AP Bio stars Glenn Howerton from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and Patton Oswalt. It is a big, smart swing-for-the-fences sitcom about a down-and-out Harvard professor forced to teach biology to high-school students after an “incident”. Everyone in this is working at the peak of their abilities, and yet this is perennially overlooked, a recurrent theme in this list.

Now TV

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Bill Hader in Barry. Photograph: AP

Now that you have finally watched Breaking Bad (and, I’ll assume, Better Call Saul), make this your next port of call. Barry has the hackiest premise imaginable – a hitman (played by Bill Hader) wants to retrain as an actor – yet it is capable of drama that will clamp your throat shut. Best of all, it gets better as it goes along.

Various platforms

Ostensibly Ricky Gervais’s favourite police show, Sweden’s Before We Die is a less sombre affair than much Scandi fare. Hanna Svensson is a detective so uncompromising that she sends her own son to prison for dealing drugs. Can she protect an informant in over his head at the hands of a brutal crime family?

All 4

This deserves to be remembered as a lost classic. Champaign ILL has the best premise of any show ever – a rapper’s posse struggle to adjust to the normal world after the rapper dies – and two monumental central performances by Adam Pally and Sam Richardson. It’s a brilliant, dumb, goofy comedy that you might have missed because it aired on YouTube.

YouTube

Dead to Me should have been enormous. It stars Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini. It’s exec-produced by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay. It was nominated for an Emmy. And yet it passed people by. Perhaps the subject matter – a comedy about grieving widows – was too dark. But these are dark times, so give it a shot.

Netflix

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tim Robinson and Sam Richardson in Detroiters. Photograph: Comedy Central

I will assume that you’ve watched Netflix’s staggering sketch show I Think You Should Leave (if you haven’t, ignore this entire list and just watch that 30 times in a row), in which case you’re ready to watch Tim Robinson’s just-as-silly sitcom Detroiters. Ostensibly a show about the advertising industry, in truth, it’s just two adult men being idiots. Glorious.

Various platforms

Fred Armisen, Bill Hader and Seth Meyers’s series of spoof docs are made with such a tremendous amount of care that they should really be handled with padded gloves. Their parodies of Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Stop Making Sense and Original Cast Album: Company are as beautiful as they are funny, which is saying a lot.

Amazon Prime Video

Joe Swanberg’s improvised mumblecore Netflix anthology Easy operates at its own pace. An average episode will be about a pair of lightly monied Silver Lake residents who come into a period of minor marital difficulty and then quickly overcome it. It isn’t for everyone. But it’s beautifully observed and – especially in the case of the episodes with Marc Maron – tremendously well acted.

Netflix

A hilarious, obnoxious riff on talkshows, The Eric Andre Show often seems to come as a surprise to its own guests; notably James Van Der Beek, who finds himself confronted by a terrifying doppelganger. Seek out the Lauren Conrad episode, in which The Hills star runs from the studio after Andre starts to lick his own vomit.

All 4

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Giri/Haji. Photograph: Luke Varley/BBC/Sister Pictures

Probably the most overlooked series of the last year, Giri/Haji is a tough sell; it’s a British detective show that contains long stretches of subtitled, Japanese dialogue and has an interpretive ballet as a climax. But beneath those surface obstacles it is a drama of impossible depth. Now that Parasite has softened everyone up to the idea of subtitles, maybe it will get the chance it deserves.

BBC iPlayer

It is bizarre that people aren’t more excited about Good Girls. It is a comedy thriller starring Christina Hendricks, Retta and Mae Whitman. It’s about a bunch of mums who turn to a life of violent crime. It’s as funny as it is gripping. It should be huge, but it isn’t. Maybe you binging the lot might fix this.

Netflix

Remember Hanna? It was a film by Joe Wright? It came out in 2011? It had a Chemical Brothers soundtrack? It was OK, then it finished, and then you never thought about it again. But then it became a much better series that got lost in a sea of TV. That is a shame, because the story of a young assassin being hunted by the authorities fits television far more snugly than film.

Amazon Prime Video

A show that nobody watched because it was on Facebook, Human Discoveries is a cartoon about cavemen and women slowly learning about what it is to be human. It has an astonishing voice cast – featuring Zac Efron, Anna Kendrick, Lisa Kudrow and Ben Schwartz – and a broader-than-you’d expect emotional range for a dumb caveman cartoon.

Facebook Watch

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Joe Pera Talks With You.

If you are seeking something truly soothing, Joe Pera Talks With You is as lilting and gentle as comedy gets. A soft-spoken innocent who doesn’t want to get in your way, Pera guides you through subjects such as trees and rocks and the Who’s Baba O’Riley. This is comedy as self-care.

All 4

The Leftovers is, on paper, the last thing you will want to watch at the moment: a show about a world struggling to come to terms with enormous grief in the wake of a rapture-like event. But the second and third seasons harness the absurdity of the situation, and you are left with something genuinely powerful and profound.

Various platforms

Here’s my theory: had it been on Netflix, Liar would have been globally buzzed-about. But as it’s on ITV (series two is on the ITV Hub), its outrageously twisty plot, centred on a rape allegation, was ignored by the streamerati. It’s by Harry and Jack Williams, and marks the first stage of a Ioan Gruffudd comeback. It deserves your attention.

BritBox

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Looking for Alaska. Photograph: Alfonso Bresciani/BBC/Paramount Television/Hulu

An adaptation of John Green’s powerhouse YA novel, Looking for Alaska is the closest thing to Dawson’s Creek that you will find on TV today. A bunch of gleaming teens mope about Alabama in an endearingly anachronistic way, and that’s about it. If you need something to watch with kids, this is a good place to start.

BBC iPlayer

A show that originally aired on Channel 4 to a tiny audience, largely because back then it was titled Scrotal Recall, Lovesick follows the adventures of one man as he revisits old relationships in order to tell past flames that he has a sexually transmitted infection. The drama and comedy wrung out of this premise is astonishing.

Netflix

A Canadian drama that very much does what it says on the tin. There is a doctor named Mary, and she has carved out a nifty little sideline in assisted suicides. The subject matter is deftly handled, striking just the right balance between heartbreak and humour.

All 4

The running theory is that Miracle Workers was too similar to The Good Place to fly. But that isn’t true. This is a comedy about workers in heaven trying to make two Earthbound idiots fall in love to save the world from the whims of a negligent God. It’s got Steve Buscemi and Daniel Radcliffe in it. It’s brilliant.

Now TV

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Morning Show, with Jennifer Aniston and Steve Carell. Photograph: Apple TV+

If The Morning Show were on Netflix, everyone would still be raving about it today. But it appeared on Apple TV+, which not enough people know how to watch, so it now has the luxury of being a plucky underdog. Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston and Steve Carell star in a truly operatic #MeToo drama set in the world of breakfast TV.

Apple TV+

Kirstie Swain’s series about a young woman plagued with destructively intrusive sexual thoughts was one of the best comedy-dramas of last year, although it seems to have dropped from the collective memory. Now is the time to revisit this frank, funny and resonant series.

All 4

This is tremendous. It’s about a single mother whose life is plunged into chaos when her son starts to demonstrate signs of superpowers. A low-key superhero show more in the Chronicle/Brightburn mould than the DayGlo Marvel monoculture, the emotional power of this show will take you by surprise. Hopefully events won’t delay season two for too long.

Netflix

You know, this might actually be the time that BritBox comes into its own. Derided for its pointlessness upon launch, it is actually packed wall to wall with comfort food. It is also the only place where you can watch Rev, the peerless Tom Hollander sitcom. If you missed it first time round, this is the perfect opportunity to make amends.

BritBox

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Search Party. Photograph: Channel 4

Starring Alia Shawkat as a young woman looking for a missing college acquaintance, Search Party is one of the best shows of the century. It’s a millennial murder mystery where every new clue is obliterated by the cataclysmic self-absorption of the lead characters. It manages to operate like a thriller while still working as a comedy, which is almost impossible.

Various platforms

Buzzed about upon release and then forgotten about because, again, who knew Facebook did TV, Sorry for Your Loss is the exact type of show that should be made in the age of Peak TV. A small-scale drama about a widowed woman (Elizabeth Olsen), it digs so deep into the grieving process that you couldn’t imagine a mainstream channel wanting to make it.

Facebook Watch

From the creator of BoJack Horseman, Undone is a rotoscoped comedy-drama about a cynical young woman whose entire reality begins to fragment after a car accident. There is a kaleidoscopic nature to Undone that is breathtaking to watch, plus once the storytelling picks up it becomes something genuinely profound.

Amazon Prime Video

History now states that Renée Zellweger’s comeback began with her Oscar-winning turn in Judy. This is incorrect. In fact, it began with What/If, a Netflix drama where she plays a berserk billionaire who has gone deranged with lust. It’s even weirder than I have made it sound.

Netflix

The most expensive Norwegian television series ever made, possibly due to the fact that it hired Carrie-Anne Moss from The Matrix to play an FBI agent. Wisting is a police procedural about a widowed detective following the case of an American serial killer, and represents a new frontier in brooding in a genre full of it.

BBC iPlayer

Not enough people watched Russell T Davies’s Years and Years last year, and that’s probably because it was unremittingly gloomy. Setting off a nuclear bomb in episode one doesn’t exactly scream viewer-friendly fun. But now is the time to gird your loins and revisit it, because it deserves to be remembered as one of the most powerful satires of our age.

BBC iPlayer