We made it through the wilderness. Somehow we made it through. August was one of the worst months for TV in several years, but now it’s September, and schedules are as crowded as they’ve ever been with exciting new releases. From 2024’s best new sitcom to date, English Teacher, to the meditative indie masterpiece that is Penelope to the pure fun of Marvel’s Agatha All Along, there’s something for every viewer and mood. In fact, I had such a tough time choosing my five favorite debuts of the month that I’ve also included a brief rundown of five more shows that would easily have made the list if they had premiered elsewhere on the calendar.
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Agatha All Along (Disney+)
Ten minutes into the premiere episode of the wonderful new Marvel series Agatha All Along, you might worry that you pressed play on the wrong Kathryn Hahn show. Instead of the powerful witch Agatha Harkness, whom Wanda “Scarlet Witch” Maximoff defeated in the finale of WandaVision, her character is Agnes, a mouthy, flannel-sporting, rule-breaking police detective investigating a murder in a prototypical small town. Her condescending foil? An FBI agent sent to keep her in line, played by Aubrey Plaza. It’s giving Mare of Easttown. But what’s really unsettling is the broadness of the performances by Hahn and Plaza, two of the best TV actors of our time.
Those weirdly stiff portrayals are our first clue that Agatha—a WandaVision spin-off from that series’ showrunner, Jac Schaefer, whose first two episodes are now streaming on Disney+—is having a bit of fun with us. Hahn is hamming it up Mare-style because Wanda (Elizabeth Olsen) seized Agatha’s powers and sealed her in the same suburban nightmare that had sent the Scarlet Witch hurtling through 20th century family-sitcom clichés for much of the series that bears her name. Who knows how many Strong Female Leads Agatha has been shoehorned into in the three years she’s spent trapped in the TV-trope hellscape that is Westview, New Jersey? Happily, we never find out; Agatha is no WandaVision retread, and its detour into detective-drama hackery is just the first of its many delightful, hyper-culturally-literate surprises. [Read the full review.]
English Teacher (FX)
Created by and starring the actor, comedian, and viral bard of sitting Brian Jordan Alvarez, English Teacher isn’t a dramedy or an action comedy or adult animation but a genuine sitcom set at a high school in the suburbs of Austin, Texas. While comedy series tend to take a season or two to find a rhythm—and this one certainly has room for improvement—English Teacher radiates confidence from the very beginning, striking a savvy balance between funny character beats and timely observations from the increasingly politicized realm of public education. It is easily the year’s best new sitcom to date. More importantly, it’s a must-watch for anyone who yearns for television that elicits actual, audible laughs. [Read the full review.]
La Maison (Apple TV+)
Infuriated by a Korean client, Vincent Ledu (Lambert Wilson), the longtime creative director of his family’s independent Paris couture house, LEDU, is caught on video in a racist rant that immediately goes viral. As the scandal escalates into an international incident, fueled by a luxury giant with a vendetta against LEDU that happens to employ Vincent’s brother Victor (Pierre Deladonchamps), the designer’s departure, voluntary or otherwise, becomes inevitable. And the competition to replace him causes further strife within the family, pitting his scheming, artistically stunted nephew Robinson (Antoine Reinartz) against Paloma (Zita Hanrot), an upstart with an eco-conscious label and a guerrilla approach to challenging the fashion industry’s status quo, whose connection to the Ledu clan has never been properly recognized.
It’s not hard to see why La Maison—an ensemble drama about a rich, cutthroat family and the rapidly changing industry where they play an outsize role—is earning so many comparisons to Succession. But while the latter thrived on American ambition and the hyperliterate black humor of its British creator, Jesse Armstrong, La Maison is a quintessentially French work. In place of devastating insults, it offers suds, sex, and passionate earnestness. Beyond that glossy exterior, though, the series brings enough depth to its characters and enough insight to its depiction of the contemporary fashion landscape to satisfy Succession heads and style nerds alike.
Penelope (Netflix)
Created and written by indie film and TV eminence Mark Duplass and Biosphere director Mel Eslyn, who also directed and served as showrunner, Penelope is like nothing else on television. Each of its eight episodes is immersive and impressionistic; the camera lingers on the vibrant greens and deep browns of the natural world, in patient shots soundtracked by birdsong, the crunching of leaves underfoot, and serene, wordless music. Against that backdrop, Megan Stott (Little Fires Everywhere) gives a remarkable performance in the title role, embodying, in all her confusion and contradictions, a character who is at once a regular 16-year-old, a girl in the throes of an existential crisis, and the heroine of an ambitious allegory. [Read the full review.]
Social Studies (FX)
You’ve seen dozens of trend pieces and studies and trend pieces pegged to studies, but do you really understand the all-consuming role social media plays in the lives of teenagers? However you answer that question, this five-part documentary from Lauren Greenfield, the sociologically minded filmmaker and photographer behind The Queen of Versailles, Generation Wealth, and the remarkable monograph Girl Culture, is sure to leave you with some profound new insights. Greenfield spent the difficult post-lockdown school year of 2021-22 following—and moderating group conversations among, and securing access to the unfiltered online communications of—a racially and economically diverse handful of Los Angeles teens.
The characters she chooses are fascinating. An enterprising boy makes money throwing wild high school parties. A working-class Latina once dated a famous peer—and is still getting over being harassed by his fans. An empathetic kid is making a doc of his own about teens and social media. As she tours top-tier colleges, a queer girl stresses over how to come out to her right-wing, conspiracy-vlogger mom. Pairing the subjects’ physical worlds with the videos, photos, and texts they post while inhabiting them, Greenfield captures with great nuance the intersection of technology and adolescence. We observe how apps and algorithms can exacerbate body-image issues, how a spurned suitor’s diss track turns the former object of his affection into a pariah, how the pandemic left everyone more addicted to their phone than ever. Often depressing but always revealing, Social Studies paints a blunt yet never alarmist portrait of contemporary teen life.
Plus five more that would’ve made the list in any other month:
Have I Got News for You (CNN)
Beloved Daily Show correspondent Roy Wood Jr. famously quit when it became apparent he’d been passed over for the vacant hosting role, so now he’s on CNN—of all places—with his own, quite funny game show (adapted from a British series of the same name) in which he quizzes teams led by fellow comedians Amber Ruffin and Michael Ian Black on our perennially bonkers news cycle.
How to Die Alone (Hulu)
The White Lotus and Insecure star Natasha Rothwell created and starred in this frank, inspirational (but never saccharine) comedy about a repressed airport worker who has a brush with death and resolves to start living the more adventurous life she has never felt confident enough to pursue.
Nobody Wants This (Netflix)
Romantic comedies work best when viewers adore both halves of the central couple, and though this interfaith love story doesn’t always ring true, it’s impossible not to fall for a pair of unlikely soulmates played by Kristen Bell and Adam Brody.
The Perfect Couple (Netflix)
This soapy adaptation of an Elin Hilderbrand murder mystery is not what I would call good TV, but it’s certainly fun TV, with a happily typecast Nicole Kidman playing the icy matriarch to a secretive, blue-blooded family amid a cast that also includes Liev Schreiber, Eve Hewson, Dakota Fanning, Meghann Fahy, and Isabel Adjani.
Wise Guy: David Chase and The Sopranos (HBO)
What sounds like the kind of inessential featurette you’d find on a Blu-ray is actually an insightful two-part history of a TV classic, grounded by a candid conversation—conducted on a set designed to resemble the therapist’s office where Tony Soprano faced off with Dr. Melfi—between the show’s creator, David Chase, and the documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney.
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