Tag Archives: John Hoffman

2024 End of Year List 2: TV series

The Emerging Artist and I watch far too much television. Fortunately, a lot of it is very good. We’ve learned the art of temporarily subscribing to a streaming service to watch a particular show, but we haven’t quite learned not to be seduced into staying subscribed.

We whittled our list down to twenty (20!) shows. Here they are, broken into more or less arbitrary categories:

Documentary series

Crime

  • The Bay, Seasons 1 and 2 (Daragh Carville & Richard Clark 2019, 2021, on BritBox)
  • Bad Monkey (Bill Lawrence 2024, from a Karl Hiaasen novel, on Apple TV+:)
  • Blue Lights, Season 2 (Declan Lawn & Adam Patterson 2023, on SBS On Demand)

Having babies

Other comedy

Drama

  • The Bear, Seasons 1–3 (Cannah Bos & Paul Thureen 2022–2024, on Disney+)
  • Bad Sisters, Season 2 (Brett Baer, Dave Finkel & Sharon Horgan 2024, on Apple TV+)
  • Plum (Brendan Cowell 2024, on ABC iView)
  • Boy Swallows Universe (adapted for TV by John Collee 2024, on Netflix)
  • Davos 1917 (Thomas Hess, Adrian Illien & Michael Sauter 2020, on SBS On Demand)

Next, a much shorter list: Theatre

End of Year List 2: TV series

I watch too much television, but at least in 2023 an awful lot of it has been very good.

Last year we allowed ourselves to name just three shows. This year we decided to have two or three in each of five categories, and then in one of the categories we had to break that rule. It’s probably true that in every category we would have chosen different titles on another day. Three of the ones we chose were the final seasons of longer-running shows, all of them most satisfactory conclusions.

Cop shows

Documentaries / reality TV

Historical fiction

Comedy

Drama

Next, a much shorter list: Theatre