We Might Regret This
We Might Regret This is a sitcom written by and starring the tetraplegic artist Kyla Harris as Freya, a Canadian who moves to London and employs her wayward best friend Jo to be her personal assistant. It’s very funny and manages to confront audience preconceptions about living with a disability without ever feeling preachy or laboured. Sally Phillips is in it too, and is there anybody who doesn’t like Sally Philips? It’s been renewed for two further seasons, praise the Lord.
The Day of the Jackal
Slick, gun-metal TV from Sky, following the titular Jackal, a notorious international assassin who specialises in using elaborate disguises to get close to his targets. It’s based on the 1971 thriller novel of the same name, which was also made into a film in 1973, but this new series successfully transplants the action to the present day. Eddie Redmayne plays the lead and reportedly got paid a million pounds per episode—which is absurd, really—but he does hit the mark, as it were.
Say Nothing
Hulu’s adaptation of Patrick Radden Keefe’s best-selling nonfiction book about the Troubles. It tells the story of a pair of sisters who join the Irish Republican Army, and charts how the culture of silence around IRA activity impacts their lives and the lives of their compatriots. It’s a nuanced look at the conflict that conveys the complexity of life in and out of the IRA in Northern Ireland—and is insanely gripping. You can watch it on Disney Plus in the UK.
Final season of Curb Your Enthusiasm
The time has finally come to say goodbye to Larry David. After 12 seasons and 25 years, this year saw the end of Curb Your Enthusiasm, the sitcom that asked: what if one man committed every social faux pas conceivable by the human mind? The final season takes Larry out in classic, exasperating style, as he faces a court trial in which several characters from past seasons return to chastise him for mistakes he’s made. It’s an almost-copy of the much-loathed Seinfeld finale, because of course it is. What else would you expect from David but a balls-to-the-wall, meta piece of madness to round it all off?
Colin from Accounts, season 2
The second season of the Australian sitcom Colin from Accounts came out this year. I binged the lot in a matter of days. Colin from Accounts follows two strangers, Ash and Gordon, who get thrown together one day when Gordon hits a stray dog with his car because he was distracted by Ash flashing him in the street. They adopt the now disabled dog and begin a romantic relationship despite their 10-year age difference. It’s completely delightful, easy viewing.
Baby Reindeer
This one is complicated because of everything that followed its airing, but Baby Reindeer was undoubtedly some of the most compelling TV of 2024. The comedian Richard Gadd created and starred in Baby Reindeer as a stage show first and then brought it to television this year. It presents the “true story” of how a stalker became enmeshed in his life. It’s told well and grippingly, painting Gadd himself as a very dark and complicated character, but the “true story” claim has led to a rather messy lawsuit being brought by Gadd’s apparent real-life stalker against the comedian and Netflix, who produced the show. Watch this space, but, first, watch the show. Then the Piers Morgan interview with the supposed stalker, if you’re really brave.
Rivals
Disney Plus have adapted Jilly Cooper’s jodhpur-ripper Rivals, and the result is pure entertainment start to finish. Rivals, the second in Cooper’s Rutshire Chronicles, is about the machinations of various upper-crust types involved in a local TV station in the 1980s. It’s garish, unsubtle and filthy: everything a Cooper adaptation needs to be, fuelled by a riot of Buck’s Fizz and bonking. For my money, Rivals is the most TV fun you can have without taking your clothes off, but don’t expect the characters to follow suit.
Industry, season 3
Industry has been something of a sleeper hit. I admit to not loving the first series, but this nail-biting drama about the fortunes of a group of investment bankers has won me round. This new season shows no signs that the show is taking its foot off the pedal: be warned, if you like your blood pressure lower after an evening in front of the TV, Industry will disappoint. But the show has some of the best writing on contemporary television and is guaranteed to fill the Succession-shaped hole in your life.
Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light
A full nine years after the first installment of the BBC’s adaptation of Hillary Mantel’s masterpiece trilogy about the life of Thomas Cromwell, we have Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light. Mark Rylance and Damien Lewis reprise their roles as Cromwell and Henry VIII, and this time around Cromwell’s star is on the wane, as he loses favour with the capricious king. It’s stunningly acted and nails the sense of creeping dread that the novels do so well, the sense that immense power gained must eventually be lost.
One Day
This is the show that made me weep the most this year. One Day, the smash-hit David Nicholls novel, charted the lives of Emma and Dex, who meet on their last day of university and spend the next decade trying and failing to get together. This new Netflix series righted the wrong of the 2011 movie starring Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess, which was an underbaked, rushed flop. Here the production had several hours over which to tell the will-they-won’t-they story in all its joy and pathos.
