Some years, TV climbs new pinnacles. It reaches for new heights. Words like peak and summit and precipice get thrown around. But it’s important to remember that in between those peaks, other natural features can be just as beautiful in the literal and metaphorical landscape of this treasured medium. I speak, of course, of valleys.
For every peak there is a valley, and the TV of 2024 is full of them. It’s easy to think of a valley as a nadir or a depression. In the minds of enormous Hollywood studio heads seeking perpetual and impossible growth, a valley is a point of failure. But this is foolhardy! Valleys are inevitable and invaluable. How can we see our high points without our low ones? Valleys can be barren and desolate, yes, but they can also be full of life! They frame our characters, and they provide natural backdrops for the vehicles that require prominent placement for embedded marketing. 2024 may have been a year of valleys on television, but that doesn’t have to be a negative. Let us consider their majesty and the vistas they provide.
No series loves a valley quite as much as Outlander. Here, we see several important features highlighted in a rural landscape. Valleys often feature a body of water, here likely a lake, and visually they’re characterized by an overlapping V-shape that gently draws the eye to a lowered horizon. There is also a guy in a kilt.
The Los Angeles valley from Fallout gives us the other end of the valley spectrum: urban, dry, and vast. This valley formation encircles a mid-century Los Angeles cityscape, beautifully setting off a toxic radiation cloud that will soon kill millions of people.
Smothered in clouds, this House of the Dragon valley provides perfect, obscuring aerial cover for anyone who might happen to be wandering around in the wilderness and stumbles into a dragon that went rogue decades ago.
Another dark one, Shōgun’s brand-new valley provides a clear viewpoint for the vast destruction that’s taken place as a result of a devastating earthquake. Like Fallout, the valley becomes a showcase for power and terrifying awe.
On the other hand, valleys can be locations to declare victory! See, in this case, the glowing river that snakes through this Rings of Power valley.
Like so much of the imagery of Ripley, this valley cupped along the Amalfi Coast appears magisterial and cold. It looms; its grandeur is alarming rather than inspiring.
One can only assume that the truck prominently featured driving along a canyon in this Yellowstone shot has been included as a part of a promotional agreement. Good-looking valley, though.
With caribou seen in the distance and a hunter posed in the foreground, True Detective: Night Country’s icy Alaskan valley communicates lurking danger and astonishing beauty in one glorious image.
The distant hanging moon here is the first indication that these are alien valleys, and yet the warm, leafy greens of this Dune: Prophecy scene communicate safety and richness. Looks can be deceptive, though, and all kinds of stuff can hide within little valleys. In this case it was mass murder.
Another of the alien valleys on TV this year, this stunner comes from The Acolyte and, like many of these images, features people dwarfed by the valley walls to help provide a sense of scale.
This knockout comes to us from The Old Man and relies on a sunburst-over-the-hills element to really lean into the light-and-shadow possibilities of this natural feature.
This image, a still from this year’s Coca-Cola Christmas commercial made entirely by AI, is a demonstration of the uncanny valley. Note, for instance, the odd nonsense shapes on the back of the polar bear child’s sweater and the uneasy way the other young polar bear’s scarf bleeds in and out of its fur. Lighting provides much reason for concern as well. How are the bottles being lit? How do the walls of this cave work? Never mind the uncomfortably visible asscracks on the bears. For completeness, this image does include a depiction of a valley, seen in the background.
Now this is a valley. This is textbook! Two heavily sloped sides, one running body of water between. This image comes from 3 Body Problem, and shortly after this frame, a boat will slide along the canal that defines this valley floor and very bad things will happen to the boat. But the valley is lovely, and that’s what matters.
We end on this frame from Bravo’s The Valley, which really says it all.
