Small screen, big impact Highlighting eight of 2024’s top TV productions to put on your New Year’s streaming resolution list By: Free Press Arts & Life staff Posted: 7:28 PM CST Tuesday, Dec. 31, 2024

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 31/12/2024 (438 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Any top 10 lists of television you read this year can’t possibly capture the depth and breadth of the options available for viewing, from sci-fi series to spy thrilers, from sitcoms to rom-coms, from docudramas to reality TV.

This year saw a season of much-lauded restaurant drama The Bear that divided critics and viewers alike, a move to Netflix for the brilliant musical comedy Girl5Eva that somehow failed to find fans, and a remake of Shogun on Disney+ that pretty much everyone agreed was a masterpiece, winning 18 Emmys.

So, keeping in mind that a definitive “best of 2024” list is impossible, here are some stellar shows that stuck out to Free Press arts writers in 2024.

---

Baby Reindeer

● Seven-episode limited series

● Premièred April 11 on Netflix

“This is a true story” is typed out on a black screen 30 seconds into the first episode. Based on a play of the same name by Richard Gadd, this is about a struggling comedian in London whose life falls apart, comes together, falls apart… as he is stalked by a woman after having been groomed, drugged and raped by an industry mentor.

Audiences devoured the show, which is less dark comedy than harrowing psychological thriller. Audiences also tore up the digital and real worlds to find his parents, and identify the real-world stalker and rapist. A woman has sued for defamation and damages.

But truth is not the reason to praise or watch this. Gadd’s Donny, Jessica Gunning’s stalker Martha and Nava Mau as Donny’s trans lover Teri are beautiful and painfully authentic. The story does fascinating honour to the experience of assault and harassment, the gutting risks of creative ambition, the confusing, circular grind of recovery and, finally thankfully, to the power of love.

— Denise Duguay

---

Hacks

● Nine-episode third season

● Premièred May 2 on HBO/Crave

The main reason I started watching Hacks was that I could only rewatch Broad City so many times before spoiling it. When I saw that Hacks was co-created by three key BC players — Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs and Jen Statsky — I was already committed to enjoying it.

Then I watched it and was amazed by how the creators built on the framework that made Broad City such a smash. Instead of New York, Hacks — which follows a legendary comedian (Jean Smart) whose relevance is fading and the young standup (Hannah Einbinder) she hires to amp up her material — uses Vegas and Los Angeles as mirrors for its characters’ best and worst impulses, and instead of following two characters who aren’t quite sure what they want aside from air-conditioning, Lil Wayne tickets, and secret handshakes with the staff at Bed, Bath and Beyond, Hacks is about two women separated by one generation but united in pursuit of survival in the jungle of standup comedy.

On screen, Jean Smart, Hannah Einbinder and Downs are excellent, but the series’ most bafflingly solid work comes from indie film star Jane Adams, who plays Einbinder’s character’s mother as a self-playing accordion on the fritz.

A sure sign of a tremendous show? When the small players are every bit as compelling as the ones at the top of the call-sheet.

— Ben Waldman

---

One Day

● 14-episode limited series

● Premièred Feb. 8 on Netflix

It might seem a bit twee to choose this slightly melodramatic limited series in a year that also contained Netflix’s dead stylish Ripley adaptation and season 3 of the stellar Slow Horses spy series on Apple+, but it was also a year that contained an inordinate number of preposterous, chemistry-free rom-coms (we’re looking at you, Lonely Planet and The Idea of You) to which One Day is the perfect antidote.

Based on David Nicholls’ 2009 novel of same name (also the basis for a not-very-good film starring, coincidentally, Hathaway and Jim Sturgess), One Day follows Dexter (White Lotus’s Leo Woodall) and Emma (This Is Going to Hurt’s Ambika Mod) who almost hook up at college graduation but settle for a flirtatious friendship… or do they? In each episode, the viewer is dropped chronologically into one day a year — St. Swithin’s Day, July 15 — in their evolving relationship.

Woodall goes far beyond his pretty-boy exterior to deliver a portrait of hearbreaking decline, and Mod is a revelation — sardonic and vulnerable and radiant.

Beware: Much Kleenex will be required.

— Jill Wilson

---

What We Do in the Shadows

● 11-episode sixth (and final) season

● Premièred Oct. 21 on FX (Disney+ in Canada)

Saying goodbye to the blood-sucking trio of Nandor the Relentless, Laszlo Cravensworth and Nadja of Antipaxos (played by Kayvan Novak, Matt Berry and Natasia Demetriou, respectively) — as well as energy vampire Colin Robinson (Mark Proksch) and Guillermo (Gizmo) de la Cruz (Harvey Giullén), Nandor’s human familiar — proved to be an 11-episode collection of raucous episodes with serious bite.

For five seasons, the comedic “documentary” series (think The Office, but with vampires — it’s based on the film of the same name created by Jemaine Clement and Taika Waititi) followed the antics of centuries-old vampires clumsily bumbling their way through modern life.

When it came to the laughs, Season 6 of What We Do in the Shadows went for the jugular. And in the finale, when the documentary crew suddenly announce they’re wrapping, Nadja breaks the fourth wall and hypnotizes us, the audience, into seeing satisfying final scenes that riff on other legendary series endings. (Yes, endings plural — there are three different endings to be found on Disney+.)

Over six seasons, these hilariously brash, potty-mouthed and occasionally obscene vampires managed to find a way into viewers’ hearts. They’ll be missed, but they’ve surely got a long (after)life ahead.

— Ben Sigurdson

---

Somebody, Somewhere

● Seven-episode third (and final) season

● Premièred Oct. 27 on HBO/Crave

This big-hearted, three-season dramedy from Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen stars the incomparable Bridget Everett as Sam, a 40-something woman who moves back to her Kansas hometown and must figure out who she is and find her place in the world after her sister’s death.

This show is all about relationships — between Sam and her other sister, Tricia (Mary Catherine Garrison), between Sam and her aging parents, between Sam and herself. But the relationship at its heart is the one between Sam and Joel (a truly wonderful Jeff Hiller), who is her gay best friend but is never relegated to the Gay Best Friend trope. Theirs is such an intimate, cosy relationship, but it’s complicated too — especially when Sam feels like she’s being left behind.

Somebody, Somewhere is just a beautiful, affirming reminder that you never know where you might find your people, and that soulmates show up in many forms.

— Jen Zoratti

---

Jake Paul vs. Mike Tyson

● One episode

● Premièred Nov. 15 on Netflix

It wasn’t great boxing. Indeed, many considered it a sideshow and embarrassment to the sport.

But the absurd event transfixed the world anyway and carried an odd symbolic potency. A brash social media star versus a volatile, soft-spoken ex-con. A mediocre newcomer to boxing, offered $40 million for the match, who ultimately outfought a retired titan who’d been offered $20 million.

The Paul-Tyson match mattered less as sport than for the antagonisms it conjured in our fraught moment of cultural politics. And while Tyson’s complicated, often ugly past makes him far less than a cleanly heroic figure, fans and viewers seemed broadly on the 58-year-old former heavyweight champ’s side. Netflix’s three-part miniseries Countdown: Paul vs. Tyson further helped set the stage, covering their training, press conferences, and personal lives with reality TV flair.

Fans were ultimately disappointed by not just the match’s results, but by the dismal quality of Netflix’s stream. The original broadcast was more glitch and buffering than live TV. Nevertheless, after this shoddy delivery, the streaming juggernaut saw its stocks hit record highs.

What were the lessons of it all? Not any that were inspiring, that’s for sure. But apart from America’s last federal election, it’s hard to think of a televised fall event that felt more 2024.

While difficult to recommend without qualification, it’s been almost impossible to look away from this saga.

— Conrad Sweatman

---

Sweetpea

● Six-episode first season

● Premièred on Oct. 10 on Starz through Crave

It’s dark comedy at its best with a plot ending so twisted it’ll have you in knots.

Ella Purnell (Fallout) plays Rhiannon, a.k.a. Sweetpea, a mousy, often-ignored, shy woman working as a receptionist in a local newspaper who really wants to be a reporter. She’s such a self-effacing wallflower she ends up being overlooked when a vacancy arises — it’s yet another wrong to add to her growing list.

She’s a bubbling cauldron of barely contained resentment and suppressed anger, so a humiliating experience on the banks of a canal prove to be the last straw.

She sets off on a killing spree, narrowly evading capture.

Things, however, start going pear-shaped when she kidnaps her ex-classmate and childhood nemesis.

A taut six episodes crammed with well-fleshed-out, nuanced characters, the series lulled me into excusing Sweetpea’s actions time and time again… right until its cliffhanger ending. Bring on Season 2.

— AV Kitching

---

Grand Designs

● 8 episode 24th season

● Premiéred April 17 on Apple TV+, other seasons on CBC Gem

This is by no means a new show, but an enduring classic in the reality home renovation cannon.

Grand Designs is a British television series launched in 1999 and hosted by charismatic (and sometimes snippy) designer Kevin McCloud — although his approach has softened significantly over the last quarter-century of filming.

The episodes follow ambitious families as they endeavour to build their dream homes on urban lots and idyllic countrysides. The architecture is always lofty, the budgets and timelines are always underestimated. Spoiler alert: everyone wants to be finished by Christmas, nobody is ever finished by Christmas.

The main drama is the emotional rollercoaster of construction and its impact on the subjects, many of whom have no prior homebuilding or project management experience but are bound and determined to do it all themselves.

Window installations are always nail-biter moments. Will the expensive glazing shipped from overseas arrive intact and fit the frames properly? Frequently, yes. But the manufactured suspense gets me every time.

Relationships, finances and health are often pushed to the limit. There’s at least one episode that ends in divorce and a number of impractical, ill-fated homes that remain unfinished after years of toiling.

Most of the time, however, the show closes with a celebratory walk-through of a beautiful, imaginative abode and an inspirational monologue from McCloud.

Grand Designs is my ultimate comfort watch. There are hundreds of episodes between the UK original and its spin-off seasons in Australia and New Zealand. Also, the Grand Designs Reddit forum is an excellent source of snarky viewer commentary on questionable design choices.

— Eva Wasney