Ranking Every TV Show of 2024: #s 20-11

Nearly there now. All week we’ve been ranking every TV show of 2024, and today we’re revealing the honorable mentions. For prior installments, check out the following links:

#s 88-76
#s 75-61
#s 60-51
#s 50-41
#s 40-31
#s 30-21

20. Under the Bridge (Hulu, Season 1). Oh, great, another true-crime show. But what’s gratifying about Under the Bridge is that it’s less a conventional murder mystery than a tender and searching portrait of a particular community. Most whodunits are structured such that they gradually crescendo until their final reveal of the killer (which is invariably uninteresting), but the identity of the perpetrator here is almost beside the point (which is why it’s disclosed with several episodes remaining). The focus instead is on the small town’s residents, all of whom are plagued with a curious mixture of anguish and longing. Riley Keough and Lily Gladstone are both very good as (respectively) an inquisitive writer and a weary investigator, but Under the Bridge is most unsettling for its depiction of teenage dynamics—how the toxic combination of insecurity and bravado can lead to ghastly behavior. Yet while the dutiful reenactment of real-life tragedy carries an undeniably sordid quality, the dominant tone of this show is one of empathy; it extends genuine compassion to all of its inhabitants, be they victims or killers or just scared little girls doing their best to fit in. It asks not if you know where your children are, but if you know what they’re feeling.

19. House of the Dragon (HBO, Season 2; 2022 rank: 19 of 110). I am preprogrammed to resist these types of shows: spinoffs that seem designed to perpetuate their own mythology rather than tell interesting stories. House of the Dragon avoids this trap not through any sort of transgressive defiance, but simply by virtue of its stellar execution. To begin with, it’s a great-looking production, with some of the most eye-popping set pieces ever conceived on the small screen. (The gigantic budget surely helps.) More importantly, even if you could fairly label it a mercenary commodity, the series doesn’t feel like trudged-out content. The writing is generally sharp, and while there are too many subplots, the show manages to focus on its characters rather than just dutifully hitting plot points for book fans. It’s less about the destination than the journey—or in this case, the flight.

18. Expats (Amazon, Season 1). I always hesitate to use the term “underrated,” because aside from its obvious subjectivity, it implies an agreed-upon consensus that’s impossible to accurately ascertain. So instead let’s call this my favorite show of 2024 that I personally heard no one else talk about. That’s a shame, because while Expats initially scans as first-world trauma porn, it quickly shifts into considerably more interesting territory, examining female relationships through lenses of race, class, and identity. Nicole Kidman is everywhere these days, but she commits to the role of a bereaved woman whose grief overwhelms her capacity to function, while Yoo Ji-young is a real find as a gig-economy worker caught in a web of tragedy and self-loathing. Running just six episodes, Expats is arguably overstuffed with messages and ideas, but it’s gratifying to see an ambitious series wrestle with itself and eventually locate the humanity at its center. It’s a show about the agony of loss, and also about the people whom we find.

17. Laid (Peacock, Season 1). As high concepts go, the premise of Laid—about a woman who discovers that all of the men people she’s had sex with are dying in rapid succession—is quite arresting. But the real backbone of the show is more simple: Stephanie Hsu is a star. She’s a limber comic performer, both physically and verbally, and she brandishes her vivacity with such unapologetic force, it’s a wonder she doesn’t crash through the screen like Jeff Daniels in The Purple Rose of Cairo. Yet Hsu’s energy, however anarchic—and however ably supported by Zosia Mamet and Michael Angarano—is what grounds Laid, lending its giddy absurdity an emotional core. Maybe the series’ concept is less outlandish than it sounds, because watching its heroine plot and panic and careen, you just might laugh yourself to death.

16. Slow Horses (Apple, Season 4; last year: 18 of 94). As a spy thriller that secretly doubles as a workplace sitcom, Slow Horses is constantly trying to balance itself, delivering gripping adventure while also making room for playful banter and acid quips. Early on, Season 4 skews a bit too heavily toward the former, minimizing its intra-office relationships and failing to properly capitalize on Gary Oldman’s greatness. But as the season progresses, it locks in, supplying the requisite espionage material (tails, glorious tails!) while honing its personal dynamics. It also locates its first great villain in the person of Hugo Weaving, whose casual lethality and innate superiority prove a perfect fit for the show’s fluid intrigue and arch intelligence. (Jack Lowden, meanwhile, continues to excel as an idealistic agent who constantly undercuts his matinee-idol looks with bumbling helplessness.) The series’ broader storylines tend to be more functional than exceptional, but when Slow Horses mimics Heat and just features two wily operatives sharing a cup of coffee and warring with words, it gets your pulse racing.

15. Ripley (Netflix, Season 1). It’s a cliché to remark that art mimics its characters, but Ripley gives the truism some heft. Its antihero is smart, patient, and fastidious—all qualities that apply to the show as well. That’s why the usual complaints about pointlessness that attend most remakes fall aside here; the series is too confident, too exacting, to feel like an imitation. It’s also the rare novelistic TV adaptation that makes good use of the medium’s extended length, especially in two episodes that function as a rigorous tutorial on the mundane perils of corpse disposal. As its star, Andrew Scott drains the light from his eyes, which again works as metaphor; this is a gorgeous-looking show, with brilliant use of contrast and shadow. So if Ripley feels a bit chilly and soulless, well, just look at its title.

14. Disclaimer (Apple, Season 1). In some ways, this show is the exact opposite of Ripley, in that it’s lush, wild, and unapologetically melodramatic. But it too features an estimable level of craftsmanship, thanks to director Alfonso Cuarón, who imbues its constant chaos with an aural and visual grandeur that feels—there is simply no other word for it—cinematic. The music, the sound design, the imagery, the vast Mediterranean horizon… everything on Disclaimer seems huge, and that tracks for a series about the outsized nature of storytelling—how dramatists embellish facts in order to lend sweep to their narratives. The dual-timeline structure is ambitious and occasionally threatens to come apart, but holding everything together is Cate Blanchett, who delivers an astute and fearless performance flecked with distress and desperation. (Also, hello Leila George.) This may not be the most plausible show, but that too feels right for a story that interrogates the concept of belief, and how the people closest to us can also be an ocean away.

13. Pachinko (Apple, Season 2; 2022 rank: 16). My attitude toward this show is much the same as it was regarding My Brilliant Friend: I rarely comprehend what’s going on, and I am hypnotized by every minute of it. The logistical particulars (who’s that? where did she come from?) matter less than the overall breadth; the time-hopping format might be superficially distracting, but it draws you in, hooking you with its temporal scale and emotional turbulence. Pachinko is very much about a specific family, but it also feels like a grander text, contemplating multiple generations as they wrestle with their own history. That isn’t to say it lacks intimacy; the performances are achingly vulnerable, and the characters are too finely drawn to function as ciphers. And despite its persistent gloom, the show resists miserabilism, instead pulsating with hope and joy—never more so than in an infectious title sequence that will have you springing off your couch and turning your living room into your own private dance floor.

12. The Decameron (Netflix, Season 1). The Decameron is a show about a band of desperate people clutching onto the last vestiges of civilization as the Black Plague sweeps through their homeland. It’s hilarious. Sure, there’s plenty of thematic material to chew on: about the delicate fabric of the social contract; about the persistent enforcement of class divisions; about the tension between marrying for love, marrying for money, and marrying someone who’s dead. But in raw terms, this thing is just an expertly calibrated comedy machine, dispensing ribald laughs with remarkable rhythm. The entire cast is strong (Zosia Mamet, again!), so you will forgive me for highlighting Tanya Reynolds, who perfectly embodies the series’ madcap spirit; she’s funny, she’s sexy, she’s charming, and she won’t hesitate to stick a knife in your back if it means staying alive. Arrayed against her, the rats don’t stand a chance.

11. A Gentleman in Moscow (Showtime, Season 1). Among the most pernicious messages surrounding modern television is the dreaded advice, “Stick with it, it gets good after the first few episodes.” And with that in mind: I strongly encourage you to give this show at least two episodes. The pilot is something of a drag, but then Mary Elizabeth Winstead shows up and voilà, we’re in business. What initially seems like a turgid period piece quickly becomes something else: a vibrant, moving family drama that uses historical turmoil as scaffolding for its lavishly appointed setting and exquisitely drawn characters. The material involving State-sponsored oppression is very real and relevant (why I never!), but it’s secondary to the series’ more pressing concerns: friendship, marriage, parenting. A Gentleman in Moscow is about a man given a new lease on life, and it will richly reward you if you deign to give it a second chance.

Coming tomorrow: the top 10.