Whether you have a satellite dish on your wall and the full Sky package or use the streaming platform Now to access your content, there is a wealth of box sets here.
Beyond its well-known live sport and movies offering, Sky is especially good for British TV fans who want exclusive access to HBO shows such as The Last of Us, Succession and House of the Dragon and other big-name buy-ins from premium cable providers in the US. Alongside the American acquisitions, Sky is beginning to build a good back catalogue of original drama and comedy, including shows such as Then You Run and Dreamland.
The Now entertainment pass is probably the most cost-effective way to access the majority of the best TV content on Sky, but it is still not cheap when compared with other streaming services — so you will want to find the best content fast.
Our rolling list of the top 40 shows on Sky and Now includes the very best of what’s new on the service as well as a deep dive into the archives with recommendations of great drama, comedy and documentaries that we believe are worth watching. We will be updating the list with new content regularly — but don’t forget to leave your favourite Sky/Now shows in the comments below.
Love TV? Discover the best shows on Netflix, the best Prime Video TV shows, the best Disney+ shows , the best Apple TV+ shows, the best shows on BBC iPlayer , the best shows on Sky and Now, the best shows on ITVX, the best shows on Channel 4 streaming, the best shows on Paramount+ and our favourite hidden gem TV shows. Don’t forget to check our critics’ choices to what to watch this week, the best shows of 2024 so far and browse our comprehensive TV guide.
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New for 2024
Elsbeth
Crime comedy, one season, 2024
Those who liked the hit shows The Good Wife and The Good Fight will enjoy this fun spin-off comedy with the kooky redhead lawyer Elsbeth Tascioni, played expertly by Carrie Preston, getting her time in the spotlight. Part police procedural drama, part light-hearted comedy, this show catches up with the character as she swaps her successful legal career in Chicago for a new investigative role in New York City. She’s enamoured by Times Square and the Empire State Building but the NYPD aren’t exactly delighted by her presence, with the police captain (the excellent Wendell Pierce) seeing her as a nuisance. It’s charming, quirky and packed with guest stars, reminiscent of Only Murders In The Building and Poker Face. Preston is a delight and her old True Blood colleague Stephen Moyer her first adversary.
Stax — Soulsville USA
Music documentary, one season, 2024
Helmed by the brilliant African-American director-interviewer Jamila Wignot, this four-part chronicle of the great American soul record label is so much more than your standard music documentary. Wignot knows that the story of Stax Records is also the story of US civil rights in the Sixties and Seventies, but her secret weapon is that she’s a true fan, which means she has sourced rare, unseen footage of Isaac Hayes, Otis Redding and Booker T & the MG’s. More importantly, her interviewees trust her, so they open up, telling her stories you haven’t heard. The result is a rise-and-fall narrative that is utterly joyous and profoundly heartbreaking.
Ibiza Narcos
Documentary, three seasons, 2021-
The third instalment of the Bafta award-winning series (Liverpool Narcos and Dublin Narcos are also available) explores how the tiny Mediterranean island of Ibiza became one of the world’s most vibrant party destinations, fuelled by a dangerous and lucrative drug trade. The three-part series charts the rise and fall of some of the most notorious smugglers and dealers who have plied their trade on the White Island. The story begins with Ibiza as a pivotal destination on the hippy trail in the 1960s and 70s, where idealistic hedonism exploded into something more sinister with the arrival of the European gangs and characters such as “El Sapo”, the Spanish boss of “the biggest group for drug distribution in Ibiza”.
House of the Dragon
Fantasy drama, two seasons, 2022-
Fans of Game of Thrones and its source material — George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series of novels — have a voracious appetite for new material. The opening episode of the first series of this prequel was the most-watched premiere in HBO history — but even so there was a lingering sense that House of the Dragon, set nearly 170 years before the original show, was a little slow to kick in, compromised by its necessary time-skips. The don’t-bore-us brigade should be happier with this second series, which refuses to rush its storytelling while bringing its narrative up to the Targaryen civil war. With Aegon II (Tom Glynn-Carney) on the Iron Throne, the feud between Rhaenyra Targaryen (Emma D’Arcy) and Alicent Hightower (Olivia Cooke) deepens, while Matt Smith’s Daemon Targaryen orchestrates bloody intrigues. It’s cold, hard world-building in an unforgiving landscape, full of horror. All the dragons are here.
The King
Crime drama, two seasons, 2022-
Fans of the actor Luca Zingaretti, the star of the Italian detective drama Inspector Montalbano, might have found his role in The King (Il Re) something of a shock. Shaking off his crime-fighting police officer aura, Zingaretti took on the role of the corrupt prison warder Bruno Testori, ruling over the decrepit San Michele jail with his own curious understanding of the law. However, as this second series begins, Testori’s dismal fiefdom is under threat after the chaos that ended season one. He is on the wrong side of the bars and the authorities are promising to “re-establish the rule of law”. But they are going to need luck. It might be too bleak for Montalbano aficionados, but those who enjoyed The Shield, Prison Break or possibly even HBO’s penitential horror show Oz may find themselves happy to spend some time between San Michele’s dank walls.
The Tattooist Of Auschwitz
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Historical drama, one season, 2024
In Melbourne in the early 2000s Lali Sokolov (Harvey Keitel) shares his memories of events 60 years earlier with a retired social worker and rookie writer, Heather Morris (Melanie Lynskey). In this six-part adaptation of Morris’s global bestseller, their encounters are interwoven with flashbacks to the wartime experiences of young Lali (Jonah Hauer-King), a Slovakian Jew. In part one he is deported from Bratislava to Auschwitz, where the man charged with tattooing new arrivals’ identity numbers sees something in him and makes Lali his apprentice. While this gives him “a chance to survive”, it’s not wholly positive, as he now occupies a grey area between SS guards and inmates, and is assigned a bullying minder. It’s while doing his job that he first meets Gita (Anna Prochniak), and it’s their love story that will dominate the rest of the series.
The Regime
Satirical drama, one season, 2024-
It feels improbable that 2024 will throw out any more bizarre and embarrassing TV sights than Kate Winslet belting out a wildly off-key version of Chicago’s soft-rock ballad If You Leave Me Now. In The Regime she plays the middle-European autocrat Elena Vernham: a capricious, paranoid germophobe who rules unsteadily over a vast palace of viperous politicians and sycophants, as well as her turbulent country. As her grasp on reality wobbles like her singing voice, she comes to rely on her new humidity tester: the disgraced soldier Herbert Zubak (Matthias Schoenaerts). Fans of Armando Iannucci’s The Death of Stalin will recognise the absurdist tone; Succession aficionados will relish the brutal wit and vicious power plays. The supporting cast (Andrea Riseborough, Pippa Haywood, Henry Goodman and, later, Hugh Grant) give the satire the hard sell,
yet it’s Winslet’s compelling grotesque who rules.
Mary & George
Historical drama, one season, 2024
In 2017 the life of King James VI of Scotland and I of England and Ireland was given a going-over in Benjamin Woolley’s book The King’s Assassin. Adapted by DC Moore into a strikingly profane script, the seven barely lit episodes of steamy drama star Julianne Moore as prototypical tiger mum Mary Villiers. She has heard rumours of her new monarch’s fondness for male company and, observing her second son’s boy band looks, she becomes determined to throw his hat into the royal ring. It’s a stretch for the 63-year-old to play 22, but as boy George (Nicholas Galitzine) grows into a young man, the elegant-boned Moore makes more sense in the role. “If I were a man and looked like you I would rule the f***ing planet,” she tells her son, before sending him to the French court to learn how to comport himself at an orgy.
Curb Your Enthusiasm
Comedy, 12 seasons, 2000-2024
Twenty-four years after its debut, Larry David’s acclaimed sitcom begins a 12th and final series. There was a hiatus between 2011 and 2017 when his self-centred blunderer seemed to have been put to rest, yet eventually returned. This time it looks as if the end really is nigh, as the creator and star (now 76) has said he can’t wait to “shed this ‘Larry David’ persona and become the kind, caring, considerate human being I was until I got derailed”. In Atlanta for a party in the opener, Larry gets caught up in a farcical scenario linked to politics — this is the macropolitics of parties and elections that the show usually avoids, not the micropolitics of identity, culture and language that it specialises in. His roommate Leon (JB Smoove) visits fan favourite Auntie Rae (Ellia English).
True Detective: Night Country
Drama, four seasons, 2014-
It feels as if there is a lot riding on this fourth series of True Detective: since its striking debut series in 2014, starring Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey, the occult-tinged crime anthology has come with a sense of diminishing returns. If anyone could reverse that process it is Jodie Foster, who stars as Detective Liz Danvers, working in the small Alaskan town of Ennis. When a polar research station is left in a Mary Celeste-style state of abandonment, Danvers and her colleague Evangeline Navarro (Kali Reis) quickly connect the mass disappearance to a disturbing cold case. While the frozen setting triggers memories of thrillers Fortitude and Midnight Sun, there are also echoes of Stranger Things and David Lynch’s Blue Velvet. Polar bears, twisted family dynamics, Fiona Shaw as an inscrutable visionary: it’s a chilling return to form, skilfully suggesting something very nasty lies beneath the ice.
Zuckerberg — King Of The Metaverse
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Documentary, one season, 2024-
Marking the imminent 20th anniversary of Facebook’s launch in 2004, this first-rate extended documentary draws on archive interviews with Mark Zuckerberg and contributions from former Facebook executives. Broadly chronological, it charts almost unmarred growth and success across the social media platform’s first decade. But 2016 was a turning point: the fact that it was a helpful tool in Donald Trump’s election victory (and for other populists and authoritarians) prompted widespread criticism and internal agonising, and was followed by an outcry over mishandling of users’ data. The questions raised then are still pertinent, the film suggests: who at Meta “keeps Mark Zuckerberg in check?” and who asks him if his decisions “are good for the world”?
Julia
Comedy drama, two seasons, 2022–
This is a drama in which Sarah Lancashire goes up against Meryl Streep — and in playing a patrician American, typecasting for La Streep but a tough ask if your previous role was as a Yorkshire cop. What’s more, when Streep played the TV chef Julia Child in Julie & Julia, she shared star billing with Amy Adams; whereas Lancashire’s Julia — tall, posh and enthusiastic, a bit like a Yankee Miranda — dominates HBO’s bio-drama. Set in the early 1960s, the first series had our heroine dealing with publishers and telly folk when readying her debut cookbook and making her show about French cuisine. Now she’s famous and has to resist pressures to lower her standards. Series two begins in France — she and her husband (David Hyde Pierce) have a house there — where there’s tension with her co-writer (Isabella Rossellini) about their follow-up book.
Best drama
The White Lotus
Drama, two seasons, 2021-
Mike White’s anthology series offers a biting, satirical look at the lives of the rich as they holiday. Now with two seasons, the first is set in a resort in Hawaii and the second in Sicily. Although the destination may change each time, this exceptionally well-written comedy drama cleverly intertwines the personal and professional lives of the holidaymakers and locals to create unexpected twists and turns as an overarching mystery is uncovered in each season.
The Last of Us
Drama, one season, 2023-
A brilliant, raw zombie epic based on a video game, this series shows what happens when a fungus evolves and takes over humans. Twenty years after the outbreak, Joel (Pedro Pascal) must smuggle the feisty teenager Ellie (played by the outstanding Bella Ramsey) across zombie-infested country. Craig Mazin, the co-creator of the series and the genius behind the nuclear disaster drama Chernobyl, goes beyond the blood and gore of the usual zombie drama to create something with real heart. The third episode of the series, a love story between a doomsday prepper and an intruder, is one of the best 80 minutes of television you will ever see. A must-watch series.
Succession
Drama, four seasons, 2018-23
One of the most celebrated series of the modern era, Succession, now complete, offers the compellingly dark and twisted story of the Roy family — centring on the grown-up children’s efforts to take control of their father’s multinational media empire. Starring Brian Cox as the patriarch Logan and with an exceptional cast that includes Sarah Snook, Jeremy Strong and Kieran Culkin, this at times incredibly funny series from the pen of the Peep Show co-creator Jesse Armstrong is without doubt unmissable television of the very highest order.
Then You Run
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Thriller, one season, 2023-
Don’t be misled by the nightmarish opening scenes. The strength of Ben Chanan’s European crime thriller lies in the central performances of Leah McNamara, Yasmin Monet Prince, Vivian Oparah and Isidora Fairhurst as four young London friends whose impromptu summer holiday in a seedy part of Rotterdam rapidly descends into a cat-and-mouse chase across Europe, pursued by an inept group of Irish gangsters. Overambitious, messy, highly stylised and sometimes nasty, Then You Run is by no means perfect, but there is plenty of invention on screen and whenever our gritty quartet are in view it is an absolute thrill and a hoot.
Poker Face
Crime drama, one season, 2023-
Much has been made of the obvious homage to Columbo in the excellent new murder-mystery series from Rian Johnson (Knives Out), from the blocky yellow font of the opening credits and the shambling, apparently disorganised lead character (Natasha Lyonne) to the pleasing “we-know-whodunnit” format that sees the characters several steps behind the viewer. But there’s also a touch of The Incredible Hulk. Like Dr Bruce Banner, Lyonne’s fugitive character, Charlie, has a special, if not entirely supernatural, power and uses it to right injustice, episode by episode in a modern (but not too modern) take on the TV detective genre. Lyonne is dazzling, roguish and clever. Her many television antecedents will be proud.
Warrior
Drama, three seasons, 2019-
There is a special kind of pleasure to be had in watching a show develop from merely “OK” to “great” and Jonathan Tropper’s action-packed period crime drama has done just that. Set during the Chinatown gang wars of 1870s San Francisco, and based on an original story outline by the martial arts icon Bruce Lee, Warrior began as little more than a kung-fu version of Deadwood. However, over three seasons it has blossomed into a glorious mix of narrative suspense, deep emotional drama and bone-crunching fight sequences. There is even some slyly subversive political commentary hidden in the mix.
Mare of Easttown
Drama, one season, 2021-
She may be from Reading, but Kate Winslet shone as a troubled small-town American cop in this moreish detective drama. It is a proper whodunnit with a gruesome murder in a forgotten corner of Pennsylvania, the grim moments offset by humour and touching relationships. Its first episode drew a bigger audience on Sky than Game of Thrones.
Chernobyl
Drama, one season, 2019
Created and written by Craig Mazin (who would find further success with The Last of Us), this chilling drama follows the events of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986 from several perspectives. Depicting some of the lesser-told stories from the catastrophe, including the response of firefighters and miners alongside the response of politicians and bureaucrats, the drama — which stars Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgard, Emily Watson and Paul Ritter among a wonderful ensemble cast — quite rightfully took home a sack of Emmys and Golden Globes.
The Knick
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Medical period drama, two seasons, 2014-2015
While we wait for the delightful Monsieur Spade to arrive on these shores (it’s Clive Owen as Dashiell Hammett’s detective, living out his retirement in the south of France), you can bide your time by revisiting Steven Soderbergh’s historical medical drama from 2014-15. Owen (Oscar-nominated for his role in the film Closer) gives one of his finest performances as morphine-addicted chief surgeon Dr Thackery, but the show — meticulous, gripping and gory — is also blessed with Eve Hewson (daughter of the U2 lead singer Bono), who is compelling as a West Virginia nurse embroiled in Thackery’s collapsing opiated world.
The Leftovers
Drama, three seasons, 2014–17
Despite having Lost’s Damon Lindelof at the helm and an impressive cast including Justin Theroux, Liv Tyler and Christopher Eccleston, HBO’s exceptional supernatural drama doesn’t have the profile it perhaps deserves in the UK. Based on the co-showrunner Tom Perrotta’s novel, we are introduced to a world three years after a mysterious incident caused 2 per cent of the global population to disappear. The story follows grieving families as they try to cope in a world irrevocably changed by this “sudden departure” and they struggle to maintain some sort of normality as cults and conspiracy theories run rampant. A rare example of a show with an intriguing premise that gets better across its three seasons.
Billions
Drama, seven seasons, 2017-23
What do you get when a billionaire hedge fund manager engages in a tense game of cat and mouse with a US attorney determined to bring him down? Well, the answer is the addictively tense Billions. Starring Damian Lewis as Bobby “Axel” Axelrod, an unorthodox money man who doesn’t always play by the rules, and Paul Giamatti as Chuck Rhoades, the US attorney for the southern district of New York. Across seven glorious seasons this show explores the personal and professional lives of the pair while the power balance between them makes sudden and unexpected shifts.
Band of Brothers
Drama, one season, 2001
Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks, two of the legends of modern cinema, have seemingly effortlessly transferred their skills to the small screen, creating one of the most powerful and acclaimed depictions of the Second World War. Based on the book by Stephen E Ambrose, the emotionally charged and at times deeply troubling HBO series follows the fortunes of Easy Company, the 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division, from training to active service across Europe. Based on first-hand accounts of veterans who served during the conflict, the show benefits from a large ensemble cast including Damian Lewis, David Schwimmer and Colin Hanks.
Big Little Lies
Drama, two seasons, 2017-19
A multi-award-winning mystery drama, Big Little Lies has a compelling story and an A-list cast at the top of their games. Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Laura Dern, Shailene Woodley and Zoë Kravitz star in a show in which a seemingly perfect community in the affluent town of Monterey, California, is rocked by the death of a resident. Exploring friendship, toxic relationships and what really goes on behind the gates of the perfectly manicured mansions lining the coast, this powerful and intriguing show will have you hooked.
The Wire
Drama, five seasons, 2002-08
Over five series, this Baltimore-based show tackles everything from drug policy to government corruption — and yet it never feels too heavy. It made stars of Idris Elba, Dominic West and Michael B Jordan and didn’t shy away from exploring the best and worst in all its characters.
Gangs of London
Drama, two seasons, 2020-
This gripping, violent drama is Succession set on the gritty streets of London. It kicks off with the collapse of a crime syndicate after the murder of the kingpin. What follows is a battle for control, featuring Joe Cole as the troubled man set on avenging his drug-lord father and Sope Dirisu as an undercover police officer. There’s Game of Thrones-style savagery, including burning bodies hanging from skyscrapers and vicious bar brawls.
The Gilded Age
Period drama, two seasons, 2021-
Julian Fellowes’ “American Downton” returns with a season premiere that largely serves to remind us of its key dynamic. In 1880s Manhattan, the old elite are at war with rich arrivistes, a conflict embodied in the friction between the upper-crust sisters Agnes (Christine Baranski) and Ada (Cynthia Nixon) and their neighbours, the tycoon George (Morgan Spector) and his social-climber wife Bertha (Carrie Coon). All that’s changed is that opera houses have joined balls and parties as arenas for the rival forces’ battles. But some other developments in series two are signalled. Peggy (Renée Benton), the would-be writer, is set to become an activist in the black community. And it looks as if there will be more airtime for the servants, moving the drama closer in feel to Downton Abbey by giving it an upstairs-downstairs dynamic.
Boardwalk Empire
Drama, five seasons, 2010-14
A blockbuster Prohibition-era drama with action, glamour and sleaze. What more could you want? Steve Buscemi is at the heart of the action as Nucky Thompson, an Atlantic City Mob boss on a mission to keep the city on the booze. Martin Scorsese is an executive producer.
Best comedy
The Righteous Gemstones
Comedy, three seasons, 2019
Led by a towering performance from John Goodman as Eli Gemstone, the head of a mega-church empire, this smart satire with some welcome slices of silliness is certainly unholy. In a set-up reminiscent of Succession, the Gemstones are so rich they have three private jets called the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Eli’s three children, each more incompetent than the last, are battling it out for control of the enterprise. As feuds and dodgy dealings threaten to destroy everything they have built, this comedy delivers laughs of biblical proportions.
Smothered
Comedy, one season, 2023-
Romantic comedy can be tricky to pull off in an age when television would have us believe that drug-fueled promiscuity is the norm, but this new sitcom from Monica Heisey (Schitt’s Creek) is the real deal. The title gives no clue as to its nimble charms and perfect plotting — Heisey has assembled a delightful cast that includes Danielle Vitalis and Jon Pointing as well as Aisling Bea and Blair Underwood.
Breeders
Comedy, three seasons, 2020-
There’s no shortage of warts-and-all parenting comedies in the modern television catalogue, perhaps best illustrated by the sublime Motherland. However, Breeders is a show that has taken family life and allowed its creators (the star Martin Freeman and comedy supremos Chris Addison and Simon Blackwell) to free themselves from the traditional constraints of a sitcom. Starring Freeman and Daisy Haggard as parents barely surviving a world of work, children and extended family, this dark and pleasingly satirical show takes the viewer deep into a chaotic and at times very angry world. You really shouldn’t like anyone in it, but somehow you can’t help but feel their pain.
Dreamland
Comedy, one season, 2023-
Set in sunny Margate and shot in seaside-postcard pastels, this new comedy makes a breezy first impression at odds with its stormy family dynamics. Based on Sharon Horgan’s Bafta-winning short film from 2017, Dreamland unpicks the complex relationships between four sisters: the catalytic agent of chaos Mel (Lily Allen in her television acting debut); Freema Agyeman’s Trish, desperately hoping her third child will be a daughter; the journalist Clare (Gabby Best), tired of reporting on giant rabbits; and Leila, played by Aimee-Ffion Edwards. Additional eccentricity comes courtesy of Frances Barber, Kiell Smith-Bynoe and Sheila Reid. As with anything associated with Horgan (her company, Merman, produces, although the writer Emma Jane Unsworth is the showrunner), there’s darkness running through Dreamland like a stick of especially bitter rock. Wish you were here? You probably should.
Code 404
Comedy, three seasons, 2020-
It’s not a spoiler to reveal that this cop show kills off its lead in the first episode. That’s because, thanks to technology, DI Major (Daniel Mays) is not actually dead. He is resurrected by an AI insert and resumes his partnership with DI Carver (Stephen Graham). Essentially a comedic version of Robocop, with Graham as the straight man and May bringing the laughs. Oh, and in the period between DI Major’s death and his resurrection, Carver has shacked up with his wife — awkward.
I Hate Suzie
Comedy, two seasons, 2020-
Meet Suzie Pickles, a former teenage pop star who, after compromising photos of her are posted online, loses work, her husband and her agent. She’s played by Billie Piper, another former teenage pop star and creator of the series with Lucy Prebble. The show is a wild ride and it’s magnificent.
The Flight Attendant
Comedy, two seasons, 2020-
A whirlwind, heart-stopping crime comedy featuring Kaley Cuoco as an alcoholic cabin crew worker. In the first episode, she wakes to find a man she had picked up on a flight dead in bed with her. Then the FBI gets involved, and it quickly becomes a hot mess. Slick and entertaining, this is a binge-worthy show, held together by a terrific turn by Cuoco, the star of The Big Bang Theory hitting new heights.
Brassic
Comedy, five seasons, 2019-
One of Sky’s most successful comedies, Brassic tells the story of a group of young people living in the fictional northern town of Hawley. Starring Joe Gilgun, Michelle Keegan and Damien Molony as members of a group of petty criminals and disenfranchised young people, the genuinely funny show is also unafraid to explore more serious issues as the protagonists begin to dream bigger than the small world in which they are stuck.
Best sci-fi/ fantasy
Game of Thrones
Fantasy, eight seasons, 2011-19
It may not have concluded the way many wanted, but this epic series is one of the finest shows ever produced. Based on the fantasy book series A Song of Ice and Fire by George RR Martin, it became a global phenomenon, winning more than 300 awards including 59 Emmys. With more than 70 hours of sex, dragons and brutal politics, it certainly makes for an enjoyable revisit.
A Discovery of Witches
Fantasy, three seasons, 2018-22
Oxford is filled with witches and vampires in this charming adaptation of Deborah Harkness’s All Souls novels. Teresa Palmer stars as an academic (and witch) who is seduced by a biologist (and vampire), played by Matthew Goode. Sure, it’s fairly trashy, but the captivating pairing of Goode and Palmer makes this entertaining viewing.
Best documentaries
Love Has Won — The Cult Of Mother God
Documentary, one season, 2023-
Sky’s series chronicles the bizarre story of Amy Carlson, the leader of the Love Has Won cult. Initially building up a following on the internet, she mixed up conspiracy theories, outlandish spiritual teachings and therapeutic quackery, and was known to devotees as Mother God. Then she founded a commune, supported by online sessions and the selling of colloidal silver as a supposed remedy. Such was her followers’ devotion that when her health started to decline they saw it as a sign that she was taking on the pain of the world to save it — and her death in 2021 was viewed as her ascension to a higher realm. “Told through the eyes of Amy’s devotees” and using the cult’s own film footage, the three-parter opens by showing how Carlson went from being a McDonald’s manager to “Mother God”.
Cobain: Montage of Heck
Documentary, one-off, 2015
Although Kurt Cobain may be one of the most famous musicians of the modern age, the Nirvana frontman’s tragically short life is still shrouded in myth and mystery. This 2015 documentary from Brett Morgen uses previously unseen footage and unreleased recordings, sound collages and sketches to tell Cobain’s story. Although it’s impossible to separate Cobain from the legend, this documentary does a very good job of finding the child, the human, the father and the husband in a way that you won’t have seen before.
Predators
Documentary, one season, 2022
A compelling five-part nature series, narrated by Tom Hardy, that looks at five apex predators — polar bears, wild dogs, pumas, lions and cheetahs — and their fight for survival in the wild. Is the gravelly Hardy the heir to Attenborough?
Celebrating David Hockney
Documentary, one-off, 2023
After 45 years and more than 800 episodes, The South Bank Show came to an end with this four-part series that follows Melvyn Bragg and David Hockney as they discuss the artist’s life and work, his future and influences. Filmed over 12 months, this is an intimate and delightful portrait of one of our finest artists.
