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Fleshed out from Shane Meadows’s stunning film, the director spans the late 80s with a bunch of friends negotiating adulthood. As well as seriously upping expectations for cop shows, it also introduced the world to one Idris Elba as Adam Smith-reading gangster Stringer Bell. Nothing can fully replicate the experience of watching the broadcast run of Lost – back when online recaps and deep-dive Easter egg analyses were in their infancy – but the box sets run a close second, not least because they allow you to pummel your way through the hellish third series in a single weekend. This 1920s-set drama about a pair of fashion-pioneer sisters in roaring London takes the inconsequential and elevates it to high drama.
Back in the golden age of the webseries, an aspiring actor named Issa Rae created The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl (“The awkward white girl is nothing new. So many young TV auteurs have failed to emulate Dunham’s knack for elliptical, off-kilter scripts that tell you everything you need about characters who don’t fit any stereotype. Set in a pastel-hued afterlife populated by virtuous, philanthropic sorts who can’t even swear and, er, someone who got in by accident, The Good Place was Parks and Recreation co-creator Michael Schur’s attempt at channelling Lost, via the great philosophers and, presumably, The Sims. Budget demands meant that Danish producer DR had to go low and grainy while attempting to meet the new watermark for tension TV, 24.Without “chilled-out entertainer” David Brent we may never had a generation of deluded Apprentice contestants who thought they were also “the reflection of perfection”, or indeed the “sadcom” trend that has dominated the past decade. Margaret Atwood’s tale of near-future oppression was never going to make for a sunshine-and-rainbows kind of show.
It is a comedy of relentless, almost irredeemable depravity, and yet there is something very recognisably human about each of the characters.He was a former British soldier with PTSD, she was the home secretary – can we make it any more obvious? Chris Lilley essays the Australian school system through three malfunctioning antiheroes: Ja’mie King, the monstrous private school girl going public; Mr G, the egomaniacal musical theatre darling; and Jonah Takalua, the aggro boy for whom education has failed. The chasm between what we say we are and what we really are in the digital age presides like the hangman’s arch over two seasons of drama and wit.
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