The Northern Express Herald

Planning to catch up on some TV? The best shows from 2024

Russell Baillie & Russell Brown

(Clockwise from top left) The Day of the Jackal, Fallout, Masters of the Air, and Nobody Wants This are among Listener reviewers top picks of 2024's best TV. Photos / supplied

Russell Baillie & Russel Brown’s picks for the best new television shows of 2024 and where to catch up on the ones you might have missed.

THE DAY OF THE JACKAL

It retained only a few aspects of the Frederick Forsyth 1971 assassin novel, which became the classic Edward Fox movie, but this was a slick contemporary redo. It made for a thrilling cat-and-mouse chase between Eddie Redmayne as the chameleonic hitman and Lashana Lynch’s M16 agent.

See it: TVNZ+

FAKE

This Australian series joins a growing list of romantic fraud dramas but it’s a cut above, both psychologically nuanced and terrifically acted. Asher Keddie plays journalist Birdie, finding herself wooed via dating app and text by David Wenham’s seemingly charming Joe in a fascinating story of deceit and self-delusion.

See it: ThreeNow

FALLOUT

The history of screen adaptations of video game franchises is a grisly one, but like last year’s The Last of Us, Fallout managed to buck the form book. It intelligently expanded on the original game’s post-apocalyptic themes without getting bogged down in its source material.

See it: Prime Video