10 TV Series That Highlight the Best in Humanity: 2024

By Jeremy Adam Smith, Cianna P. Stewart, Maryam Abdullah, Aakash Chowkase, and Criss Cuervo

Every year, we invite staff and regular contributors to nominate TV series for Greater Goodies, the awards we give to stories that exemplify or illustrate kindness, community, empathy, and more keys to wellbeing.

The Empathy Award: Baby Reindeer (Netflix)

By Jeremy Adam Smith

Baby Reindeer was, in my humble opinion, the most psychologically astute and troubling show of 2024.

Donny (Richard Gadd) works the bar in a London pub. When he offers a free cup of tea to a lost soul named Martha (Jessica Gunning), he has no idea what doors that act of kindness will open inside both of their heads. Martha, it turns out, has a history of stalking, and at first Baby Reindeer seems to be about how Martha victimizes Donny.

Then things get tricky, and Baby Reindeer becomes a ruthless examination of codependence, and of how people come to be locked into abusive situations. As the episodes peel the onions of their brains, we discover that two people who seem very different from each other actually have a great deal in common. Donny and Martha both feel invisible to the people around them, and, tragically, their antagonism toward each other helps them both to feel seen and important.

In the end, Baby Reindeer does something that I consider to be black magic: We arrive at a place of empathy for all the characters, where we understand why they’ve done what they’ve done, even when it was wrong — even when their actions are deservedly punished. It’s a remarkable, tough-minded achievement.

The Find-Yourself Award: Extraordinary (Disney+/Hulu)

By Jeremy Adam Smith

In the world of the comedy series Extraordinary, everyone gets a superpower by age 18 — except for Jen.

Jen (Máiréad Tyers) is 25 years old. She hasn’t gone to college, and she works as a clerk in a costume shop. She can’t make a romantic connection to save her life. Jen is estranged from her mother and sister, largely because she’s amazingly self-centered. While everyone else around her flies or turns invisible or reads minds or makes people orgasm by simply touching them, Jen is just…ordinary, and so in that context extraordinary. Jen is also incredibly smart and funny and fun and appealingly vulnerable.

So, what’s holding her back? That’s the question behind Extraordinary, one the episodes explore with surprising depth and compassion. It’s a fantasy that skillfully uses superpowers as a metaphor for the search for identity.

Extraordinary isn’t actually a superhero show, though the idea of superheroes is the target of some of its satire. When Jen’s flatmate Kash (Bilal Hasna) decides to launch a superhero team, the results are slapstick ridiculous. Kash’s power is to turn back time, but instead of stopping crime he misuses it to prevent his girlfriend (Sofia Oxenham) from dumping him.

Everyone in this show is a work in progress, which is a huge part of its charm. Will Jen ever get her superpower? While season three hasn’t yet been confirmed, I’ve read that the signs and portents are promising. Stay tuned! 

The Greater Goodness Award: Fargo (Hulu)

By Jeremy Adam Smith

Fargo the series is based on the classic 1996 Coen brothers movie Fargo, but not in a literal way. There are a lot of visual and situational callbacks to the movie. But the characters and conflicts are entirely different — not just between the series and the movie, but between each season of the series. It’s the moral scheme of the series that most aligns it with the movie, and helps each season align with the others.

At one pole, there is a police officer, usually but not always a woman. She is polite and humble and straight-shooting and purposeful. She’s Good with a capital “G.” She stares every situation in the face and tries to make it at least a little bit better than it is, because what’s the alternative?

At the other end of things, there’s a criminal, usually but not always a man. Evil in Fargo is charismatic. Evil makes long speeches, wears nice clothes, possesses an enormous amount of self-confidence, and makes the world much worse than it was.

And then there’s the rest of us. Small-time business owners who are just trying to climb that American ladder one more rung. Brothers who can’t get over childhood wounds. Husbands saddled with wives who make terrible mistakes; wives married to men who seemed like a good bet in high school.

In each season, one of those more-or-less ordinary people comes into contact with Evil, and the Evil changes them in some way. This is what each season is about: What choices do people make when confronted with Evil?

In Fargo, Good matters. There are always consequences to our actions. “The problem is not that there is evil in the world, the problem is that there is good,” says season three’s Evil, a bulimic mobster named V.M. Varga. “Because otherwise, who would care?”

The Emotional-Connection Award: Love Is Blind Mexico (Netflix)

By Criss Cuervo

Love Is Blind is an international reality-television series/social experiment that invites single men and women to find love and get engaged without ever meeting face to face, focusing on emotional rather than physical connection. In addition to the American version, there are shows in Brazil, Japan, and other countries.

The one I watch is the Mexican version, which to me is more than just entertainment — it’s a celebration of the universal human desire for connection, framed within the beauty of Mexican culture (food, places, cultural values, and more). As the series unfolds, it highlights that love is a deeply human experience, one that transcends borders, languages, and cultural differences — but that relationships evolve differently through language and culture.

In Spanish-speaking cultures, love progresses in stages: “Me gustas” (I like you), “Te quiero” (I really care about you and want to be with you), and “Te amo” (I am deeply in love with you). In contrast, American culture often follows its own stages, such as “I like you,” “I love you,” and eventually “I’m in love with you,” with each step representing deeper emotional commitment.

While fewer relationships in Spanish-speaking cultures may reach “Te amo,” in the US, the pace and progression of love tend to follow a different path. It’s fascinating to see how relationships and feelings evolve both similarly and distinctly across these cultures.

For me, building connections based on shared values is a powerful reminder that, regardless of cultural background or skin color, everyone desires love and connection in some form. In a world where division often dominates headlines, the Love Is Blind international versions offer a hopeful message that we all seek to love and be loved, regardless of where we come from. 

The Transformational Love Award: Our Flag Means Death (HBO Max)

By Cianna Stewart

In 1717, wealthy landowner Stede Bonnet’s midlife crisis took the form of buying a sloop, naming it Revenge, and abandoning his wife and family to become a pirate. Bonnet was an unorthodox (and not very good) pirate but still formed a close connection with the infamous Blackbeard, sometimes sharing a command, sometimes stealing from each other.

In Our Flag Means Death, David Jenkins wove these facts into a rom-com with heart (and some violence) that upends pirate tropes. The only one saying “arrr” is Bonnet, whose understanding of his newly chosen lifestyle is based on storybooks.

Blackbeard (Taika Waititi, also the director) is clad in all black leather, consciously choosing a look to support his reputation as a terrifying pirate, a job that he’s starting to find tedious. In other words, Blackbeard is facing his own midlife crisis. After a meet-cute that includes a stabbing, he and Bonnet (Rhys Darby) develop a romance and find in each other the support to question their current life paths and the freedom to try new ways of being.

Blackbeard and Bonnet are not the only ones to undergo transformation during the series. Every member of the crew has a chance to shine. Gruff exteriors are exposed as self-protective armor.

Our Flag Means Death has been praised for its radical approach to LGBT+ representation, namely that queerness permeates nearly every storyline while simultaneously being treated as no big deal. The show also has an ethnically diverse cast, and a writers room including multiple nonbinary writers of color.

Let this witty, moving, sometimes-beautiful, and sometimes-bloody adventure series restore your battle-weary heart. 

The Community Award: Panchayat (Amazon Prime)

By Aakash Arvind Chowkase

Set in the quaint village of Phulera in Uttar Pradesh, India, Panchayat — a word that means village council — is a humorous, heartfelt show that captures the simplicity and charm of rural life. The story revolves around the friendship of four council members: Pradhanji, the head (Raghubir Yadav); Prahlad, the deputy (Faisal Malik); Sachivji, the secretary (Jitendra Kumar); and Bikas, the assistant (Chandan Roy). Together, they navigate the amusing yet complex challenges of daily life in a typical Indian village.

In season three, the close-knit group faces growing difficulties as they confront a powerful political leader. Pradhanji is accused by his political rival from the village of misusing his power. The rivalry between them quickly escalates into a conflict between the village and the political leader, revealing the pettiness of local politics and personal vendettas that can often overshadow the true needs of a community. 

The season also focuses on Prahlad, who is mourning the tragic loss of his son. In one touching moment, he takes an elderly woman — fixated on securing a government-funded house, even if it means separating from her family — to visit his own unkempt home. Revealing his deep grief, Prahlad says, “I just wanted to show you how it feels to live in an empty house.” He then asks her, “Mother, who trades gold for bricks and stones?,” poignantly comparing family to gold. Touched by his words, the woman chooses to reunite with her family.

Panchayat stands apart from fast-paced, thrill-driven narratives, instead offering a more contemplative, slower-paced portrayal of the raw beauty of everyday life. The show invites viewers to pause, step away from their hectic routines, and reflect on the value of family, deep relationships, and especially male friendships. 

The Happiness Award: Somebody Somewhere (HBO Max)

By Jeremy Adam Smith

You’ve probably never watched a show as down-to-earth as Somebody Somewhere. Much of it feels improvised. Reader, this is a show wherein the characters casually fart in each other’s presence.

In the first episode, Sam (played by the incredibly expressive Bridget Everett) has returned to her tiny hometown in Kansas, lingering after her sister Holly has died. As we’re slowly introduced to her family, friends, and high school chums (many of whom she met singing in choir), we discover that not one of the characters is idealized and neither is the town. In many ways, their world is pretty messed up. There’s alcoholism, discrimination, and mental illness, but none of it is melodramatic or sensational.

I was very struck by the groundedness of the family’s grief. When Sam’s niece Shannon (Kailey Albus) asks to look through Holly’s clothes, Sam replies, “Dude, of course, anytime!” To which Shannon replies, “Awesome.” The scene that follows is so darn sweet, as Shannon picks out a T-shirt that says “Lez Zeppelin” (Holly, it turns out, was a lesbian) and they make use of leftover hair dye.

That dialogue and situation are good illustrations of the show’s way of seeing the world. There is sadness in Somebody Somewhere, but the show itself is not actually very sad. In fact, I would describe it as mainly being about Sam’s slow, deliberate, and (so far, as of season two) successful search for somewhat more happiness. When Sam reconnects with a high school classmate named Joel (Jeff Hiller), he invites her to join his choir group, which meets in a church housed in a semi-abandoned mall. There she finds a secret community of freaks and queers and artists who help her learn to sing again. This is the third and final season of Somebody Somewhere.

The Conscience Award: The Sympathizer (HBO Max)

By Maryam Abdullah

“How did you become this?” That’s a question Sofia Mori (Sandra Oh) asks the Captain (Hoa Xuande), who is the protagonist and narrator of The Sympathizer. This seven-episode mini-series combines spy thriller with dark comedy to tell the story of a North Vietnamese double-agent during the Vietnam War. The answer to Sofia’s question is revealed by the confession that the Captain is forced to write after he is captured by the North Vietnamese, which becomes The Sympathizer’s narration.

Through the Captain’s self-reflection, we learn that his all for one and one for all childhood friendships with his two blood brothers shaped the trajectory of his adult life. One of them, Bon (Fred Nguyen Khan), a South Vietnamese soldier, never learns of his allegiance with the North.

“I was cursed to see every issue from both sides,” says the Captain at the start of his confession. While his perspective taking does not prevent him from murdering those who threaten to reveal his identity, it does cause the Captain to come face to face with the injustices he commits wherever he goes.

In the end, the Captain reflects on the meaning and aftermath of his sacrifices — and is left to mine the depths of his conscience to understand what is most precious after all.
The Sympathizer is an adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book of the same name by Viet Thanh Nguyen. It is clear-eyed about the catastrophe of war for all people — that loss of any life is abhorrent. It underscores the absurdities of stereotypes and the disingenuous attempts of creating dehumanizing stories that pit one people as worthy against another as unworthy. These lessons will reverberate for many across the globe today. 

The Loving-Difficult-People Award: Time Bandits (Apple TV+)

By Cianna Stewart

In 1981, the movie Time Bandits wowed critics and kids alike. It was dark and weird and original in a way that only a Terry Gilliam film co-written by Michael Palin could be.

The general setup of the series follows the original movie: The main character, Kevin (Kal El-Tuk), is a friendless 11-year-old nerd whose room is overflowing with books, gaming figurines, and drawings of famous figures from history. His parents pay much more attention to the television than to him or his sister.

One night, a group of time-travelers (led by Lisa Kudrow) crash into Kevin’s bedroom, and he gets swept up in their quest to rob rich people through the ages while fleeing both the Supreme Being and Pure Evil (played by series creators Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement).

At first, the bandits are annoyed by Kevin constantly spewing facts, and he is annoyed with their robbing. Over time, however, they all come to appreciate and care about each other.

At the same time, however, Kevin never lets being dismissed by his parents or sister diminish the basic fact that he loves them. When things go awry, Kevin spends most of the series trying to get back to them, and his sister goes on her own adventure in an effort to find Kevin.

The original Time Bandits include critiques of technology and religion, which Clement and Waititi bring back but with some twists. As the show goes on, the differences between Pure Evil and the Supreme Being become hazier. What stays consistent through time and space is that knowledge is useful, kindness matters, and it’s possible to love people even when you don’t always get along. 

The Mindful-Romance Award: Outlander (Starz) 

By Jeremy  Adam Smith

In Outlander, a World War II combat nurse named Claire is accidentally cast back in time to 18th-century Scotland. There she meets the dashing, well-muscled, red-headed Jamie Frasier, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Outlander is a romance, but to me it’s romantic in a very unusual way. Yes, there is rather a lot of very hot sex, especially in the first seasons, but the carnality of this couple goes way deeper than that. When, in the second season, the ever-heroic and manly Jamie reveals to Claire that he’s been keeping track of her periods, Claire is moved and grateful: It’s intoxicating to know someone you watch so closely watches you with the same care.

In another, much later, episode — when the couple is now middle-aged and Claire is probably post-menopausal — Jaime sees that Claire is suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (even if he doesn’t have the language to call it that). Though she’s taken great pains to hide the symptoms, Claire is always in Jamie’s spotlight; he sees as much as he can of her, bad and good. Claire has been difficult, deceptive, and unreliable, and Jamie’s message to her is this: I see you, I’m here, I’m not going anywhere, and we will get through this together.

While menstruation and mental illness are seemingly non-romantic topics, they  are the stuff of the toughest, most enduring romances.  Outlander returned in November for the second half of its seventh season.