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Who is Mahmoud Khalil, Palestinian student activist facing US deportation? Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent figure during the Gaza war protests at Columbia University in the spring of 2024, has drawn global attention after the Trump administration arrested and moved to deport him. The case has raised questions about free speech on college campuses and the legal process that would allow for the deportation of a US permanent resident. Mr Khalil was held in an immigration facility in Louisiana for three months before a federal judge ruled that President Donald Trump could no longer detain or deport him. On 20 June, a judge ruled Mr Khalil must be released. Born in Syria, the Columbia graduate's arrest by immigration agents was linked to Trump's promise to crack down on student demonstrators he accuses of "un-American activity". Trump has repeatedly alleged that pro-Palestinian activists, including Mr Khalil, support Hamas, a group designated a terrorist organisation by the US...
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 Netflix's The Perfect Couple and the reason TV was so poor in 2024 – but we watched anyway


This year was defined by a host of average TV shows that were glossy and watchable enough but insubstantial and forgettable – as epitomized by the Nicole Kidman thriller. Here's why.

As the year comes to an end and everyone takes a look back over 2024's best TV offerings, for some there may be a collective form of amnesia. What was that Apple TV+ crime series with that big actor in you watched – was it Presumed Innocent or Sugar? What was that nice rom-com starring Adam Brody called again? Did you watch that series where Nicole Kidman played a wealthy woman who floated around in designer dresses looking worried because her son went missing (Expats), or where she played a wealthy woman who floated around in designer dresses looking worried because someone was murdered on her estate

If, perhaps with a quick Google search as a prompt, you realize you did watch The Perfect Couple, it's a show that seems to encapsulate where such interchangeable TV is at in 2024. The Perfect Couple burst onto Netflix in September, a soapy, glossy and silly adaptation of Elin Hildebrand's 2018 novel of the same name. With a decent cast – including Kidman in a dodgy wig, Live Schreiber, Meghann Fahy and Dakota Fanning – the six-episodes series unraveled a murder mystery set at an upper-class wedding in Nantucket. The tone of the show was off, slightly; was the melodramatic telenovela-like style in earnest or was this some kind of satire on the murder mystery genre? It was unclear. Also shoe-horned in was a cringe all-cast dance routine on the beach to Meghan Trainor's song Criminals that introduced each episode; even Fahy told Variety "Everyone [the actors] was saying they didn't want to do this because we just didn't understand." The audience lapped it up – it was most watched on Netflix's TV chart for two weeks in a row – then it seemed to vanish from memory.

"I had actually forgotten I had watched The Perfect Couple," says Manor Ravindran, a TV industry journalist who writes for The Ankle and Broadcast. "And all I can remember about that now is the dance, which, even when I was watching it, felt like a very orchestrated device to make it stick in people's minds; a visual element to make a show memorable." While the dance gave the show a viral moment at the time,  the drama as a whole didn't inspire the same cultural conversation. The Perfect Couple was the essence of a 2024 television phenomenon: the rise of Mid TV.

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