From the most beautiful show Netflix has ever made to a thriller about a menopausal hitwoman and a dazzling documentary set in outer space, here are some TV gems that may have passed you by this year.
In a bizarre move, Netflix released this series by Japanese master Hirokazu Kore-eda – the Palme d’Or winner renowned for movies such as Shoplifters and Nobody Knows – with absolutely no fanfare this year. But Asura was a total knockout – a rich and sumptuously shot drama about four sisters in the 70s who discover that their dad has been having a lifelong affair. It was so good, in fact, that it might even be the most beautiful show they’ve ever released. Talk about selling yourself short.
Not content with creating TV’s best sitcom about life as a young, 2020s US Muslim, Ramy Youssef decided to create TV’s best sitcom about life as a super-young 00s US Muslim. Packed with retro references to appeal to nostalgic millennials, and full of dark comedy about the US’s anti-Muslim bent in the wake of 9/11, it was a idiosyncratically satirical joy. Easily one of the funniest shows of the year.
It’s not often that the year’s best conspiracy thriller is a cartoon. But that might just be the case, given the phenomenal watchability of Mike Judge’s animated tale of fungi expert Marshall, who finds a mushroom that cures all illnesses and even brings people back from the dead. When big pharma weigh in to stop his discovery ruining their profits, it becomes a wild, blackly comic tale of guns, death and love – plus how deeply in thrall the US is to profit.
A gorgeous romantic drama that had everybody digging out their own mixtapes and sharing smile-raising memories. Pitched as One Day but grittier, the four-parter followed teenagers Daniel (Rory Walton-Smith) and Alison (Florence Hunt) falling in love in Sheffield, in 1989. Twenty years later, Daniel (Jim Sturgess) has stayed put and is a music journalist, while Alison (Teresa Palmer) is a successful novelist in Sydney – but unanswered questions from the past reconnect them.
From the makers of similar oral histories of the Iraq war and the Troubles, this dazzling documentary managed a remarkable trick. It was both a grand survey of the vaulting ambition of the space race and a very personal, emotional history explaining what becoming an astronaut actually meant to the few people who managed it. The best bits of this series are genuinely unforgettable.
