Prosper
Stan
Bringing religious-themed Australian drama roaring into the 21st century, Stan’s sizzling megachurch thriller – which draws obvious parallels to the scandal-riddled story of Hillsong – makes older shows like The Devil’s Playground and Brides of Christ feel almost quaint. In another, perhaps better world, the story of a superstar preacher (Richard Roxburgh’s Cal Quinn) navigating a series of crises, many self-inflicted, might’ve come across as wildly unrealistic; in ours, it’s just a small step to the left of reality.
Spearheaded by a vintage performance from Roxburgh, who’s so good at evoking an unsettling kind of charisma, the show has a red hot energy that sustains itself spectacularly well across a tumultuously melodramatic eight-episode arc. – Luke Buckmaster
Read more: Prosper review – Richard Roxburgh leads a sizzling and sharp megachurch thriller
Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont Spelling Bee
ABC
No other show has given me more pure delight and loud laughs than this absolutely unhinged series, which the Kiwi comedian began hosting over Zoom and YouTube during the pandemic, before spinning it out into a live show, then a TV show in New Zealand.
Premiering this year, the Australian Spelling Bee follows the same format: four comedians – which this year included Tim Minchin, Steph Tisdell, Rhys Nicholson and Tom Gleeson – join Montgomery for a series of games that have less to do with spelling than the insanely convoluted premise and deeply unhelpful clues. Montgomery’s ridiculously pleasant and awkward sidekick is Aaron Chen, who displays a Gold Logie-worthy commitment to the bit: an inability to casually banter. – Steph Harmon
Read more: Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont Spelling Bee review – an absolute d-e-l-i-g-h-t
Fake
Paramount+
It’s clear from the first scene in Fake that there’s something not quite right about the guy Birdie (Asher Keddie), a magazine features writer, meets on a dating app. But what, exactly?
Despite being familiar with the source material – this limited series is inspired by Stephanie Wood’s 2020 memoir about a romance scammer – I was on the edge of my seat the entire time. It’s a credit to both Keddie’s performance and the writing that Birdie’s willingness to look past her paramour’s red flags feels so believable; just one of the leaps of faith we all must make in dating. David Wenham is also incredible as her manipulator Joe; the episode where his true self is finally unmasked disturbed me in the best possible way. – Katie Cunningham
Read more: Fake review – Asher Keddie thrills in visceral drama about a romance scammer
Four Corners: The Ozempic Underground
ABC
Four Corners on a Monday night remains one of the few times I’ll actually tune in to watch a television show broadcast “live”, even if I’m not watching on an actual TV. Among this year’s crop, The Ozempic Underground stands out as a particularly memorable investigation.
As the ABC’s national health reporter, Elise Worthington, delves into the shortages of Ozempic and Mounjaro, some of the most shocking revelations have nothing to do with the drugs themselves but deal with the gaps in oversight and regulation for certain types of medicine in Australia.
Add into the mix general practitioners getting faxed drug advertisements from unknown pharmacies and actually passing the details to patients, it’s a pretty eye-opening edition. – Petra Stock
Read more: Ads for ‘weight-loss treatments’ are everywhere in Australia. Are they promoting prescription drugs?
Thou Shalt Not Steal
Stan
For me, the most purely enjoyable slice of Aussie TV from 2024 was this super stylish and sassy series from its co-creator and director Dylan River. The plot follows two young lovers – Robyn (Sherry-Lee Watson) and Gidge (Will McDonald) – as they tear across the outback, raising a middle finger to polite society and dancing to their own beat.
The show’s fiendishly jaunty tempo feels like an extension of the personality of its initially incarcerated but soon on-the-run protagonist Robyn, played with dynamic charm and chutzpah by Watson. As I wrote in my review, the show’s “pumped full of country and gospel music and a big bold score, lots of pulpy retro flourishes giving it an out of time feel and a funky Tarantino-esque flavour.” – LB
Read more: Thou Shalt Not Steal review – this series has future classic written all over it
Stuff the British Stole season two
ABC
With Stephen Fry cameos and an enviable travel budget, the latest outing for Marc Fennell’s globetrotting colonial whodunnit sets a new high point for the podcast turned TV series.
From the stolen bones of “Irish Giant” Charles Byrne to the Parthenon Marbles, this season once again presents a string of famous and obscure case studies that illustrate how colonial systems won cultural and economic dominance through decades of theft and extraction.
Taken as a whole, the eight-episode arc carefully builds a nuanced but clear historical, moral and emotional argument, from colonial administrators burning archives of their torture programs to a dark-skinned doll that once belonged to a little girl in Tasmania. It’s also testament to the effect of the British empire that, after five seasons of podcasts and television, you get the sense Fennell and his team are still getting started. – Walter Marsh
Colin From Accounts season two
Binge
When Gordon (Patrick Brammall) and Ash (Harriet Dyer) talk, they sound like real people. This seems like the limpest compliment you can give Colin from Accounts, but delivering dialogue that feels true – without playing up or down the variances of Australian slang – is hard to pull off. If you were worried that, after the show’s success in the US, they would water down the colloquialisms to appeal to an international audience, you can rest assured – this show is still as Australian as peeling yourself off hot plastic patio furniture at Christmas time.
An episode set in Yass with Gordon’s family will feel familiar to anyone who has witnessed the code switch of a partner going home, and having to integrate this version of them into your idea of who they really are. By the by, it’s super funny too. – Sinead Stubbins
Read more: ‘Each season we’ve had one mega-fight’: the real-life couple behind Colin from Accounts
Taskmaster Australia seasons two and three
Network Ten
Taskmaster Australia’s format, drawn from the UK version, is brilliantly simple if you’ve spent any time around comedians: tell them to do a task and watch a comedy of errors spiral out of control. Taskmaster Australia takes this premise and runs with it like a toddler with scissors, with the second and third seasons among the best in the global franchise. It’s utter chaos.
Season three’s mix of comedians brought even more joy than just the games(see: the beautifully weird repartee between contestant Concetta Caristo and co-host Tom Cashman). In season two, Jenny Tiang’s 90-minute attempt to logically play “duck, duck, goose” is described by Josh Thomas as “so much smarter than me, but also so dumb”. A good description of the show itself. – Patrick Lenton
Read more: Taskmaster comes to Australia: ‘I am better than Greg Davies – make that the headline!’
Territory
Netflix
In the opening minutes of this riotous six-part drama, the fate of the world’s largest cattle station is thrown into turmoil when the heir apparent dies.
Who will run the fictional Marianne station becomes a saga that rivals Succession in helicopter rides but outnumbers it in cowboy hats and bar fights. The vultures are swooping, as the cruel, paranoid ageing patriarch Colin Lawson (Robert Taylor) puts it.
Marianne becomes the setting of an internecine power struggle between the Lawsons, mining interests and rival cattle farmers – with a poignant reminder of whose land it was originally.
With a strong ensemble cast (including Anna Torv, Michael Dorman and Clarence Ryan) and explosive action all set against the expansive, stunning backdrop of the Top End, this Australian western makes for compulsive watching. – Donna Lu
I Was Actually There
ABC
This six-part series, which revisits historical flashpoints including the 2004 tsunami and the Port Arthur massacre, could easily have turned into glib human-interest filler – a twist on commercial TV flashback shows like 20-to-1, with celebrity voiceovers swapped for real trauma. Instead, the result (from the team behind the ABC’s acclaimed talking heads series You Can’t Ask That) is sensitive, arresting and devastating, as we hear from the first journalists on the scene – whose archival footage is now seared into our collective memories – as well as the survivors and bystanders forever changed by the day history, and a media storm, descended on them.
Poignantly, we also learn how other moments, from the Woomera detention centre breakout to Nicky Winmar’s defiant shirt-lift, could easily have slipped through the cracks of memory. – WM
Swift Street
SBS
There’s no time to be bored in Swift Street: the pace soars and the characters move quickly, throwing themselves into crime-filled escapades. Tanzyn Crawford leads the cast as Elsie, a tenacious 21-year-old determined to prove that crime does pay, at least in the short term, by raising $26,000 in 10 days to save her trouble-magnet of a father (Cliff Curtis) from gangsters.
The premise is hardly original but the execution feels fresh, with the creator, co-writer and co-director Tig Terera seemingly working with the assumption that audiences may switch off at any time so it’s best to keep the plot tumbling forward lickety-split. The show’s gritty textures and scheming characters reminded me of the excellent Australian film Idiot Box. – Luke Buckmaster
Muster Dogs season two
ABC
As the owner of a mongrel with a dash of kelpie in her, I was slightly sad to see that the ABC’s most adorable reality show was saying goodbye to kelpies and casting a litter of border collies instead – but what a minor grumble. This year’s pups – Buddy, Ash, Snow, Molly and Indi – were as cute as ever, learning how to be good working dogs in a breakneck 12-month program.
The training process was fascinating, as the dogs learned to round up sheep, cattle and even feral goats in various parts of the country. And excellent news: a third season is on the horizon, and it will be a kelpie v border collies showdown. – Sian Cain
Read more: Muster Dogs returns – with border collies instead of kelpies: ‘It’s like comparing Holdens to Fords’
Australian Story: Making Lachlan Murdoch
ABC
There’s a chilling quote from Lachlan Murdoch, moments into the second episode of Paddy Manning’s excellent three-part exposé for Australian Story, about family dinners and the Murdoch predilection for debate. “We’ll start taking a position against each other we don’t really believe in, because we just want to cause some excitement.” Given the “excitement” of a court case he’s just lost for control of the family business, we can expect fewer of those family dinners but more egotistical posturing from the heir apparent.
Relying heavily on archival footage – Murdoch refused to participate, for obvious reasons – and plenty of bitter (and some hagiographic) analysis from friends and rivals, Manning paints a thoroughly distasteful portrait of toadyism, opportunism and vaulting ambition. – Tim Byrne
The Great Australian Bake Off season eight
Foxtel/Binge
It’s a rare treat to watch a group of people enjoying each other’s company, being silly, occasionally bursting into song. Add baking into the mix and you’ve got a perfect show.
For Bake Off devotees, the Australian show provides a satisfying snack filling the interminable space (usually months) between when GBBO airs in the UK and eventually shows on local streaming services. The shed serves up the same cosy vibes as the tent, albeit sprinkled with native birdsong and the irrepressible smiles of judges Rachel Khoo and Darren Purchese.
Among this season’s contestants, I loved Melisa’s “big whisk energy”, Jaden’s sincerity and Adrian’s sassy asides, and was impressed by 16-year-old Molly’s baking and long-division skills. Of course, season eight carries a bittersweet undertone with the tragic loss of Cal Wilson, whose cheeky humour delights for the first five episodes alongside her co-host, Natalie Tran. – PS
Australian Open
Nine
Each summer brings us two sporting joys: wonderfully soporific Test cricket and the Australian Open. This year’s tournament was particularly good, as some of the beloved old guard finally begin to make way for exciting new faces.
Belarus’ Aryna Sabalenka played a ruthlessly efficient game to retain her AO crown for a second year, while the Italian 22-year-old Jannik Sinner knocked out the 10-time AO champion Novak Djokovic in the semis before dispatching Daniil Medvedev in a five-set final to win his first major title. Special mention to the Rybakina/Blinkova thrill ride, which ended with a record-breaking tie break that went to 22-20. – SC
Which Australian TV shows did you love this year? Join us in the comments
