The 10 best new television shows of 2024, and how to watch them | Canada Voices

There’s a spreading perception that the era of prestige TV has peaked – and that the quality of shows out there is on the decline. I label this point of view as misinformation.

As a critic who moved over to the small-screen beat partway through the year, I tried to catch up on all the highly touted shows out there even as new hotly tipped ones launched weekly – and I was nearly crushed by an avalanche of terrific television. Maybe it’s just harder to hunt the quality down in all those siloed streaming services.

Here are 10 of the best new shows or limited series that premiered this year – and where to find them now – picked with the counsel of wise colleagues and in no particular order.

Criminal Record, Apple TV+

Released in January, this crime thriller flew under the radar of many who had already had their fill of British mysteries over the holidays. But the best detective double-act of the year was Cush Jumbo as an up-and-coming Black copper who becomes convinced that there’s a man sitting in prison for a crime he didn’t commit and Peter Capaldi as the senior white colleague trying to stymie her attempts to reopen the case. Tremendous cat-and-mouse chemistry.

FX’s new adaptation of James Clavell’s popular history-inspired novel set in feudal Japan was yet another sign that viewers will flock to subtitled TV when it’s compelling (something our pay-for-two/get-one public broadcaster CBC/Radio-Canada still doesn’t really get). Hiroyuki Sanada justly won an Emmy for his piercing performance as the series’s central warlord Toranaga, who masterfully studies the winds of change in the civil war and colonialism swirling around him. The series doubled as a great showcase for British Columbia’s scenery – and film and television industry craftsmanship.

The world’s most popular streamer once again tapped into the world of solo theatre (see Fleabag) to commission a completely original show that stood out from everything else out there. Based on his one-man show, Richard Gadd’s unclassifiable series started as a black comedy about a stalker – and turned into a murkier drama about compulsion, sexual assault and the complex and confusing ways humans process trauma. Perhaps most shocking was that it let viewers discover what it was.

English Teacher, Disney+

Gay Texas school teacher Evan Marquez’s hilarious struggles to keep up with woke students in a very red state made me rewind the most this year – because I kept missing punchlines while laughing too hard. Along with Hacks, this freewheeling FX comedy created and starring Brian Jordan Alvarez found a way to mine the humour of the culture wars while keeping heart and head intact. It niftily reinvented the will-they, won’t-they sitcom trope while at it.

Late Bloomer, Crave

Jasmeet Raina – a.k.a. YouTuber Jus Reign – nailed that tricky leap from online success to traditional television with this half-hour dramedy that easily ranks alongside American comparables such as Ramy and Master of None. Late Bloomer found fresh comic beats in the second-generation Canadian experience (in Sikh and Indian communities, specifically), while also being a savvy satire about social media and the paradox of finding fame while still living in your parents’ house.

Andrew Scott turned off the charm for his riveting performance in Steven Zaillian’s cinematic, Caravaggio-inspired black-and-white take on Patricia Highsmith’s tales of a murderous grifter. It’s a show with a stately pace that comes back to you in memories of individual shots – all those shadows and staircases, archways and Italian art and a cat that managed to survive its curiosity. (Bravo, bravo to Italian actor Maurizio Lombardi for showing how to steal a scene with stillness both here and in Prime Video’s Citadel: Diana.)

Say Nothing, Disney+

Based on Patrick Radden Keefe’s bestselling non-fiction book about the Troubles in Northern Ireland, this FX series lured viewers in with rock ’n’ roll depictions of righteous radicalism as the Price sisters broke through the IRA’s glass ceiling and dressed as nuns to pull bank heists with shotguns. But the price, never fully paid, of using violence to achieve aims, on both perpetrators and victims, was the ultimate subject of the unsettling show. Each episode-ending disclaimer that former Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams has always denied being a member of the IRA or participating in any IRA-related violence was a stinging reminder of the stakes and continuing silence.

Families Like Ours, CBC Gem

This TV 2 series from Oscar-nominated director Thomas Vinterberg sees Denmark order an orderly evacuation as sea levels rise. Focusing on the attempts of an extended family to keep their varying levels of privilege while fleeing in slow motion, the emotional centre came from Amaryllis August’s beautifully measured performance as Laura, who surfaces into adulthood as her homeland sinks. The title had an ironic note – a recognition that this was refugee cosplay, in a way, for its original Danish audience – but that didn’t make the show’s mournful imagining of the loss of a culture and its unique vowel sounds any less haunting.

As I write this, the final of the five episodes of Jamaican novelist Marlon James’s first television series (HBO/Channel 4) hasn’t aired – but the first 80 per cent of this story about a missing-persons detective in Kingston was gripping enough to make this cut. Millie – played by Tamara Lawrance, all swagger shot through with self-doubt – hunts down one disappeared child after another but isn’t satisfied with the finding. A down-to-earth mystery with surprisingly literary structure and delicious dialogue befitting its Booker Prize-winning creator.

Jerrod Carmichael Reality Show, Crave

This soft-spoken American stand-up – more often seen sitting down, his head cradled in his arm as if he’s embarrassed by his own oversharing style – looked at both reality television and cringe comedy from new angles in this HBO series. It was hard to separate the emotional vulnerability on display from the narcissistic exhibitionism glimpsed in Carmichael’s couple’s therapy sessions with his boyfriend and a road trip with his father that was as much an act of revenge as an overture for reconciliation.