2024 was a poor year for TV.
Last year the screen writers strike hit the pipeline of shows in production, and this made itself felt in 2024. There was less and less to watch, and what did come out was worse than last year.
But there is something deeper going on here. Despite growing numbers of subcribers only Neflix and Disney make profits. Even Amazon Prime relies on cash from elsewhere in Bezo’s empire for subsidies. There is a quiet crisis behind the scenes of the TV and movie industries, similar to the crisis that the music industry went through a couple of decades ago.
Streaming services expanded massively during Covid, creating an explosion of content. Niche audience segments aggregated globally were big enough to justify investment, which in turn led to exciting new content. Not quite a golden age, but still a great time to watch as Streamers tried to find new market sectors, new customers, and invent new programming for them. Under represented consumer groups found programming just for them. Investors poured money in to fund growth, which in turn funded an explosion of new shows.
Traditional advertiser funded broadcasting by contrast was more conservative, less likely to take chances. Advertisers were clear which demographics they wanted to target, which in turn limited content.
But the era of constantly expanding viewer numbers is over, and the focus has shifted from growing audiences to making profit. The economic logic of streaming has changed completely.
This is behind the creeping appearance of adverts on streaming services, lay offs, and expensive cancellations. Behind the scenes people talked about “survive until 25”, just trying to see the year out. The writers strike taught the streamers that they could maintain their business models without paying many writers for so many new shows.
Some of the years most interesting and innovative shows were dumped with no warning: Taika Waititi’s remake of Time Bandits with Taika as God, and Jermaine Clement as the Supreme Evil was brilliant, but scrapped after one series. KAOS with Jeff Goldblum as a neurotic Zeus in a Technicolor re-telling of the Greek myths got the boot too. Both these shows seemed to have been designed to fill a Neil Gaiman hole in scheduling; replacing shows like Sandman, American Gods, and Good Omens; in response to the “Me Too” allegations against him. Behind the scenes there are stories of shows being cancelled on the day filming was to begin, with the sets built and the actors paid.
But the biggest trend among streaming services was the way they developed parallel offers to hit the same market segment. As soon as one Streamer found a hit their rivals would pile in with their own competitor. This is the same process that the car industry went through a couple of decades ago. There used to be car companies who were really good at only one kind of car – Volvo made great estates, but not much else, others made great sports cars. But the cost of development meant that car companies either expanded so they had a car for each main market segment, or they merged. Niche car manufacturers like SAAB vanished. Now each streaming service tries to have a similar range of shows to attract similar viewers. The same shows for each market segment. Consistent mediocrity.
The easiest place to see this is the current trend for cool spy series, a genre which I have loved ever since I bunked off school and watched Richard Bradford in Man In A Suitcase, and Patrick McGoohan in the Prisoner
Apple has Slow Horses which is amazing, and series 4 is up to the same high standard. Sky have Day of the Jackal, which is fantastic and it’s Bond style opening sequence looks like Eddie Redmayne’s audition to be the new 007. Redmayne however is closer to the kind of cool killer that Alain Delon and Takashi Kitano specialised in, rather than the emotional train wreck of recent Bonds. Immaculate.
Netflix have spent a lot of money on Black Doves with Ben Wishaw and Keira Knightley which is loads of fun, but lacks the genius of Slow Horses or the empty cool of Jackal. It is still a great show, and they are clearly hoping to spin this out to multiple series. Paramount+ have The Agency with Michael Fassbender, a remake of French series Le Bureau des Légendes. This is the second time someone has tried to turn Michael Fassbender into a spy, after the failure of The Killer. Looks like the same bad ideas being green lit time and time again to hit the same market segment..
Neflix also invested in The Madness, with Colman Domingo, a taught 4 part thriller sadly stretched out to 8 episodes which diluted any impact it had. They say that the longer you are in a cult the harder it is to leave, because it means admitting you have wasted so much of your time. I reflected on that on episode 5 of The Madness, but hoped it would speed up. It didn’t. It did have an evil environmentalist as the rather limp baddie, which was at least unusual. Netflix also invested more wisely in Ripley, with Andrew Scott taking the role of the Talented Mr Ripley. Filmed in neo-noir black and white it also dragged out for too many episodes but that didn’t matter because it looked fantastic and Scott carried the show through the duller moments. This really was set up for multiple series, but studio execs look like they have bottled it. A shame as this was really original and distinctive TV.
HBO brought back True Detective for a final series with Jody Foster which was a spooky return to form. Peter Capaldi had 2 shows. The first, the brilliant Criminal Record for Apple, a police procedural with Cush Jumbo, and second the return of time travelling crime drama Midnight Hour for Amazon Prime. Both are excellent, and at last Midnight Hour tries to do something new with the formula.
But when it comes to police shows the BBC win hands down. Season 2 of Blue Lights was great, maybe not quite as good as season one; too much Holby City, not enough Line of Duty, including a cameo for Charlie Fairhead. Responder was also back for season 2 and if anything it was even better than the first. Martin Freeman is outstanding as a Liverpool police officer stuck on night shift, with the city and his life falling apart around him. The script at times touches the dark humour of Liverpool shackled by poverty and mental illness, aided by the brilliant Bernard Hill, the original Yosser Hughes, in his last role. Season 2 of Sherwood took a familiar story of drugs, guns and murder, but told it in the the English provinces; the guns don’t work, the drugs are shit, and the murders are cheap and sordid. Only the BBC could put together David Morrisey, Robert Lindsey, David Harewood, and Lesley Manville. The way the BBC is funded allows it to become excellent at specific sectors of programming, and develop shows over time. That is why there is such a huge effort to get rid of it.
HBO’s big hit Game of Thrones has an expensive spin off; House of Dragons, with less sex, and, predictably, more Dragons. Amazon has Rings of Power, a luxuriant prequel to Lord of the Rings. I admit that I only watched a handful of epic episodes of GoT like the White Walker battle, and couldn’t be arsed with HofD. I started watching RoP, but it takes a long time to get into. Amazon are committed to endless more series of this, but while it looks fantastic it needs better plot and acting to make it watchable.
The same is true of epic Sci-Fi. HBO have Dune Prophecy, which, like the movies, is beautiful but dull, and repeats the sci fi movie trope that belonging to a futuristic order of spiritual warriors (Bene Jeserit, Jedi, etc.) is a bit like doing very difficult yoga.
Netflix in return have Three Body Problem. I was so set up to love Three Body Problem; expensive, high concept sci fi, but I got bored of the books half way through, and I got bored of the TV series even faster. The 3 bodies relate to 2 different ideas, a planet with 3 suns whose behaviour is unpredictable in catastrophic ways, and 3 generations of Chinese women from the cultural revolution to the near future. Just as the alien planet goes through stable and turbulent eras so do the lives of the Chinese women. The age of Chaos from the Opium Wars to the Cultural Revolution gave way to the stable, but authoritarian era it is now in. Whether the future is stable or turbulent no-one knows.
The books were better when the human stories of the 3 generations of women were in the foreground, the TV series is less compelling because it pushes the other high concept sci fi side of the story.
You can’t get more odd than conceptual sci-fi set in underground bunkers, yet both Apple and Amazon Prime spent money on series set in the near future underground. Clearly there is a large streaming demographic who don’t get out much.
Silo, on Apple is inexplicably back for another series. Conceptual sci fi set in a bleak under ground bunker where no-one really knows what is going on should be my kind of thing but after a few episodes of watching people stumble around in the dark it is hard to avoid thinking that is a metaphor for the shows producers. Apple has renewed Silo for another 2 series of darkness and confusion. No-one knows why. Perhaps somewhere in the darkness there is an answer. I doubt it.
Amazon have Fallout, based on the computer game, in which a future America is stuck in a state of arrested cultural development somewhere around 1960. It has wit and humour and it lots better.
But more fun than both was the final season of Sweet Tooth, based on the DC comic. Set in a world in which a virus has killed the majority of the world’s human population, while creating hybrid babies that are born with animal characteristics. The main story follows Gus, a naïve 12-year-old human deer hybrid, who sets out to find his mother after his father’s death. Lovely stuff, and not a concrete bunker in sight.
Disney plus had The Bear, BBC had Boiling Point, spun off from the Stephen Graham movie. Both were tense depictions of crises in the food and drink industry, and both too tense for me to watch more than a couple of episodes. Just too true to life.
The last series of The Boys was brilliant, with Homelander in full effect as Donald Trump with superpowers. Netflix’s Supacell was less engaging, although The Kitchen was excellent, directed by Daniel Kaluuya, and with an surprise appearance by Ian Wright as a pirate radio DJ. Kaluuya’s dystopian London was remarkable similar to the current day, and all the better for it.
One market segment that is being well catered for is reactionary old white men.
It is hard to spend any time on social media without encountering reactionary old white men complaining that their voices are being silenced in favour of younger, more diverse views. They lack the self awareness to realise that in the modern world people have to compete to be heard, and they need to be at least a bit less boring. Social media doesn’t love self pity.
Even so this has been a bumper year for them.
Graham Hancock’s Ancient Apocalypse is back, this time with a brief cameo from Ted from Bill and Ted. Hancock bravely speculates that ancient moments were built by aliens, lost civilisations or anyone other than people who weren’t white. Brilliant and endlessly entertaining if you can overcome the unsubtle whiff of racism. You would have thought that Ted could just go back in time and check for himself. Yo, San Demas.
Clarkson’s Farm enters it’s 7 zillionth season. Amazon paid a vast amount to hire Clarkson, May and Hammond once they got the boot from Top Gear. The economics behind it were easy to work out – for years Clarkson had been one of Amazon’s best sellers, regularly topping the charts with books designed to be read on the toilet and DVD compilations of car crashes. Clarkson’s big secret was writing books for adults with the same reading age as Enid Blyton, which gave him mass appeal among people who don’t like to think too much.
Clarkson’s farm also has a new book out this Christmas for plenty of cross sales. Clarkson is following Trump’s path into politics; obese attention seeking reality TV man-baby transitions into authoritarian right wing politics botherer. Clarkson is starting further up the grid than Trump as he already has the middle aged snobs in string backed driving gloves vote locked in. Middle aged men with impotence problems wearing string backed driving gloves are a key part of the British right’s voter coalition, so much so that if Britain were ever to fall to fascism we wouldn’t have jackboots and jodhpurs but string backed driving gloves, M&S trainers and Genesis T-shirts*
Netflix gave us Man In Full, based on the Tom Wolfe novel. I love Tom Wolfe but he doesn’t always work well on screen; Jeff Daniels channeled Donald Trump in his portrayal of corrupt and failing real estate supremo Charlie Croker. His hair was particularly Trumptastic. Some of my favourite bits of the books were missed out, including dodgy Atlanta rapper Doctor Rammer Doc, although I appreciate that Wolfe may not be the best writer to describe hip hop.
As an antidote to angry white men the Channel Four documentary Undercover: Exposing the Far Right about the work of anti-facist group Searchlight is excellent. Small Town Big Riot presented by Mobeen Azhar is even better – he brilliantly traced the run up to riots outside an Asylum Seekers Hostel on Merseyside in 2023, and provided perfect insight into the 2024 summer far right riots.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0021k3z/small-town-big-riot-series-1-episode-1
So what was actually good?
Ludwig was amazing, David Mitchell as an autistic puzzle obsessive tracking down his brother’s killer. It managed to send up the whole genre of genius autistic detectives in an affectionate way, while working as a police procedural in it’s own right. It had a bit of Dirk Gently about it, and was better for it. It was light, lovable, with characters easy to connect with. Shame there aren’t more shows you can say that about. It was everything that Eric on Netflix should have been, but wasn’t. Anna Maxwell Martin was excellent support, and was even better in Until I Kill You.
Baby Reindeer will be controversial forever, but I loved it. The terrifying story of a man being stalked was too real, given my own experiences with a stalker. The UK Government is rightly tightening the law on stalking which has become the defining crime of our era – obsession magnified and facilitated by technology.
Colin Farrell as Penguin and Critin Milloti as Sofia Falcone were excellent in the eponymous series, set in the same universe as the Robert Patterson Batman. Dark, brooding crime drama, that wore it’s comic book heritage lightly. Superb.
Shogun on Disney Plus was epic, beautifully shot and had proper plot and actors. I would however quibble about the historical accuracy of the haircuts. Don’t let that put you off.
And an honourable mention of Harry Lawtor, fast becoming a new mod icon in the final series of Industry. He makes a decent cameo too as Harvey Dent in Joker Folie a Deux
Worst TV of the Year had to be The Way on the BBC. Michael Sheen’s ghastly vanity project in which good working class left wing Welsh nationalists take on the British Government. I grew up in East Durham in the Miners’ strike and if there is one thing I can’t abide it is posh middle class lefties egging on the working classes to some kind of pretend revolution in which the workers will take all the beatings while the middle classes maintain their social superiority. Paul Weller nailed it with Eton Rifles. No surprise to see Adam Curtis involved in this load of rubbish. How can so many talented people be out of work in the TV industry and yet Curtis still gets paid? Incredible.
I don’t really believe in conspiracies unless they are very well attested. I do believe that the UK came very close to a military coup against the Wilson Government on 2 occasions: in 1968 when Lord Mountbatten would have become Generalissimo, and 1974 when Airie Naeve would have been the Great Leader; others involved were William Rees-Mogg, Cecil King and Ross MacWhiter. The 1974 plot got as far as stationing troops at Heathrow Airport. Three of the conspirators would be killed by the INLA, a Republican splinter group widely infiltrated by British Intelligence. In between those 2 coups LWT broadcast The Guardians in 1971. One of the many post apocalyptic dramas that were made in the UK in the 1970s, an era when TV dwelled upon the possibility of a darker future. We are in a similar era today. with everything from Walking Dead to the Hunger Games predicting the End of the World As We Know It.
In the Guardians an economic and political crisis brings an authoritarian right wing regime to power dedicated to turn the clock back on social reform and trades union power. The PM, an old school Tory from the patrician class comes to realise that he is just the front for a paramilitary group – the Guardians – formed to keep order in the face of civil unrest. Bit by bit he realises that he has handed over Britain to a facsist regime he can no longer control.
Long lost, somehow it is now free to air on YouTube. Picture quality is uneven, but the acting makes up for it. Forget all of the rubbish post apocalyptic dramas on TV and watch this instead.
BBC Sounds continues to produced amazing content. In current affairs Marianna Spring was back with another series of Why Do You Hate Me? set in the USA. Jon Ronson’s new series of Things Fell Apart starts with one of the most jaw dropping opening episodes of the year. The Coming Storm presented by Gabriel Gatehouse followed a similar path as America chose dark fantasies over complex realities.
The Autocracy in America podcast by Anne Applebaum and Peter Pomerantsev traced the ways that authoritarianism has evolved over the last few decades of US politics. Both get a mention in Books of the Year.
BBC Sounds also hosted too much quality audio drama to list, but the return of Aldrich Kemp in The Rose of Pamir was brilliant.
Finally I have my own show in development with the Streaming services. It’s about an ageing British bloke whose entire life is dependent on immigrants; from healthcare to paying taxes to fund his benefits. Rather than being grateful he blames them for all the woes in his life. It’s a retro comedy set in the 70s.
The working title is Honky Donkey. Sure to be a winner.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/oct/17/netflix-profits-double-subscriber-growth
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/sep/15/rings-of-power-streaming-disaster
*not from the weird early albums with Peter Gabriel, but the shit later ones with Phil Collins singing
Jon – have you ever read that alternate history of 1970-1990 kicking round the internet based on the premise of an England 1970 World Cup win causing a ‘butterfly effect’ style chain of events leading to a dictatorship with Enoch Powell being a puppet dictator?
I haven’t read it, but sounds like my kind of thing. I am familiar with LP “The North Sea Scrolls” by Luke Haines, which is set in a Britain ruled by Oswald Mosley with Enoch Powell as Home Secretary. The fascist Government gets into trouble and Mosley organises a celebrity edition of It’s A Knockout against the cast of On The Buses to raise the nation’s spirits. When that fails Powell leaves the Government, listens to loads of Gong and Hawkwind while smoking loads of dope.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ck4rvYZFLYs