AJ Pics / Alamy
The deeply flawed but intriguing Tony Soprano opened up a whole new world of complicated relatable characters that drew audiences in their millions.
Masha Mashkova and Joel Kinnaman in For All Mankind.
Apple TV+
For All Mankind is set in an Apollo era transformed by the inclusion of women, characters of colour and LGBTQ+ protagonists.
Sophie Wilde in Everything Now.
Netflix/Left Bank
The series should be praised for recognising that it’s not just white, middle-class girls who experience eating disorders.
Fox/AP/AAP
Evidence confirms that minimum-force policing is safer and more effective than the style of policing so colourfully depicted in US crime shows and movies like Die Hard.
Bloody and unbowed: Claes Bang as Dracula.
BBC/Hartswood Films/Netflix/David Ellis
The latest version of the Gothic vampire chiller is brought to you with the trademark humour of writers Steven Moffat and Mark Gatiss.
Emma Thompson is populist demoagogue Vivienne Rook.
BBC
Tune in, Donald Trump: it might just save a lot of lives.
BBC/Sid Gentle/Steve Schofield
What’s with all the sausages in Killing Eve? It’s a thriller that gives butchery a new meaning.
Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen in season 8 of Game of Thrones.
HBO/Helen Sloan
For all its queer characters, Westeros is a gender binary world.
BBC Images
Embracing change is the theme of Doctor Who’s fizzing series opener.
Olivia Cooke as Becky Sharpe in ITV’s Vanity Fair.
Mammoth Screen for ITV
Many viewers think that the recent adaptation of Vanity Fair plays fast and loose with Thackeray’s novel. But the writer was surprisingly modern.
Emily Brontë published Wuthering Heights in 1847, at a time when writing was largely the preserve of men.
BBC/PBS
Cast as some unworldly young woman who wrote a 19th-century romance, Emily Brontë is more powerful and relevant than she is given credit for.
Sarah Lancashire (left) stars in the Channel 4 drama, Kiri.
Channel 4
A new Channel 4 drama has drawn criticism from social workers for its representation of the profession.
Stranger Things.
Netflix
Stranger Things is re-writing the ‘reference’ book on homage and intertextuality.
(Paul Schiraldi/HBO)
“Gritty,” “authentic” are words of praise often used for TV director David Simon: No less so with The Deuce, his new series about the rise of the porn industry in New York City in the 1970s.
BBC
BBC sitcom Fleabag rewrites the rules on depicting women in drama, freeing the female character from the mindless stereotyping that has straitjacketed women for so long.
Happy Valley’s Nicola Shindler, Siobhan Finneran, Sarah Lancashire and Con O'Neill with the award for Best Drama.
Ian West/PA Wire
Police drama Happy Valley beat off the challenge of high-profile streamed dramas to carry off the big prize.
BBC
The problems and how we might fix them.
Tom Hardy in Taboo.
Scott Free Prods/Robert Viglasky
The East India Company offered men untold travel and riches – if they survived.
Time for another viewing?
Pere Ubu
Dennis Potter’s 1986 story of a writer in need of psychological renewal rewrote the TV drama rulebook.