Top Television of 2024 (Part 1)

Jan 22, 2025

It’s January here at Do You Know What I Love The Most?, and that means it’s time to sum up the last 12 months with Year End Lists! I’ll be devoting the rest of this month to rounding up and discussing the various media released in 2024 that meant the most to me — just like every other website on the internet! Isn’t that special?

Today we’re going to talk about the best TV shows of 20241! This is not meant to be a definitive list of the best out there, because I simply cannot and have not watched it all. These are simply the shows released in 2024 that caught my attention and/or tugged at my heartstrings the most throughout the year, in no particular order. Enjoy!

Due to size restrictions for these emails, we’ll be discussing the first half of this list today, and the remaining entries in Part 2 within the next few days.

Delicious in Dungeon (Tokyo MX/Netflix)

I’ve tried and failed countless times to describe Delicious in Dungeon to friends, but there’s just no good way to sum up the charm, the vision, the idiosyncrasies of this delightful anime without sounding like a raving madman. Do I start by explaining how it’s a gorgeously animated riff on Dungeons and Dragons? Great! Except the main hook setting Delicious apart from other D&D inspired stories is that our main party of characters cook and eat the monsters they defeat? But that gimmick is largely used to explore the way that food and cooking bring people together, forges bonds, and essentially created civilization as we know it? But food is also a doorway into exploring the way that each and every one of us plays a role in the ecosystems we inhabit, and our role in our ecosystem drastically changes how we interact with the world around us? When I lay it all out like that, yeah it sounds like it shouldn’t work, but what’s amazing is that all these various ideas actually perfectly mesh into one exciting, clever, offbeat adventure after another. Also worth mentioning is the show’s cast of lovable, quirky misfits, each more eccentric and memorable than the last. Delicious in Dungeon has a deep affection for each and every character it introduces — no matter how prickly or off-putting one may initially appear, the series has a way of quickly cutting to their core and finding what makes them worth caring about — but also understands how hard it can be to be a misfit in a world full of people who hate and fear what they don’t understand. It’s what drew these characters to the dungeon in the first place, and to each other, and why we care at all about their adventures. Delicious in Dungeon is a magical show in many ways; you may need to take the leap and check it out yourself to really understand why, but you won’t regret it.

Fargo (FX)

The fifth season of Fargo2 — Noah Hawley’s anthology series inspired by the Coen Brothers’ film of the same name — manages to inhabit everything that made its inspiration such a classic, while still telling a story all its own. It’s a story full of evil, stupidity, selfishness, and incompetence, but also full of compassion, determination, bravery, and enlightenment; a genuinely thrilling crime farce about how far one person can be pushed while still retaining her core humanity, that acknowledges the cruelty of the world without ever succumbing to it. Fargo’s fifth season is also a true actor’s spotlight, coaxing career-highlight performances out of the likes of Juno Temple (a fierce warrior whose kindness is a tool, but not a facade), Jennifer Jason Leigh (deliciously campy, more clever than she appears) and Jon Hamm (righteous and ruthless). It’s a nearly flawless season of television that, nonetheless, is still somehow almost totally eclipsed by its instant-classic finale, “Bisquik.” The final confrontation between Temple’s Dot Lyon and the 500-year-Sin Eater, Ole Munch, has felt inevitable throughout the entire season, but when it finally comes, Dot finds the strength and compassion within herself to break the cycle of violence that’s plagued her ever since she escaped from Tillman. Dot offers Ole Munch, not the retribution he seeks, but warmth, love, and a warm meal, freely given, the chance to forgive a debt and in return be forgiven, the chance to use his accursed hands to create rather than destroy. The audience can’t help but to share in the catharsis Ole Munch feels in those final moments, a brilliant subversion that drives home all of the season’s overarching themes. It’s the kind of episode worth watching an entire series for, an episode that made its way on to Rolling Stone’s 100 Best TV Episodes of All Time list only a few months after airing. It’s hard to overstate its brilliance.

Invincible Fight Girl (Adult Swim/Max)

Despite a premise nearly tailor-made for my interests — a shōnen-inspired animated action adventure set in the world of professional wrestling — it took me a bit to fully connect with Invincible Fight Girl. From the very beginning, the story of Andy — the daughter of accountants, groomed from birth to become one herself, who wanted nothing more than to become a wrestler — was full of heart, but throughout its first few episodes the plot dragged a bit, a few of the characters (namely, Craig) clawed at my last nerve, and though the action was always dynamic and well-thought out, there wasn't nearly enough it. Though I liked the series, I was starting to conclude that I wasn’t its target audience after all, that it wasn’t going to be a favorite of mine. But then, as the season reached its halfway mark, things started to change. The plots started growing more mature, and less predictable. The characters began forging real connections with each other, with even the most annoying of them revealing new, redeeming layers. The action became more intense, more frequent, and began tapping more into that shōnen inspiration, with the season’s final episodes delivering a heart-pounding bout of wrestling that took Andy’s skills and personal development to the next level, her own Super Saiyan moment (but not at all derivative!) that had me leaping off my feet and cheering like I really was at a wrestling match. It was even more than I originally hoped for from Invincible Fight Girl, especially coupled with the late-season plot swerve involving Quesa Poblana’s past with the Global Wrestling Commission that gave a whole new dimension to much of what had come before, all while setting up an intriguing new direction for the series to explore moving forward. You could probably make an argument that IFG was a bit of a Surf Dracula situation, taking most of its first season to become the show that was initially promised, but the early parts of the season ended up becoming an important foundation for the story, and when it finally did reach its full potential, IFG more than lived up to expectations. As the credits for Invincible Fight Girl’s season finale rolled, I was filled with a desperate, burning need to immediately start the next, and that’s the sign of great television, a sign that a series has become one of my favorites.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Amazon Prime)

Donald Glover and Maya Erskine both stun in Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Amazon Prime’s adaptation of the 2004 film that casts both actors as undercover spies, feigning a marriage as a cover story under the direction of an anonymous organization. Each episode presents a standalone mission for “John” and “Jane,” full of morally dubious goals, gorgeous, far-flung locales, and gritty, visceral action sequences. It would be an excellent spy series based off that alone, but Glover and Erskine elevate the proceedings with their electric chemistry that evolves across the season as their characters’ relationship strengthens and deteriorates. Both actors have natural charisma and are sexy as hell, but aren’t afraid to portray themselves as absolute asses and to get down and dirty, to suffer and scrap and get bloodied up on camera. The journey these two characters take as a couple — both real and imagined — is as much a roller coaster as any spy mission, and what really helps Mr. and Mrs. Smith stand out in comparison to other similar stories. I’m stoked that the series is returning for a second season with a new couple at its core, but it’s going to be hard to match the energy, passion, and incredible vibes Glover and Erskine brought to its debut season.

Batman: Caped Crusader (Amazon Prime)

It’s rare for a creator to be able to return to the character or franchise that made them famous and not have it feel like a cheap retread, but with Batman: Caped Crusader, Bruce Timm pulls it off. Timm became famous for his work on the iconic, seminal, timeless Batman: The Animated Series in the 90s, but while Caped Crusader retains many of the best elements of BTAS (a grim, mature Batman; a moody, old fashioned aesthetic; compassion for its characters; respect for its viewers), it also forges an identity all its own. It fully commits to being a period piece (while still leaving room for queer characters and characters of color), it splits its perspective rather equally between Batman and his expansive supporting cast — all of whom are compelling characters in their own rights, with their own ongoing arcs — and it tells standalone stories that eventually build to a season-long arc. Most interestingly, Caped Crusader is daring enough to make major changes many of Batman’s most iconic villains; the Penguin as the mother of a mob family, Catwoman as a spoiled thrill-seeker, and Harley Quinn as a sociopathic, but well-intentioned, therapist with no connection to the Joker are all audacious, fascinating, refreshingly new takes, and I am all for them. Caped Crusader also expands its horizons by exploring some more obscure Batman rogues (Onomatopoeia, Nocturne), and even embracing the supernatural. Taken as a whole, Batman: Caped Crusader is grounded in what makes the Batman mythos great, but isn’t afraid to forge an identity all its own, and it should appeal to old and new Batman fans alike. I don’t know how Timm managed a comeback like this, but god bless him for it.

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“Do You Know What I Love the Most?” is a newsletter from Spencer Irwin about his relationship with the stories he loves. Spencer is an enthusiast and writer from Newark, Delaware, who likes punk rock, comic books, working out, breakfast, and most of all, stories. His previous work appeared on Retcon Punch, One Week One Band, and Crisis on Infinite Chords, and you can follow him online on your social media of choice. If you like this newsletter, please subscribe and share with your friends!

More or less. There are some shows — like Abbott Elementary and Bob’s Burgers — that deserve to be on this list as well, but after years of excellence, I struggle to find something to say about them beyond “these still rule, and that’s so great!”

Only 3 episodes of Fargo Season 5 actually aired in 2024, with the first 7 episodes of the season airing in 2023. In that sense, it could be tough to argue for its inclusion on this list. Fargo was certainly on my shortlist for the Best Television of 2023 as well, but that year was so jam-packed with great television that, when I was rounding up my picks, I decided to wait and see how Fargo S5 ended before putting it on a list; if it nailed the ending, I’d talk about it on my 2024 list. I’m ultimately glad I waited, since the season’s ending ended up being the best part of an already-phenomenal season of television.

Do You Know What I Love The Most?