As the streaming wars intensify, this year will bring with it a deluge of new and returning shows. Better get bingeing...

Peak TV is a phrase that has long been used to describe our current era, in which there seems to be an epochal masterpiece airing every week. But in 2020, all previous uses of the term will look quaint. It is a year full of bold statements, massive names and even bigger budgets. The strutting king and slightly awkward prince of streaming, Netflix and Amazon, face competition from Apple and Disney, whose rival services have already launched (Disney+ comes to the UK in March), with HBO Max arriving in May in the US to saturate the new streaming market still further. It turns out we were nowhere near the top of the peak, but this year maybe we will get close.

Once, a piece recommending the best dramas would essentially be a list of what we were going to be watching, like it or not: even if you didn’t fancy a new show, chances were you’d tune in anyway for the lack of alternatives. Now there is a vast selection to choose from, with big, new online shows in addition to programmes from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Sky. Those traditional broadcasters, meanwhile, are getting in on the US goldrush by not just importing shows but co-producing them: Lena Dunham’s Industry, for example, a saga about the personal lives of young bankers, has been made jointly by HBO and BBC Two, while Sky is HBO’s collaborator for The New Pope, the Jude Law-starring sequel to Paolo Sorrentino’s The Young Pope.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The Mandalorian. Photograph: Lucasfilm Ltd

Will all this mean better telly, though? Certainly it will mean more expensive, good-looking event series, in the form of franchise behemoths such as Disney+’s Star Wars spin-off The Mandalorian and the first of its many planned Marvel series, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Or grand undertakings such as Masters of the Air, a continuation of the Band of Brothers family of second world war dramas that is said to be costing Apple TV+ a quarter of a billion dollars.

The main impact on the amount of superb TV, however, is likely to come less from money and more from talent: actors made the move from cinema to living room some time ago, but 2020 is the year when auteur directors will start to follow in earnest. La La Land’s Damien Chazelle has his jazz musical The Eddy coming to Netflix and another project in the pipeline for Apple, which also has Steven Spielberg’s remake of his 1980s compendium Amazing Stories. Spielberg is fully embracing smaller screens: he is also bringing After Dark to Quibi, a mobile-friendly platform that launches in the spring. The BBC has convinced a big-name director to commit to the small screen, too: Steve McQueen will direct Small Axe, an anthology about black Britons in the 1970s.

That is not to say that these stars of cinema will necessarily make finer dramas than the acclaimed showrunners that TV has already. Netflix’s lucrative deal with Glee/Feud/Pose creator Ryan Murphy has already borne fruit in the form of The Politician, and in 2020 he’ll follow that with One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest prequel Ratched. Grey’s Anatomy mastermind Shonda Rhimes, meanwhile, lands on Netflix with Bridgerton, a fizzy period drama set in Regency England.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Masali Baduza and Jack Rowan in Noughts + Crosses. Photograph: Ilze Kitshoff/BBC/Mammoth Screen

Dystopias and alternate realities will continue to thrive in 2020: Jude Law and Naomie Harris visit a weird microcosmic island for Sky’s The Third Day, which, intriguingly, is produced by pioneering immersive theatre company Punchdrunk; while the BBC dramatises Malorie Blackman’s racial role-reversal novel Noughts + Crosses; and HBO tasks The Wire creators David Simon and Ed Burns with adapting Philip Roth’s The Plot Against America.

Prestige TV has the time, space and budget to do justice to novels, and there is room for more adaptations than ever. Of the new digital players, Apple TV+ seems to have a particular fondness for books, with versions of Lisey’s Story by Stephen King (starring Julianne Moore and Clive Owen), The Mosquito Coast by Paul Theroux (written by Luther creator Neil Cross), and Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series (featuring Jared Harris) all providing screen versions of novels that might otherwise have had to make do with bowdlerised films. That said, the BBC has been the master of this game for decades and will continue in 2020, with major small-screen versions of Sally Rooney’s Normal People, The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton and the hefty A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth, scripted for TV by House of Cards’ Andrew Davies.

All these micro-trends share the same fundamental property, which is that where there might once have been two or three big literary adaptations or dystopian thrillers or mega-budget dramatic landmarks in any 12-month period, now there will be seven or eight. This will be the year when even the most committed box-set binger is forced to throw up their hands and say: “This is simply too many hours of TV for me to cope with so I’m just going to miss a load of stuff and not worry about it.” And that’s just the brand new series. How will we keep faith with Line of Duty, Ozark, The Crown, Save Me, Succession, Sex Education, Euphoria, Westworld, American Gods and Outlander as they all return? We can’t. We won’t. But start stockpiling snacks, eye baths and caffeine pills now …

2020’s best dramas

Facebook Twitter Pinterest From left: Deadwater Fell; The New Pope; The Mandalorian. Composite: Channel 4; HBO; Disney+

Deadwater Fell

A juicy “murder reveals secrets” saga, with Cush Jumbo as a woman mourning a best pal whose husband (David Tennant) might have committed an unimaginable crime.

Friday 10 January, Channel 4

The New Pope

As Jude Law’s Young Pope lies in a coma, the sequel unleashes John Malkovich as a posh pontiff, flanked by Sharon Stone and – ye gods! – Marilyn Manson.

12 January, Sky Atlantic

Sex Education

Up there with Skins as UK telly’s canniest ever portrayal of secondary schoolers, this show (also about a talented young sex therapist) is rampantly funny, too.

17 January, Netflix

Star Trek: Picard

Eighteen years after Patrick Stewart’s last voyage, he and a lot of old Trek faces are back: Stewart’s presence alone will ensure this stands out from the intergalactic crowd.

24 January, Amazon Prime Video

The Mandalorian

March is when law-abiding UK viewers will finally understand those Baby Yoda memes. The big Disney+ launch show is a handsome western, set in the Star Wars universe.

31 March, Disney+

Adult Material

Hayley Squires plays a veteran adult film star destabilised by a young protege (Siena Kelly) in a confrontational examination of the modern porn industry.

Spring, Channel 4

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Paul Mescal in Normal People. Photograph: Enda Bowe/BBC/Element

Normal People

It may or may not be the best literary adaptation of 2019 and won’t be the highest-rating, but TV’s take on Sally Rooney’s millennial snapshot will be the most heavily analysed.

Spring, BBC Three

Noughts + Crosses

Being Human writer Toby Whithouse converts Malorie Blackman’s novel, about a society with a black ruling class, into what should be a painfully timely fable.

Spring, BBC One

Boys

Anything written by Russell T Davies is a landmark drama now; his saga about the 1980s Aids crisis ought to be typically heartfelt and politically perspicacious.

2020, Channel 4

Euphoria

Back for a second season, this US series innovates by being so unflinching in its portrayal of teens drowning in drugs, digital communications and childhood trauma.

2020, Sky Atlantic

Industry

Lena Dunham, usually a multi-hyphenate, merely directs this sex, drugs and money thriller about a group of graduates selling their souls to break into the London banking sector.

2020, BBC Two

Ratched

Ryan Murphy’s megabucks Netflix deal includes this One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest origin story, starting in 1947. Sarah Paulson is the budding nurse-monster.

2020, Netflix

Succession

Season one was good. Season two was incredible. If the media-oligarch satire keeps up that rate of improvement, the new run will be 2020’s biggest must-see.

2020, Sky Atlantic

The Third Day

Jude Law and Naomie Harris have a timeline each in a drama about an island that struggles to allow outsiders to integrate because it loves its traditions. Wherever could they have got that idea from?

2020, Sky Atlantic

The Undoing

More or less Big Little Lies 2: Nicole Kidman stars, David E Kelley scripts. Kidman is a posh therapist, beset by violence and secrets. Hugh Grant is her dodgy hubby.

2020, Sky Atlantic

The North Water

Andrew Haigh (Looking, Weekend) writes and directs a brutal Arctic thriller, set in the 1850s and based on Ian McGuire’s acclaimed novel. Colin Farrell, no less, stars.

Late 2020, BBC Two