Television

A genius tactician from the Three Kingdoms era arrives in modern day Shibuya to help an aspiring pop artist. Brilliantly fun.

The full subtitle of this show is bonkers: “The Villainess Enjoys a Carefree Life Married to Her Worst Enemy!” It’s pretty by the numbers, but I enjoyed it.

Beautifully animated and drawn. It’s very much “cute girls doing cute things” but there’s a real passion and charm to this series that sets it apart from many others of its ilk.

The first BL anime I’ve watched, and found it incredibly charming and sweet. It hinted at the ongoing discrimination and barriers queer folk in Japan face but I think wasn’t concerned about fully exploring this, which is a shame, but not surprising.

Economics! Wolf God! Simmering tension between the two leads. Fantastic. A little uneven episode to episode, but it ends quite strongly.

I finally watched this, afraid that it wouldn’t live up to the substantial hype. But I enjoyed it.

A nicely told awkward love story between colleagues. It was a little by the numbers at times, but largely charming.

A beautiful story about finding value in life and finding one’s people.

One of my favourite things from 2024. Adored this. Bizarre, funny, amazing art, kicker op.

A beautiful and gentle series. Very much cute girls (and a few token boys) being cute, but with penguins and other sea critters. Surprisingly nuanced in parts about the role and value of aquariums.

An excellent version of Taskmaster, and one that I find much more enjoyable than the Australian variant. Our Kiwi cousins have an excellent sense of humour.

Andrew Scott is thrilling, charming, disturbing, human and monstrous all in equal measure in this excellent adaption. Also, Italy is very beautiful.

I don’t often love superhero stuff, but this smart, modern take was stylish, fun, and well-paced. Perhaps I just don’t want to see generic US superhero stuff?

A fantastic, thrilling and thoroughly over the top animated series that feels like a love letter to anime and all things samurai. Fun.

I still cannot decide if this was actually bad or rather bad on purpose as clever commentary about success in new endeavours. Actually, I think it was just bad.

An excellent drama, with a few moments that were stunning moments of story-telling.

Heart breaking, beautiful, funny, deeply distressing. A powerful combination of juxtapositions.

Sometimes I panic when I realise a season has 22-24 episodes instead of just the usual 12-13. Not in this case. I galloped through this, inhaling deeply and enjoying my time with it immensely.

This squid game-adjacent piece starts strong but soon collapses under the weight of mediocre and unbelievable plotting. A few compelling performances kept me watching, but I wished for something deeper.

Another exhibit in tremendous year of anime that is 2024. Fun, moving, beautiful, silly. I cannot ask for much more.

A brilliant show; one that you should go into blind. Stylish, clever, human. More like this.

Not quite as sharp or enjoyable as season one (nor, I think as funny). Still, the things that made season one so wonderful are still present here, just perhaps in lesser amounts.

Stunning and harrowing. An important story that is rarely told: that while it happens far less, men are still victims of sexual abuse, domestic violence and other similar crimes (although, the perpetrator of violence towards men is likely to be other men). I was also blown away to see a romance with trans woman handled so well, and with nuance and love and care, while also acknowledging that modern life does not make it easy for trans people to be happy and to thrive. This is tremendous television which rises far beyond the usual garbage one finds on netflix.

A brilliant post-apocalyptic show that is darkly comic as well as frighteningly plausible. Whereas something like The Handmaid’s Tale television show only walks, this smart production from New Zealand runs effortlessly. I was so delighted to discover another season was ready and waiting for me.

Yes, it does appear to be mostly cake. The host, sadly, continues to be stubbornly not cake.

This was such a loving thing, done with great fondness and respect for the source material. I have a few quibbles—I wasn’t convinced by Aaron Clifton Moten’s acting, and I found the whole thing, like the game I suppose, to be very violent and gory—but on the whole, I had a lot of fun and I am excited to see where they take the show in season two.

This had so much potential but the end result was often quite silly: poor acting, too much exposition, ham-fisted attempts at being emotionally relevant; bad pacing. I love the amount of sci-fi being made these days, so it’s just a shame I don’t think this one is a particular successful example.

Uneven, yet with some really strong moments and excellent performances by most of the cast (and in particular Noomi Rapace and the actors—twins, I just found out—that play Alice!) My only complaint centers on the overall plot: it feels confused and I’m not entirely sure if I have confidence that there’ll be a satisfactory narrative conclusion when the show is all said and done. Another of Apple’s ambitious sci-fi shows, Invasion, has burnt me. I sure hope, however, that there will be.