The 20 best TV shows of 2024, ranked
Share:
From the improbable phenomenon ‘Baby Reindeer’ to the comfort of ‘Gogglebox’ and the smart, sexy and slick ‘Mr & Mrs Smith’, here are the top 20 releases from the past 12 months, selected by The Independent’s TV critic Nick Hilton. Each week, when I come to review the latest big television shows, I find the task of assigning a star rating the most challenging part of the process. Three stars feels like a cop-out, but the measures on either side – the nuclear two-star, which will prompt defensive accusations from fans, or the glowing four-star recommendation that you will have to stand by – feel so extreme. And most television is worth three stars: either not especially good nor especially bad, or a curate’s egg built of some excellent parts and some rubbish ones.
![[Toby Jones as hero Alan Bates in the ITV drama about the Post Office scandal]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/01/31/13/mr%20bates.PNG)
So, as you can imagine, the task of ranking the year’s television is not something I relish. But here, as 2024 draws to a close, are 20 shows that I can, unreservedly, recommend. Shows that hurdle over the three-star threshold while their contemporaries limbo under it. These are the 20 best shows of the year – with apologies, in advance, for your favourites that didn’t make the list.
![[Gary Oldman looks like he’s still relishing playing Jackson Lamb as a repulsive inebriate in ‘Slow Horses’]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/09/13/16/TV_Emmys_-_Slow_Horses_48599.jpg)
20. Nobody Wants This. Adam Brody has forged an excellent career playing nice guys who also happen to be hot. In Nobody Wants This, he played a nice guy who also happens to be a rabbi – giving a new generation of viewers license to think they’ve just discovered that Adam Brody is, also, hot. Co-starring Kristen Bell (and Succession’s Justine Lupe), this very modern tale of interfaith dating was sharp, sexy and contained one of the (slightly) less unrealistic portraits of podcasting committed to TV in recent years.
![[Andrew Scott as Thomas Ripley in the Netflix show]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2024/04/03/16/newFile.jpg)
