Honestly, looking back at the schedule for tv show premieres 2024, it felt like we were drowning in "peak TV" one last time before the industry collective-bargaining hangover finally kicked in. We had dragons. We had nuclear wastelands. We had a guy being stalked by a woman who may or may not have been a serial emailer.
It was a lot.
Some of these shows were massive, world-altering hits. Others? They kinda just flickered for a week and died because nobody can keep up with eighteen different streaming apps anymore. If you feel like you missed the boat on what actually mattered last year, you aren't alone. Between the delayed releases from the 2023 strikes and the sheer volume of "must-watch" content, 2024 was a chaotic year for the small screen.
The Heavy Hitters That Actually Lived Up to the Hype
Let's talk about the big ones. The shows that didn't just premiere but basically took over your entire social media feed for a month.
Shōgun (FX/Hulu) - February 27, 2024
This was the one everyone was scared would be a boring history lesson. It wasn't. Shōgun premiered in late February and immediately proved that you can still make a "prestige" epic without it feeling like a Game of Thrones clone. Hiroyuki Sanada didn't just star in it; he produced the hell out of it to make sure the historical accuracy wasn't just window dressing. It was dense, it was bloody, and it made us all realize how much we missed watching a show where characters actually have stakes that don't involve a multiverse.
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Fallout (Prime Video) - April 10, 2024
Video game adaptations used to be a curse. Then The Last of Us happened, and then Fallout blew the doors off the vault. Dropping all eight episodes at once on April 10, Amazon took a massive gamble. It paid off. Ella Purnell and Walton Goggins—who is basically a national treasure at this point—nailed the "tonal tightrope" of being incredibly funny and deeply depressing at the same time. According to Amazon's own data, over 100 million people watched this by October. That's not just a hit; that's a cultural shift.
Baby Reindeer (Netflix) - April 11, 2024
If you want to talk about the most uncomfortable experience of 2024, it’s this. Richard Gadd's semi-autobiographical nightmare about stalking and trauma came out of nowhere. It wasn't a "big budget" spectacle. It was just raw. It sparked a million "true crime" sleuths trying to find the real Martha, which was its own weird, dark side effect. But purely as a piece of television? It was probably the bravest thing to hit Netflix all year.
Why 2024 Felt Different for Returning Favorites
It wasn't just about the new kids on the block. The mid-year stretch was dominated by the return of shows that had us in a chokehold.
- The Bear Season 3 (June 26): Carmy and the crew came back to FX/Hulu in late June. Honestly? It was divisive. Some people loved the "vibes" and the experimental episodes like "Napkins," while others felt like the plot didn't move an inch. It was still the most-discussed "stress-watch" of the summer.
- House of the Dragon Season 2 (June 16): HBO reclaimed its Sunday night throne. We finally got the "Blood and Cheese" moment everyone was whispering about, and the Battle at Rook's Rest reminded us that dragons are terrifying. It felt shorter, though—only eight episodes instead of ten.
- Slow Horses Season 4 (September): This is the best show nobody is watching—except for the people who are, who won't stop talking about it. Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb is peak "grumpy old man with a heart of gold (buried under layers of filth)."
The Mid-Year Slump and the "Hidden" Gems
By the time we hit July and August, the tv show premieres 2024 list started looking a bit thinner. We had The Acolyte on Disney+ (June 4), which... well, the internet didn't handle that one very well. It was a bold swing for Star Wars, but it ended up being canceled after one season, leaving a lot of threads hanging.
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On the flip side, we got The Penguin on HBO later in the year. Colin Farrell, unrecognizable under pounds of latex, turned a Batman spinoff into a gritty crime drama that felt more like The Sopranos than a comic book movie. It was one of those rare moments where the spinoff actually justified its existence.
Then there was Ripley on Netflix (April 5). Shot entirely in black and white, it was gorgeous and slow. Andrew Scott played Tom Ripley with a kind of predatory stillness that made Matt Damon's version look like a boy scout. It’s the kind of show you watch when you want to feel smart, or maybe just when you want to look at beautiful Italian architecture.
What Most People Got Wrong About the 2024 Schedule
The biggest misconception was that the strikes would kill the year entirely. While it's true some shows were pushed to 2025, the "backlog" actually created a weirdly packed spring.
We saw a lot of "limited series" that were originally meant for 2023 finally surfacing. This led to a bit of content fatigue. You'd finish one eight-episode binger on a Tuesday and by Wednesday morning, three more had dropped. It’s hard for a show to gain "monoculture" status when the conveyor belt is moving this fast.
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Basically, 2024 was the year of the "Niche Mega-Hit." You had your Fallout fans, your Shōgun purists, and your Baby Reindeer theorists. Rarely did everyone sit down to watch the same thing at the exact same time anymore, unless it was a dragon fight or a chef having a panic attack in a walk-in freezer.
How to Catch Up Without Losing Your Mind
If you’re looking at this list and realizing you missed half of it, don't try to binge it all in a weekend. You’ll get "content burnout," and everything will start to look like a blur of subtitles and CGI.
Start with Shōgun if you want something epic and world-building. Switch to The Bear if you want something fast-paced and emotional. And if you’re in the mood for something truly weird that will make you look at your phone differently, go for Baby Reindeer.
The real takeaway from the tv show premieres 2024 is that "prestige" isn't dead; it's just moving to different neighborhoods. Whether it's a video game world or a Camden pub, the best stories this year were the ones that took a specific, weird vision and didn't water it down for a general audience.
Actionable Next Steps:
- Check your subscriptions; many of these shows (like The Penguin or Shōgun) are on platforms that offer "bundle" deals you might already have access to.
- Use a tracking app like TV Time or Letterboxd (for their new TV feature) to keep track of what you've actually finished.
- If you're overwhelmed, skip the "filler" reality TV premieres and stick to the top five rated dramas of the year—your brain will thank you.