They treated me like a kid. It was so frustrating. I went in, they gave me an IV with a ******** of meds, then also an intramuscular epi pen. I felt better in an hour, but they made me stay for another 5. They legally couldn’t keep me there, but that didn’t matter I guess. Whatever, I’m happy to be home and not itchy.
That’s what we’re here for today: To help you figure out what shows with new seasons in 2024 you should catch up on, and which ones might not be worth the effort. First things first, we’re counting out the easy ones: Big returning shows like The Boys, You, and Bridgertonare cultural phenomena that have been massive for years, so you probably know whether or not they’re for you. If one of them seems like your bag, start watching, but trust your gut instinct either way. As for everything else, here’s what you should know:
Image: Peacock
Watch it if you like: 30 Rock, or any sitcom with a constant barrage of hilarious and offbeat jokes Previous seasons: Two Where to watch: Peacock (Netflix after March 14)
This is an easy one. This sitcom about four women who used to be pop stars in a girl group is heading into its third season, and its first after moving from Peacock to Netflix. There are only 16 episodes in the first two seasons, and at just 30 hilarious minutes each, it’s easy to breeze through. —Austen Goslin
Image: CBS
Watch it if you like: Elementary, or any other offbeat procedural, or exorcism movies Previous seasons: Three Where to watch: Paramount Plus
From the minds behind all-time great legal procedural The Good Wife, Evil takes the elements of procedural shows we know and love and expertly applies them to the demonic and supernatural. Gleefully playful, surprisingly scary, and mischievously funny, Evil is unlike anything else on television. —Pete Volk
Image: Syfy
Watch it if you like: The Chucky movies, horror comedy, Jennifer Tilly Previous seasons: Two-and-a-half Where to watch: Peacock
Chucky is one of the boldest shows on television, never afraid to reinvent itself or dive into the deepest recesses of its canon. After seasons set in a quiet small town and a Catholic boarding school, the current season (in a mid-season break) is set in the freakin’ White House!! It’s one of the funniest shows on TV, and almost inarguably the goriest. Four more years! —PV
Image: Apple TV Plus
Watch it if you like: Dry British humor, spies, fun television Previous seasons: Three Where to watch: Apple TV Plus
Slow Horses really started to catch on with the 2023 debut of its third season, but if you’re not on board yet, 2024 is the perfect time to catch up. The series centers around Slough House, essentially the island of misfit toys for disgraced British spies who are disdainfully called Slow Horses. The horses are led by Jackson Lamb, a fantastic spy with awful hygiene and a penchant for rudeness — played terrifically by Gary Oldman. Slow Horses’ third season was its best so far, which is saying something for one of the most fun and watchable shows on TV. —AG
Photo: Ser Baffo/ABC
Watch it if you like: Sitcoms like Parks & Recreation, or generally sweet and funny shows Previous seasons: Two Where to watch: Hulu
Genuinely funny broadcast sitcoms feel like a rarity nowadays, but Abbott Elementary is doing a great job holding down the fort. Set in a Philadelphia elementary school, the growing roster of phenomenal guest stars helps keep each episode fresh, while the show lets its core cast of teachers grow as characters, friends, and more. Abbott isn’t the funniest sitcom ever, but it’s got a few great jokes every episode and as much heart and personality as any show on TV right now. —AG
Image: PBS Masterpiece
Watch it if you like: Animals, British shows, procedurals Previous seasons: Two Where to watch: PBS All-Access
The latest adaptation of James Herriot’s books about being a veterinarian in the British countryside as World War II looms is equally tender, charming, and beautiful. Another example of applying the procedural format in an unlikely direction, All Creatures is about how we care for our community — human and animal alike — and it’s one of the best shows hidden away on PBS. —PV
Matt is joined by LightShed Partners media analyst Rich Greenfield to break down the latest reports of a meeting between Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav and Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish in New York City to discuss a possible merger. Matt and Rich discuss what a deal would look like between these two legacy companies, how this would affect the streaming and cable networks for both of these companies, and whether or not major mergers in modern Hollywood ever work. Matt finishes the show with a prediction about the weekend box office.
For a 20 percent discount on Matt’s Hollywood insider newsletter, What I’m Hearing …, click here.
CD Projekt Red fulfilled a five-year promise last week when it added a fully functional metro system to Cyberpunk 2077. While the feature does wonders to make Night City feel more alive, I was surprised to learn just how little California’s public transportation infrastructure has improved in the game’s alternate-reality future.
Cyberpunk 2077 now includes five Night City Area Rapid Transit (NCART) rail lines servicing 19 stations. Every stop still functions as a fast travel point, but players can also use them to hop onto the subway and relocate, in real time, to other parts of the city. As movement is restricted while on the train, this is a mostly visual experience, providing folks with a new perspective on the sprawling mega-city as well as limited opportunities to chat with their fellow riders.
During one trip, I noticed a screen indicating the train’s speed was consistently hovering around 43 mph, which felt awfully slow for futuristic transportation. The average speeds of modern-day heavy-rail systems in the United States range from the high teens to the mid-30s, but they’re capable of reaching much higher maximums. And that’s not even accounting for more developed public transportation in Japan and China, whose magnetic levitation (maglev) bullet trains zoom through major cities at hundreds of miles per hour.
What the heck.Image: CD Projekt Red
This fits with what the first Cyberpunk rulebook had to say about then-future transportation in 1988:
Surprise, surprise. Contrary to expectations, the year 2000 has not yielded any staggering new developments in transportation. Years of economic strife and civil unrest have discouraged research into new ways to travel—in fact, the very act of travel has become very restricted. Expect the world of 2013 to be much like the 20th century—a network of crowded freeways, packed trains, and swarming airports.
A subsequent expansion, Welcome to Night City, indicates light-rail maglev trains with ground speeds of 200 mph existed in the eponymous metropolis as far back as 2013, the year the first Cyberpunk adventures were set. Every book since makes some mention maglev trains as a staple of Night City travel, and 2005’s Cyberpunk V3.0 even noted an improvement in their top speed to 300 mph despite the apparent destruction of the intercontinental maglev line during the Fourth Corporate War (which took place from 2021 to 2025 in-universe) between the world’s ruling megacorps.
(And just to cover my ass, 1990’s updated Cyberpunk 2020 rulebook makes it clear that NCART and the light-rail maglev trains are one and the same.)
It’s here that Cyberpunk 2077 does something clever by expanding the consequences of this conflict. Rather than only putting rail travel between continents in flux, the game describes the Fourth Corporate War as debilitating the entire maglev system, as explained by the following database entry:
Maglev trains cruised at high speeds via tunnels and on the surface thanks to the advent of electrodynamic suspension technology, allowing fast and comfortable travel from Night City to other cities, including Kansas City, St. Louis, Atlanta and Washington D.C. Unfortunately, this new era of transportation didn’t last long. The social unrest and armed conflict of the 4th Corporate War brought with it an economic crisis that soon crippled the entire system. Currently inoperational, the abandoned Maglev tunnels are used by the homeless and various gangs.
The destruction of the maglev system and the slow NCART speeds exhibited in-game lead me to assume the local government was forced to revert to pre-2013 tech to ensure NCART remained operational, a massive downgrade from the bullet trains that once transported residents through Night City and beyond.
Hurry up and wait.Image: CD Projekt Red
While researching this situation, I couldn’t help but see darkly hilarious parallels between the difficulties facing the fictional California depicted in Cyberpunk 2077 and the actual state in which I live.
Despite being one of the largest (both in terms of land and population) and richest states in the union, California has long struggled with plans to build public transportation on par with the bullet trains of eastern Asia. A lot of that is due to politics, as even ostensibly supportive legislators are wary of spending the billions of dollars necessary to complete the project. And let’s face it: Americans are just way too devoted to their cars.
All that said, there’s one very simple explanation for Night City metro’s relatively low speed: The developers didn’t want NCART rides to happen in the blink of an eye. What good would the long-awaited subway experience be if players didn’t actually, you know, experience it?
A trip taken at 300 mph wouldn’t provide any time to people watch Night City’s eccentric residents or take in the view of skyscrapers surrounding the bay outside the train’s windows. The entire point of the subway system — and a big part of why folks clamored for its inclusion all these years — is to give players new opportunities to role-play and experience the visual splendor of Cyberpunk 2077’s setting and its over-the-top aesthetics.
I find it hard to fault CD Projekt Red for playing a little loose with established Cyberpunk history if it makes for a better game in the end.
Fandom might be something people participate in during their spare time, maybe in the privacy of online communities or convention halls, but it undoubtedly has an impact on the wider world. In the past few years, the types of strategies deployed by politicians and those leading social movements have increasingly started to look like those used in fandom. This is particularly true of tactics pioneered within the digital and physical fan spaces in order to increase visibility and impact. All the while, fandom itself is continuing to change and evolve.
Powered by passion, fans make things happen. Sometimes those accomplishments are only important within each individual fandom — producing a zine, making a character or celebrity trend, starting a new meme. But other times they reach further than expected, outside fan spaces, and make things really move.
Taking a look at the accomplishments of fandom communities this year is a good way to get a bird’s-eye view of what exactly fandom is, at a time when more people engage in fandom than ever. In 2023, fans showed up and made their voices heard. They launched projects, saved shows, supported strikes, and even rescued historical figures from obscurity. Here are just a few of fandom’s most impressive accomplishments from this year.
Fans on strike
When the Writers Guild of America announced that its members would be going on strike in May of this year, fans took the news in stride. Of course, it was disappointing to hear that production on many fan-favorite shows, like Stranger Things,would be pausing thanks to the strike action. But it was more important that fans supported the actions of the WGA, and later SAG-AFTRA, which were necessary for writers and actors to earn protections and fair wages in their industry.
Though some troll posts led people to believe that fans were against the strike, that couldn’t have been more untrue. It was precisely the opposite: Fans worked hard to spread information about how best to support the striking writers and actors. Independent, fan-run blogs like sagwgastrikeupdates and fans4wga consistently communicated the latest news on the strikes and answered questions about how best to avoid crossing the picket line with fan activity.
And while some fans were sad that shows that came out during the strike, like fan favorites Good Omensand Our Flag Means Death, never got traditional actor- and writer-centric press tours that fans could obsess over alongside the new episodes, fans put their feelings aside in support of fairness. OFMD fans showed up in person to picket lines and were rewarded, when the strike ended, with a deluge of behind-the-scenes content that stars like Vico Ortiz and Leslie Jones shared on TikTok.
A plaque for Hester Leggatt
West End comedy musical Operation Mincemeat has fostered a fandom of Mincefluencers ever since its off-West End days at Riverside Studios. It’s an oddball show, which, much like the Broadway hit Six,was written and developed by a company of Fringe Festival stalwarts.And like Six it was also inspired by real history. Like the Colin Firth film of the same name (which it otherwise shares no connection with) Operation Mincemeat was inspired by real events during World War II, when a group of MI5 operatives successfully diverted the Nazis by planting false information on a corpse.
The musical’s main characters are based on real historical figures, including Hester Leggatt, a secretary at MI5. She contributed to the wartime operation by helping create the false identity of the corpse, writing love letters to “Bill Martin” that were planted on the body. In the musical this work is immortalized in the tearjerker song “Dear Bill.” In the song “Useful,” Hester thinks that instead of a statue she might like to be recognized by “just a small plaque / Something tasteful and small.”
Something special is happening, folks!!!
On Monday 11th Dec, a plaque in Hester Leggatt’s honour will be unveiled following the dedicated research of some incredible fans!
You’ll be able to view the plaque unveiling from the entrance to the theatre. pic.twitter.com/6SPWsWoRLb
Unlike the male protagonists of the story, about whom biographical details abound, little was known about the real Hester Leggatt — just enough to create her character in the musical. But fans went much, much further, digging up biographical records at the National Archives and London’s Imperial War Museum in order to illuminate details of Leggatt’s life. Fans found census records, exam results, and handwriting samples that matched the real letter to “Bill.”
Finally, their research culminated in a letter from MI5 confirming Legatt’s employment, which had been classified information up until then. A plaque honoring Leggatt is set to be unveiled outside the Fortune Theater, where Operation Mincemeat is playing, on Dec. 11. Hester Leggatt is finally getting the recognition she long deserved, thanks to fans’ hard work uncovering her story.
Save the sapphic show
Fan campaigns aren’t new, but their persistence year after year is a demonstration not only of fans’ ability to self-organize and persevere, but the continued divergence of studios, networks, and streaming platform priorities from the desires of passionate fan communities. In 2023, the shows that fans rallied behind included animated show Star Trek: Prodigy and the CW’s Supernatural prequel The Winchesters. But the most notable fan campaigns have been behind the canceled shows A League of Their Own and Warrior Nun.
Passionate fans hungry for queer representation have helped rescue shows like Sense8; fans have also banded together to campaign for The 100 to change certain plotlines. A League of Their Own was renewed only to be un-renewed by Amazon in August of this year, and fans immediately started organizing, seeing that it was worth the effort to push back against this cavalier treatment. Fan campaigners behind accounts like @ALOTOHomeRun have kept the show trending, hoping for a second season that will continue to explore the queer and Black characters that made the show a powerful adaptation of the original 1992 film. They have kept the show trending on X (formerly Twitter), and in return the showrunners have promised that they’re still trying to find a way forward for the show.
Fans’ impressive show of support for Warrior Nun began late last year, when Netflix confirmed the beloved drama about an ass-kicking nun (played by Alba Baptista) would not return for a third season. After creating a Discord server called Sapphics in Pain, the fans began to organize — and didn’t stop. Well into 2023, they were spending hours of volunteer labor on professional-level analytics research papers and strategic analysis, aiming to prove conclusively to network stakeholders that their beloved show was well worth picking up for a new season. Their hard work was rewarded when executive producer Dean English announced the series would return as a trilogy of feature films — though, because of the lack of involvement of the original series’ writers, it’s a cautious victory for the hardworking fans.
Swifties united
Photo: Daniel Knighton/Getty Images
Thanks to the kickoff of the ubiquitous Eras Tour, and the steady (re)releases of Taylor’s Version albums, Swifties consolidated their power and emerged as an unshakeable and unstoppable bloc in 2023. Swifties are behind trends like trading friendship bracelets and wearing glittery boots, but there’s more to it than aesthetics — the huge community of Taylor Swift’s die-hard fans have also used their influence to attempt to create visible change and move the needle on issues that are important to them.
In early November, Swifties in Argentina spoke out against the right-wing political candidate Javier Milei, forming a group called “Swifties Against Freedom Advances” to try and convince other fans not to vote for him. However, in the end it wasn’t enough to move the needle, and he ended up winning.
Other Swifty fan efforts in South America are ongoing. A fan, Ana Clara Benevides Machado, died at one of Swift’s Brazilian shows during an extreme heat wave. Fan outcry after this event was widespread, but American-language media was slow to report on the incident beyond Swift’s initial statement about the tragedy. Fans rose to the occasion in order to translate Brazilian news stories regarding the timeline of events and venue issues, and even raised money for the family of the fan who passed. This culminated in Swift paying for the family to come from their rural home to see her concert, where they posed for a picture with her wearing shirts with Ana’s face on them.
I just panicked and said yes to a brutal logging job that will probably make me want to kill myself again because they offered me lots of money and a truck. It’s been an honor **** posting with you 18 hours a day, I’ll be around, just less. *salutes*
When the euro banknotes were 1st designed in 2002, they featured fictional bridges, so as not to cause a row amongst EU member countries. Ten years later an architect for the Dutch town of Spijkenisse claimed them all for the Netherlands by building them ALL on a single waterway
Just lost my oldest cat tootsie today bros. Some people say they’re just animals ,but they come into your life and bring you love and happiness that they become apart of your family. She was a great cat and i just wanted to show you guys a picture of her. She will be missed. Thanks.
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