Our readers on their pick of 2024’s best films, music, TV shows and podcasts
Welcome to the last Guide of 2024! I hope you all are enjoying your festive break, and have a better handle on which day it is than I do. As is tradition, after our own roundup of the year’s best culture, we are turning things over to you this week. Here are the films, TV shows, music, performances, and podcasts that wowed you in 2024.
Thanks to everyone who sent in suggestions and sorry if we weren’t able to include yours. Enjoy the rest of your Christmas break, and see you on the other side of the new year, for our 2025 preview next Friday!
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Film
“I’m not sure it will get the recognition it deserves when awards season rolls around, but Love Lies Bleeding was the best film I saw in 2024. Grimy, violent and larger than life in so many ways, it was a hugely impressive follow-up to 2019’s Saint Maud for British director Rose Glass, putting her among the most exciting talents around at the moment.” – Andrew McGregor
“Dune: Part Two was amazing, wasn’t it? The bowel-throbbing bass line is now unmistakable. So good I saw it twice at the cinema. I am totally caught up in Paul’s crusade – kill them all, Paul! Ignore Chani whingeing & buzz-killing! Get on that worm and take them to paradise! I fear it won’t end well.” – Suzanne Stockton
“Heretic and Longlegs were the outstanding films – devilishly diverting psycho-thrillers linked by prickly scripts and supremely creepy turns by Hugh Grant and Nicolas Cage. Hail Santa!” – Monty Smith
“The Beast, starring George MacKay and Léa Seydoux, was existential science fiction made up of three stories across different timelines. Two of these didn’t quite land, but the middle story, about a homicidal “incel” and the woman he has been trailing, was one of the most astonishing bits of film-making I’ve seen in yonks. I wish the film’s director, Bertrand Bonello, had scrapped the rest and made that the whole film – but it’s still worth checking out for that portion alone.” – Jane
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TV
“My favourite TV show this year was Hacks. I loved this new season! It appeared around the time my baby was born, and I watched it in the evenings (it is the perfect length) while he was sleeping in his cot. The show is hilarious, I tried to laugh quietly so I wouldn’t wake him up!” – Enikő Szijártó-Jancsek [Season three of Hacks, absurdly, is still unavailable in the UK. Sort it out, powers that be! – Ed]
“Big Boys continues to be the loveliest comedy on TV – although calling it lovely sounds a bit like faint praise: it’s incredibly funny, too. Roll on series three!” – Janet Andrews
“Race Across the World, especially James from the brother and sister team breaking down thinking about his sister Betty’s problems and asking for a hug from the camera person. Breaking the illusion of teams being on their own, as well as breaking hearts.” – Anthony Train
“Mr Loverman. Lennie James and Sharon D Clarke shine brightest in this adaptation of Bernardine Evaristo’s typically humane work, but the supporting cast are also great and it has a lively sense of place. Refreshing for being a story of black Britons not solely concerned with issues of immigration and crime.” – Richard Hamilton
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Music
“My album of the year has been Filthy Underneath by Nadine Shah. By turns raw and intimate, then big and powerful. She reminds me of Tori Amos. As for a live performance, that was the remarkable Sahra Halgan in Brighton. The Somaliland singer quite lightly ululates alongside her amazing band. Danced all night and couldn’t stop smiling. Wonderful!” – Rob Mansfield
“The track Eusexua by FKA Twigs, released in September and a taster for her third album due to be released in January. A confounding artist, and all the better for it.” – David McCutcheon
“No question about it, 2024 is Linkin Park’s year. A phoenix rising.” – François De Kock
“I can’t believe Los Campesinos! are back after seven years away (though it feels even longer). And I really can’t believe they’ve come back with their best album yet: All Hell. It’s completely DIY, too: self-funded, self-recorded and self-released.” – Chris
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Podcasts
“Serial season four, on Guantánamo. Sarah Koenig and her producer Julie Snyder remain the dons of deep dives into fiendishly complicated issues. This series highlights the absurdities as well as the horrors of the facility, and illustrates just how intractable the problems associated with bringing the inmates to trial are.” – Richard Hamilton
“As I try to wean myself off doomscrolling, Screen Rot has become an indispensable guide to the weird and wonderful (but mostly weird) stuff social media has to offer. Hosts Jacob Hawley and Jake Farrell look at all the nonsense so I don’t have to, and strike just the right tone of deeply considering what ‘goes viral’ and why, while wondering why on earth we care.” – Miles Brown
“There are so many podcasts about religious cults and sects around, but I found that World of Secrets: The Disciples from the BBC stood out, with its tale of a manipulative pastor based in Nigeria, and the vulnerable young charges he recruited from thousands of miles away. I’m also enjoying the most recent World of Secrets series, The Bad Guru.” – Jordan Smith
Take Five
Each week we run down the five essential pieces of pop-culture we’re watching, reading and listening to
TV – Squid Game
Oh, Netflix: you do know how to push our buttons! Dropping the extremely long-awaited follow-up to one of the biggest shows of this young-ish decade on Boxing Day while everyone is at home is the sort of power play that has made it the biggest streamer in town. By now, you would have had to have been sealed away from society on, say, a murderous Korean gameshow to not know about Squid Game’s return, but just in case, you can binge the lot now.
Want more? The final season of much-loved comedy drama Somebody Somewhere is available to stream on Now in the UK.PODCAST – You Must Remember This
It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Karina Longworth’s peerless Hollywood history podcast, but just before Christmas it returned with a new season on an intriguing topic: the late-era movies of cinema’s masters of the 30s, 40s and 50s. Titled The Old Man is Still Alive (from a self-referential quote from RKO stalwart George Cukor) it looks at the creation of sometimes surprising august-years films made by Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Howard Hawks and more.
Want more? Want up to the minute awards season analysis? The Ankler’s podcast Prestige Junkie has you covered.FILM – The Order
I hereby declare this “the winter of Hoult”. After a barnstorming performance last month in the peculiarly handled Juror #2, Nicholas Hoult has two hefty roles hitting cinemas as 2024 gives way to 2025. You’ll have to wait until New Year’s Day for Nosferatu, in which he plays the credulous real estate agent ensorcelled by Count Orlok, but first there is this taut, grubby crime drama from Justin Kurzel (Snowtown, Macbeth, Nitram), in which Hoult plays a sinisterly fresh-faced, bank-robbing neo-Nazi taking Jude Law’s undercover FBI agent along for a wild ride. In cinemas now.
Want more? Also in cinemas is Better Man, AKA the Robbie Williams biopic with a twist (he’s depicted as a CGI chimpanzee).ALBUM – 2024 EPs
You’ve probably read more than enough about the year’s best albums, from the Guardian and everyone else. But what about EPs? There have been some great examples of shorter form in 2024: New York outsider hardcore group Show Me the Body’s twin Corpus EPs, which featured collaborations with High Vis, Texan rapper Blackie and more; Escape and Mindsnap, the two 2024 EPs by weirdo college jangle outfit World News (who have a Christmas single out, FYI); Bristol bass DJ Peverelist’s relentless Pulse Echo EP; and Catching Chickens by Baltimore R&B/soul/pop/house/noise rock/everything in between artist Nourished By Time.
Want more? The Guardian’s music writers have shared the best albums you might have missed this year, with some real goodies suggested.BOOK – What in Me Is Dark by Orlando Reade
Reade’s passionate book spans centuries as he takes in the many writers, philosophers and politicians who have turned to Milton’s Paradise Lost for inspiration. The academic came to love the epic poem when he was an undergraduate, and he is interested in why others over the years have loved it too, and how it has played a role in shaping aspects of society. “Reade’s enthusiasm and curiosity are winning,” said Guardian reviewer Dorian Lynskey.
Want more? If you’re a crime fan, check out the novels that Ian Rankin, Bella Mackie, Mick Herron and other crime writers turn to during the Christmas break.
Read On
Brady Corbet’s three-and-a-half-hour epic The Brutalist is one of the most-anticipated films of 2025 (well, for British audiences who haven’t been able to see it yet). Xan Brooks meets the director behind a cinematic monster.
The New York Times is the surprising publisher on this illuminating deep dive into the parlous state of Manchester’s grassroots music venues. Cracking photography, too.
Neon signage is increasingly being replaced by LED visuals in Manhattan. New York Mag pays tribute to a glowing beacon of glitz.
And on the subject of works by artists deemed “past their peak”, Guardian critics have nominated the best late-era albums by great musicians.
