The best TV shows of 2024 (so far) you need to stream

As a tense chess game between powerful warrior factions seeking control over a feudal realm, the comparisons with Game of Thrones are inevitable. But, boy, does Shōgun deliver on the brutal potential signposted in its opening episode – which delivers betrayals, beheadings, and even death by boiling. Inspired by real historical events from the climax of Japan’s ‘Warring States’ period (circa 1600), and otherwise based on James Clavell’s 1975 international bestselling novel (previously adapted as a mega-hit TV miniseries in 1980), Shōgun’s strength lies in its taut storytelling, rich production design, and nuanced performances from actors Hiroyuki Sanada, Tadanobu Asano, Anna Sawai and Cosmo Jarvis – all of whom are Emmy-worthy. It’s a gripping, gut-churning historical drama – and probably the best thing you’ll see on television this year.

Length of binge: 9 hours 46 mins

Richard Gadd’s darkly funny drama recounts its creator’s experience of being stalked and sexually assaulted in his twenties. But as Gadd, who impresses with his writing, acting and sheer, unsparing honesty, makes clear: Baby Reindeer is not your average, 1980s-style regressive Hollywood fantasy of female predation. What makes it such a jaw-dropping experience is how wannabe stand-up Donny, Gadd’s semi-fictionalised version of himself, implicates himself in his own anguish, his mishandling of Jessica Gunning’s deeply troubled Martha coming into sharp focus. It’s a show that threatens to have its own painful postscript, with online sleuths tracking down the ‘real’ Martha with dispiritingly predictable consequences.

Length of binge: 3 hours 57 mins

Somehow even funnier than the first season, this Aussie sitcom continues to deliver more belly laughs per minute than anything else on the small screen – not to mention relatable observations on relationships, families, work and the heartstring pull of pet ownership. Colin, the scruffy border terrier whose injury brought Ashley and Gordon (co-creators and real-life couple Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall) together in season one, takes more of a backseat – or trolley – in the second run. Until, at least, Gordo tries to turn the utterly impassive pooch into a dog actor. Is this the funniest show on TV? Shit yeah.

Length of binge: 3 hours 37 mins

Is this the definitive version of the modern-but-classic love story? Ambika Mod and Leo Woodall (The White Lotus) are perfect as Emma and Dexter, two students who meet-kinda-cute on July 15, 1988 – St Swithin’s Day – and whom we encounter again on the same day over the next two decades. The time jumps that make David Nicholls’ novel so unique add drama and uncertainty to a love story that’s by turns funny and gut-wrenching. And amid all the Blur-fuelled club nights and terrible noughties fashion choices, there’s real depth here too, with class divides, drug abuse, infidelity, and death all tackled head-on. Forget the 2011 movie, this one’s the real deal.

Length of binge: 6 hours 40 mins

The Suicide Squad of surly, downbeat spies, Slough House’s finest chugged back into action for a fourth outing that continued Slow Horses’ ascent to peak TV status. This time it’s River’s roots that are focus, as grandpa David Cartwright (Jonathan Pryce) falls into the grip of dementia and show newbie Hugo Weaver causes havoc on an unsuspecting London. Jack Lowden is the show’s bushy-tailed yin with Gary Oldman providing the pissy yang as cynical, masterful spymaster Jackson Lamb, a man who looks like he’s spent his entire life passed out on a Wetherspoons toilet. Consistently one of the best shows out there – long may it continue. 

Length of binge: 4 hours 34 mins 

Matt Damon was preppy and pandering in The Talented Mr. Ripley; Alain Delon slippery and seductive in Plein Soleil. Now Andrew Scott gives us a smirking, shadowy Tom Ripley – and the most complex version of Patricia Highsmith’s great interloper yet. As showrunner, Schindler’s List writer Steven Zaillian, of course, has the luxury of eight episodes – and countless glorious Italian locations – over which spin Highsmith’s yarn about a murderous conman and the unsuspecting Americans abroad that he preys upon. But with Robert Elswit’s high-contrast monochrome photography as crisp as a fresh banknote, it makes for a highly addictive mix of high style and murky morality. The ending is maestoso, too.

Length of binge: 7 hours 30 mins

After three gory, radically transgressive and sweary seasons, The Boys finally jettisoned the shocks and grew up. Nah, not really. Somehow, showrunner Eric Kripke finds even more stops to pull out in a fourth run that delivers ominous supe scheming at Vought, ultra-topical culture war riffs, flying super goats, octopus romance, and one extraordinarily dark homecoming for Homelander. And as the man who’s replaced Logan Roy as TV’s villain of the moment, Urban’s fellow New Zealander Antony Starr is on Emmy-worthy form as that narcissistic, thin-skinned monster – now cosplaying at being a dad. As Karl Urban’s lovable antihero Butcher would say: enjoy, you cahhnntts! 

Length of binge: 8 hours 47 mins

World War II on the ground was zero fun, as Band of Brothers and The Pacific have shown in visceral detail. Somehow it seems even uglier in the skies above Europe in this gripping, epic-scale Hanks-and-Spielberg miniseries threequel. It barrels through nine episodes of airborne carnage as its charismatic cast of flyboys (Austin Butler, Callum Turner and Nate Mann) brave frostbite, hypoxia, flak and Luftwaffe fighters to drop bombs on the Third Reich. The combat scenes are terrifying, the period detail is spot-on, and the characters are true to historian Donald L Miller’s source tome – gutsy twentysomethings doing their jobs and trying to stay alive in the process.

Length of binge: 8 hours 31 mins

How do you mix espionage action, comedy and the kind of marital fireworks usually found in awardsy dramas? Answer: get Donald Glover involved. The star and co-creator of this eight-part riff on the so-so Doug Liman action-comedy (and lesser-seen Scott Bakula/Maria Bello ’90s TV series) helps bring a knowing, but smirk-free wit to a premise that sets him and Pen15’s Maya Erskine up as two spies going incognito as a married couple. The action is slick, the locations are Gourmet Traveller-worthy, and the chemistry absurd. Look for a John Turturro appearance for the ages, too.

Length of binge: 6 hours 31 mins

James Graham’s Nottinghamshire-set BBC drama dredged up decades-old bitterness caused by the 1980s miners’ strike. Series two, set ten years later, digs deeper. David Morrissey and Lesley Manville return, but the focus is now on the rivalry between the Sparrow and Branson families, triggered afresh by a spontaneous and senseless killing, and controversial plans by a local businessman (a serpentine Robert Lindsay) to reopen a disused coal mine – and some old wounds. A heartbreaking, fatalistic drama packed with outstanding performances.

Length of binge: 5 hours 51 mins

Forget real-life comedians whining about being ‘cancelled’. Emotionally invest instead in Hacks double act Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder as the majestically monstrous (but softening rapidly) Deborah Vance and her prickly but hard-done-by co-writer Ava as they battle ageism, homophobia and actually career-derailing YouTube videos in a rabble-rousing third season that sets its sights on the late-night chat show world. Old school rapid-fire funny. 

Length of binge: 4 hours 58 mins

If Amazon’s mega-budget Tolkien adaptation flattered to deceive in its first season, its second run, perhaps benefiting from less focus on all the noughts, really struts its stuff. Flattering to deceive in a more literal scene is Sauron (Charlie Vickers), in human rather than eyeball form, as he manipulates his way to awesome power. But the quiet MVP is the elf he dupes, ringmaker Celebrimbor, played with great deftness by Michael Palin lookalikey Charles Edwards. Even alongside the colossal climactic battle – Balrog, massive siege weapons, orcs and all – his fate is the season showstopper. 

Length of binge: 9 hours 3 mins

Ignore the naysayers because season 3 is no time to fall behind (‘Behind!’) on The Bear. Jeremy Allen White’s chef Carmy is now trying to upgrade his late brother’s restaurant, while chef Sydney (Ayo Edebiri) worries they’re in over their heads. The quest for a Michelin star is admittedly less relatable than the struggle to stay afloat, but the characters sing and the cameo-packed opener is audacious, tasty stuff.

Length of binge: 5 hours 49 mins

Finally, some gratuitous male nudity on primetime television. After decades of the male gaze, we’re finally treated to the boldly horny Jilly Cooper-gaze. Raunchy, hilarious and featuring more gloriously hairy chests than an Attenborough nature doc, this 1980s-set comedy-drama based on Cooper's 1988 bonkbuster looks at a group of showjumping, shagging toffs working in telly in Thatcher’s Britain. As such, most of them are deeply hateful people, but an all-star cast of Aidan Turner, David Tennant, Emily Atack, Katherine Parkinson and Danny Dyer make it impossible to look away.

Length of binge: 7 hours 10 mins

There’s two good reasons to shake off your superhero fatigue and dig into HBO’s DC crime noir – three, if you include the absence of any actual superheroes. Far from the bucket of fish heads it might have been, The Penguin is elevated by a performance of oily genius from Colin Farrell as the hobbling (rather than waddling) footsoldier who elbows his way to generalship in a post-The Batman Gotham. Beneath the extraordinary prosthetics, Farrell lends real vulnerability to the sociopathic ambition and guile. Oh, and the other reason? Cristin Milioti’s icy sneer as his nemesis, the ruthless Sofia Falcone.

Length of binge: 7 hours 39 mins

We dare you not to become deeply obsessed with Michelle de Swarte’s semi-autobiographical six-part series. Mouthy and defiantly self-obsessed Mia returns home to Brixton after a high-flying modelling career in New York to find she has well… absolutely naff all – no home, no money, and waning prospects. Uproariously funny at times (we direct you to the accidental dogging scene), and heartrendingly potent at others (especially when dealing with Mia’s strained relationship with parents suffering from mental health problems), Spent is verging on the spectacular.

Length of binge: 2 hours 45 mins

The hipster-friendly feast of bushy mutton chops is just one reason to stream this enthralling and elegant period chase thriller. Another good one is The Crown’s Tobias Menzies’ lived-in performance as Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s Secretary of War during the Civil War, who seeks to track down the man who assassinated the President: John Wilkes Booth. The latter is a vain actor and white supremacist played with sulky malevolence by Anthony Boyle (Masters of the Air). Booth has several days’ head start, but is slowly tracked down by the bloodhound Stanton and his Union pursuers across a war-riven landscape. Not just gripping telly, but a historically ironclad insight into how Reconstruction-era fudges caused many of modern America’s woes.

Length of binge: 5 hours 58 mins

The best True Detective since season one, this frosty noir is set in an Alaskan town (but filmed in Iceland) that’s beset by permanent darkness, environmental worries, and the discovery of a giant ‘corpsicle’ of frozen scientists. Enter Jodie Foster’s cranky cop Liz Danvers to form a testy partnership with indigenous local trooper Kali Reis (Evangeline Navarro) and figure out how that giant human ice lolly came about. Foster is mesmerising as the hard-bitten cop, and showrunner Issa López, taking over from, and for some reason incurring the ire of original series creator Nic Pizzolatto, wrangles all the disparate threads into one satisfying thrillersicle.

Length of binge: 6 hours 20 mins

For once, Nicole Kidman isn’t the main drawcard of this slowburn Hong Kong drama. An adaptation of Janice YK Lee’s bestseller, it sees the Aussie great retreading familiar ground as grieving architect Margaret Woo dealing with a family tragedy – overfamiliar, perhaps, after all those well-heeled David E Kelley roles. Instead, its power lies in creator Lulu Wang’s skill in locating Margaret’s trauma within a fracturing expat community, without ignoring the hard-grafting immigrants who serve it. The fifth episode, a stunning feature-length affair, centres on the foreign domestic workers who keep this rarefied world from falling apart. Mostly.

Length of binge: 6 hours 26 mins

A cerebral slowburn best digested in increments rather than one chewy binge, Game of Thrones duo David Benioff and DB Weiss’s sci-fi epic parlays the big ideas of Chinese engineer Liu Cixin’s books into a solar storm of astrophysics, religious fanaticism and extra-terrestrial plots. It follows a group of university friends who venture into alternate realities to uncover the truth behind a spate of suspicious suicides onlky to uncover something X-Files-y. The result is intergalactic in ambition as well as themes.

Length of binge: 7 hours 24 mins

Rap fans have been familiar with Vince Staples for a decade now, while TV viewers may recognise him from Abbott Elementary. On his self-titled Netflix series, though, everyone seems to know who he is, at least in his hometown of Long Beach, California, and they all want something from him, whether it’s the cops who insist he hang out with them after hauling him into jail or the unknown cousin in need of an alibi with his girlfriend. It’s tempting to describe the show as ‘a West Coast Atlanta’, given its similar themes and surrealism, but its ambition is less ‘Twin Peaks with rappers’ than a live-action Adult Swim series, which perfectly suits Staples’ deadpan charisma and sly wit. Let’s hope his audience takes his suggestion and ‘peer pressures’ Netflix into ordering more episodes.

Length of binge: 1 hour 54 mins

Twenty-four years after its debut, the curmudgeonly comedy starring Seinfeld co-creator Larry David, is still turning out classic episodes, improvised from outlines constructed with Swiss-watch precision. Season 12 sees Larry heading to Atlanta to avoid ‘girlfriend’ Irma (Tracey Ullman), get lauded as a political activist, condemned as a racist, fail to be ‘cordial’ at a millionaire’s (Sharlto Copley) birthday party, and try couple’s counselling in an office with wafer-thin walls. Pair it with the new weekly podcast ‘The History of Curb’, in which Jeff (Garlin) and Susie (Essman) look back at all 114 episodes.

Nida Manzoor’s raucous musical comedy covers topics you’d expect from a story of a band trying to make it – how to stay authentic and stay friends as the stakes ramp up –  and yet We Are Lady Parts is like nothing you’ve seen before. It's big-hearted, hilarious, and interested in the lives of people rarely shown on screen. Season 2 finds Lady Parts – an all-female, all-Muslim punk band – on the brink of success. Lead guitarist Amina (Anjana Vasan) is still the heart of the show but her band mates get chewy, satisfying storylines too, navigating what it means to be an artist, woman, queer, Black and Muslim. The songs are bangers, too, with new tracks like ‘Malala Made Me Do It’ joining ‘Bashir With the Good Beard’ and ‘Voldemort Under My Headscarf’ on the band’s playlist.

Length of binge: 2 hours 40 mins

They’re no greenhorn probationers any more, which is just as well as the stakes cranked up a notch for the Belfast police officers in the second season of this gripping BBC cop show. The element of surprise has gone from a show that arrived last year out of the blue, but the things we loved about it – the ensemble of complex characters; the nuanced look at the city’s sectarian divisions; and the thrilling set pieces – are still there in abundance. Co-creators, Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson, are both former hard news journalists and North Irelanders and it shows in Blue Lights’ gritty cityscapes and strenuous efforts to wrestle with the city’s real-life divisions. And good news: there’s two more seasons to come.

Length of binge: 5 hours 49 mins

Shock executions, plots, betrayal and sex... if Sky’s 17th century royal potboiler sounds like Game of Thrones in a ruff, it’s all based on a dusty but delicious corner of British history. Specifically the story of social-climbing smoke show George Villiers (Nicholas Galitzine) and his scheming mum (Julianne Moore), who inveigle their way into the court of the sorta-closeted King, James I (Mayflies’ Tony Curran, superb). Benjamin Woolley’s book ‘The King's Assassin’ offers a roadmap for a rollicking tale of affairs – of both the sexual and international kind.

Length of binge: 5 hours 59 mins

Apocalypses are big in Hollywood at the moment, but it’s rare to see one that actually starts there. That’s the setting for a deeply unnerving, nuke-filled opening that picks up where Dr Strangelove left off, before barreling forward 200 years to a still-radioactive, post-Armageddon California. What begins as a roadtrip of sorts, with Ella Purnell’s guileless Vault-dweller on a mission to rescue her abducted dad, becomes a murky conspiracy thriller. Retro ’50s world-building and Walton Goggins’ gunslinging Ghoul, a character straight from the pages of 2000 AD, help Fallout follow The Last of Us in successfully transplanting a wildy popular video game to the screen. Remember when they said it couldn’t be done?

Length of binge: 7 hours 51 mins

He’s made the best Harry Potter movie, sent Sandra Bullock into space, and put his own childhood on the big screen in Oscar-winning fashion with Roma. But, somehow, this Apple TV+ seven-parter is Alfonso Cuarón’s first small-screen project, and he brings all his craft to a knotty adaptation of Renée Knight’s bestselling potboiler. It starts slightly jarringly, despite a cast that boasts Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline and Lesley Manville, as a half-forgotten backpacking trip to Italy reverberates in horrific fashion for two present-day families, but pays off in expectation-subverting fashion. It’s an enthralling, mazy, and for some viewers, possibly chastening watch.

For the love of the Force please ignore the misogynist trolling campaign waged against this excellent Disney+ Star Wars show. Set a century before The Phantom Menace, showrunner Leslye Headland’s The Acolyte frees itself of the usual nostalgic Star Wars baggage by delving into the unfamiliar world of the High Republic. A phenomenal turn by Squid Game’s Lee Jung-jae as the kindly but troubled Master Sol and the best lightsaber fights in the franchise to date power this morally ambiguous murder-mystery. It all wraps up quite neatly, but even if there’s no season two, Headland deserves a bright future in Star Wars.

If you didn’t pay attention in English history classes, Lady Jane Grey was the nine-day Tudor queen who got her head chopped off. In this farcical retelling, Jane (Emily Bader) has a better time of it... if you consider being forced to marry a man who turns into a horse getting off easy. The show incorporates the romance, adventure and fantasy of Anne Hathaway’s Ella Enchanted and the social-climbing antics of Julianne Moore’s Mary & George. It’s about as historically accurate as The Book of Mormon, but the duels, sweary narration and Rob Brydon’s scheming Lord Dudley make it worthy of a place on the syllabus.

Length of binge: 6 hours 40 mins

Disney’s superhero comedy returned for a second season, this time determined to make us weep. The silliness was still there – Kash (Bilal Hasna) stages a musical about Milton Keynes and his supernaturally-gifted ex-girlfriend Carrie (Sofia Oxenham) gets possessed by Princess Diana (because obvs) – but there’s loads of heart to go with the lolz. Therapy, break-ups and fatherhood, as well as complex themes of sexual exploration, self-sabotage and grief… no one could accuse Extraordinary of shying away from the tough stuff to go with all the twentysomething fuckupery. Have rehydration salts ready.

Length of binge: 3 hours 49 mins

Could the second run of British comedian Jack Rooke’s autobiographical coming-of-age-ish comedy live up to the explosion that was season one? Yes, and then some. Every bit as tender, funny and downright brilliant, season 2 widens the focus to the show’s wider ensemble of relatable characters, from the grieving, closeted Jack himself to his sweet mum Peggy, and lovely but depressed Danny. Rooke’s writing smartly navigates horrific freshers week parties and awkward sexual encounters. Like a cross between Gavin and Stacey and Fresh Meat, it’ll make you howl with laughter and wince in recognition. I hoped it would never end. Sadly, it did. Here’s hoping for season three. 

Length of binge: 2 hours 24 mins

Those sniffles and itchy eyes? That’ll be this summer’s high #POLIN count. The hashtag-worthy coupling of Colin Bridgerton and Penelope Fetherington brings romance and raunch to a third run of Netflix’s regency smash that gets better and better as it goes. Nicola Coughlan is typically effervescent as Pen, lovestruck by the newly buff globetrotter Colin Bridgerton (Luke Newton) and Golda Rosheuvel’s Queen Charlotte presides over all the courtly schemes and flirtations with a stately. The exquisite costumes, grand locations and chamber-music covers of BTS, Taylor Swift, Pitbull and Billie Eilish make it opulent comfort viewing – preferably from some kind of chaise lounge. 

Length of binge: 7 hours 59 mins

Based on Aussie author Trent Dalton’s semi-autobiographical novel, this Netflix series is a masterful meeting of authenticity, storytelling, and dreamy fantasy sequences. It’s a tale of magical realism that plunges you headfirst into the world of Eli and Gus – two young brothers growing up in a neglected outer suburb in Queensland during the mullet-loving ’80s. The pair must navigate never-ending hardships, brushes with the town’s criminal underbelly, and their mother’s struggle with addiction – all with (and without) the help of the dysfunctional family around them. Steeped in trauma, but packed with heart and humour, it has a touching bond of brotherhood at its core.

Length of binge: 6 hours 44 mins

Somewhere between the bacchanalian menace of The Wicker Man and the larky spirit of Hot Fuzz lies a British telly procedural that’s way better than it has any right to be. Much of that is down to the sarky smarts of Anjli Mohindra as a big-city cop sent on a ‘punishment posting’ to a remote Welsh island on the case of a missing man. She stumbles into a community dominated by a mysterious cult and straight into a conspiracy that may or may not see her Edward Woodward’ed down the picturesque isle’s giant mine shaft come the final episode. The locations, filmed on England’s north eastern coastline, are just one more good reason to give it a spin.

Length of binge: 4 hours 44 mins

The first season of this hit BBC mystery-thriller Jamie Dornan’s shadowy Irish amnesiac, Elliot, and Danielle Macdonald’s (Patti Cake$) Aussie cop, Helen, with plenty of questions back in Australia. The satisfyingly knotty, western-riffing second run has them heading back to the Emerald Isle, where the pair’s tender bond is soon interrupted by all manner of bloody mayhem, abductions and double-dealing as Elliot’s real identity is slowly revealed. Olwen Fouéré is all ivory-haired menace as Elliot’s family matriarch, but it’s Dornan’s show and The Fall actor is touchingly vulnerable as a reformed man figuring it all out as he goes along.

Length of binge: 5 hours 45 mins

Like later-era John Woo, only without all the doves and slow-mo, this Netflix gangster series decamps from Asia to the US and pretty much lays waste to the place. There’s bruising fights in spas, dust-ups in driving ranges, devastation in Chinese restaurants – all overseen with aplomb by the John Wick stunt team. The non-fighty bits are spearheaded by Michelle Yeoh as a Triad matriarch travelling to LA where badass elder son Charles (Justin Chien) is a lot more help fending off rivals than Americanised younger offspring Bruce (Sam Song Li), who just wants to do improv for a living. It’s maybe an episode too long, but has enough charm to keep you on board throughout.

Length of binge: 7 hours 20 mins