The old new TV of 2024

By Soncirey Mitchell
Reader Staff

Critics and movie buffs alike have railed against Hollywood for years over its plethora of sequels, prequels and remakes. TV has been likewise formulaic and repetitive, but it reached an all-time low in 2024. A lack of originality is perhaps the worst of several trends that claimed countless victims last year and will no doubt continue into 2025. Still, it wasn’t all bad.

Bond withdrawal

The least onerous 2024 TV trend was the spike in spy and spy-adjacent shows. Nearly three years after the release of James Bond: No Time to Die, and with no new movies on the horizon, Daniel Craig’s exit left a vacuum that every streaming platform and major network attempted to fill.

In 2024, audiences were introduced to The Day of the Jackal, following a high-profile assassin running from MI6; Black Doves, with Keira Knightly as a spy for hire; The Agency, the story of a CIA agent in London; Mr. & Mrs. Smith, about a fake couple working for an agency secret even to them; and The Gentlemen, an action comedy dealing with England’s underground marijuana empire.

If any of those titles sound familiar, that’s because all — save Black Doves — are remakes.

The cast of Brilliant Minds. Courtesy photo.

Taking their cues from the most recent Bond films — especially Jackal, which has the scenic destinations, lush soul music and theatrics of the 007 films — these shows had a surprising number of strong female leads. And by strong, I don’t mean they punch men while wearing heels. The characters were (mostly) multifaceted, emotionally complex and integral to the plot.

Black Doves, Mr. & Mrs. Smith and Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen have heaps of dark humor; and, for the most part, these shows didn’t fall into the conventional traps. It remains to be seen if they’ll maintain that momentum through their confirmed second seasons.

From this list, while I wholeheartedly recommend Jackal, I couldn’t make it through the first episode of The Agency, thanks to Michael Fassbender’s unnerving American accent. If you can overlook the stilted speech, the show has received some good reviews from the likes of Rolling Stone.

Trafficking in nostalgia

The majority of new U.S. shows not only tow the same formulaic line as hundreds of others but rely on an established fanbase to stay afloat.

For instance, Dexter: Original Sin brought back Dexter Morgan — the serial killer who kills bad guys — for the third time. It was an interesting premise when the show premiered in 2006; but, with the sequel New Blood, 2024’s prequel Original Sin and the upcoming sequel Resurrection, it’s time to let it die like the rest of Dexter’s victims.

Hopefully, the networks will bury the seventh Walking Dead sequel, The Ones Who Live and the sixth NCIS show, Origins, alongside Dexter. 

There were also remakes of Avatar: The Last Airbender, which I did not and will never watch for sentimental reasons, and Ted, which I did not and will never watch because I hate Seth MacFarlane for no particular reason.

Even somewhat original shows were full of recycled tropes and references preying on viewers’ nostalgia, including the newest spinoff of The Good Wife, Elsbeth, which is essentially Colombo in heels. The incomparable Kathy Bates revived Matlock, bringing, admittedly, new grace and depth to the remake that the showrunners refuse to call a remake. Having Bates’ character say, “I’m Matlock, just like that old show,” can’t hide the fact that it’s the same series.

Writing is not therapy

As Millennials seem to be taking the reins of the TV business from Boomers, it appears that they’ve mistaken their therapists’ guidance for writing advice and peppered their trauma into their scripts in all the wrong ways.

Brilliant Minds, starring the lovely Zachary Quinto is the poster child for this phenomenon. The show is a typical procedural medical drama following a neurologist with face blindness (prosopagnosia) as he takes on complex cases while shepherding a gaggle of interns. Rather than creating realistic scenarios stemming from characters’ personality differences, psychology and backgrounds, the show is set in a magical world where everybody talks about their feelings every five minutes, nullifying the conflict that drives good stories — or any stories, really.

At one point, Quinto’s character manages to talk a man out of setting himself on fire with a few sentences that can be summarized as, “No, don’t burn yourself alive. Think about how pretty the world is.” With grade-A ideas like these, the writers will put real psychologists, counselors and therapists out of a job.

If it wasn’t bad enough that the characters hug it out 20 times per episode, in the final minutes, Quinto’s character gives a little speech on the moral of the story, spoon-feeding themes to the audience the same way Dora the Explorer teaches Spanish. This trend belittles audiences and feels as though the writers are scared that depicting things like mental health without a rose-colored filter will result in mass suicide.

If you don’t like tragedy, write a Hallmark movie. Don’t walk into the writers’ room and say, “Romeo and Juliet was great, but it would have been better if the Capulets and the Montagues had just acknowledged each others’ feelings and opened a dialogue.” Remember, characters that make healthy decisions do not make for good stories.