Hi! Last week, at The New Republic, I published my end-of-year wrap-up essay, which is about disappointment: both TV shows and trends that disappointed me, but also TV shows that had really moving and insightful things to say about disappointment itself. The piece, however, does not contain an actual Best Of list. So, as a little New Year’s Eve treat, I’m sending out both a traditional top ten list and some other annotated lists of things I loved this year on and off of TV. I will — as I must ritually promise — try to send out more of these updates from the City Chicken account in 2025. Though, as a programming note, I will say that I am doing most of my posting these days on Bluesky (here I am!). It’s not a perfect platform, largely because a decent number of my favorite posters haven’t yet made the switch. Many have, though, and, maybe more importantly, it’s notable the degree to which the people who like or rt the things I post actually seem to be clicking through and reading them. Recommend.
Anyway, til we meet again then, happy new year, and I hope you find something in here you can binge or even READ in the vanishing amount of time you have off before you go back to work.
BEST NEW THINGS I SAW ON TV IN 2024
Somebody Somewhere (HBO)
My Brilliant Friend (HBO)
Shōgun (FX)
Jacqueline Novak: Get On Your Knees (Netflix)
One Day (Netflix)
Evil (Paramount+)
Say Nothing (FX)
Slow Horses (AppleTV+)
Industry (HBO)
SCREEN EXPERIENCES THAT WEREN’T NEW TV SHOWS
Iowa vs. LSU / NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament / April 1, 2024
I’ll admit that my household became Caitlin Clark-pilled this year. Maeve was the leader of the charge, having remembered enough of 2023’s NCAA tourney to get preemptively amped about 2024’s (along with many of her little friends). And it did not disappoint. This was a really fun tournament, top to bottom, from the dominance of South Carolina to the return of Paige Bueckers and our introduction, at least, to JuJu Watkins, but the grudge match between Iowa and LSU was maybe the most electrifying TV watching experience I had this year. Lots of the worst people in the universe googled the rules of basketball this year so they could turn this rivalry into a race war, but, from my couch, we just got to watch two undeniable stars write another chapter in their story with and against each other. Maeve has a poster of each of them on the wall over her desk. We were lucky enough to see their WNBA rematch live in Indianapolis later in the summer, but it was hard to top their last ride in the NCAA.
Friday Night Lights complete series rewatch
I’ve made some jokes about how impossible it is to imagine this show being made today, but it’s simply true. They don’t make TV series like this, at this scale, anymore; they barely made them when FNL was on the air. I began this year thinking my rewatch life would be occupied with twentieth-anniversary binges of Lost and Battlestar Galactica, but it ended up being FNL. This show has a broad, relatable premise, a poetic visual style, and a charismatic ensemble of actors, a dozen or so of whom delivered the best performances they’ll ever deliver in their lives on this show. Watch Zach Gilford’s stuttering, inarticulate Matt Saracen, and tell me that’s a performance you could imagine airing on network television in the year of our lord 2024.
The Tim Walz Memes
For a brief, wild moment this year, I got to have the concentrated experience of falling in love with a political candidate. I’m writing a book about dad culture — more on that in 2025, hopefully! — so the arrival of the Dad King of Mankato, MN admittedly felt micro-targeted to me as a person. (And I wrote about that, here!) But, amid all the shittiness, there was a joy in the selection of this guy, in the very very briefly-held idea that it signaled a shift in political philosophy for his party, not only a repudiation of its more craven impulses but an active, dadly, embrace of what progressive politics might do to help people. When it happened, I tweeted, “I've never not voted the straight democratic ticket. Walz will be the first time my party — whose ideals (if not actions) I actually believe in! — has chosen someone to appeal to ME (a DEMOCRAT!) rather than moderate republicans or corporate donors or whoever. I can't believe it.” I was obviously quite wrong about what Walz’s selection betokened, but, for a second, the memes convinced me otherwise.
I don’t know who this guy is or why Instagram started pushing his videos on me, but he’s a guy who sets up next to a stream in the wilderness, and, using large flat stones as griddles, he silently prepares elaborate roasted meat dinners for himself and his dog. (The title of his channel translates, it seems, to “Black Sea Adventurer.”) I have watched every video that’s come up in my feed, and I could just live inside of them. We went on a hike the other day, and all I could think was that the creek bed we were walking along would be perfect for burying some beef ribs under hot coals.
I have heard what the talkers were talking, the talk of the Wordle and the Connections. But do not talk of the World or the Connections. I’m talking about TILES, man, Tiles.
BEST TV PERFORMANCES OF 2024
Kayvan Novak turned out to be the heart of What We Do in the Shadows. The final season of this show was a real bounce-back from a kind of fatigued fifth season, and spending so much time watching Novak’s Nandor wrap up his social and emotional journey was key to what made it great.
Lola Petticrew, Hazel Doupe, Josh Finan, and Anthony Boyle each individually delivered a performance of the year candidate on Say Nothing. Hollywood has tried to make Anthony Boyle happen three times this year — casting him as a lead in both Masters of the Air and Manhunt — but this time it really stuck. And the three other actors here are ones I hope I see in everything now.
Abby Elliott and Liza Colón-Zayas get a double-nod here for anchoring the two best episodes of The Bear this season. Olivia Stowell wrote about the indulgent shallowness of the “departure episode,” this year, but these were two standalones that worked a) because they constituted stylistic breaks from a season whose overall style was NOT working and b) because these two actors could sustain them.
I liked Agatha All Along just fine, if only because it was one of the MCU shows least reliant on all the insane nonsense that happens in the MCU. But, in part for that reason, it’s a bit of a wobbly ship, narratively speaking. The only reason it works even a little bit is the cast. Kathryn Hahn and Patti Lupone have made their entire careers out of filling every crevice of every role that’s given to them, and they do that here. I don’t think they’re the two best performances of the year, but I also don’t think any of the other performers I’ve listed here could have kept this specific show afloat the way Hahn and Lupone did.
Speaking of shows that really wouldn’t be much of anything at all if it weren’t for an ensemble of actors who’ve decided only to make interesting choices with bland material: Presumed Innocent. The all-star here is O-T Fagbenle, who takes a completely anonymous DA hack character and — with the power of a wackadoodle voice worthy of early Nicolas Cage — makes him sing.
Keri Russell has insane chemistry with every actor she’s ever been onscreen with. She could anchor a serviceable rom-com with a randomly selected extra from the cast of The Diplomat.
I am ambivalent about whatever it is Industry is doing, but I’m not ambivalent about Ken Leung and Marisa Abela. Spike Lee’s 2004 film Sucker Free City was shot as the pilot to a Showtime series about gentrification in the Bay Area, but it wasn’t picked up. If it had been, we would now think of Ken Leung — who starred in the film alongside Anthony Mackie — as one of the founding stars of the prestige TV revolution. I’m happy, at least, that he is one now that that revolution has entered its zombie phase.
I don’t remember a single thing from Mr. and Mrs. Smith, a perfectly fine television program I watched and apparently quite liked in January of this year, except for Maya Erskine, who has got It.
Late period Curb Your Enthusiasm was running out of ideas pretty quickly, but what it didn’t run out of is its trademark generosity toward its guest actors. I think it’s possible that Tracey Ullman’s Irma Kostroski is the single best supporting performance in Curb history. We deserve a lot more Ullman in the new year.
Where would any of us be without Yabushige? Everybody on Shōgun is incredible, but Tadanobu Asano created an icon here. An epic performance for an epic series.
Finally, I already wrote a lot about Tim Bagley on Somebody Somewhere. Just watch it, okay?
BOOKS I READ (AND LIKED) IN THE YEAR 2024 BUT WHICH DID NOT NECESSARILY COME OUT IN THE YEAR 2024 (THOUGH SOME OF THEM DID)
Homeland: The War on Terror in American Life / Richard Beck
Monsters: A Fan’s Dilemma / Claire Dederer
Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art / Lauren Elkin
Speedboat / Renata Adler
The Beautiful Struggle / Ta-Nehisi Coates
TWO BOOKS FOR KIDS
The Puppets of Spelhorst / Kate DiCamillo
Detective Sweet Pea: The Case of the Golden Bone / Sara Varon
AND THREE THAT WON’T COME OUT UNTIL NEXT YEAR BUT WHICH YOU SHOULD PRE-ORDER WITH HASTE
Mother Media: Hot and Cool Parenting in the Twentieth Century / Hannah Zeavin
The Dad Rock that Made Me a Woman / Niko Stratis
Y2K: How the 2000s Became Everything / Colette Shade
ESSAYS AND CRITICISM
In last year’s edition of this annual newsletter, I wrote, “I think of myself always as writing to the writers I love and admire. Everything I wrote this year I wrote looking up to these essays.” I don’t really have a better way of saying that.
Four treatises on the decline and fall of television.
James Poniewozik, “The Comfortable Problem of Mid TV” / New York Times
M.C. Mah, “Who Killed Prestige TV? Toward a ‘Good Fan’ Theory of Television” / LitHub
Olivia Stowell, “Let Down By Television” / Mid-Theory
Daniel Bessner, “The Life and Death of Hollywood” / Harper’s
Two Defector rhapsodies about live music.
Corey Atad, “The Decemberists Take Me Back and Forth” / Defector
Soraya Roberts, “In Communion With MJ Lenderman” / Defector
The best (and most useful!) essay you’ll read about having your first colonoscopy.
Anne Helen Petersen, “Welcome to Your Colonoscopy” / Culture Study
A handful of essays about AI that don’t make me want to puke.
Edward Ongweso, Jr., “The Phony Comforts of Useful Idiots” / The Tech Bubble
Elizabeth Lopatto, “Stop Using Generative AI as a Search Engine” / The Verge
One of the most genuine, illuminating pleasures of this year was being on the receiving end of Aaron Bady’s DMs as he was researching this piece on the birthrate crisis everyone says we’re having.
Aaron Bady, “The Parenting Panic” / Boston Review
To me, just a perfectly constructed piece of criticism. I made my students read it.
P.E. Moskowitz, “Vibeocracy” / Mental Hellth
The best thing I’ve read about the m*nosphere.
Eamon Whalen, “Boy Problems” / Mother Jones
I didn’t really quite know what to do with The Curse, but, boy, Jennifer Wilson sure did!
Jennifer Wilson, “The Curse and the Magical Thinking of the Speculative Economy” / The New Yorker
An essay and a new substack about picture books.
Chris Ware, “Writing in Pictures” / The Yale Review
Mac Barnett & Jon Klassen, Looking at Picture Books
Three beautiful essays about grief and returning to media you didn’t quite leave behind.
Bilge Ebiri, “Interstellar’s Most Enduring Quality is Exactly What People Used to Hate About It” / Vulture
Lauren Eriks Cline, “Seriality and Slow Grief” / The Los Angeles Review of Books
Cory Barker, “My Mom, Me, and TV” / TV Plus
An essay about Tupperware.
Alexandra Lange, “Tupperware Days” / Dirt
And a recipe for one of the fastest, most delicious, most repeatable meals I’ve made this year.
Linguine with Sardines and Fennel / Food52
I’d substitute rigatoni, though,
Phil.
So many great recs here. Looking forward to dad book news!
Always look forward to your end of year recommendations, and am delighted to hear there's a book coming soon too!
It's mind-boggling to think that a VP has never been selected with you (& your demographic) in mind. I'm Irish so I observe US politics from afar but that seems crazy! (Though of course I know the logic behind it. Big tent etc)