all the value of documentaries, sometimes a dramatisation can bring a story into the cultural consciousness like nothing else. Will Mr Bates inspire more TV getting to grips with institutional scandals of our time? Let’s hope so. (HM)

Available on PBS in the US and ITVX in the UK 

Kate Winslet is funny, chilling and on top form in this dark political comedy as Elena Vernham, dictator of a fictional Central European country. On the ludicrous side, Elena sings Santa Baby as part of her Christmas address to the nation, and calls its citizens "My Loves". On the ominous side, she masquerades as a populist but is ruthless in her determination to hold on to power, invading a nearby country and imprisoning her political opponents. It's as if she were the child of Eva Perón and Vladimir Putin. Winslet balances the character's comic and evil parts beautifully and is surrounded by a stellar cast, including Matthias Schoenaerts as the sociopathic soldier who becomes her lover, Andrea Riseborough as her cowed servant, and Hugh Grant in a single episode as the Chancellor whom Elena deposed. The Regime's tone is more absurdist than pointedly skewering, yet by the end its politically tumultuous world comes to mirror our own. (CJ)

Available on Max in the US and Now in the UK

This sci-fi show arrived with considerable hype, being the next project from Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and DB Weiss. And while it may not have exactly become the phenomenon that the streamer might have hoped for, it deserved serious applause for its intelligence and creative ambition. Based on a Chinese novel, it tells the story of a group of scientist friends as they try and work out what is going on with a spate of suicides within their community – a story that involves flashbacks to the Chinese Cultural Revolution, a mysterious virtual reality game and much more besides. It's an initially mind-boggling mix that nevertheless settles around a brilliantly compelling and timely premise: what would we do if we knew the human race was going to be destroyed, but not for 400 years? Plus it has the single most shocking TV sequence of the year, one up there with GoT's infamous Red Wedding. Netflix have announced that it will return for a second and third season, and that will be it. Here's praying it can stick the landing. (HM)

Available on Netflix internationally 

The numbers in this piece do not represent rankings, but are intended to make the separate entries as clear as possible.

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