The Guide #170: All of Us Strangers to Charli xcx – our completely partial best of culture 2024
2024, then. It’s time to look back at a year of podcast bros, Brats and Baby Reindeer with the Guide’s annual roundup. As ever, for an exhaustive rundown of what was good culturally this year, do check out the Guardian’s lists of the best films (both in the UK and US), TV shows, albums (across rock and pop, folk, jazz and classical), games, art and architecture, and theatre, comedy and dance. The Guide’s list doesn’t pretend to be that definitive. Instead, we’re sharing a smattering of our favourites, unranked.
How did the year pan out? Well, the film world might not have witnessed a Barbenheimer-sized cultural event in 2024, but there were plenty of box office success stories: notably Dune: Part Two, Deadpool and Wolverine, Inside Out 2 and Wicked. As that list suggests, sequels were the dominant mode as a panicky Hollywood stuck to tried and trusted ideas – though that old safe bet, the superhero movie, continued to generally struggle this year.
In music, 2024 was a year where female-fronted pop reigned. Taylor Swift managed to extend her omnipresence for a second year with the Asian and European legs of her Eras tour, not to mention her latest carnival of score-settling and self-reflection in The Tortured Poets Department. Meanwhile, Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan made their own plays for world domination. And 15 years and six albums into her career, Charli xcx finally became the ubiquitous, commercially massive yet creatively daring dance-pop phenom she always threatened to be, with Brat.
British TV and its stars seemed to have an outsized influence over 2024’s small-screen output, with the buzziest shows – Baby Reindeer, Industry, Shōgun – either British made, British set or featuring British stars. Of course, the truth behind this homegrown triumph was a little murkier, as Rachel Aroesti’s piece for the Guardian on the US money flooding into UK shows illustrated. Generally though, this felt like a pleasingly deep-benched year for TV: when a show as admired as The Bear – for all the imperfections of its third series – can only sneak in at number 27 on our 2024 top 50, you know that the medium is in good health. Here, then, are the shows, films, albums, podcasts and books the Guide enjoyed this year.
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Film
Boy, has this year felt long! But if you are able to cast your frazzled mind back to January, you’ll remember that some truly fine films hit UK cinemas around then. Andrew Haigh’s spectral family drama All of Us Strangers and The Zone of Interest, Jonathan Glazer’s chilling Holocaust movie, certainly lingered in the memory. Other crackers from that period included Yorgos Lanthimos’s twisted comedy Poor Things, and Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers, a film that really deserves to be on heavy rotation among households this Christmas.
That last trio all picked up baubles at this year’s Oscars, and there are similar expectations for Sean Baker’s Anora (above), a film well-deserving of its best picture frontrunner status. Likely to dominate in the craft section of the awards is Dune: Part Two, the year’s most audacious blockbuster, though I’m a little confused by the lack of buzz around Alex Garland’s Civil War, a bracing slap to the face of a film. Rebel Ridge, meanwhile, was the year’s best thriller, a sharp exploration of race and policing in America disguised as a taut, visceral revenge drama – though one, remarkably, where very little claret was spilt.
All We Imagine as Light, Payal Kapadia’s beautiful tale of three nurses navigating political currents in Mumbai, was perhaps the year’s most admired international film, even as it was under-appreciated by some in Kapadia’s home country. Kneecap, the mock-origin story of the Irish rap group, was a complete hoot, every scene brimming with energy and humour. And Robot Dreams, about the relationship between an anthropomorphic dog and his robot companion in NYC, was the best animated film of the year. Finally, a word for Union, a terrific documentary about hard-fought attempts to get worker recognition at an Amazon warehouse, which earned a spot on the Oscar best documentary shortlist despite no one being willing to distribute the film. It offers an always timely reminder of the importance of organised labour and why the rights won through it shouldn’t be taken for granted.
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Music
It’s hard to look past Charli xcx’s Brat as the commercial and critical triumph of the year. Its influence was felt far and wide, from dancefloors to campaign rallies, but at heart it was just a really well-put-together dance pop album chocked full of tunes and attitude. Also at the sharp end of the charts, Kendrick Lamar’s GNX served a buoyant lap of honour for a rapper that definitely proved his top dog status in 2024, while Tyler, the Creator’s Chromakopia was the most exciting “mature” album you’re ever likely to hear, a riot of ideas and sounds. Similarly playful was the self-titled debut album by dance pranksters Two Shell, who also managed to entertain almost as much in their interviews as on record.
I still can’t quite get my head around the rise of Fontaines DC, from diffident Dublin post-punkers to an act that can headline parks and arenas, but their fourth album Romance felt stadium-sized in the best possible way. I’m hoping that Nilüfer Yanya (above) is on a similar trajectory – the London songwriter’s third album, My Method Actor, was a terrific piece of restless indie soul. Diamond Jubilee, the streaming-eschewing marvel by mysterious lo-fi artist Cindy Lee, was the year’s most welcome musical surprise, while MJ Lenderman’s Manning Fireworks signalled the arrival of a major figure in indie rock. And Only God Was Above Us reminded us that Vampire Weekend are top of the class when it comes to effortless genre experimentation.
I’m sure that plenty will run a mile from music on the heavier end of the scale, but there were some great examples of it this year, from sludge metallers Chat Pile’s howling, despairing Cool World, to the invigorating, intense post-hardcore of Deep Sage by Florida quartet Gouge Away. And at the complete opposite end of the decibel scale, I was totally entranced by 22° Halo’s Lily of the Valley, a whisper-quiet indie album about the emotional weight of a cancer diagnosis that still somehow managed to be funny and earwormy.
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TV
Two shows, for my money, stood above the rest this year: Shōgun (Disney+), above, and Industry (BBC iPlayer). The former was the first truly engrossing TV epic since Game of Thrones ended, presenting an authentic, lived-in feudal Japanese world that you wanted to return to again and again. And the latter stepped up massively in its third season for what was already one of the best shows on TV, every episode seeming bigger and braver than the last, culminating in a finale that seemed to elicit a “wait, what?!” every few minutes.
I have to hand it to Netflix. So often criticised as a streamer that seems to aim for the lowbrow and undemanding, this year they promoted a host of distinctive voices and were rewarded with some terrific TV. Complicated ethical questions will continue to swirl around Baby Reindeer, but it remains a gripping, highly original comedy drama, while Ripley was the most gorgeous-looking show of the year, and One Day managed to live up to its truly beloved source material. And that’s without mentioning Supacell, Black Doves, season two of The Diplomat and many more besides.
A dynamite year for British TV continued with the deliciously moreish Rivals on Disney+ and a rollicking season of Slow Horses on Apple TV+. Mr Bates v the Post Office might have been a solid, if not spectacular, primetime ITV drama, but it’s impossible not to be stirred by the real-world change it affected, while the BBC delivered blue-chip television with Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light. Elsewhere, an exciting new comedy voice came of age in the form of Julio Torres, with his fantastically weird Fantasmas (Now), while the great docu-comedy How To With John Wilson landed the plane with a terrific third and final season. Finally, a word for BBC’s Olympics coverage – a perfectly executed parallel bars act that somehow managed to give viewers what they wanted despite no longer having the endless red button coverage to rely on. Roll on LA 2028!
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Podcasts
The year’s blockbuster was undoubtedly Kill List. Its premise alone – a journalist comes into the possession of the contents of a murder-for-hire website, and tries to tip off potential targets – had you reaching for the play button. But this was no mere tawdry true-crime pod – instead it was a thoughtful (though still engrossing) deep dive into the troubling world of the dark web. It was a busy year for Serial productions, which produced both The Good Whale (above), a enjoyable series about the campaign to free the real-life orca from Free Willy, and also a fourth series proper of Serial, this time about the troubling legacy of Guantánamo Bay. And Cover: Stakeknife was a gripping, stomach-churning account of the notorious IRA enforcer-slash-British agent.
I continue to be consistently delighted by Decoder Ring, Willa Paskin’s Slate podcast about peculiar cultural mysteries, which this year looked into everything from the decreasing heat of the jalapeño to the social history of garden gnomes. Blank Cheque with Griffin & David, the long-running pod breaking down directors’ filmographies, had a great year with seasons on John McTiernan and David Lynch (it’s the rare pod that gets a pass for having extremely looooong episodes). Sam Diss’s pod The English Disease was a brilliant, often bracing look at 21st-century football hooliganism and its connection to this summer’s riots.
Of course, the Guardian has its own terrific stable of pods. Black Box was a remarkable look at the ways that AI is already interacting with humanity, for good or ill. Daily news podcast Today in Focus was indispensable on events global and local (its breathless election-night instalment was a particular highlight) while Politics Weekly and Politics Weekly America offered invaluable insight on two seismic votes across the world in 2024. There were new seasons too of Pop Culture with Chanté Joseph and Comfort Eating with Grace Dent. And Football Weekly and Women’s Football Weekly were great on tackling the major issues in the men’s and women’s games – but also in simply offering up engaging, funny nattering, which is ultimately what we’re after from a podcast, really.
For a full rundown of the year’s best podcasts, make sure to head over to the Guardian site on Christmas Eve, where you’ll find a definitive top 20.
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Books
Every year people like to squabble about the Booker longlist, but most seemed to agree that 2024’s was a pretty solid list: the winner, Orbital by Samantha Harvey, is a gem of a book. Percival Everett’s reimagining of Huckleberry Finn, James, or Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lake (which I heard someone describe as “Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens meets Killing Eve”), would have also made worthy prize-winners. Personally, I had a soft spot for Rita Bullwinkel’s longlisted debut, Headshot, a sharp, touching novel focused around a fictional boxing tournament.
One of the most anticipated books of the year was Intermezzo by Sally Rooney, the Normal People author’s fourth novel. I didn’t get on with her third, Beautiful World, Where Are You?, so I didn’t have high hopes for this one, but after a slow start I really got behind the characters. It’s probably the author’s most sophisticated and experimental novel yet. (My order of preference now goes Conversations with Friends, Intermezzo, Normal People, BWWAY – fight me.)
Ali Smith’s latest, Gliff, is – like all her novels – a work of art, while Miranda July’s All Fours is bizarre and brilliant – and probably the book I’ve heard people drop into conversations the most this year. And in nonfiction, Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger came out in paperback in 2024, and is an insightful, important study of truth in politics that also manages to be hopeful – a must-read.
Finally, the cookbook of the year has to be Meera Sodha’s Dinner – the recipes are quicker and easier than in her previous books, and every single one I’ve tried is delicious. A particular shoutout to the baked butter paneer, which I’m planning to make for just about everyone who comes round to mine next year. Lucy Knight
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