Tic-tac-tick-tac… Only a handful of days left before saying goodbye to 2024. Before starting 2025 with optimism and enthusiasm (it costs nothing to try), it is high time to reveal the rankings of the best series of the past year, according to the Culture department of 20 Minutes.
And the big winner is the series Worshipput online last October on Prime Video. This fiction retracing the arrival of “Loft Story” in France was widely acclaimed by our journalists, particularly for the high-level performances of its actors.
Another French series seduced us, it is Fever, about a France on the brink of civil war. Foreign productions then complete the top 5: Disclaimer, The Messiah et Fallout. Nuggets that it is always possible to catch up on at the end of the year, between two liver attacks.
“Cult” on Prime Video
Over the course of its 6 episodes, Worship offers us a little trip back in time, to the era of the beginnings of reality TV in France, when “Loft Story” appeared twenty years ago. “I loved his way of intensely transcribing the madness of the time,” explains our journalist Victoria Berne. The series perfectly illustrates the audacity of these young producers to make a place for themselves on television. »
Worship reveals behind the scenes of this show, as much criticized as it is adored, the low blows of its producers, the rivalries of the big TV bosses but also the vulnerability of the first “lofters”, thrown out to pasture under the spotlight. “We understand better why Loana has had a difficult time since the end of the show. Enough to make us think about the fate of other reality TV candidates who should slow down on set, for their mental health. And the importance for productions to set up real psychological units after filming,” believes our journalist Fiona Bonassin.
We must also highlight the remarkable performances of the actors in this mini-series, in particular Anaïde Rozam in the role of Isabelle (a character inspired by producer Alexia Laroche-Joubert) and Marie Colomb, disturbing in that of Loana.
“La Fever” on Canal+
How can the bad buzz of a football club star threaten the stability of a country? That’s the whole point of this captivating series created by Éric Benzekri (Black Baron). It is also the confrontation of two women: on the one hand Sam Berger (played by Nina Meurisse), specialized in political crisis communication, ready to lose her mind to prevent the major cataclysm which threatens France. On the other, Marie Kinsky (Ana Girardot), far-right stand-up star, who only dreams of setting France ablaze.
For Claire Frayssinet, deputy editor-in-chief, Fever “should almost be shown in schools in media education classes. Even if there is sometimes a somewhat caricatured side, this series allows us to understand the mechanisms behind the manipulation of public opinion, particularly on social networks. It’s intelligent, well written, and it’s a very topical subject that still gives food for thought when you’ve turned off your TV. Quite funny in fact that it is a channel owned by the Vivendi group (owned by Vincent Bolloré) which lends itself to this script exercise.”
“Disclaimer” on Apple TV+
It’s a moving series from Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity), in the form of a long film divided into 7 chapters. Episode after episode, we witness the collapse of the life of Catherine Ravenscroft, a renowned British documentary filmmaker, victim of a past which explodes in her face.
« Disclaimer is a drama disguised as a thriller that offers us food for thought on the stories we are told. The casting is four stars – Cate Blanchett, fantastic in the lead role,” praises our journalist Fabien Randanne.
Behind the trajectories of his idle, pathetic or cruel characters, the director also delivers a moving story about mourning and pain, about the tragedies that shatter life and resilience.
«The Messiah» sur Arte
« The Messiah is a dense, intriguing, sometimes hallucinatory series, which speaks of childhood traumas and sectarian excesses without highlighting its subject,” underlines Fabien Randanne. Available on Arte.tv, the seven dense and captivating episodes of this double award-winning series at Séries Mania 2024, take place over three decades, from the 1990s to the 2010s. At the heart of the plot, the story of siblings, Enric and his sister Irene, crushed by their mother and a childhood under influence.
For Claire Frayssinet, “this Spanish series is an excellent surprise. It takes the viewer through a slightly sticky atmosphere, which can sometimes make you uncomfortable, with incursions into the fantastical universe. And at the same time, it offers us moments of deep humanity, with characters damaged by life who try, with more or less success, to find meaning in their existence.”
“Fallout” on Prime Video
Transposing a post-apocalyptic video game universe into a series after the triumph of The Last of Us ? The challenge was daunting. Falloutan 8-episode series, is doing better than well by relying on two sure values: the settings and the characters. “The world of Fallout is perfectly rendered: both the bunkers where part of humanity hid and developed a two-century-old proto-fascist society, and outside in the baroque world of nuclear catastrophe. Then, the creators of the series had the excellent idea of following three main characters rather than one to introduce us to the surreal world of Fallout », notes Benjamin Chapon, deputy editor-in-chief.
This transposition of the video game into series by Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy also won over our journalist Olivier Mimran: “They perfectly knew how to restore the essence of the video game franchise while expanding its universe and introducing new characters. This allows the series to focus more on the internal conflicts of its protagonists, all very endearing, than on the action scenes, rare but spectacular. »
The rest of the top 10:
Among the very good series for the year 2024, the Culture department has selected the 4th season of Slow Horses (Apple TV+), Dark Matter (Syfy), season 2 of Shrinking (Apple TV+), the 5th season of Fargo (FX) and Becoming Karl Lagerfeld (Disney+).
