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Adolescence
Netflix
The first streaming show ever to top UK charts. The second biggest English language Netflix series of all time. The most tense scene of an actor retching at the thought of a child eating a cheese sandwich. Such are the lists of firsts for this breathtaking drama about toxic masculinity in teens that it’s nigh on impossible to overpraise it. For a few weeks, the entire world seemed to be talking about the astonishing single-shot cinematography, the terrifying realism of a premise that saw social media fuel a 13-year-old boy to murder a female classmate and stunning performances not just from storied veterans like Stephen Graham, but hyper-young first-time talent such as Owen Cooper. From now on, this is the bar by which all UK drama has to be judged.
What we said: “A deeply moving, deeply harrowing experience.” Read the full review
Amandaland
BBC One/iPlayer
Creating a spin-off based on Motherland’s least likable character was by no means a shoo-in for winning TV. But the subtlety and vulnerability Lucy Punch brings to her turn as post-divorce queen bee Amanda – paired with a script that skewers Insta-obsessed posh parents – makes for comedy gold. Add laugh-out-loud one liners from the likes of supporting characters Anne and Siobhán McSweeney’s sardonic chef Delia Fry and you have a televisual joy. Just don’t accuse her of living in south Harlesden: it’s “SoHa”, darling.
What we said: “When writing is this good, it fizzes with the hysterical energy of perimenopause.” Read the full review
Big Boys
Channel 4
After three series of endearingly kitsch references to British pop culture, giddy explorations of gay love and devastating moments of emotional poignance, Jack Rooke’s heartfelt take on his 2010s youth comes to an end. It is as heavily packed with sharp dialogue and cheeky mentions of Alison Hammond as you’d expect, not to mention heart-rending explorations of male mental health. This series has never shied away from a tear-jerking moment, and the astonishing final episode is no exception. Unforgettable.
What we said: “Sitcoms don’t get much more deep and meaningful than this.” Read the full review
Black Mirror
Netflix
Black Mirror rarely disappoints, and series seven was incisive as ever. Meds making you spout adverts? Going inside old photographs to relive memories? A video game taking over the world? Writer Charlie Brooker hits the same notes with continually fresh ideas – plus, for the first time, a sequel: part two of fan favourite USS Callister. Modern British dystopia at its best.
What we said: “What was once a hard-edged, occasionally malfunctioning cyborg of a show has slowly evolved: Black Mirror 7.0 has a lot of soft tissue around the metal … a warmer, more convincingly human show.” Read the full review
Dying for Sex
Disney+
Beautiful, hilarious and life-affirming, this spectacular show stars Michelle Williams at her funniest and most vulnerable as Molly, a woman with terminal cancer who decides to devote what remains of her life to a quest for the perfect orgasm. Based on a brilliant podcast, Molly’s sexual adventures take in tons of swiping right, epic orgies, cock cages, pup play and a dominatrix awakening. Helping her in this pursuit are a revelatory Jenny Slate as her best pal and soul mate; Sissy Spacek as her eccentric mother and Rob Delaney as her comically gross neighbour. Wonderful TV to revel in – and weep to.
What we said: “Dying for Sex is only sexy when Molly finds it so … it is a feminist endeavour to its core.” Read the full review
Get Millie Black
Channel 4
Created by Marlon James, the author of the celebrated novel A Brief History of Seven Killings, this drama is a seductive experiment in multiple perspectives. On the face of it, it’s a crime drama set in Kingston, Jamaica. But as it tells the story of Millie (Tamara Lawrance), a former London detective back in the Caribbean in search of a lost sibling and a missing girl, it becomes clear that it’s much more than that. Instead, Get Millie Black ponders the legacy of colonialism and the search for identity – sexual, national and existential – in the context of a broken family.
What we said: “Millie-Jean Black is a force of nature, and a joy to watch, wherever she is in the world.” Read the full review
Hacks
Sky Max/Now
It was always going to be tough to follow a third season so glorious that it won the best comedy Emmy. But this tale of veteran standup Deborah and gen Z comedy writer Ava hits back with a new roster of scene-stealing minor characters, heart-wrenching moments of pathos and zingers so acerbic you’re in constant danger of spraying tea across the room. It also doesn’t hurt that the relationship between its two leads is one of TV’s most captivating. Roll on season five.
What we said: “Season four of Hacks is very funny. But what makes it really special is just how raw it is, too, ready to hit you in the feels when you least expect it.” Read the full review
High Potential
Disney+
Sometimes the world feels so dark that you need a bit of eminently watchable trash – and High Potential is a fine slice of such escapism. Kaitlin Olson is super-fun as a lovable genius with an IQ of 160 who is working as a police station cleaner when she solves a doozy of a case – then soon gets brought on as a consultant in the homicide department. She sees things no one else sees, and solves every case of the week – from death by tap-dancing to a nanny bludgeoned in a playground – with her jaw-dropping photographic memory and epic knowledge. An easy-watching delight.
What we said: “It is so much desperately needed, perfectly paced fun that, like Kenneth Tynan before me with Look Back in Anger, I don’t believe I could be friends with anyone who doesn’t love it.” Read the full review
Just Act Normal
BBC Three/iPlayer
Kids fearing they might be taken into care, drug dealers breaking into flats to make threats about unpaid debts, armed confrontations: not your usual comedy drama fare. But Janice Okoh’s adaptation of her 2011 play Three Birds is a singular viewing experience – a wry depiction of three working-class Black children’s lives on a Birmingham estate as they try to fly below social services’ radar to keep the family together after their mum leaves. It’s at times tense, dark viewing – but only when it’s not dipping into chicken-based escapades or sing-alongs to R&B classics. Charming, challenging TV.
What we said: “Okoh’s work is done full justice by three extraordinary young actors – we are surely watching stars being born. It is altogether a wonderful thing.” Read the full review
Last One Laughing UK
Prime Video
Ten comedians spend a day in a room together and try to make each other laugh; anyone who so much as chuckles is eliminated. It’s a simple but brilliant concept, which is why Last One Laughing has already been a hit in 26 other countries before arriving here. There is evil-laced glee to be had watching famous faces try to resist the comedy mastery of Bob Mortimer’s magic show and Daisy May Cooper’s re-enactment of being on a rollercoaster. No wonder Joe Lycett only lasted minutes!
What we said: “Harriet Kemsley, who may well be the breakout contestant of the show, at one point looked as if she was having a nervous breakdown trying to stop a laugh from leaking out.” Read the full review
Miss Austen
BBC One/iPlayer
Ah, the joy of a new Jane Austen drama – except this one is about the real author, whose 250th anniversary is this year, and the personal letters her sister Cassandra destroyed. Still, the adaptation of Gill Hornby’s novel is every bit as swoony and whip-smart as one of the literary legend’s stories. Keeley Hawes is at her period drama peak as Cassandra, who reflects on her relationship with Jane after her death, and works to save her legacy – all while playing matchmaker for a female relative, of course.
What we said: “The series becomes ever more of a treat as it goes on – warm, intelligent, clear-eyed, confident and thought-provoking.” Read the full review
Mo
Netflix
Mo tackles a tough topic at a troubling time, but sharp gags and vibrant storytelling mean the comedy expertly skewers the immigration experience in the US today. This is a show about a Palestinian refugee trying to claim citizenship in the country he’s lived since he was a child – proving himself between two cultures, and (occasionally) making a pig’s ear of doing so. In series two, Mo finds himself trapped in Mexico, selling tacos and moonlighting as a lucha libre wrestler. Can he get back to America to attend the asylum hearing he’s been waiting 22 years for?
What we said: “Mo brings together food, identity, immigration, family and Middle Eastern politics in a way that’s as fresh and intriguing as the falafel tacos that become central to the plot.” Read the full review
Poker Face
Sky Max/Now
From meth-fuelled alligators to magician-splatted gerbils, glorious daftness is the name of the game in this howcatchem detective series. The majestically watchable Natasha Lyonne plays Charlie Cale, a serial crime solver with the handy knack of always knowing when someone is spouting “bullshit”. For its second outing, the homage to Columbo-like case-of-the-week shows feels more rounded, with stellar guest spots including Giancarlo Esposito as a murderous mortician, Rhea Perlman as a grudge-holding mob boss and Cynthia Erivo sharing the screen with herself as five separate sisters. Two seasons in, Rian Johnson’s oddball crime series is going strong.
What we said: “With her gravelly-chipmunk New York tones – or “voice like a rusty clarinet”, as one character has it – Lyonne ensures Cale is an idiosyncratically charismatic protagonist you can really get behind.” Read the full review
Reunion
BBC One/iPlayer
The best of the year’s TV crime dramas starring Rose Ayling-Ellis (see also ITV’s Code of Silence) features stellar acting talent, with Anne-Marie Duff and Eddie Marsan also taking major roles. But the really breathtaking performance comes from Matthew Gurney, playing a deaf character newly released from prison after confessing to the inexplicable murder of his friend – and hellbent on vengeance. Action moves seamlessly from spoken dialogue to British Sign Language, and a script that frequently shines a light on the frustrations of living in a world designed for hearing people. It’s an eye-opening, thrilling piece of TV.
What we said: “Gurney is a revelation. That he has had to wait until now for a lead television role says at least as much about the blinkered, ungenerous world of unchallenged norms we live in as Reunion itself does.” Read the full review
SAS Rogue Heroes
BBC One/iPlayer
In one sense, Steven Knight’s dramatisation of the origins of the Special Air Service went off book for its second outing – sidelining Connor Swindells as main character David Stirling in an Italian jail to focus on Paddy O’Connell’s unnervingly hair-triggered berserker, Paddy Mayne. But in another, it is very much business as usual: fist-pumping rock soundtrack, episodes that rattle along at full throttle and such a thrillingly anti-establishment attitude that it’s not hard to imagine even the authority figures flipping the bird every time they walk past a mirror. Quite possibly TV’s most rollicking historical drama.
What we said: “A right old romp!” Read the full review
Severance
Apple TV+
More death, more weirdness, more goats: the second season of the surreal workplace science fiction drama is yet another grippingly bizarre exploration of corporate overreach. There are renegade brass bands, terrifying voyages down dark corridors, characters coming back from the dead and Adam Scott putting in a career-best performance as lead character Mark Scout – whose desperate bid to find the wife he believed to have died years ago scales heights of poignant bleakness. Were this buzzy show on a more popular streamer, it would be impossible to escape.
What we said: “The first series was fantastically stylish, clever, trippy and compelling. The second is even more so. It demands all your concentration and takes you down rabbit holes so deep and twisted that you may meet yourself coming back.” Read the full review
The Assembly
ITV1/ITVX
After the success of Michael Sheen’s turn in The Assembly – a room in which a group of neurodivergent people fire questions at a visiting celebrity – the BBC’s decision not to produce more was baffling. Thank the TV gods then for ITV taking it on, and picking Danny Dyer as the first guest in the hot seat. The panel are fearless, funny and not afraid to ask questions most entertainment journalists wouldn’t dare to, while the celebrities (Gary Lineker, Jade Thirlwall and David Tennant also star) answer with rare candour – plus the musical performances will have you bawling.
What we said: “This is some of the warmest telly you’ll see this year … even when Danny Dyer starts dropping f-bombs left, right and centre.” Read the full review
The Change
Channel 4
Bridget Christie’s comedy drama isn’t just a window into her weird, whimsical mind – it’s a call to arms for “invisible” menopausal women everywhere. In the first hit season, she played fiftysomething Linda, a mother and wife who hops on a motorbike and escapes to the Forest of Dean to reconnect with her roots. The second season picks up with her navigating this new life, with plenty of life-affirming sisterhood moments – but most memorable are the side-splitting scenes with Paul Whitehouse’s Tony in the pub: “No, I like the company,” he tells Linda when she advises him to get shampoo for his lice problem.
What we said: “It’s not easy to weave an ecstatic, rousing and laugh-a-minute TV show out of a toxic patchwork of midlife despair, domestic inequality, sexism, misogyny, culture wars and ecological and political crises. But Christie has gone and done it again.” Read the full review
The Last of Us
Sky Atlantic/Now
Fans of the video game this show is based on knew it was coming: Joel’s untimely death. But could the second season of the big-budget apocalyptic drama really survive without the giant presence of Pedro Pascal? Ellie’s (Bella Ramsey) melancholy, flashbacks and guitar playing proved too schmaltzy for some, but others appreciated these new emotional layers. Plus, it did drive a big new mission plot: bloody revenge on his killer, Abby (Kaitlyn Dever). Episode two, where an army of mushroom monsters invade the village, was a white knuckle ride reminiscent of Game of Thrones’s Battle of the Bastards (Mark Mylod, who worked on GoT, also directed this). Surely one of the most exciting episodes of the year?
What we said: “Season one was a lot … relentless, constantly shifting and weaving to deliver devastation and heartbreak in brutal new ways. On its return for a second season, it has earned the right to take a breath and slow down.” Read the full review
The Last Musician of Auschwitz
BBC Two/iPlayer
There have been some incredible documentaries to mark 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen (see also Sky’s The Lost Music of Auschwitz and Sam Mendes’s What They Found). This film is exceptional in telling the extraordinary story of 99-year-old cellist Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, the only surviving member of the women’s orchestra at Auschwitz. First-hand testimonies, archive footage and musical performances merge to show the utter confusion of prisoners playing such beautiful music in an evil hellscape – as well as tiny glimmers of resistance.
What we said: “This incredibly impressive programme does not let us forget about Auschwitz’s corpse mountains or stench of burning bodies for a second, all the while posing questions about art and humanity that should ring in your ears for years to come.” Read the full review
The Rehearsal
Sky Comedy/Now
Cloned dogs. A brutal musical talent show. An airport bar, fully recreated in a different state. A couple having an excruciating conversation about their intimacy issues while Nathan Fielder looks on impassively. It’s hard to do justice to the strangeness of Fielder’s latest comedy-reality-documentary series – which is ostensibly an attempt to improve inter-pilot communication on commercial aircraft but sometimes, you find yourself forgetting that. Instead, you’ll repeatedly question everything that is happening on screen: is it real? Is it cruel? Is everyone involved OK? How does Fielder come up with this stuff? Don’t expect many answers.
What we said: “Frequently plane-crash TV – but my oh my, does it stick the landing.” Read the full review
The Settlers: Louis Theroux
BBC One/iPlayer
After a few years spent having low-stakes podcast chats with celebrities, it is great to see Louis Theroux back on top form with this bold sit-up-and-watch documentary. As a follow-up to his 2011 film, The Ultra Zionists, he returns to the West Bank in the wake of the 7 October attacks, as more Israeli religious nationalists settle in the occupied Palestinian territory. Not many could keep a level head spending time with Ari Abramowitz, a gun-holding settler from Texas who refuses to even use the word “Palestinian”, or Daniella Weiss, the aggressively outspoken “godmother” of the movement – even Theroux, in a moment that sees him step away from his usual gentle approach, asks whether she is a sociopath. It is alarming but absolutely necessary viewing.
What we said: “I’ve been watching Theroux’s films for more than three decades, and watching him be this forthright feels like a true watershed moment in his career. It suits him.” Read the full review
The Studio
Apple TV+
Comedy doesn’t tend to move at the pace of The Studio, but this Hollywood satire operates at breakneck speed without skimping on the laughs. Seth Rogen plays Matt Remick, the newly installed head of a Hollywood studio whose ambition to make meaningful cinema is thwarted by his given task of getting a cash-grabbing Kool-Aid blockbuster off the ground. Fast-paced episodes see him and his team in farcical movie mogul scenarios: meddling on sets, fighting with directors, and tying themselves in knots trying to keep a glittering cast of cameo actors sweet.
What we said: “You mustn’t come to The Studio looking for much hugging or learning. Emotional abruption, not growth, is the name of the game.” Read the full review
The Traitors
BBC One/iPlayer
Weird fake Welsh accents, professional opera singers who couldn’t act, a bizarre row about Harold Shipman: this season of the Claudia Winkleman-hosted murder mystery reality show has no shortage of memorable moments. Arguably the show’s weakest outing yet, each episode nonetheless felt like appointment TV in a way that no other show has managed in years.
What we said: “For those who still believe reality TV can be truly edifying, The Traitors is manna from heaven: shedding light on how people lie and how easily others are taken in, how barely perceptible slips can give people away and how fast herd mentality and conspiracy theories can take hold has real sociological worth.” Read the full review
The White Lotus
Sky Atlantic/Now
It’s hard to argue that the Thailand-set instalment of Mike White’s luxury resort drama was its finest to date, dogged as it was by complaints over an unsatisfying finale and a fan-angering theme tune. But even a middling season of the gripping wealth satire is must-watch TV, with Parker Posey’s accent setting social media ablaze, an incest scene that proved to be the drama’s most shocking moment yet and Aimee Lou Wood emerging as the international star she’s long deserved to be. Where can the show go to top this?
What we said: “Exquisitely shot, scripted, paced and performed, it’s a sumptuous feast for all the senses.” Read the full review
#1 Happy Family USA
Prime Video
Everything Ramy Youssef touches in the world of television turns to gold – and his edgy, laugh-a-second adult animation (created with South Park’s Pam Brady) is no exception. Following a Muslim family straight after 9/11, which makes everyone in their community run a mile from them, they double down on their love of all things American: Britney Spears, the Chicago Bulls … Bill Cosby. The funniest show of the year so far.
What we said: “This is a show steeped in 00s nostalgia, and mentions of illegal streaming services like LimeWire and Napster, classic anime series Dragon Ball Z and even the Game Boy Advance had me misty-eyed. But it’s also rooted in the present. At a time when religious and racial prejudices seem to be steadily creeping back into vogue, and with Trump back in power, it feels quietly subversive – underlining just how necessary switching between two identities is for many people’s survival in American society.” Read the full review
The Residence
Netflix
There’s a dead body! In the White House! Luckily, given the fact that there’s a state dinner taking place for Australia’s top politicians – including a live performance by Kylie Minogue – it’s an open-and-shut case of suicide that should be easy to clear up … shouldn’t it? Obviously not. The gleefully idiosyncratic turn from Orange is the New Black’s Uzo Aduba as a maverick detective fills this daffy procedural with fun, as she strews political chaos in her wake while trying to get to the bottom of the crime. If only US politics were normally this fun …
What we said: “A gorgeous, gleeful romp that allows not just Aduba but all of the many players in the cast to shine.” Read the full review
Unforgotten: Bradford City Fire
BBC Two/iPlayer
Taking place just a few weeks before the Heysel Stadium disaster, the devastating fire at Bradford City FC’s Valley Parade ground in 1985 is, in many ways, a forgotten tragedy. This moving documentary is an overdue commemoration of the 56 lives that were lost (watching the horrifying footage, you’ll marvel that it wasn’t many more) and an exploration of the safety oversights and regulatory failures that allowed it to happen. The Bradford fire changed football as profoundly as the Hillsborough disaster: this documentary explains why.
What we said: “Courageously, this film tries to rescue hope and humanity from the ashes.” Read the full review
What It Feels Like for a Girl
BBC Three/iPlayer
Spiky, fierce and up for absolutely anything, 15-year-old Byron (a scintillating Ellis Howard) is so bored they start giving sexual favours for fivers in the local public loos … and so starts a rollercoaster story of self-discovery around the clubs, caffs and grim bogs of their home town Hucknall and the big city beyond: Nottingham. Based on Paris Lee’s thrilling memoir, Byron soon meets a gang of queer and trans friends known as the Fallen Divas and learns the power and bliss of being yourself (not before getting into lots of scrapes, mind.)
What we said: “It’s certainly a wild ride – and I’ll struggle to look at a toilet brush the same way ever again.” Read the full review
