Fire-breathing fantasy, hot drama in the kitchen, a tale of five sisters, the wide open plain – and delicious Sicilian excess
1. Sherwood
BBC One
James Graham’s crime drama, inspired by true events. Set in a Nottinghamshire community still coated in bad blood from the 1980s miners’ strike, it boasted a brilliant cast, including David Morrissey, Lesley Manville and Adeel Akhtar. While there were other true crime-derived successes this year, including Black Bird (Apple TV+), Sherwood fused the personal, political and criminal to devastating effect.
2. The Newsreader
BBC Two
Starring Anna Torv and Sam Reid, Michael Lucas’s quasi-workplace soap about a 1980s Australian TV network hooked on to real-life events, but elsewhere bit deep into sexism, mental fragility and more. Sometimes 80s-set dramas lose their way in a cliched blizzard of Poison perfume and shoulder pads. Not this time.
