Expert-approved: The books, TV, podcasts and films we loved this year

Stuck on what to watch, read and listen to during the holidays? Our culture reporters have done the hard work for you. Here are their picks of the best shows, films, podcasts and books from 2024. If it’s good enough for them, it’s definitely good enough for you. Share your favourites in the comments below.

Film

Challengers (Amazon Prime)

Luca Guadagnino’s horny tennis/threesome drama has fallen out of the conversation as a main contender this awards season, but it’s still, hands down, one of my favourite films of the year. And the soundtrack – a pulsating original score of techno bangers composed by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross – has been on my main rotation while exercising or frantically writing to deadlines since the film’s release in April.

If you missed it completely (which means you’ve sadly also missed some of the year’s best memes), the film follows a 13-year love triangle between an injured tennis star turned coach (Zendaya), her husband now limping towards the end of his successful career (Mike Faist), and his one-time best friend still chasing his shot at glory (Josh O’Connor).

It’s a feverish film with frenetic cuts and pounding synth melded through moments of emotional intensity. And while that’s not everyone’s cup of tea, I think it’s exactly what we need more of in cinema: original stories about somewhat regular adult relationships that take big creative swings. If nothing else, it’ll change the way you watch the Australian Open. Meg Watson

TV

Hit Man (Netflix)

Who would have thought a straight-to-streaming movie would top my list this year? Certainly not me, but that was before I saw Richard Linklater’s ridiculously rewatchable rom-com-thriller Hit Man.

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Inspired by a 2001 Texas Monthly article by Skip Hollandsworth, the film has a mild-mannered professor (Glen Powell) picking up a gig impersonating assassins for the police. However, his entire moral code is turned on its head after he falls for a woman (Adria Arjona) who hires him to kill her abusive husband.

It’s a crime that this film missed out on a proper theatrical release – not only because it stars Powell (surely 2024’s Hollywood sweetheart after Anyone But You and Twisters) but because of its expert weaving of comedy into a compelling examination of identity and morality. The leading pair ooze chemistry on-screen, Powell somehow makes three-quarter denim pants look hot, and the ending is entirely unpredictable. It’s refreshing to watch something this fun again. So Richard Linklater, thanks for the hit, man. Nell Geraets

Ripley (Netflix)

For the first couple of episodes of Steve Zaillian’s take on the chameleonic serial killer Tom Ripley, I wondered why I was watching, and why it existed. After all, Anthony Minghella’s 1999 film The Talented Mr Ripley did such beautiful justice to Patricia Highsmith’s creation (Ripley appears not just in the 1955 novel of that name, but in another four) that it was hard to see what more could be said. But by the third episode, I was completely won over by the slow accretion of detail and lugubrious pacing, by the stunning black-and-white cinematography, and above all by Andrew Scott’s portrayal.

In his hands, Ripley is not the young aspirational social climber Matt Damon gave us. Rather, he’s a mid-career petty conman almost at the end of his tether who happens to get incredibly lucky. But he’s such a bumbler that he very nearly blows it, repeatedly. The character, like the show itself, is a tightrope walk, never more than one dreadful misstep from collapse. By its end I wasn’t just grateful to Zaillian for going there, I couldn’t wait to see where he, and Ripley, might take us next. Karl Quinn

Podcast

Binchtopia

If you want a laugh or just to keep up to speed with internet culture, then the Binchtopia podcast is for you. It will have you speaking like a TikTok-addicted Gen Z after a few episodes, without having to actually watch TikToks.

Hosts Julia Hava and Eliza McLamb, the “girlies”, will take you on a journey as they explore concepts such as doomsday prep, lead you down ridiculous Reddit threads, and take on more serious and complex issues such as eating disorders.

Highly researched and organically funny, the podcast is ideal listening for lying on the beach or taking a road trip. It strikes a balance between informative and light-hearted, served with a confronting (at first) but endearing vocal fry. Beware – it’s addictive listening. Kayla Olaya

Books

Playground by Richard Powers

Weeks after reading this, I am still thinking about it; it’s the best thing I’ve read in 2024. Powers, whose 2018 novel The Overstory was shortlisted for The Booker and also won the Pulitzer for fiction, has essentially written a book that, once you reach the end, has you rethinking the entire story.

Longlisted for this year’s Booker, Playground is tricky to describe without spoiling. It follows the intertwined stories of Todd, a billionaire tech giant, Rafi, his college best friend, Rafi’s Polynesian girlfriend Ina and a famous oceanographer, Evie, over several decades. But it’s also a story about the climate crisis, AI, colonialism, the wonders of the ocean and mortality. And in Powers’ hands, each theme is deftly rendered. I’m already thinking about a re-read. Kylie Northover

The Passenger and Stella Maris by Cormac McCarthy

The best books you read in a year are often not from that year. So I’m happy to stretch the brief and cite Cormac McCarthy’s masterful final novels, The Passenger and Stella Maris, which were published six weeks apart in late 2022. They tell the stories of Bobby Western and his sister Alicia respectively – complex, wounded geniuses struggling to survive in marginalised America, haunted by their father’s work developing the atomic bomb and their feelings for each other.

McCarthy’s writing so erudite, so rich with ideas and so evocative that these two interconnected novels would be the high-water marks of most writers’ careers. But he has also been acclaimed for All The Pretty Horses, Blood Meridian, No Country For Old Men and The Road. I’ve struggled to read McCarthy for years, finding his books too unsettling and emotionally bruising. But that’s changed. I’ve just started his first novel, The Orchard Keeper, and plan to work my way through the rest. Garry Maddox

The Transit of Venus by Shirley Hazzard

Where the hell have you been, you might well ask when I nominate reading this Australian novel as my fave culture moment of the year; after all, it was published in 1980. The story of orphaned Australians Caroline and Grace Bell making new lives in England starts in the 1950s and ends some time in the 1970s, yet it feels absolutely timeless.

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Hazzard has a clear eye for personality and character, unflinching but not cruel. She captures, especially in the early pages, the sometimes uneasy relationship between Australians and the world they desperately long to be part of. And she has a deft way with plot: one character’s ultimate demise is signalled soon after we first meet him, though it comes decades in the future; another’s, right at the end, is a shock, a twist, a punch to the guts.

Hazzard’s way with language impresses most, especially the way she crafts sentences that are unfinished yet complete. Full of empathy for the desires that guide us and the wrong choices we make, and the fleeting moments of perfection that are so easy to miss, The Transit of Venus is achingly sad and blindingly beautiful. Karl Quinn

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