Items21The creator’s order
  1. 1Unit One (2000)Unit One (2000) 8.1/10 on IMDbFirst aired Oct 1, 2000Denmark, Best Drama Series 2002. Long before Nordic noir had a name, this was the Danish crime show that set the template. An elite mobile police unit travels around the country helping local forces with their worst cases, so every story drops you into a different town. Charlotte Fich leads, and a…0
  2. 2Berlin, Berlin (2002)Berlin, Berlin (2002) 7.3/10 on IMDbFirst aired Mar 5, 2002Germany, Best Comedy Series 2004. A sweet, scrappy early-2000s comedy about Lolle, who follows her boyfriend to Berlin, finds out he has cheated and decides to stay anyway, moving in with her cousin Sven. Felicitas Woll carries it with real charm, and the city itself is half the appeal: this is…0
  3. 3The Newsroom (1996)The Newsroom (1996) 8.0/10 on IMDbFirst aired Oct 21, 1996Canada, Best Comedy Series 2005. Not the Aaron Sorkin drama: this is Ken Finkleman's acid Canadian satire, which got there first. Finkleman created it and stars as George Findlay, the vain, image-obsessed executive producer of a never-named TV station's nightly newscast, and the show skewers…0
  4. 4Life on Mars (2006)Life on Mars (2006) 8.3/10 on IMDbFirst aired Jan 9, 2006United Kingdom, Best Drama Series 2006 and again in 2008. Sam Tyler, a modern Manchester detective, is hit by a car and wakes up in 1973, working under the gloriously unreconstructed DCI Gene Hunt. John Simm plays the confusion straight, Philip Glenister steals every scene, and the mystery of…0
  5. 5The Street (2006)The Street (2006) 8.3/10 on IMDbFirst aired Apr 13, 2006United Kingdom, Best Drama Series 2007 and again in 2010. Jimmy McGovern's drama visits the residents of one ordinary, unnamed Manchester street, and turns their small crises, debts, affairs and grudges into something close to tragedy. The cast is extraordinary, with Timothy Spall, Jim Broadbent,…0
  6. 6The Returned (2012)The Returned (2012) 8.0/10 on IMDbFirst aired Nov 26, 2012France, Best Drama Series 2013. In a quiet Alpine town beneath a huge dam, the dead start walking home, not as zombies but as themselves, expecting dinner and their old bedrooms. The Returned is less a horror show than a slow, eerie study of grief, and it is the most beautiful-looking series here.…0
  7. 7Moone Boy (2012)Moone Boy (2012) 8.1/10 on IMDbFirst aired Sep 14, 2012Ireland and the United Kingdom, Best Comedy Series 2013. Chris O'Dowd's warmest work: he created and co-wrote this comedy and plays Seán Murphy, the imaginary friend of 12-year-old Martin Moone. Martin grows up in Boyle, County Roscommon, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, in a chaotic family…0
  8. 8Utopia (2013)Utopia (2013) 8.4/10 on IMDbFirst aired Jan 15, 2013United Kingdom, Best Drama Series 2014. Four strangers who met online get hold of the manuscript of a cult graphic novel, and suddenly a secret organization wants them dead. Dennis Kelly's thriller is violent, blackly funny and shot in saturated yellows and greens that still look like nothing else…0
  9. 9Spiral (2005)Spiral (2005) 8.5/10 on IMDbFirst aired Dec 13, 2005France, Best Drama Series 2015. The great French police drama, and a proper long haul: eight seasons from 2005 to 2020. It opens with the body of a young woman found on a Paris dump and follows detectives, prosecutors, judges and defense lawyers as the case spreads into corruption. What sets…0
  10. 10Deutschland (2015)Deutschland (2015) 8.0/10 on IMDbFirst aired Jun 17, 2015Deutschland 83, the first season, Germany, Best Drama Series 2016. Martin Rauch, a 24-year-old East German border guard, is sent west as a Stasi spy inside the West German army in 1983, at one of the tensest moments of the Cold War. Jonas Nay plays him as a frightened kid in over his head, and a…0