Do you spend too much time scrolling and not enough time watching TV? Are you fed up with being served algorithmically generated suggestions of the same shows? Do you want to bypass those heavily promoted new dramas to find some hidden TV gems?
If you answered yes, read on — because here we present a handpicked list of TV series that we believe you’ll love, but may have slipped under your radar. We’ve scoured the streaming services from Netflix, BBC iPlayer, Prime Video and Disney+ to Now, Paramount+ and Apple TV+ to find the best shows.
From laugh-out-loud comedy to gripping drama, from out-of-this-world sci-fi to eye-opening documentaries, there is something here for everyone.
We’ll be updating this list regularly, so do return for more recommendations once you’ve watched them all, and don’t forget to leave your hidden gem recommendations in the comments section below.
Love TV? Discover the best shows on Netflix, the best Prime Video TV shows, the best Disney+ shows , the best Apple TV+ shows, the best shows on BBC iPlayer , the best shows on Sky and Now, the best shows on ITVX, the best shows on Channel 4 streaming, the best shows on Paramount+ and our favourite hidden gem TV shows. Don’t forget to check our critics’ choices to what to watch this week, the best shows of 2024 so far and browse our comprehensive TV guide.
Camberwick Green
Prime Video
For a show that ran for only 13 episodes in 1966, this stop-motion children’s series has a huge place in our collective nostalgia bank. Animated by Bob Bura and John Hardwick and narrated by Play School’s Brian Cant (with a voice as soothing as a cool flannel on a fevered brow), this brightly coloured village picaresque is undeniably consoling and comforting, but the presence of clowns, music boxes and the eerie folk music soundtrack also lends the show an uncanny quality, suggesting that all is not quite as it seems on Camberwick Green.
An Accidental Studio
ITVX
When Monty Python’s 1979 religious satire, The Life of Brian, lost its funding, the former Beatle George Harrison and his business partner Denis O’Brien stumped up the cash. Harrison’s justification? “I just wanted to see it.” So began a ten-year run that saw their company, Handmade Films, fund such classics as The Long Good Friday and Withail & I. Every good industry story needs a villain and in this case it’s O’Brien. Made in 2019, two years before O’Brien’s death, and hampered by certain legal restrictions, this remains an engrossing talking-heads doc.
The Great Buster
Prime Video
Buster Keaton is the cineaste’s favourite silent comedian, a writer-director whose artistic innovations influenced everyone from Orson Welles to the Bugs Bunny creator Chuck Jones. In this 2018 documentary by the director Peter Bogdanovich, Keaton gets the tribute he deserves, one that chooses not to dwell on his decline but instead revels in his many cinematic masterpieces. It’s also rare to see a director contradicting his interviewees, which Bogdanovich does on numerous occasions, always in defence of Keaton’s genius.
Annika
U
The crime drama market is an overcrowded one, so all credit to this adaptation of BBC Radio 4’s show Annika Strandhed for being so rich in quirks. For a start, DI Annika Strandhed (Nicola Walker) works for Scotland’s marine homicide unit, which allows for a striking watery backdrop, but even more important is Annika’s engaging habit of breaking the fourth wall, sharing her secrets with the audience as she tries to work out her relationships with her daughter Morgan (Silvie Furneaux), her crime-fighting partner Michael (Jamie Sives) and romantic interest Jake Strathearn (Paul McGann). It’s hard to think of a better actress for the job than Walker, her distinctive delivery creating an intimacy between character and viewer.
Fairies
BBC iPlayer
In 1917 Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, two young cousins from Cottingley, near Bradford, faked a series of photos that purported to show them playing with fairies at the bottom of their garden. Despite their unlikely nature, the photos fooled many luminaries, including the Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle. In Geoffrey Case’s 1978 BBC drama the case of the fairies phenomenon is examined against the rise of spiritualism and the UK’s interest in the supernatural after the horrors of the Great War. A quality drama, it’s anchored by two terrific naturalistic child performances by Linda Searle and Sarah Wright as Elsie and Frances.
Amazon With Bruce Parry
BBC iPlayer
If you spend enough time on social media you will discover that some TV presenters operate as a sort of curative balm during times of unease. Robbie Cumming (Canal Boat Diaries) is one, as is Siobhán McSweeney on The Great Pottery Throw Down and the intrepid adventurer and explorer Bruce Parry. Parry wears his knowledge lightly and this 2008 journey from the mighty South American river’s source to its mouth is a treat. Parry is particularly good at hanging with the natives, but also dryly funny.
The Au Pair
5
Given the screen stereotype of the wicked nanny — as seen in The Hand That Rocks the Cradle and Lullaby — it’s a fair bet that the eponymous au pair in this four-part thriller will be a villain. Indeed, in the first scene we see Sandrine (Ludmilla Makowski) receiving instructions from a sinister Frenchwoman. She then sets about wreaking chaos in the lovely house in Somerset where Zoe (Sally Bretton), Chris (Kenny Doughty) and their two children live, with Zoe’s diabetic father, George (David Suchet) next door. A series of “accidents” ensue, including a child’s bike crash. All look designed to show that Zoe can’t combine her work and home roles, and so cause marital tension. So many incidents follow the evil au pair’s arrival that it seems implausible that no one connects them to her. But it all changes for Zoe at the end of part one as this series begins to unfold.
The Middle
ITVX
It ran for nine seasons between 2009 and 2018 and won many awards, yet you would be hard-pushed to know anyone in the UK who is a fan or has even heard of this US comedy. Taking up where Roseanne left off, Eileen Heisler and DeAnn Heline’s family sitcom was, as its title suggests, about a middle-class, middle-aged, Midwestern couple, Frankie and Mike (Patricia Heaton and Neil Flynn), and their three children. Narrated by Frankie, it was a show about family unity with beautifully realised characters living an often hard-scrabble life. It was also a show about optimism, hope and the double-edged sword of the American dream.
The Madness
Netflix
Despite spending five weeks in the Netflix top 10 charts in 2024, this classy thriller went under the radar for many. Starring Muncie Daniels (Colman Domingo), it tells the story of a media pundit who finds himself accused of murder after discovering a body in the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania. To prove his innocence he must embark on a journey that will reconnect him with his estranged family.
Talking To A Stranger
BBC iPlayer
Described by the musician and critic George Melly as “the first authentic masterpiece written directly for television”, this groundbreaking 1966 drama by the Z-Cars creator John Hopkins tells the story of four members of a suburban family all dealing with their own miseries during a tense Sunday lunch. Hopkins’s narrative follows a different family member across each of the four episodes, revisiting events from their wildly differing perspectives. It’s a kitchen-sink drama at its most earthy and essential viewing, if only to witness a young Judi Dench as the family’s wayward daughter.
Boston Legal
Disney+
If you have never watched David E Kelley’s early-Noughties legal drama it might surprise you to realise that it is a comedy spin-off from Kelley’s own late-1990s legal drama The Practice, and that it is quite brilliant. Centred on James Spader’s deadpan performance as the mercurial defence lawyer Alan Shore and William Shatner’s multilayered turn as a once great attorney now suffering from Alzheimer’s, it’s a show that takes a little adjusting to. However, once you acclimatise to its curious ways you realise that it is both a brilliant comedy and a decent-minded satire on America, its justice system and its moral values.
Arcane
Netflix
The Last of Us is surely the best live action video game adaptation. But Christian Linke and Alex Yee’s series, inspired by the multiplayer online battle-arena game League of Legends, must be considered one of the finest animated examples of such shows. Set at a time of unrest between the wealthy utopian city Piltover and the downtrodden subterranean metropolis of Zaun, this is a show with strong characters, coherent plotting, decent voice actors and beguiling animation. Season two is now upon us, but if you are just reading about it now, consider this an early Christmas gift.
9-1-1
Disney+
This US first responder procedural is the most fun you can have with a flatscreen TV. If you were worried that Ryan Murphy, its creator, had lost his touch, have no fear. The first episode of season eight starts with killer bees and ends with a cliffhanger. If you watched his Doctor Odyssey and wondered what the fuss was about, this is the real deal: an object lesson in how to deliver a procedural drama that is deliciously campy, expertly crafted and sizzling with an ambient eroticism.
The Chelsea Detective
U
To the list of winter essentials (hot water bottle, chunky knitwear etc) we must now add both seasons of Peter Fincham’s cosy crime drama. A huge part of the series’ success lies in the performance of the great Adrian Scarborough who plays divorced, houseboat-dwelling DI Max Arnold with that necessary twinkle of irony. The crimes-of-the-week remain as comfortingly unremarkable as ever, but a necessary shout-out must go to Vanessa Emme, whose sidekick role of fish-out-of-water DS Layla Walsh invests season two with a buddy-cop chemistry that was lacking in season one.
Mrs Fletcher
Sky/Now
Underwhelmed by Marvel’s WandaVision spin-off Agatha All Along and in need of some quality Kathryn Hahn content? Try this bold, brassy and bracingly candid miniseries. Hahn stars as a divorcée, Eve Fletcher, coming to terms with freedom, loneliness and sexual liberation while her troubled son Brendan (Jackson White) is at college. It’s intelligent, funny, often disturbing and dares to believe that an audience can watch a show about female freedom and toxic masculinity without having its hand held.
The Resident
Disney+/Netflix
If you are up to date on Grey’s Anatomy and New Amsterdam and in need of another quality hospital soap, may we recommend all six seasons of Amy Holden Jones’s pacey medical drama. Centred on Matt “Gilmore Girls” Czuchry’s irresistible turn as the unconventional Dr Conrad Theodore Hawkins, an ex-Marine now working as a third-year resident physician at a beleaguered Atlanta hospital, it’s a show that survived a clunky start, transforming into an addictive and quietly political show with a splendid ensemble cast and a belief in the power of high-quality TV escapism.
The Hardacres
5
From the production company that remade All Creatures Great and Small comes this richly textured period drama in the Catherine Cookson mould, perfect viewing as the nights draw in. Based on CL Skelton’s bestselling family saga charting the fortunes of the Hardacre clan as they rise from Yorkshire village to prosperity, it’s an antidote to Downton Abbey complete with wisecracking granny — a Beverly Hillbillies with a big heart.
Night Sky
Prime Video
This beautifully crafted sci-fi drama from 2022 invites us into the lives of a couple married for more than 50 years, who just so happen to have discovered a portal to another planet in their garden. The Oscar-winning actors Sissy Spacek and JK Simmons command the screen with absorbing performances as a pair who have known each other for so long that every pause, glance and smile speaks a thousand words. This is an elegant piece of television that feels so down to earth that the alien element is almost a side issue and brings a level of slow-burn intrigue often absent from modern sci-fi.
Being Human
BBC iPlayer
For its first two seasons Toby Whithouse’s late-Noughties flatshare comedy drama was something close to faultless. It stars Aidan Turner, Russell Tovey and Lenora Crichlow as the vampire, werewolf and ghost, forced to live together in a Bristol house. Here was a show that blended the ordinary and the fantastic, the comic and the melancholy, the sweet and the sinister. Narratively it lost its way when the characters moved from Bristol to Wales, but it remained reliably scary, thanks in part to the presence of Jason Watkins as an ancient vampire king.
The Bureau
Paramount+
One of the many pleasures of streaming is when an entire series arrives in ready-to-binge form, especially when it’s an underrated classic such as this French spy thriller. Complex, intelligent and dryly funny, it stars Mathieu Kassovitz (Amélie, Munich) as Guillaume “Malotru” Debailly, an undercover agent recalled to Paris after six years in Syria who can’t quite settle into his new desk job. Kassovitz is a joy to watch as this restless master manipulator, and so is the show itself, as it entwines the sinuous spy stories within labyrinthine love intrigues.
Enlightened
Sky/Now
If social media has taught us anything over the past ten years it is that self-help do-gooders can be just as damaged and unhappy as the rest of us. Co-created by its star, Laura Dern, and future White Lotus showrunner Mike White, this 2011 comedy drama is centred on Amy Jellicoe (Dern), a burnt-out HR executive who after a spiritual rebirth exacts revenge on her old employers. A divisive series, and one caught between hysterical highs and poignant lows, it’s also deeply, blackly comic, its emotional complexities perfectly encapsulated in Dern’s powerhouse performance.
Corporate
Paramount+
Like a devilish cross between The Office, Silicon Valley and Severance, this absurdist workplace sitcom is a bleakly hilarious delight. Co-writer/performers Matt Ingebretson and Jake Weisman are adorably despondent as the downtrodden office drones Matt and Jake, but the show’s darkest pleasures can be found in the nightmarishly believable antics of deranged superiors John and Kate (Adam Lustick and Anne Dudek). Amazingly, for a US comedy that took its cues from Kafka and Ionesco, it lasted three seasons and managed to go out on a deliriously creative high.
The Night Caller
5
Fans of the 1980s drama Midnight Caller or Clint Eastwood’s 1971 slasher Play Misty For Me will detect a similarly tense crackle in this four-part drama. Robert Glenister plays Tony, a former science teacher now working the night shift as a cab driver. Lonely and plagued by his past, his low mood shifts when he calls into a late-night talk-radio show hosted by Lawrence (Sean Pertwee), a smooth-talking man of the people. There are lots of clever touches in this thriller — a bleak eat-work-sleep-repeat montage, a Nighthawks-style framing of a café — and thanks to Glenister’s repressed fury it becomes a kind of Liverpudlian Falling Down.
Law And Order
BBC iPlayer
The Law And Order in question here is not Dick Wolf’s endlessly multiplying US crime franchise, but the pioneering British crime drama originally broadcast in April 1978 on BBC2. Split into four episodes, it told the story of a police investigation from the perspectives of “the detective”, “the villain”, “the brief” and “the prisoner” and became highly controversial due to its portrayal of police corruption. Sir Ian Trethowan, then director-general of the BBC, was told he should not sell the series abroad, while questions were asked in parliament about the raw depiction of the British legal system (especially Derek Martin’s bent copper, Detective Inspector Fred Pyall). Also on iPlayer, the show’s writer GF Newman discusses his work and recalls the social shockwaves it sent.
Butterflies
BBC iPlayer
Described by its writer, Carla Lane, as a comedy about a married woman contemplating adultery, this great British Seventies sitcom is decidedly that yet so much more. Centred on an utterly charming performance by Wendy Craig as the capricious yet defiant Ria, and Geoffrey Palmer as her loving yet peevish husband, Ben, it’s a series that used humour to discuss such radical themes as depression, suicide and female emancipation. Not everything has aged well, but the show stands as a brilliant portrait of a suburban woman disappointed by motherhood.
Utopia
Channel 4
Dennis Kelly’s apocalyptic thriller was one of the TV highlights of 2013 — a visceral mix of suspense, sex, horror and dark wit that unsettled as many as it beguiled. Returning to this landmark series more than a decade later makes you realise how genuinely ahead of its time it was. The mix of comic-book visuals and conspiracy thriller narrative feels utterly contemporary, while the jarring juxtaposition of dark psychological drama and bone-dry comedy can be found in everything from the sci-fi officer drama Severance to Eric Kripke’s superhero satire The Boys.
Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Prime Video
Back on streaming after a period in limbo, the return of Peter Harness and Toby Haynes’ luxurious 2015 miniseries is cause for celebration. A seven-part adaptation of Susanna Clarke’s 2004 novel of the same name about a battle of the dark arts between two magicians during the Napoleonic wars, this is a high-quality multiworld fantasy drama that has only grown in grandeur in the intervening years. Behind the high production values and star turns from Bertie Carvel and Eddie Marsan as the combative necromancers lurks a story closer to gothic horror than Cranford, and in its fairy world of mirrors are scenes and images fit to engender nightmares.
The Valhalla Murders
Netflix
Maybe the Nordic crime drama has had its moment in the midnight sun, but it’s odd that this eight-part Icelandic thriller from 2020 isn’t better known. Yes, it’s your standard hunt-the-serial-killer plot with the usual dark subtext of institutional cover-ups. However, thanks to excellent performances from Nina Dogg Filippusdottir and Bjorn Thors as the mismatched detectives Kata and Arna, plus the steady drip-drip of chilling details and a meticulous depiction of toxic office politics, this feels a lot more subtle and rewarding than your usual icy crime dramas.
Brian And Charles
Netflix
This quirky mockumentary by Jim Archer (the director of the C4 sitcom Big Boys) is a quintessential slice of British eccentricity. Ricky Gervais alumnus David Earl (Derek, After Life, Extras) plays Brian, a lonely inventor living in Wales who creates a makeshift 7ft-tall robot companion for himself. Quiet, slow-moving and poignant, this isn’t your usual Netflix fare. It feels closer to the “slow cinema” genre — a minimalist comedy designed to soothe the soul and make you appreciate the quiet wonders of human nature.
Lodge 49
ITVX
Jim Gavin’s cult 2018 comedy drama (loosely inspired by Thomas Pynchon’s 1966 novel The Crying of Lot 49) is a fuzzy light-hearted tale of a Long Beach surfer turned pool cleaner (the adorable Wyatt Russell) who stumbles upon a pseudomasonic society with a possible occult past. Replete with a perfect ensemble cast, Lodge 49 is a wise, funny and philosophical show about nothing and everything, but with a focus on the importance of community. They made just two seasons, but they are both perfect.
Raised By Wolves
Sky/Now
One of the weirdest big-budget television shows in recent years, Aaron Guzikowski’s sci-fi drama was cancelled in 2022 after just two seasons. Not the kind of show that lends itself to neat one-sentence summaries, Raised By Wolves loosely concerns two androids, Father and Mother (Amanda Collin and Abubakar Salim), tasked with raising human children on planet Kepler-22b after the destruction of Earth. If you enjoy hard sci-fi series such as Foundation and The Expanse this is for you — brutal, baffling and dark-hearted with lashings of moral ambiguity.
The 7 Up Collection
ITVX
Michael Apted’s nine series, chronicling the lives of 14 British children from 1964 onwards, is not always an easy watch. As with all of us, there are triumphs and tragedies, elation and depression, and as anyone who’s followed the adventures of Tony, Neil, Jackie, Lynn and Sue down the years will know, the emotional bonds are strong. But the series remains one of the true landmarks of British documentary and, after Apted’s death in 2021 at the age of 79, it remains to be seen whether the next instalment, 70 Up, due in 2026, will still get made.
Seaside Hotel
Channel 4
Fans of Downton Abbey will love delving into this charming Danish series set in a fancy beach hotel during the Roaring Twenties. An unexpected hit in Denmark and now in its ninth season (there are six available to stream now on Channel 4), the show is an intriguing hotbed of wealthy guests and poor staff, with comedy, heartbreak and young love on the menu. There touches of Jeeves and Wooster, Fawlty Towers and even The Duchess of Duke Street. It’s a treat.
All Creatures Great And Small
ITVX
To viewers of a certain age these late 1970s BBC adaptations of James Herriot’s novels about veterinary life in rural 1930s Yorkshire can’t help but evoke the easefulness of an early Sunday evening just before the dread of work or school reared its melancholy head. What’s surprising is how well the series has aged, thanks in part to its exemplary cast (Christopher Timothy, Robert Hardy, Peter Davison, Carol Drinkwater) and the scripts, which exude fireside warmth yet crackle with a droll, no-nonsense wit.
Houdini And Doyle
ITVX
If you are tired of slow-moving crime dramas with almost no emotional stakes may we suggest this ludicrously playful 19th-century detective romp from 2016. Based on the real-life friendship between the Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Stephen Mangan) and the American illusionist Harry Houdini (Michael Weston), it rebrands the unlikely pals as a bickering detective duo. Utter hokum, but it has bags of charm and there’s a chemistry between Mangan, Weston and Rebecca Liddiard, who plays their unlikely Metropolitan Police foil, Constable Adelaide Stratton.
Early Doors
BBC iPlayer
Set entirely within the confines of a grotty Stockport pub, Craig Cash and Phil Mealey’s wry Mancunian comedy only ran to twelve episodes but remains a small marvel; a shining entry in the pantheon of working-class British comedies. If you’re a fan of The Royle Family and in need of another non-conformist blue-collar sitcom look no further.
Marion And Geoff
BBC iPlayer
Long before his gustatory road-trips with Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon made his name with another car-centred comedy picaresque. First shown way back in 2000, this faux video diary follows naive cab driver Keith Barret (Brydon) as he gradually discovers the truth about his titular wife and their best friend. It’s a lo-fi, nuanced, heartbreaking little comic smasher.
Unbelievable
Netflix
A powerful and heartbreaking story inspired by the Pulitzer prizewinning article An Unbelievable Story of Rape, this sensitively crafted drama transcends much of the true crime content on offer across the streaming services. With an exceptional performance from Kaitlyn Dever as Marie, a young sexual assault survivor charged with lying about having been raped, the story is driven forward by the determination of two female detectives (played by Toni Collette and Merritt Wever) to find out the truth. However, what they will uncover is a case far bigger than they could have expected as they follow multiple leads across Washington and Colorado to a dramatic conclusion.
Darby And Joan
U
Greta Scacchi and Bryan Brown team up for this series that puts two mismatched characters together to solve mysteries inhabited by well-preserved Aussie soap stars, including Peter O’Brien aka Shane from Neighbours. It’s a pleasing family affair, with an appearance from Leila George, Scacchi and Vincent D’Onofrio’s daughter and ex-wife of Sean Penn. Rachel Ward (Brown’s wife and Thorn Birds co-star) even shows up as the voice of the satnav.
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Kurt Cobain: Montage of Heck
Sky/Now
Although he may be one of the most famous musicians of the modern age, the Nirvana frontman’s tragically short life is still shrouded in myth and mystery. This 2015 documentary from Brett Morgen uses previously unseen footage and unreleased recordings, sound collages and sketches to tell Cobain’s story. And although it’s impossible to separate Cobain from the legend, this documentary does a very good job of finding the child, the human, the father and the husband in a way that you won’t have seen before.
Parkinson
BBC iPlayer
If you’d like to take a step back in time to see the king of British interviews meet the great and the good of the entertainment industry, you’ll be pleased to learn there are plenty of episodes of Parkinson available on iPlayer. A classic from 1998 features Billy Connolly discussing how he used an apple to try to help him sleep and David Attenborough offers an insight into the sex lives of the penduline tit. There’s a fascinating 1974 episode with Dr Jacob Bronowski, presenter of the landmark series The Ascent of Man, on his thoughts on moving to England in the 1920s, science and his philosophy, and a show from 1972 where David Niven talks about his reasons for moving from Hollywood to France.
Fat Friends
ITVX
Without Kay Mellor’s Fat Friends (2000-05) there would be no Gavin & Stacey. It was on the set of the ITV drama, which followed the fortunes of a group of slimmers in a Leeds-based dieting club, that Ruth Jones met James Corden. By the second series the pair were regularly retreating to the bar to discuss their planned one-off drama featuring a Welsh girl marrying an English boy. All four series of Fat Friends are available on ITVX, with the cast including Jones and Corden, along with fellow G&S alumni Alison Steadman and Sheridan Smith.
The Complete And Utter History Of Britain
ITVX
Miscatalogued for decades, this 1969 pre-Python comic confection from Michael Palin and Terry Jones has been unearthed by the ITV Archive team. Closer to Horrible Histories than Monty Python, it’s an absurdist chronicle of this island’s past and a parody of contemporary TV tropes. Jones and Palin take the role of various kings and serfs, but the biggest surprise is Roddy Maude-Roxby, whose eternally befuddled Professor Weaver is a work of eccentric comic genius.
Elementary
Prime Video
If your list of top five Sherlock Holmes portrayals doesn’t include Jonny Lee Miller then you’ve clearly never watched this much-maligned modern US reboot of the Conan Doyle adventures. The cases were admittedly more Columbo than Blue Carbuncle, but the dynamic between Miller’s deeply flawed detective and Lucy Liu’s ruthlessly intelligent Watson was complex, caring and utterly gripping. Holding hard to the rigorous conventions of network crime TV shows, yet with space to develop emotional themes and grand story arcs, Elementary remains one of the unsung TV classics of the 2010s. However improbable, it’s the truth.
Cheat
ITVX
When this tense and gripping drama first aired on ITV in 2019 it was stripped across a week so there’s every chance you may have missed it. Starring Katherine Kelly as Leah Dale, a Cambridge academic on the cusp of making tenure, her life is soon driven into chaos by her entanglement with Rose Vaughan (an excellent performance by Molly Windsor), an entitled and seemingly disaffected student who is always late and doesn’t take lectures seriously. After Leah accuses Rose of cheating and she consequently fails an exam, so begins a bitter feud between the pair that becomes increasingly dark and twisted as family members and even pets get drawn into a dispute that it’s clear will not end well.
Upright
Sky/Now
Much like its central characters, Tim Minchin’s road-trip comedy starts out as an utter mess and then matures into something admirable. Director, writer and star, Minchin plays the ironically monikered Lucky Flynn, a middle-aged musician transporting an upright piano across Australia to his childhood home. His partner, nemesis and reluctant passenger is foul-mouthed teenager Meg (Milly Alcock), fleeing an already cloudy past. Both are unhappy, both argue and both make you want to switch off after two episodes, but stick with it because gradually this odd-couple bicker-fest becomes curiously likeable and then quietly profound.
Maid
Netflix
Inspired by Stephanie Land’s memoir Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay and a Mother’s Will to Survive, this beautifully paced series tells the story of a 23-year-old woman, Alex, who with her two-year-old daughter escapes an abusive relationship to start a new life. Failed by the system, she is left with nothing and tries to make ends meet in low-paid cleaning jobs while protecting her daughter, fending off her ex and dealing with her bipolar mother. Margret Qualley delivers an emotionally charged lead performance in a fantastic drama, with Alex’s mother played by Qualley’s real-life mother, Andie McDowell.
Around the World in 80 Days with Michael Palin
BBC iPlayer
In an age where there are seemingly fewer celebrities who haven’t made a travelogue series than have, the fact that Michael Palin’s Around The World In 80 Days still stands out as one of the very best is testament to just what a magical show this is. It originally aired in 1989 and Palin’s easy charm guides the viewer through a seven-part documentary based on the central premise of Jules Verne’s classic 1873 novel. Travelling on foot, by train, boat, hot-air balloon and even husky-driven sled, this remarkable series closely follows the trail of Phileas Fogg from France to Greece, India, China and the United States as Palin meets and interacts with local people, their customs and traditions along the way.
Little Dorrit
BBC iPlayer
Long before she was a global streaming sensation as Queen Elizabeth II in the Netflix royal drama The Crown, Claire Foy took centre stage opposite Succession’s Matthew Macfadyen in Little Dorrit. When the series broadcast in 2008, Andrew Davies’s 14-part show didn’t receive quite the same attention as his previous Charles Dickens adaptation, Bleak House. It features a who’s who of British acting talent, including Tom Courtenay, Pam Ferris, Eddie Marsan, Andy Serkis, Maxine Peake and Jason Watkins, to name but a few.
Crashing
Channel 4 / Netflix
In 2016, Phoebe Waller-Bridge became the toast of the town after the comedy sensation Fleabag mopped up at award season and paved her way to stardom. Just a few months earlier though, she created Crashing, a comedy about “property guardians” (they’re not squatters) living and loving in a disused London hospital. Filled with much of Fleabag’s angst, dark humour and awkward self-reflection, the single series Channel 4 show may not have reached the heights of any of PWB’s other productions, but it is still an accomplished piece of comic storytelling set against the familiar backdrop of twentysomething urban-living. A refreshing new take on the flatshare sitcom, prepare for a quirky comedy overlooked by many.
The Leftovers
Sky/ Now
Despite having Lost’s Damon Lindelof at the helm and an impressive cast including Justin Theroux, Liv Tyler and Christopher Eccleston, HBO’s exceptional supernatural drama doesn’t have the profile it perhaps deserves in the UK. Based on co-showrunner Tom Perrotta’s novel, we are introduced to a world three years after a mysterious incident caused 2 per cent of the global population to disappear. The story follows grieving families as they try to cope in a world irrevocably changed by this “sudden departure” and they struggle to maintain some sort of normality as cults and conspiracy theories run rampant. A rare example of a show with an intriguing premise that gets better across its three seasons.
Russia 1985-1999 — TraumaZone
BBC iPlayer
Known for his distinctive — at times almost hypnotic — style of films, Adam Curtis is one of the most creative and celebrated British documentary makers, having picked up four Baftas. This fascinating seven-part series is subtitled What it Felt Like to Live Through the Collapse of Communism and Democracy and consists of largely unused archival footage of the Soviet Union and Russia found in the BBC’s Moscow bureau. In a stylistic shift, Curtis uses captions rather than his usual narration to hold together what is a remarkably intimate and immersive piece of television, which brings alive a time of enormous change that would pave the way for the rise of Vladimir Putin.
Irma Vep
Sky/Now
Written and directed by Olivier Assayas, Irma Vep is an HBO comedy-drama based on his 1996 film of the same name. The eight-part series stars Alicia Vikander as Mira, a Swedish-born American actress looking to reinvent her career and reboot her personal life by travelling to France and taking on the role of Irma Vep, star of a French TV remake of the silent film serial Les Vampires. This show oozes class and style, with a beautiful Parisian backdrop to match the sharp script and fabulous direction. Although a TV series based on a film about a TV series based on a film series may sound confusing, viewers with a penchant for witty TV will be rewarded for making their way through the meta structure.
Back to Life
BBC iPlayer
This jet-black comedy drama about a thirtysomething woman returning to live with her parents in a seaside town after serving 18 years in prison manages 12 near-faultless episodes filled with loss and laughter. Led by an incredible performance from one of its co-creators, Daisy Haggard, it is driven forward by a razor-sharp script and beautifully paced as its protagonist, Miri, attempts to rebuild her life surrounded by hostile forces and unexpected twists.
Salt Fat Acid Heat
Netflix
Based on Samin Nosrat’s book of the same name, Salt Fat Acid Heat treats viewers to one of the simplest, most charming and genuinely authentic cooking shows on television. Structured around Nosrat’s four foundations of good cooking, we visit Italy for fat, Japan for salt, Mexico for acid and California for heat. There is no shortage of mouthwatering food and awe-inspiring settings, but unlike some more high-concept cooking shows of the modern age, it is grounded in its presenter’s genuine passion for food.
Have we missed any of your hidden favourites? Let us know in the comments below
