BNP Staff Favorites for 2024: Television

So…2024 was a hell of a year. Both eventful and in some respects…hellish. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t some high points. We had a series of favorites when it came to television series–see what captivated our staff below!

Shogun (FX) The one correct answer for Best Television Series of 2024 is Shogun. This is a technically flawless series whose singular fault is being based on a book that uses a White Man™ as a vantage point character and hence the first scene of the Japanese historical drama is unfortunately this random White Man™. But once you get past that, you get a clinic on how to do historical fiction.

You have Hiroyuki Sanada as Lord Toranaga, deftly navigating a treacherous political game, with the help of Cosmo Jarvis’ John “Anjin doomed to stay in Japan for however long Toranaga is entertained by him” Blackthrone, and Anna Sawai as Lady Mariko, Toranaga’s translator, key component to several machinations, and all around one of the most badass ladies in all of fiction, and many more that flesh out a beautiful world. There is a reason Shogun became the first Japanese-language series to win an Emmy for Outstanding Drama series, and then 18 other awards for good measure (a record by the way). There is a reason what was pitched as a mini-series was instead converted to a season 1 and already renewed for a season 2 and season 3. You want action? You want romance? You want mystery and intrigue? You want Will Evans, o…