2024 was the year streamers and TV watchers alike said enough. Besides that HBO Penguin Show where Colin Farrell went deep into the witness protection program, America said, “I’m done with the origin stories and superhero cosplay shenanigans; Gimme first-rate, quality.”
This year, showrunners, actors, writers, and differently thinking producers got their moment; Superior grade television came back.
Ironically, the word brain rot, defined as low-quality, low-value content found on social media and the Internet, was named the Oxford Word of the Year.
So we’ve selected five shows from 2024, good ones—kick rocks “Hot Frosty,” hit the Cleaners’ “Suits”— which are compelling hangs, that we believe can prevent that brain rot.
That’s right, do it for your mental faculties; you gonna need ‘em this year.
MR & MRS SMITH (AMAZON PRIME VIDEO)
Hilarity and bombs find space in this awkwardly funny take on “what if millennials took jobs as spies.” Isn’t it a perfect job to flush out all that pent-up ennui? Donald Glover and Maya Erskine bring their generational takes to this slick, funny dramedy that teeters about during kills. Is romance a side perk that will keep me alive or kill my libido, emotional health… well, health in general? Love in the gig economy never dressed so suave. Glover and Erskine make the Pitt-Jolie version look clunky and oh-so-fugly. Glover, who executive produced this, pitches the right tone of disillusionment between the off-again on-again lovers/clock punchers.
PRESUMED INNOCENT (APPLE TV+)
Let’s take Scott Turow’s bestselling 1987 novel, put it in David E. Kelley’s hands, and watch Jake Gyllenhaal sweat and squirm. “Presumed Innocent” tracks how Gyllenhaal’s character, Rusty Sabich—Chicago’s chief deputy prosecutor—cheats on his wife and gets accused of murdering his colleague and paramour, Carolyn Polhemus, played by Renate Reinsve.
There’s an inner cheekiness to Gyllenhaal’s portrayal. You accept the all-gas, no-brakes performance as mere summertime pulp. Ruth Negga, who plays his wife, Barbara, also brings a degree of camp into the destructive brew, which sees both parents create emotional harm for their children. The supporting roles are strong, too. Peter Sarsgaard plays Tommy Molto, football-watching, bolo tie-wearing, cat daddy attorney who’s unlucky with the ladies. O-T Fagbenle is the smarmy, power-hungry prosecuting attorney Nico Della Guardia, with a dose of side-eye in his voice. “Presumed Innocent” may have plot holes the size of garbage cans, but the performances chew through the scenery like Pac-Man on a bender.
“SOMEBODY SOMEWHERE” (HBO)
Ever since mumblecore dawned, experimental films have brought naturalistic acting, low-budget settings, tons of improv, handheld camera shots, and real locations into the independent film zeitgeist. Duplass Brothers productions have been a standard that always deserves attention. So when I saw Mark and Jay were producing the Bridget Everett project “Somebody Somewhere,” I made sure to make time for it.
In its third and final season this year, Everett’s character Sam is making efforts to uplift the high school friends still in her Kansas hometown who helped her when she first touched down in the first season, following her sister’s death. That was the person in that town who understood her. So she thought.
“Somebody Somewhere” is a quiet, cozy, seemingly low-stakes but real emotional snapshot of life in the Midwest, a fish-out-of-water story of sorts, which tells the tale of how chosen family can be just as important as blood relatives.
Bonds made with friend Joel, played by Jeff Hiller; Sam’s surviving sister Trisha, played by Mary Catherine Garrison; and Fred, a trans professor—always the upbeat and good-natured center of the show—played by Murray Hill. Fred’s the homie. The community beats ring true and heartful.
But it’s Everett, who one moment is larger than the moon singing “Gloria” at a wedding or doing leg kicks and Pilates with confused ferocity, that can steal a scene or an entire episode with that comedic timing. Then when she gets small, quiet, and floats out that tender, sensitive heart… why the hell TV and film aren’t banging down Everett’s damn door.
“Somebody Somewhere” is a career-transforming statement on her versatility, outside of the torch singing, showing that ole Home Box Office still can program something warm and sweet, which speaks to everyone with a heart, even if all the money is in that Dragon show.
LANDMAN (PARAMOUNT+)
I could give you-know-what about the Taylor Sheridan multiverse, but gimme a show where I get to hear Billy Bob Thornton talk that shit? Yeah, I’m a sucker for it. Thornton plays Tommy Norris in the Sheridan huge hit “Landman,” which follows Norris putting out fires (literally) for his kinda sketch oil company.
Middle management deals with drug cartels who steal the oil company’s planes and land on the oil company’s roads to unload their own product, which Norris reports back to Jon Hamm, who plays his wealthy tycoon-type boss. Demi Moore is Hamm’s wife who swims, makes green smoothies for her husband, and other stuff the show doesn’t give us more time to observe, unfortunately. Thornton’s Norris is juggling work, a smoke show ex-wife played by Ali Larter who is getting itchy for him again, a daughter Ainsley, who dresses inappropriately around every boy or man in her life, and Norris’s son, Cooper, who just isn’t mean enough to work his way up in the oil company. He encounters major disasters on and off the oil rigs.
Ultimately, it’s Billy Bob speaking that Texas philosophy through pathos, sarcasm, and hillbilly wisdom that keeps the eyes peeled on whatever disaster pops up in an episode, cause they always do. If Sheridan keeps that comedy, self-deprecation, and sadness falling from double B’s lips every week, he will have found his new Yellowstone.
INDUSTRY (HBO)
The TV belt-taker this year. It’s not even close. You can forget that one note, “Chef” show with all the Dad rock hits. Come back for it next year. “Industry,” HBO’s finance drama, took the hot slot left bare by the ending of “Succession,” and gave us a mirror into the crooked world of investment banking that’s about to be barreling down the pike harder than ever in 2025.
In its third season, this show—made by one-time investment bankers, filled with soundtracking befitting an intense “Sopranos” episode—always pitches up scenarios dealing with sex, drugs, and naughty behavior. But now? That boulevard of broken men and women, of all ages, races, and classes, who work at or are otherwise associated with would-be prestigious London investment bank Pierpoint & Co, are overcome by the dominant social order and blown-up financial institutions.
And somehow, if you look past all the human shrapnel and carnage left by the wayside, Season 4 looms even heavier in the distance. Cash rules.
