At the end of a long (very, very long) year, all we want to do is switch our brains off, disengage from reality and escape to a fictional TV world. Luckily, there are some pretty good worlds to escape to this festive period. Here’s our pick of the best TV to binge over the holidays.
The Man in the High Castle (Amazon, available now)
Season two of Amazon’s hit Philip K Dick adaptation returns without showrunner Frank Spotnitz, and his absence is keenly felt. Despite that, season two hits the ground running as we meet the Man in the High Castle (played by Stephen Root, always a reliably great oddball). The show also dips more than just a toe into other realities, exploring our own world and hinting at others. The show’s alternate-period detail looks as fabulous as ever, and it continues to pick apart the idea that fascism – and warfare – is ever simply black and white.
The OA (Netflix, available now)
This is Netflix’s new original show, co-created by and starring Brit Marling. If you like your shows to be a bit trippy, with a hefty dose of fantasy/sci-fi/spirituality, then The OA is for you. Marling plays Prairie, a young blind woman who goes missing only to return with her sight restored, some mysterious scars, and a new name: The OA. The show delves deep into questions about the afterlife, as it becomes clear that Prairie/The OA has had a number of near-death experiences. Season one is only eight episodes long, so it’s an ideal mystery to binge over the Christmas break.
No Second Chance (Netflix, available now)
Harlan Coban’s hit mystery novel was – like another of his books, Tell No One – picked up by the French market. It was transplanted to Paris and turned into a six-part event series, which broke viewing records on the network that originally showed it. Now Netflix has picked it up, and you can enjoy it with English subtitles. The story centres around a doctor who is shot in a home invasion while her baby daughter get snatched. She sets out to get her daughter back – no matter what extreme lengths she has to go to.
Horace & Pete (Hulu, available now)
Louis CK’s hit web series has arrived on Hulu. Focusing on two cousins who run a family-owned bar, Louis CK has described it as a “tragedy” more than a comedy. It boasts the sort of cast you’d usually expect from HBO or Showtime – Louis CK and Steve Buscemi play Horace and Pete, with the likes of Edie Falco, Alan Alda and Jessica Lange rounding out the rest of the dysfunctional cast. Blackly funny with a lacerating take on current affairs and some seriously heavyweight performances, this is the sort of show you’ll want to brag about getting on board in the early days.
Sense8 (Netflix, 23 December)
It’s over a year since season one of Sense8 debuted on Netflix, and it’s back for a two-hour Christmas special (albeit minus one key cast member and one showrunner, with Lana Wachowski directing solo for the first time). This time some of the sensates are coming together in more than just mind, and villain Whispers is still hot on Will’s tail. The special embraces the Christmas theme wholeheartedly, and this is the perfect show to end 2016 on an optimistic note. Sense8 has always been about celebrating our similarities rather than letting our differences drive us apart, which is a message 2016 could really do with.
Trollhunters (Netflix, 23 December)
This animated series created by Guillermo del Toro is about a teenage boy who stumbles across a magical amulet that turns him into the trollhunter. He must protect the race of good trolls from the evil trolls who would destroy them – and mankind too, given the chance. The series is the result of a Dreamworks/Netflix collaboration, and the visuals are as cinematic as the voice cast, which includes Kelsey Grammer, Ron Perlman and the late Anton Yelchin as Jim, the titular trollhunter. This is one to binge with the whole family – or just on your own, if you’re still surfing that Stranger Things wave of nostalgia for plucky kids riding bikes.
Twin Peaks (Showtime, 26 December)
Showtime is showing season one and two of Twin Peaks ahead of the show’s long-awaited return in 2017. It’s a great chance to remind yourself of all the weirdness or to be baffled by it all for the first time. You can revisit the Log Lady and the Red Room, enjoy the buddy comedy of Cooper and Truman and try to remember what the hell was going on. Sure, the quality drops off in season two, but season one is extraordinary, and Twin Peaks on a bad day is still better than most other shows on their best day.
Doctor Who (BBC America, 25 December)/Sherlock (PBS Masterpiece, 1 January)
This is the time of year when two of Britain’s best-loved imports make an appearance. Sherlock is back, after last Christmas’ drugged-up, historical jaunt, and the Doctor is returning after a year off. The rest period seems to have done Doctor Who some good, as this year’s Christmas special has a lightness and sense of fun that had been missing from the show for some time, as the Doctor comes face-to-face with a bona fide superhero in New York City. Meanwhile, in Sherlock, the titular character has returned from his brief exile and is awaiting Moriarty’s posthumous move, while battling his own internal demons – plus a new villain, Toby Jones’ Culverton Smith.
