Our Christmas planners are filling up with festive specials and the streamers are releasing tantalising teasers for the year ahead, which can only mean one thing: another year of televisual treats is almost over, and it’s time to look back on the best TV shows of 2024. As the era of ‘peak TV’ has continued to boom, we’ve been well and truly spoiled this year by a veritable smorgasbord of incredible new shows and returning favourites; some saying a final goodbye, some reinventing themselves, some just getting started, and some offering in a single limited run the kind of stories — and storytelling — we’ll still be talking about for years to come.
It would be fair to say 2024 has been a banner year for boundary pushing small screen offerings. From riveting historical dramas to conversation-starting, intensely personal stories, fresh takes on done-to-death genres, superior sophomore seasons, and contemporary shows that somehow already feel classic, compelling characters and virtuosic writing have been in plentiful supply over the past twelve months.
nd so, as we wave goodbye to another year merrily spent streaming, bingeing, and organising our lives around those sneaky weekly droppers, the time has come again for Team Empire to get together and vote for the best TV shows of 2024. As always, this year’s vote saw our editors, critics, and contributors (for more on us and our team, head this way) submit their own Top 10 shows of the year, with each vote assigned points based on the rankings given. This is then aggregated into the official Empire Top 20 list that you find here.
Whether you’ve been bwa-na-na-na’ing along to shots of animated nineties nostalgia, diving deeper into the Second Age of Middle-earth, dodging the law with Andrew Scott, or finally discovering the brilliance of Industry, we can all safely agree that the era of peak TV hit new heights in 2024. And so without further ado, scroll down and join us as we run through the list of this year’s best telly, counting from 20:
Top 20 TV Shows Of 2024
20) X-Men ‘97
Streaming on: Disney+
Showrunner: Beau DeMayo
Starring: Ray Chase, Jennifer Hale, Cal Dodd, Lenore Zann, George Buza