41 Shows We Can’t Wait for in 2024 (and 11 We’re Already Obsessed With)

Brad Falchuk’s first showrunning venture away from the purview of Ryan Murphy is The Brothers Sun, a fun action/comedy/family show that features a captivating Michelle Yeoh at its very center. There are far worse—and far less fun—ways to spend a couple hours. The show unfortunately has already been canceled by Netflix—but it’s still enjoyable even when viewed just as a limited series.

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Depending on who you’re talking to, HBO’s True Detective: Night Country is either Season 4 of the True Detective franchise, or an entirely new show, a spin-off starting anew. All things considered, it’s kind of semantics and doesn’t really matter, but for the purposes of this list, we’re going to include it.

Night Country is set in the fictional town of Ennis, Alaska, where the men stationed in a secretly-funded location for research suddenly disappear. Local law enforcement officers played by Jodie Foster and newcomer Kali Reis step in to solve a mystery, which may or may not be connected to long-running local cold case. The show has a dark, brooding aesthetic, but it’s the performances of the leads that really draw us in. Reis is an energetic and exciting performer, and—let’s be real—Jodie Foster in a dark psychological crime thriller has never steered us wrong before. The Silence of the Lambs for life.

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Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks once again reunite as producers of a TV limited series of war, brotherhood, and incredible visual spectacle. The show follows the story of the 100th Bond Group—also known as the “Bloody Hundreth”—and both their tragic and triumphant adventures through the WWII theater. The story features incredible visuals and even better acting, led by a cast that includes Austin Butler, Callum Turner, Barry Keoghan, and Ncuti Gatwa, among others.

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Donald Glover and Maya Erskine take a new approach to the hit 2005 film Mr. and Mrs. Smith with this action-packed, super clever, and very engaging Prime Video dark comedy. It may not have the same star-powered punch as the film (which, if you haven’t watched it in a while, does have incredibly charismatic stars, but otherwise barely has a plot), but it’s actually a better product overall. Glover and Erskine both shine, and the guest stars—including Paul Dano, Parker Posey, John Turturro, and more—are episodic highlights. One of the best, and most fun, shows of the year, by far.

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FX is not playing around, people. The long-in-the-works samurai epic (based on James Clavell’s book of the same name, previously adapted as an NBC miniseries in 1980) is absolutely fantastic, a big-budget story that uses that budget in all the best ways, looking incredible, and featuring top-notch acting, but perhaps most importantly, coming to play with some seriously fantastic writing that spans several languages; some of the best parts of the show come in the moments where Mariko (Anna Sawai) is translating the words of John Blackthorne (Cosmo Jarvis). Led by a cast that features Hiroyuki Sanada (a martial arts legend who audiences may recognize from Bullet Train, Westworld, or Avengers: Endgame), Shōgun is probably the best show overall to land in 2024 so far.

Based on a thrilling true story, Manhunt is an adaptation of the nonfiction book of the same name and follows the 12-day hunt for John Wilkes Booth that came in the immediate aftermath of President Abraham Lincoln’s assassination. The cast is led by Tobias Menzies as Edwin Stanton, Anthony Boyle (who also appeared in Masters of the Air) as Booth, and Hamish Linklater as Lincoln.

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This is another one where we don’t have to make it too complicated: the beloved ’90s X-Men animated series continues just a few decades later with X-Men ’97. The original voices and creative forces largely returned from that original product, and, as detailed in a Men’s Health interview with producer Brad Winderbaum, Marvel Studios made ’97 a major priority—and it shows. It’s a nostalgic, delightful treat for any fan of Professor X’s squad.

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Netflix’s 3 Body Problem is based on the bestselling hard sci-fi novel The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, and while the book may seem, at times, to be rather unadaptable, the team of showrunners (including the Game of Thrones team of David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, along with True Blood writer Alexander Woo) did an admirable job bringing everything together. 3 Body Problem makes some major changes from the source material, but ultimately comes together in a brisk, exciting sci-fi adventure that works on the back of ambitious visuals and writing and a fun, game cast that includes the likes of Eiza Gonzalez, Benedict Wong, Liam Cunningham, Rosalind Chao, and more.

Anyone looking for a fun, realistic look at what first contact with an alien race would really be like is in for a treat; 3 Body Problem ultimately plays as half extremely intense sci-fi, half tension-filled political thriller, and 100% a good time. Now we just have to cross our fingers for Season 2.

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The Gentlemen comes from writer/director Guy Ritchie, and is based on his 2020 movie of the same name, but not a prequel or a sequel; rather it essentially does a do-over from the film (think The Evil Dead and Evil Dead II), slightly changing some things, and largely for the better—the show is a blast. The cast is led by Theo James, and also includes Giancarlo Esposito and Ray Winstone, among others.

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The world of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley comes to Netflix in the form of the new series Ripley, shot in black-and-white and starring Andrew Scott, coming off arguably the high-point of his career as the lead in 2023’s fantastic All of Us Strangers. The series is distinctly different from 1999’s The Talented Mr. Ripley, but also fantastic in its own right—which says a lot, considering that such a fantastic film sets a high bar. But with Scott in the lead role and the series entirely written by Steven Zaillian (The Night Of, Gangs of New York, The Irishman, among other great projects), Ripley manages to shine.

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Guys. It’s Colin Farrell in a detective show. Do we need to say much more? Think neo-noir throwback of sorts, but starring one of everyone’s favorite actors. We’ll get to see Farrell again later in the year on The Penguin, but Sugar almost feels like a throwback to an era that almost feels forgotten. We’re glad this show exists.

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Coming off 2023’s massive hit of The Last of Us (and modest hit of Twisted Metal), Prime Video’s Fallout is looking to be the next massive adaptation to prove that video games can be mined for live-acton material. Based on the games of the same name, Fallout comes from the Westworld team of Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy, and will find stars Ella Purnell (Yellowjackets) and Walton Goggins (Justified, The Righteous Gemstones) navigating a nuclear wasteland version of Los Angeles. Our hopes are high.

We don’t have to make this one too complicated: Michael Douglas as Benjamin Franklin. Yes!

Based on Viet Thanh Nguyen’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of the same name, HBO’s The Sympathizer tells the story of a half-French, half-Vietnamese double agent who spends time on a mission in the United States as he reports back to his superiors in Vietnam. The show, which is directed by the fantastic Park Chan-Wook (Oldboy, The Handmaiden, Decision to Leave), looks to pack all the spy/espionage thriller we could possibly want, and features Robert Downey Jr. as multiple different villainous American diplomats and figures. Hopes are high for this one.

In her first role since the release of Killers of the Flower Moon (and a possible Best Actress Oscar win), Lily Gladstone will play a local law enforcement officer alongside Riley Keough’s lead journalist in Under the Bridge. This FX/Hulu project is a crime drama adaptation of a horrifying nonifiction book about the murder of a young girl by a number of her peers. Dark stuff that should nonetheless make for captivating television.

Years after ending his TBS show and announcing that he’d move to a new weekly show on Max (then called HBO Max!), Conan O’Brien is finally returning to our screens with a new limited series called Conan O’Brien Must Go, where the legendary comedian hits the road to meet up with some fans he’s met through episodes of his fantastic podcast, Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend. Team Coco, our time is now.

Elisabeth Moss and Josh Charles lead The Veil, an globe-trotting, twist-filled, thriller series that comes from Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders) and features tons of excitement and twists.

Jeff Daniels leads the cast of A Man in Full, an adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s novel about a man who must defend his real estate empire after suddenly losing everything. Regina King will follow up her directorial debut One Night In Miami by directing the first three episodes of this series.

“You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?”

Those are the words sung by David Byrne on the Talking Heads’s classic song “Once In A Lifetime,” but it’s pretty much the plot of Dark Matter, a new Apple TV+ sci-fi series based on the bestselling novel by Blake Crouch. This series, which stars Joel Edgerton, is about a man who suddenly wakes up in a life where everything, from his family, to his job, to the way he’s perceived in public, is entirely different. Apple TV+ has done a great job with sci-fi in recent years, and Dark Matter seems like a strong bet to keep that reputation strong.

The wonderful Will Forte leads Bodkin, a genre-bending comedy thriller about podcasters in Irelander investigating a murder, before things start to get really kooky. The show should serve as both a satire on the never-ending true crime trend, and also a darkly funny mystery we’ll be quickly binging through.