The 20 best TV shows of 2024 (so far)

Nostalgia is a dangerous substance, never more so than when you’re building a revival of an already beloved (if also unabashedly dated) TV show. Use too little, and you risk alienating the audience your project is at least partially designed to draw in; too much, and you blow out every other idea that presumably led you to make the damn thing in the first place. The genius of X-Men ’97, then, lies at least partially in its ability to manage and marshal this terrifying cosmic force, tapping into the signifiers of the old Saturday-morning cartoon it serves as a sequel to—the voices, the look, the slightly melodramatic hokiness of it all—while pushing deeper and deeper into the actual reasons people still give a damn about Marvel’s mutants all these decades later. Shockingly bold, visually daring, and willing to take on the central metaphors of mutant life with unblinking ferocity, it’s a show that goes far beyond a simple nostalgia exercise—while still scratching the itch of anyone who just wants to hear Wolverine slice up robots while calling people “Bub.” [William Hughes]