2024 is the year TV went quiet.
A few years ago, there was an easy, healthy overlap between the kind of television beloved by those who talk about TV as professionals and the kind beloved by those who talk about TV as enthusiastic amateurs. TV seemed to abound with shows that both racked up high scores on Metacritic and had highly engaged fanbases. When new episodes dropped, fans and critics alike would turn up on Twitter to discuss their faves: Succession and Schitt’s Creek and Ted Lasso and Game of Thrones and on and on.You were gathering around the digital water cooler, and you were doing it with a show that everyone agreed was more than just a guilty pleasure. It was art. Yet somehow, without anyone quite noticing it had happened, the TV shows we watch like that seem to have vanished.There’s still good TV out there (Abbott Elementary, Somebody Somewhere, the recently completed Reservation Dogs), and there are still shows that lots of people watch and talk about (Bridgerton, mostly), but the overlap in the Venn diagram of “critical consensus hits” and “watercooler discourse bait” is getting smaller and smaller. At this point, all that’s really occupying the niche is The Bear.