Ten top TV shows you might have missed in 2024
With the seemingly ever-increasing list of streaming services, not to mention traditional networks, there are more television shows released in any given year than one person could possibly watch. TV writer Lisa Woolford highlights 10 of the best from this year.
Colin From Accounts
Binge
There’s always some nerves, mixed in with eager anticipation, when a brilliant TV show commissions a second series. Fortunately, the latest iteration of this comedy by real-life husband and wife Patrick Brammall and Harriet Dyer retains its unique charm. The sophomore season picks up where the last left off, with Gordon (Brammall) and Ashley (Dyer) having seller’s remorse about giving Colin away to a family. Most of the season, though, deals with the two of them settling into their life together, while frequently discovering the ways in which they each annoy the other, or offend the world at large. It’s excellent as a rom-com, and with its occasional drift into drama. Only complaint – the cliffhanger ending leaving us hanging until a third instalment is greenlit.
Nobody Wants This
Netflix
In contrast to its title, just about everybody fell in love with this 10-part rom-com series with Kristen Bell as Joanne, the agnostic host of a no-holds-barred sex podcast, and Adam Brody as the recently divorced, idealistic and inordinately considerate “hot” rabbi Noah. They are completely wrong for each other, as everyone in the show continually tells them (hence the title). Streamers have been attempting to resuscitate the rom-com for years, often using high-profile names such as George Clooney and Julia Roberts. The efforts were largely cringey. Here, the jokes land, the people are real-ish, and Bell and Brody – the whole ensemble, in fact – are absolutely charming. Filming starts on season two early in 2025.
Fallout
Prime Video
Since the ‘90s, the Fallout games have been a phenomenon, and now this visually stunning and darkly humorous TV spin-off looks set to follow suit. Set in a “retro-futurist” Los Angeles where pockets of survivors were driven into underground enclosures – vaults – after a nuclear holocaust in 2077, the eight-episode show follows Lucy (Ella Purnell), who emerges from the safety of her underground refuge in 2296 to find her missing father (Kyle MacLachlan). Along her rather perilous journey, she crosses paths with a mysterious Brotherhood of Steel squire (Aaron Moten) and a wily ghoul bounty hunter (Walton Goggins), each with their own secrets and quests for survival. If you liked Westworld, you’ll love this from the husband-and-wife team behind that sci-fi TV mega-hit.
Bryan Brown and Felix Cameron in Boy Swallows Universe. Photo: NetflixBoy Swallows Universe
Netflix
It swept the Logies this year, and received rave critical reviews. Based on Trent Dalton’s semi-autobiographical book of the same name, the seven-part, limited series is a heart-breaking yet humour-filled ride through the epic coming-of-age story. It shows the dark side of 1980s Brisbane, blending the magic and innocence of youth with the brutal reality of the adult world. Eli Bell (played gorgeously by Felix Cameron) is trying to follow his heart and understand what it means to become a good man. Phoebe Tonkin is magnificent as mum Frankie – in fact, there’s not a misstep in the casting, which also includes Travis Fimmel as stepdad Lyle, Simon Baker as the largely absent father Robert, Bryan Brown is the straight-shooting, recently out-of-jail babysitter Slim and Lee Tiger Halley as Eli’s mute older brother Gus.
The Assembly
ABC iView
A group of autistic journalism students are mentored by one of Australia’s most renowned interviewers, Leigh Sales, in this gorgeous series, as they interview some of the country’s biggest names including Hollywood star Sam Neill, radio and TV personality Hamish Blake, sporting legend Adam Goodes and Australian PM Anthony Albanese. There’s a few rules: no subject is out of bounds and no questions off the table. The results are entertaining, such as when one student asks Blake how much money he has in the bank, and sometimes emotional, like when Neill is visibly moved after being asked about the best lesson his parents taught him.
Richard Roxburgh is pastor Cal Quinn in Prosper. Photo: StanProsper
Stan
If you’ve a Succession-shaped viewing hole in your life, this eight-part series will fill it. Richard Roxburgh is Cal Quinn, founder of one of the fastest-growing mega-churches in the world, while Rebecca Gibney plays Abi Quinn, his wife and worship leader. Ewen Leslie is Cal’s son Dion in the eight-episode series, which is set in a world of money and privilege, and details the rapidly fracturing, powerful and wealthy family behind the globally successful U Star church. Proper is fictional but there are obvious comparisons with headlines surrounding actual mega-churches. There are Succession parallels, too, as the four children jostle for their father‘s approval as they enjoy the trappings of his success – think private jets, helicopters and gorgeous harbourside homes.
Shrinking stars Jason Segel as a therapist Jimmy trying to get his life on track after his wife’s death.Subscribe for updates
Shrinking
AppleTV+
Shrinking proved a hit in 2023, with How I Met Your Mother actor Jason Segel joining forces with the team behind Ted Lasso. The second season picks up shortly after the events of the first, with therapist Jimmy (Segel) starting to get his life back on track after the death of his wife. Of course, it’s not all smooth sailing, with his patient Grace in prison, and his fledgling relationship with colleague Gaby. The pitch-perfect ensemble – including the brilliant Harrison Ford as Jimmy’s boss Paul and Ted McGinley’s expanded role as Derek – help the dramedy really find its voice. Shrinking deftly balances its comedic and emotional currents in a way that’s both entertaining and moving.
Fake
Paramount +
Starring Asher Keddie and David Wenham, and inspired by Stephanie Wood’s best-selling book, this eight-part series follows Birdie Bell (Keddie), a magazine features writer who thinks she has found “the one” when she meets successful grazier Joe Burt (Wenham) on a dating app. But as cracks start to form in Joe’s stories, Birdie soon discovers her boyfriend isn’t all he’s led her to believe. We all think we’re pretty savvy about scams – it’s easier if it’s a weird text or email from your bank, but another thing all together when it comes to matter of the heart, as this chilling and unsettling masterclass in gaslighting highlights. You’ll be yelling at Keddie’s Birdie through your screen, willing her to see sense.
The new Shogun is immersive from its opening frame. Photo: Disney+Shogun
Disney+
Hiroyuki Sanada headlines this ambitious feudal Japan epic, which brings James Clavell’s best-selling 1975 novel to life. The 10-episode limited series is set in Japan in the year 1600 at the dawn of a century-defining civil war and follows cunning Lord Yoshii Toranaga (Sanada), who must fight for his life after his enemies on the Council of Regents unite against him. It also stars Cosmo Jarvis as English captain John Blackthorne, who stumbles into the power struggle, and Anna Sawai as translator Toda Mariko. Gorgeous and immersive from its opening frame, the new Shogun is a stunning epic that never lets big-budget set-pieces overshadow the human drama at its core.
Rivals
Disney +
With a killer soundtrack and a stellar cast, Rivals – based on Dame Jilly Cooper’s book of the same name – is as extravagant and loud as it is dark. The eight-episode series follows Declan O’Hara, an attractive Irish hard-hitting TV host (Poldark’s Aidan Turner), who finds himself pulled into the struggling Corinium TV studios after being wooed by its owner, Lord Baddingham (David Tennant – Dr Who as you’ve never seen him before). Joining him is the stylish American TV producer Cameron Cook (Nafessa Williams). And from there, chaos ensues. Rivals is raunchy, over-the-top and unapologetic throughout. Fun fact: The character of lothario Rupert Campbell-Black is a mash-up of Dame Jilly’s real-life friends, including Andrew Parker Bowles, the ex-husband of Queen Camilla.
Honourable mentions:
Fisk (ABC)
Thank God You’re Here (Ten)
The Office Australia (Amazon Prime)
The Tattooist of Auschwitz (Stan)
Strife (Binge)