There were many high-profile shows in 2024, like Shōgun, Silo, Star Wars: Skeleton Crew, and Landman. But there were also under-the-radar shows that didn’t quite get the recognition they deserved. These shows were all fantastic, featuring A-list actors and engaging stories, but they were lost among many others that got more attention.
Available from various streaming services, the five most underrated TV shows of 2024 received decent, some even ecstatic, reviews. If you’re looking for something to watch to close out the year or in 2025 while you wait for your favorite shows to return with new seasons or debut later in the year, these are all worth adding to the list.
Need more recommendations? Then check out the best new shows to stream this week, as well as the best shows on Netflix, the best shows on Hulu, the best shows on Amazon Prime Video, the best shows on Max, and the best shows on Disney+.
Vince Vaughn is an acquired taste, but he does a fantastic job in Bad Monkey simply because it seems he was tailor-made to play the character, based on one from Carl Hiaasen’s novel. Vaughn plays Andrew Yancy in this black comedy crime drama, a police detective who, after an incident, is relegated to conducting restaurant inspections. When a severed arm is found by a tourist on the beach in South Florida where he lives, however, Yancy sees an opportunity.
If he can solve this case, maybe it will wipe the slate clean, and he can get back to doing what he does best. But the situation gets murky involving a presumed dead man, his widow Eve (Meredith Hagner in a scene-stealing role), a Dragon Queen from the Bahamas (Jodie Turner-Smith), and a young fisherman named Neville (Ronald Peet) looking to protect his home.
It takes a while for all the interweaving stories to connect and for everything to come into focus. But Vaughn’s brash, fast-talking, yet deeply charming demeanor carries you through every scene. It’s a character he plays time and time again, but it just works in Bad Monkey. The story is both dark and humorous, with a delightful cast that keeps you guessing. Yancy will be back, as Apple TV+ renewed the show for a second season.
Stream Bad Monkey on Apple TV+.
James Patterson’s character Alex Cross has been depicted before in movies by Morgan Freeman and Tyler Perry. But Aldis Hodge brings a new kind of swagger to the homicide detective and forensic psychologist who has a gift for tapping into the minds of serial killers. From the opening scene, when he interrogates a suspected killer, you realize that Cross is not someone you want to, well, cross.
The story continues in Cross as he investigates the death of a young Black activist. Cross becomes convinced that it wasn’t a suicide or overdose but rather the work of a sadistic killer, and he is determined to prove it, despite his boss wanting to sweep it under the rug and close the case. Meanwhile, he and his family are being tormented by a mysterious individual while they grieve the murder of his wife a year prior.
Cross touches on topics of race, police corruption, wealth, and influence with a story that’s hard to stop watching from one episode to the next. It’s an easy binge through the eight episodes that only gets better with each one. Eloise Mumford as Shannon, Ryan Eggold as Ed Ramsey, and Juanita Jennings as Regina are stand-out characters as well. But it’s when Cross is face to face with a killer that he truly shines. While the series needed more of those scenes, the story is as intense as shows like The Night Agent and as interesting as some of the best network police procedurals. Amazon bet big on Cross, renewing the show for a second season even before the first one premiered.
Stream Cross on Amazon Prime Video.
One of those shows that easily passed you by, Sugar is a captivating mystery/drama/tech-noir starring The Penguin‘s Colin Farrell as John Sugar, a private detective who tells you from the opening black-and-white scene that he doesn’t like to hurt people but sometimes has to in order to get the job done.
There’s something deeply strange about him: He’s a loner with a good heart. He claims to be able to drink as much as he wants but never gets intoxicated. He has strange nightmares and weird symptoms that he refuses to address. When he is recruited by a wealthy movie producer to locate his missing granddaughter, the case hits close to home.
Sugar is the type of show that leaves you puzzled as to where it’s going until the one jaw-dropping moment that you’ll never see coming. It’s one of those hidden gems you won’t be disappointed watching as Farrell carries you through each scene and twist with total commitment to the character. With a second season of Sugar forthcoming, it’s worth checking out the first.
Sure, a lot of people abandoned The Walking Dead and its universe halfway through the original run. But for those who stuck it out, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon continues the story of the fan-favorite character who (spoiler alert) survived to the end. In the second season, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol, his longtime best friend is worried about him and sets out to find him. She eventually discovers he somehow ended up in France and uses her masterful skills of manipulation to convince a young man named Ash (Manish Dayal), who happens to have a working plane he knows how to fly, to help her.
The season tells the concurrent stories of Daryl (Norman Reedus) dealing with enemies in France while trying to protect a young boy named Laurent (Louis Puech Scigliuzzi) and Carol (Melissa McBride) and her journey until the two converge. It’s all about paying fan service, of course, but The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol deserves more credit than it received for the way it brought closure to older storylines. Plus, you get plenty more ferocious walkers and villainous human enemies, too.
The series may have been overshadowed by the tremendous reception to another franchise spinoff, The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live. But Reedus can hold his own, and with McBride in tow for the confirmed and already filming third season, The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol is keeping the momentum going.
Stream The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon – The Book of Carol on AMC+.
The story from the Scott Turow novel was first told in the 1990 movie that starred Harrison Ford and Brian Dennehy. In this episodic version of Presumed Innocent, Jake Gyllenhaal takes on the character of Rusty Sabich, a prosecutor who finds himself on the other side of the law when he becomes a suspect in the murder of his colleague. As secrets are revealed involving an affair between Randy and the murder victim, attorney Tommy Molto (Peter Sarsgaard) becomes obsessed with taking Rusty down. Is Randy innocent? Or was his obsession with his lover the fatal push that drove him to kill?
Approaching the story in episodic format means it’s a much slower burn than the movie, but the actors pull it off with every steamy, dark scene. Despite the case being presumably wrapped up in the end, Presumed Innocent was renewed for a second season.
Stream Presumed Innocent on Apple TV+.
China just gave Hollywood a cautionary tale about AI filmmaking. Sanxingdui: Future Past, billed as the country's first fully AI-generated movie, hit theaters on October 23 and bombed at the box office.
According to Futurism, the film's reported $1.5 million production budget landed on more than 10,000 screens. Yet it pulled in only about $181,000, averaging roughly $20 per screen, making the budget difficult to recover.
Some of the best shots in Grok Imagine’s AI-made Odyssey don’t contain actors. Ancient landscapes stretch into the distance. Close-ups of grimy hands suggest people who have touched something rougher than a keyboard. For a few seconds, the illusion holds.
https://twitter.com/imagine/status/2113712964419063911
YouTube videos could soon look better without eating quite so much data, right? Thankfully, the platform plans to introduce a new video format called AV2 on its web player in early 2027, promising more efficient streaming and potentially fewer playback hiccups on slower internet connections. The big headline is a roughly 30% improvement in compression efficiency over AV1, YouTube's existing video format. That doesn't guarantee every video will use 30% less data, but it could make streaming a little easier on both internet connections and data allowances.
What is AV2, and why should viewers care?