2024 was a good year for television scores. We had a lot of returning series that expanded both their confidence and their musical language. We also had some new series with great new themes, new entries into wider TV canons (with five new animated and live-action “Star Wars” series alone), and devastating limited runs that left it all out on the field.

What’s so heartening about the year, though, is the experimentation and diversity you can find in our list of the best TV scores of 2024. There are plenty of television scores that aim to sound as classically symphonic as anything composed by John Williams, and we love them. But there are also a lot of scores that play with dissonance and atonality, scores that maximize their minimalism and make small variations in theme feel as loud as a cymbal slam, and scores that reach for specific times and places...