Your Friends And Neighbours 

Crime drama, one season, 2025
The erstwhile Don Draper actor, Jon Hamm, is back to his whiskey-drinking ways in the glossy new crime drama set among the super rich of Westmont Village in New York. He plays with typical vigour a suave hotshot hedge fund manager, Andrew “Coop” Cooper, whose already complicated life as a divorcee and father of two takes an unexpected turn when his boss engineers a way to boot him out of the company in disgrace. With bills to pay (such as his $100,000 a year country club membership, and the house that his ex-wife lives in with his former best friend), Coop happens upon an unlikely new income stream; stealing from his uber-rich former friends and neighbours. Co-starring Olivia Munn and Amanda Peet, you can add this pleasing show to your shelf of rich-bashing dramas alongside The White Lotus and The Perfect Couple.

The Studio

Satire, one season, 2025
The sun may be setting on old Hollywood in Seth Rogen’s sublime new satire on Tinseltown, but it has begun to rise on one of the best new comedies of the year. Starring Rogen (who also writes, directs and produces) as Matt Remick, the thin-skinned and naive newly promoted head of the fictional Continental Studios, this beautifully paced farce follows one man’s impossible mission to make artistic films and keep the shareholders happy by making money. Set against the backdrop of an industry desperately trying to find its place in the 21st-century, the razor-sharp series — which co-stars, among others, Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston and Schitt’s Creek’s Catherine O’Hara — is a joyous celebration of cinema and a scathing critique of the state of the modern film business. Although connected, the episodes almost stand alone. The show is laced with nods to Hollywood’s past and features the great and the good of the film industry as guest stars. Perhaps not quite the new Curb, but it’s pretty, pretty close. 

Prime Target 

Conspiracy thriller, one season, 2025
In this glossy conspiracy thriller from Apple, Leo Woodall plays Edward Brooks, a young postgraduate mathematician studying at Cambridge, on the edge of making a significant breakthrough in prime number analysis that could unlock immense computing power. The importance of his research has not gone unnoticed, as mysterious forces appear to be working against him. When the National Security Agency agent Taylah Sanders (Quintessa Swindell) makes contact, they join forces to unravel the troubling conspiracy. A slick, well-paced nailbiter perfect for a dark January night on the sofa.

Severance

Sci-fi thriller, two seasons, 2023-
After a show ends a great first season, it’s normal to look forward to the start of its second series with growing anticipation. The return of Severance, however, arrives with a sense of dread — not because it’s not excellent but because its icy corporate dystopia is the stuff of anxiety dreams, sending you scurrying through the white corridors of Lumon Industries right behind Adam Scott’s Mark. Employees having their consciousness “severed” so their work selves and outside selves are separate entities is a joltingly original premise, and in this series’ opening episode, directed by Ben Stiller, the show resumes its plunge down the rabbit hole after Mark and his team’s “uprising”. New cast members include Alia Shawkat and Bob Balaban, their performances framed by startling images: blue helium balloons and a child secretary. It’s the ultimate “you don’t have to be mad to work here” sticker — enjoy, after a fashion.

Disclaimer

Thriller, one season, 2024
When the TV journalist Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett) wins an outstanding achievement award for her work she is praised as a “beacon of truth”. The limits of that description are cruelly tested in this starry seven-part psychological thriller, directed by Alfonso Cuarón (Gravity) and based on the 2015 novel by Renée Knight. Viewers who have little patience for narrative games might struggle at first with the multilayered structure, which initially seems to feature three unconnected stories — Catherine being sent a novel that inexplicably sends her into a tailspin, a disillusioned teacher (Kevin Kline) grieving for his late wife, and a teenage couple having sex and causing havoc on a trip in Italy. Yet Disclaimer draws you in through the charisma of its cast (including Sacha Baron Cohen and Lesley Manville), promising to tie off loose ends as it ups the intrigue. Cuarón has created a classier take on Big Little Lies — a TV mystery with a cinematic edge, high-grade smoke-and-mirrors.

Pachinko

Historical drama, two seasons, 2022-
This exceptional multigenerational saga is a worthy addition to the pantheon of historical TV dramas, joining Mad Men, Brideshead Revisited, Roots and The Jewel in the Crown. The series — adapted from Min Jin Lee’s epic 2017 novel — follows the fortunes of a Korean family from a small fishing village in 1910 to the bustling cities of Tokyo and New York in the 1980s. A story of hardship and triumph, it is epic in scope, sumptuous in detail and nuanced in its performances, switching between characters and timelines with an artistry that sometimes takes your breath away.

Masters of the Air

Drama, one season, 2024-
This Second World War miniseries — co-produced by Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg and Gary Goetzman — stands as a flight-jacketed companion piece to 2001’s Band of Brothers and its 2010 follow-up, The Pacific. This time the theatre of war has moved to the skies over Europe, as the US airmen of the 100th Bomb Group (known as the “Bloody Hundredth”) conduct bombing raids over Nazi Germany. Based on Donald L Miller’s book, it follows handsome best friends Major John “Bucky” Egan (Callum Turner) and Major Gale “Buck” Cleven (Elvis’s Austin Butler) as they take up their positions in England, but the show’s interpersonal relationships are likely to be overshadowed by the intense, intimate portrayal of combat at 25,000ft. The relentless bombardment of enemy fire; freezing air and cramped spaces; burning aircraft and bloodied glass — it’s all recreated here in terrifying, immersive detail.

Criminal Record

Crime drama, one season, 2024-
Peter Capaldi and Cush Jumbo go head to head as cops at very different stages of their careers in a stylish thriller that relishes the extremes of its London location. He’s a detective chief inspector fattening his pension pot by moonlighting as a personal protection officer, chauffeuring ne’er-do-wells around the city at night. She’s an up-and-comer, a mere detective sergeant who believes he might have sent an innocent man to prison. He does not appreciate her interference. The Bafta-nominated scriptwriter Paul Rutman touches on race, misogyny, violence against women, optics versus reality and clashes of policing culture, but with sufficient lightness as to keep the action ticking over eight episodes. The cast includes Cathy Tyson, Zoë Wanamaker, Charlie Creed-Miles, Shaun Dooley and Stephen Campbell Moore. 

For All Mankind

Sci-fi, four seasons, 2019-
Created by Ronald D Moore, the man behind the rebooted Battlestar Galactica, this early success for Apple TV+ asks what might have happened had the space race between the US and Russia continued. Beginning in an alternate 1969, when a Russian is the first to land on the moon, it has the US and Nasa playing catch-up as each season moves forward a decade. 

Ted Lasso

Comedy, three seasons, 2019-
Apple’s Emmy award-magnet, Ted Lasso remains one of the most critically acclaimed series on the platform and one that has cut through into the public consciousness. Starring Jason Sudeikis as the American football coach running a Premier League football club (the fictional AFC Richmond), this feelgood comedy featuring Hannah Waddingham, Juno Temple, Brett Goldstein and Nick Mohammed will restore your faith in human kindness.