The 5 Best New TV Shows of January 2024
TIME magazine's TV critic Judy Berman, shares her favorite new TV shows of January 2024.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 (upbeat music)
00:02 Times TV critic Judy Berman breaks down
00:08 her top five new TV shows of January 2024.
00:12 (upbeat music)
00:13 - My mother's addiction.
00:14 Her leaving their father.
00:18 - In the premiere of "Boy Swallows Universe,"
00:22 Eli, who was growing up in a dusty Brisbane suburb in 1985,
00:26 watches his loving stepdad Lyle,
00:28 a factory worker who deals heroin on the side,
00:31 try and fail to appease some intimidating thugs.
00:35 His kind mother, Frances, struggles with addiction.
00:38 Berman says, "Boy Swallows Universe is dark and gritty,
00:41 "and if you can't stand the sight of violence
00:43 "against children, it might not be for you.
00:45 "But what makes the whole thing work so effectively
00:48 "is the care with which Lyle and Frances' dangerous world
00:52 "is filtered through Eli's dreamy, alternately curious,
00:55 "and terrified perspective,
00:57 "neither sanitizing the constant threats his family faces,
01:01 "nor reducing his existence to a condescending sob story."
01:05 - Bruce, our family is head of the Jade Dragons.
01:08 (dramatic music)
01:10 - So we're like criminals.
01:12 - Berman says "The Brothers' Son" is a tale
01:16 of two halves of one nuclear family living oceans apart.
01:20 In a modest Los Angeles home,
01:22 Michelle Yeoh's canny matriarch, Eileen,
01:24 dotes on her son, Bruce, a dorky medical student.
01:28 What she doesn't know is that he's been using
01:31 her tuition checks to finance his true passion, improv.
01:35 What he doesn't know is that his estranged father,
01:38 known in the Taiwanese criminal demimonde as Big Son,
01:42 runs a powerful triad, the Jade Dragons,
01:45 and has groomed a brother Bruce hasn't seen since childhood,
01:49 Charles, to be a deadly assassin.
01:52 Years ago, the sons split up as a safety measure.
01:55 Their mantra, protect the family.
01:58 - You know, Hong Kong was supposed
01:59 to be a fresh start for me.
02:00 - A fresh start, really?
02:02 At 24?
02:03 - Berman calls "Expats" the first
02:05 truly excellent series of 2024.
02:08 She writes, "The farewell filmmaker Lulu Wang's
02:11 "stunning Amazon drama 'Expats,'
02:14 "a six-episode adaptation of Janice Y.K. Lee's novel,
02:18 "The Expatriates, follows three women
02:20 "whose families become intertwined by tragedy.
02:24 "Each is an American living abroad in Hong Kong,
02:26 "and each seems to be approaching
02:28 "an emotional breaking point."
02:30 What elevates the series beyond a potentially maudlin plot
02:34 is the nuanced sense of connectedness Wang conjures,
02:37 not just among central characters plucked
02:39 from their home countries, but also between the expats
02:42 and the diverse, teeming, politically precarious
02:45 urban island they've chosen to inhabit.
02:47 In her review of "Feud," Berman writes,
02:50 "Half a century ago, the Andy Cohen of the Upper East Side
02:53 "was Truman Capote, and the women whose world
02:55 "he insinuated himself into were A-list socialites.
02:59 "For two decades, Capote heard their confessions
03:02 "and dried their tears."
03:03 - Only you can show us these women, Truman.
03:06 - Then in 1975, he published a story in "Esquire"
03:09 that exposed their deepest humiliations.
03:12 FX's "Feud, Capote vs. the Swans,"
03:15 the long-awaited second season of a Ryan Murphy anthology,
03:18 traces the friendships and eventual schism.
03:21 It's a messy rendering that at times reverts to cliche,
03:25 but beneath the distracting artifice
03:27 is a psychologically rich, wonderfully acted portrait
03:30 of an artist torn between his work
03:32 and the life that fueled it.
03:33 As Berman writes of "True Detective,"
03:36 "grotesque murders, jaded yet obsessive cops,
03:39 "a vast, majestic, but terrifyingly extreme rural landscape,
03:44 "the suggestion of a malevolent occult
03:46 "or supernatural presence,
03:47 "dialogue that is both cryptically philosophical and profane."
03:51 Yes, it's another season of HBO's "True Detective,"
03:55 one that in many ways feels closer than ever before
03:58 to the anthology's blockbuster debut.
04:01 But this fourth installment,
04:02 returning after a five-year hiatus,
04:04 is also a reinvention, a reawakening,
04:07 maybe even a rejoinder to everything that preceded it.
04:11 - The night country, it takes us one by one.
04:16 This isn't gonna be good.
04:18 - Subtitled "Night Country"
04:20 and directed by the Mexican filmmaker Issa Lopez,
04:22 who wrote or co-wrote every episode,
04:25 Lopez's gorgeously realized story
04:28 grounds its hard-boiled mystery
04:29 in multidimensional characters,
04:31 believably immerses viewers in a unique community,
04:35 and makes a strong case
04:36 for the continuation of the franchise.
04:38 (upbeat music)
04:41 [BLANK_AUDIO]