The Best TV Shows of 2024 (So Far)
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He's dancing in joy at my misfortune... Voodoo doll in hand. Ah! I apologize. I was just reciting Truman Capote lines from Feud: Capote vs. The Swans, which I often do in my free time. It makes me feel like a snazzy socialite, OK? Sue me.
But while you're here—and we're talking television—this is as good of a time as any to run down the best shows of the year so far. This year kicked off with True Detective: Night Country, which delivered exactly what HBO promised: six hours of Jodie Foster kicking ass and scowling at people. Just two weeks later, saw Apple TV+'s stellar Masters of the Air, which is really the thing your dad wanted to see when he asked you to take him to Napoleon. From there, the streaming gods delivered the also-great Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Palm Royale, and Constellation.
Keep in mind: the small screen has plenty more shows for us this year. (The Sympathizer, House of the Dragon season 2, the return of The Bear, and much more.) But we've binged enough television in the past three months to confidently present you with eight of the best series this (potentially doomed!) year has gifted us.
Curb Your Enthusiasm
24 years after it premiered, Curb Your Enthusiasm is coming to an end with Season Twelve. Say it ain’t so! But Larry David being Larry David, the series isn’t going out quietly. Season Twelve finds our favorite curmudgeon on trial in Atlanta for the one act of kindness he’s ever performed in his life: handing a water bottle to a parched voter waiting in line to cast her ballot (yes, that’s really illegal in Georgia). Enjoying newfound fame as a liberal folk hero, Larry returns to familiar pastimes: causing chaos at the country club, feuding with waiters, and sparring with the late, great Richard Lewis. Curb’s swan song plays the greatest hits, and we’re not complaining—why mess with perfection?
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Shōgun
FX’s sumptuous adaptation of James Clavell’s seminal novel is truly epic in every sense of the word. Set in feudal Japan, it follows the fateful collision of two men: Lord Toranaga, a principled leader fending off his political rivals through shrewd strategy, and his unlikely ally John Blackthorne, an English sailor shipwrecked in Japan. But Shōgun is ultimately about a collision of cultures, values, and ideas; we see this most keenly in the extraordinary scenes between Blackthorne and Lady Mariko, the mysterious highborn woman assigned to be his translator. Shōgun is rich in grand battles and visuals, but it’s Blackthorne and Mariko’s thorny discussions about death, honor, and freedom that leave the deepest mark.
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Constellation
Apple TV+’s sci-fi domination continues with Constellation, a trippy mystery about an astronaut who survives a deadly disaster on the International Space Station, only to discover that key pieces of her life on Earth have changed. As Jo (Noomi Rapace) struggles to make sense of why her memories don’t match her present experiences, her young daughter Alice embarks on a quest for understanding that takes them through the looking glass and back again. Rich in metaphor and meaning, Constellation slowly peels back the layers of its quantum puzzle box to reveal a gripping tale about the indomitable love between parent and child. Part thriller, part fairy tale, it’s often a disorienting viewing experience—but one that rewards patience with immense payoff.
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Palm Royale
What if all your favorite comediennes teamed up to make a prestige soap opera and Apple threw bajillions of dollars at it? You’d get Palm Royale, the daffy new confection starring Kristen Wiig as Maxine Dellacorte-Simmons, a cheery former pageant queen trying to scale the heights of Palm Beach gentility. During the fateful summer of 1969, Maxine elbows her way into high society by way of her connection to her husband’s comatose Aunt Norma, the reigning queen bee of Palm Beach, played with wide-eyed comic delight by the great Carol Burnett. The all-star cast is rounded out by Laura Dern as an unlikely friend, Allison Janney as a menacing foe, and Ricky Martin as a bartender with a secret connection to Norma. Visually splendid and packed with wildly entertaining performances, Palm Royale is where dishy diversion and social satire meet.
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Masters of the Air
Let me just throw a whole bunch of names at you: Austin Butler, Callum Turner, Barry Keoghan, and Ncuti Gatwa. A long time before these men were bordering on household-name status (one of them dates Dua Lipa now!), they signed up for a World War II-set minseries about the U.S. Air Force's 100th Bomb Group, known for their heroics during deadly missions. Well, thank the sweet, sweet skies that they did. Masters of the Air is a dutiful, big-budgeted, starry retelling of a damn impressive group of men—who entered the cockpit knowing that their survival chances were slim. Add jump-out-of-the-screen-with-their-Hollywood-charm turns from Butler and Turner, and you have another singular entry in Hollywood's great canon of World War II stories.
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Mr. and Mrs. Smith
It was all the way back in February 2021 when we first learned that Donald Glover and Phoebe Waller-Bridge would star in a television series based on 2005's Mr. and Mrs. Smith. Waller-Bridge eventually left the project—but don't let that get you down, because the incomparable Maya Erskine (of PEN15 greatness) took her place. Honestly? I couldn't imagine this show without her. Mr. and Mrs. Smith is all of the things it needed to be: Quippy, hot, and fun. What the series lacks in plot (which sometimes borders on plodding) it makes up for in Erskine and Glover's can't-look-away performances. By the way: Don't worry about whether or not Mr. and Mrs. Smith earned a second season just yet. Just thank Amazon that it's better than Prime Video's ill-fated Citadel.
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Feud: Capote vs. The Swans
In 1975, Truman Capote published a story in this very magazine, which revealed the secrets of many of his high-society associates, unleashing one hell of a scandal. Ripe for a Ryan Murphy treatment, right? That's exactly what we received Capote vs. The Swans, which marked the second installment in Murphy's Feud anthology series. Now, Murphy runs a little Jekyll (early seasons of American Horror Story) and Hyde (Monster: Monster — The Jeffrey Dahmer Monster Story, or whatever it was!) with his projects, but Capote vs. The Swans is the former. The entire cast—including Naomi Watts, Chloë Sevigny, and especially Tom Hollander's Capote—serves up a feast's worth of performances. They're good enough to make you crave the old-timey elitist life you never had.
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True Detective: Night Country
Can you think of a better start to 2024 than the continuation of the Jodie Fosteraissance? The return of True Detective is all kinds of badass: a chilly, nihilistic setting, a thrilling newcomer in Kali Reis, and showrunner Issa López saying all the right things during the show's six-episode run. (If you go around dunking on Nic Pizzolatto and citing The Thing and Alien as inspirations for your detective series, you have my heart.) Night Country successfully reinvigorated the True Detective formula—and we can't wait to see what López has in store for us in season 5.
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