With so many best-of lists popping out left and right, who has time to read all of them?
Turns out: we do. But because you probably don't, we rounded up all the top 10 lists we could find, smashed 'em together in a big spreadsheet and spat out overall top 10 lists for the year's best books, games and movies. You're welcome.
The Top TV And Streaming Shows Of 2024
10. 'The Penguin' (HBO)
Giving Colin Farrell's breakout character from The Batman his own spinoff could have easily been a cheap cash grab, but "The Penguin" set itself apart from the Matt Reeves movie by carving out its own little corner of Gotham -- one infinitely seedier, and grimier, and even more morally dubious. But its boldest innovation was the introduction of Cristin Milioti's terrific Sofia Falcone, who managed to steal the show away from Farrell's Oz Cobb. It all culminated in a terrific crime drama full of complex characters you couldn't help but root for, even as you wondered where the hell Batman was
[Inverse]
Watch on Max
9. 'Fallout' (Prime Video)
Whether you're a fan of the video game series or going into the series almost totally blind, Prime Video's "Fallout" is a delight to watch. The lore is never so overwhelming that it's hard to follow nor does the rich worldbuilding taking place ever suffer from things being watered down to be more palatable. The world of "Fallout" is set in the future, after a nuclear apocalypse has ravaged the planet and left a lawless wasteland in its wake. Somehow, humanity has survived it all, but so many remnants of the old world like religious totalitarianism and corporate greed manage to survive as well, making the mistakes of the past a lot harder to escape. The show manages to capture the essence of the games while still telling a wholly new story led by complicated characters. Lucy (Ella Purnell), a naive vault-dweller who sneaks to the surface in search of her father. Maximus (Aaron Moten) a devout squire of the Brotherhood of Steel sent on an important mission. And the Ghoul (Walton Goggins), formerly actor Cooper Howard, a fierce gunslinger who has wandered the wasteland for 200 years in search of his family, and somehow still looks hot. Their eventual alliance may be a tenuous one, but as the truth about the mysterious company Vault-Tec comes to light, it becomes crucial to their survival.
Watch on Prime Video
8. 'Interview With The Vampire' Season 2 (AMC+)
AMC's "Interview with the Vampire" has no right to be as incredible as it is. The Anne Rice novel series on which it's based is as messy as it is influential, and several of its elements -- complex, intersecting perspective shifts, label-defying queer identities, and a central relationship that's simultaneously epic and undeniably abusive -- seem completely unadaptable. Yet Rolin Jones's stunner of a series doesn't just address the source material's thorniest bits; it effortlessly layers them into a sumptuous, centuries-spanning gay tragicomedy that's more compelling than 95 percent of the modern TV landscape... ... The show pulls off a series of bold, stylish magic tricks throughout its second season, from its theatrical yet poignant performances to its keen and cutting portrayal of impending heartache and the most jaw-dropping uses of unreliable narration I've ever seen. Every episode is a dark gift.
[/Film]
Watch on AMC+
7. 'Slow Horses Series 4: Spook Street' (Apple TV+)
It wasn't a fantastic year for drama, what with all the sludgily paced trippy prestige miniseries and a Busby Berkeley - like parade of questionable true-crime re-creations. But "Slow Horses" didn't disappoint. In Season 4, Apple's sly comic thriller about a motley crew of MI5 rejects who keep finding themselves out in the field -- despite their boss's best intentions -- was better than ever, introducing an enigmatic new villain (Hugo Weaving) and bringing River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) into greater focus. Come for Gary Oldman's Jackson Lamb, sweaty and malodorous and razor-sharp; stay for some of the best-structured storytelling on television.
Watch on Apple TV
6. 'Industry' Season 3 (HBO/BBC One)
I recently spoke to someone who felt that they had slogged through the first two seasons of the BBC's Industry, but that the pain of that exercise had been justified by the excellent third [installment]. This is rather damned with faint (or impractical) praise, but season three of Industry did, indeed, take the show into new areas. Kit Harington's Henry Muck brought a bit of Hollywood [glamor], and the plot became slightly more inviting, the dialog slightly less arcane, as though the creators were consciously welcoming TV refugees from the end of Succession. And in the quest to be the big, writerly show of the moment, Industry has made a convincing claim.
Watch on HBO
5. 'Somebody Somewhere' Season 3 (HBO)
As television enters its first year of getting smaller after years of rampant expansion, what could more appropriately top this list than this tiny little gem of a show, in which barely anything happens, but in a way that can be so emotionally overwhelming, it feels like everything has happened? The third and final season of "Somebody Somewhere" found Bridget Everett's Sam struggling to see everyone else's lives changing while hers remains stuck in neutral. Best friend Joel (Jeff Hiller) moves in with boyfriend Brad (Tim Bagley), wild pal Fred (Murray Hill) is domesticated by marriage, and her retired parents' farm is rented out by a mysterious Icelandic man with a name she can't pronounce (Ólafur Darri Ólafsson). But as was true throughout this gorgeous run, the series cared less about trying to solve Sam's problems than sketching out her life and the lives of her friends. It did this in such knowing detail that it felt less like we were watching a TV dramedy than like we had somehow been deposited at a karaoke bar in Manhattan, Kansas, to spend time with Sam, her sister Tricia (Mary Catherine Garrison), Joel, and the rest of the crew. Probably made for less than half the cost of the "House of the Dragon" wig budget, Somebody Somewhere could have easily run for many more years without even David Zaslav's accountant noticing. Just treasure that we got these 21 remarkable episodes of it.
Watch on HBO
4. 'Mr. & Mrs. Smith' (Prime Video)
Two spies (Donald Glover, who also co-created the series, and Maya Erskine) go undercover as a married couple -- and unexpectedly fall in love. Their assignments are exciting, but the show excels in its examination of marriage and attendant questions of intimacy and trust. Based on the film from 2005, this version of the tale is superior.
Watch on Prime Video
3. 'Baby Reindeer'
Richard Gadd's darkly funny drama recounts its creator's experience of being stalked and sexually assaulted in his twenties. But as Gadd, who impresses with his writing, acting and sheer, unsparing honesty, makes clear: "Baby Reindeer" is not your average, 1980s-style regressive Hollywood fantasy of female predation. What makes it such a jaw-dropping experience is how wannabe stand-up Donny, Gadd's semi-fictionalised version of himself, implicates himself in his own anguish, his mishandling of Jessica Gunning's deeply troubled Martha coming into sharp focus. It's a show that threatens to have its own painful postscript, with online sleuths tracking down the 'real' Martha with dispiritingly predictable consequences.
[Time Out]
Watch on Netflix
If you liked "Baby Reindeer," you should watch these shows too.
2. 'Hacks' Season 3 (Max)
"Hacks" has always been one of TV's best comedies, but the third season -- which found Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) campaigning to be named the new host of a late-night show -- took things to another level. Whip-smart on a line-for-line level ("bisexual Gumby" alone deserves an award), it was also expertly plotted with real stakes, not to mention typically amazing work from the entire cast (in these installments, Hannah Einbinder as Ava really stands out). Guest stars, including J. Smith-Cameron, Tony Goldwyn, Helen Hunt and more were well-deployed treats, and it builds to a genuinely surprising, satisfying finale that seemed perfectly inevitable only in hindsight. We can't wait to see how the writers mine even more depth from the Deborah/Ava relationship, but we have no doubt that there are plenty more laughs and surprises in store for TV's best dynamic duo.
Watch on Max
1. 'Shōgun' (FX)
There was initially something slightly embarrassing about being enthralled with "Shōgun" in the year 2024. Here was a series tuned toward so many shameless Western fascinations -- arcane systems of honorific bloodletting, triple bluffs in the throne room, white guys moving to Japan and buying a katana -- that my effusive praise of the show forced me to check my priors. The source material, James Clavell's 1975 novel, reeks of an outmoded Orientalism, oozing with wanton sex and exoticized violence, which did not bode well for any creative team gearing up for a latter-day adaptation. And yet, I think the best thing you can say about "Shōgun" is that the FX series leapfrogs above all of that with intelligent grace. Yes, it heaps gratuitous ladles of warrior masculinity on its audience with the likes of warlord-philosopher Yoshii Toranaga, who provides all the lurid visions of the feudal Japanese customs that moved millions of gawking English speakers to purchase Clavell's book in the first place. (The camera lingers on the severed bellies of the recently seppuku'd with carnal relish.) But those sequences are alloyed with an achingly understated love story, a masterful interrogation of Western individualism, and a resonant appreciation for its setting that never comes off as cloying, needy, or overly mystic. It turns out you can make a samurai show that neutralizes all of the tiresome anxieties about samurai shows. And frankly, it's about time.
[Slate]
Watch Digg's interview with "Shōgun" star Tadanobu Asano:
Tadanobu Asano spills on his 'Shogun' stunts, his dream villain role and more at @AustinFilmFest. #AFF31 pic.twitter.com/gHHIVG9jS4
— Digg (@digg) November 4, 2024
Watch on Hulu
A note on methodology
We wish we could say there was a super fancy algorithm that combed the internet and did this for us. But the truth is that the entity doing the internet combing was a human Digg Editor, and calculations were performed by an Excel sheet that ingested and re-ranked all the lists we fed into it (briefly: #1 ranked items received 10 points, #2 ranked items got 9 points... down through #10 ranked items, which got 1 point; items on unranked lists all got 5.5 points).
