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Press Gang (1989)
8.1/10on IMDb
First aired
Moffat wrote all 43 episodes of this children's comedy-drama about students running a junior newspaper, which makes it the clearest place to see where his habits began: rapid-fire bickering, a romance built on things left unsaid, and episodes that play games with dream sequences and flashbacks. Julia Sawalha's ferocious editor Lynda Day and Dexter Fletcher's wisecracking Spike are the template for many later Moffat couples.
It won the BAFTA for Best Children's Programme in 1991, and despite airing as children's TV it handles abuse and a drug death with real weight. Expect early-1990s production values; the scripts carry it.
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Joking Apart (1993)
8.2/10on IMDb
First aired
A romantic comedy that runs backwards. Moffat drew on his own separation, and the early episodes cut between Mark and Becky falling in love and the end of their marriage, so the jokes keep landing on what you already know is coming. Moffat himself called it a romantic comedy backwards because it ends with the couple unhappy.
Some episodes turn into full ensemble farces around their friends Robert and Tracy, intricate machines that point straight to Coupling. Only twelve episodes went out on BBC Two between 1993 and 1995, poorly scheduled and little watched, yet it won the Bronze Rose of Montreux. The most underseen series here, and worth tracking down.
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Chalk (1997)
6.9/10on IMDb
First aired
The honest outlier. Moffat's school sitcom sets its teachers' lounge disasters at Galfast High, a fictional comprehensive school, with David Bamber's deputy head Eric Slatt at the center and Nicola Walker as English teacher Suzy Travis.
Critics were unkind during its 1997 BBC One run and comparisons with Fawlty Towers did it no favors: the farce is broader and the puzzle-box instinct mostly absent. Watch it as a completist, for the way one bad day spirals out of control, rather than as a starting point. Only the first of its two series has reached DVD.
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Coupling (2000)
8.5/10on IMDb
First aired
The one to start with after Sherlock if you want Moffat's comedy at full power. Six friends dissect dating in London, and Moffat, inspired by his relationship with producer Sue Vertue, wrote all 28 episodes.
What lifts it above a standard roommate sitcom is the structure. Split runs two breakup aftermaths side by side in split screen, Nine and a Half Minutes replays the same stretch in a bar from three viewpoints, and The Girl with Two Breasts plays half its running time in Hebrew. It was named best TV comedy at the 2003 British Comedy Awards. The fourth series, on BBC Three, brings in a new face and loses some spark, and the short-lived American remake is best skipped.
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Jekyll (2007)
8.0/10on IMDb
First aired
The bridge between the sitcom years and Sherlock, and the first sketch of the Moffat thriller. Rather than adapt Stevenson, the six episodes act as a sequel to the novella: James Nesbitt plays Tom Jackman, a modern descendant of Jekyll learning to share his body with a Hyde of his own, while a shadowy biotech firm closes in.
Nesbitt's switches between the two are the main event and earned him a Golden Globe nomination. The conspiracy gets busy in the back half, but the reveals land, and at six hours from its 2007 BBC One run it makes an easy weekend binge.
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Sherlock (2010)
9.0/10on IMDb
First aired
Co-created with Mark Gatiss, this is the obvious gateway: Benedict Cumberbatch's Holmes and Martin Freeman's Watson in present-day London, with text messages and clues shown on screen rather than cut away to a phone. Each of the 13 feature-length episodes is a puzzle box in the purest sense, and Moffat's A Scandal in Belgravia won him a BAFTA Craft award for writing.
The Victorian special, The Abominable Bride, is a treat for structure fans. Fair warning: the fourth and final series had a mixed reception, with the cleverness starting to outrun the mysteries, so treat it as an epilogue rather than the peak.
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Doctor Who (2005)
8.5/10on IMDb
First aired
Showrunner years: 2010 to 2017, with Matt Smith and Peter Capaldi
Where Russell T Davies built the revival around big emotions, Moffat ran it as a fairy tale with a timer: arcs seeded episodes in advance, paradoxes and payoffs that only made full sense at a series finale. Matt Smith's Eleventh Doctor gets the storybook version; Peter Capaldi's Twelfth gets darker, more intimate stories.
The 50th anniversary special, The Day of the Doctor, set a Guinness World Record as the largest simulcast of a TV drama. The arcs can get tangled enough to need a diagram, so start with Smith's first series in 2010 if the mythology is new to you.
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Dracula (2020)
6.8/10on IMDb
First aired
Moffat and Gatiss again, this time with three feature-length episodes shown on BBC One over three consecutive nights from New Year's Day 2020. Claes Bang plays the Count with obvious relish, and Dolly Wells's skeptical nun, Sister Agatha Van Helsing, turns their scenes into a duel of wits.
The shape is the clever part: each episode works differently, and the third makes a bold leap in time and setting that rewrites the rules of the story. Gothic horror rather than cozy mystery, so less of a family watch than Sherlock.
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The Time Traveler's Wife (2022)
7.6/10on IMDb
First aired
On paper, perfect Moffat material: Audrey Niffenegger's novel, which he had already borrowed from for Doctor Who, adapted for HBO with Rose Leslie and Theo James as Clare and Henry, a couple whose marriage keeps colliding with his involuntary time travel. The paradox bookkeeping is meticulous.
In practice this is the riskiest pick for fans. Critics were mixed, some finding the conceit smothered the romance, and HBO canceled it in 2022 after one six-episode season, so that single season is all there is. Worth it for the craftsmanship of the timeline, with expectations set.
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Inside Man (2022)
6.7/10on IMDb
First aired
Four tight hours, first shown on BBC One in September 2022, built from three strands: a prisoner on death row in the US, a vicar in a quiet English town and a math teacher trapped in a cellar. Watching them converge is the puzzle, and the series runs on the idea that anyone could become a murderer given a good reason and a bad day.
Stanley Tucci plays the prisoner, Jefferson Grieff, with dry precision, and David Tennant's vicar reunites him with Moffat after Doctor Who. The plotting asks for a few leaps of faith, but the pull from one episode to the next is relentless.
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Douglas Is Cancelled (2024)
7.2/10on IMDb
First aired
Moffat's sharpest comedy since Coupling, in four episodes on ITV1 in 2024. Hugh Bonneville plays Douglas, a respected news anchor whose life unravels when he is accused on social media of making a sexist joke at a wedding, with Karen Gillan as his co-anchor Madeline and Alex Kingston as his wife, Sheila.
The pleasure is in watching each episode shift your sympathies and your sense of what actually happened. The third, almost claustrophobic in its intensity, is the most excruciating hour here, mostly in a good way. Bonneville's hapless bluster carries the cringe, and it doubles as a reunion with two of Moffat's Doctor Who stars.
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