Best on telly

From sweeping epics to domestic nightmares, the year in television didn't lack for big ideas or ways to rattle viewer expectations. Here, RUSSELL BAILLIE and RUSSELL BROWN offer their picks for the top 10 dramas, along with the best in local comedy and documentaries.

- 

SHOW OF THE YEAR

PLURIBUS Raging against the rapture

It arrived largely unheralded late in the year and at time of writing it still had episodes to screen.

But this sci-fi dramedy from Vince Gilligan, in which the end of the world involves everyone getting along and working together, feels like a perfectly disruptive fit for 2025. As the creator of Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul, Gilligan's leap into sci-fi isn't really a big one for a guy who started his television writing career on The X-Files, a series which had a global conspiracy backdrop. And this does too – or does it? - with its premise of a mysterious global virus that creates the psychological effect of turning the world's population into a kindly hive mind of happiness and cooperation.

That's except for a very few who don't survive and a few who are immune and do. Carol (Rhea Seehorn from Saul, who is terrific) not only didn't get the bug, but also doesn't get why this happy new world insists on waiting on her hand and foot. Fuelled by grief for what she's lost, and with a searing cynicism seemingly born out of writing bestselling romance novels for escapist readers, Carol makes it her mission to save the world from its new sense of optimism. So far, watching Carol get in over her head is as exciting as when Walter White got in over his head in Breaking Bad.

See it: Apple TV+

Now watch: Severance (Apple TV+), Lost (Disney+)

BEST OF THE REST

ADOLESCENCE Teenage kicks