The Daily Mail Online article features a list of 20 recommended TV shows and films curated by their TV experts.
The selection includes various genres: murder-mystery, travelogue, biographical drama, documentaries, reality TV, comedy-drama, psychological horror, true-crime, and more.
The article provides detailed descriptions of each show and film, including year of release, certificate, streaming platform, and key plot points or themes.
It's not always so easy picking a new show to watch.
In the era of Netflix and watching things on demand, the amount of choice we have can make the decision more difficult.
And no one wants to waste weekends and evenings sampling rubbish when there are so many gems to get stuck into.
Luckily for you, we have an array of TV experts who have written the ideal watchlist, so you can spend your precious time viewing the highest quality shows around.
Here's their top 20:
Snazzy, modern take on Columbo from the creator of Knives Out
Year: 2023
Certificate: 15
If you like watching a puzzle being solved, this hot murder-mystery drama from the US is absolutely for you. Essentially a 21st-century take on Columbo, Poker Face was created by Knives Out writer-director Rian Johnson and stars Russian Doll's Natasha Lyonne as Charlie, an old-soul cocktail waitress who can tell when people are lying, and has one of those personalities that just makes people open up and tell her things they probably shouldn't.
Each week's murder is revealed at the start, then we spend the rest of the episode figuring out how Charlie will catch the culprit and learning the 'why' of the crime. Despite the fact that her ability to sense lies is definitely superhuman, Charlie is absolutely not a superhero; she's just a regular person with a strong sense of right and wrong, and a dry sense of humour to boot. The show is very human and it's a pleasure to watch, so it's a relief that a second series followed the initial ten episodes.
Series two finds Charlie on an 'existential road trip', making friends and even finding romance across a longer, 12-part run with an impressive roster of guest stars including Wicked's Cynthia Erivo, Katie Holmes and the great Margo Martindale. (Two series)
Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman's motorcycle travelogue hits the roads of Europe
Year: 2025
Certificate: 12
It was in 2004 that the actor Ewan McGregor and his best mate Charley Boorman embarked on their first epic motorbiking documentary trip. In the decades since they've taken bikes and cameras to numerous far-flung parts of the globe, but this time they've decided to stay closer to home. Well, sort of.
While this fourth adventure of their epic travels sees the pair travelling from McGregor's home in Scotland to Boorman's place in England, they take a far from direct route. Ferrying their vintage bikes across the North Sea and embarking on a huge loop through the Arctic Circle and Europe, the trip takes them through 17 countries over the course of nine weeks. It's joyous, infectious stuff as the easygoing pair immerse themselves in each country's culture and dive playfully into local tasks and challenges. (Ten episodes)
Ravishingly modern take on the doomed Queen of France
Year: 2022
Certificate: 12
There's no sugar-coating in this biographical drama about the Queen of France. As an immature 14-year-old who stamps her feet, Austrian Archduchess Maria Antonia (a riveting performance from German actress Emilia Schule) is married to the future King (Louis Cunningham) and expected to quickly produce an heir - even though she has no idea what that involves.
It's created by Deborah Davis, the BAFTA-winning writer of The Favourite, but it's not quite as strange and surreal as that black comedy movie set in the court of our own Queen Anne. It looks absolutely ravishing and boasts a spiky modern soundtrack, but the emphasis is on the cruelty of a woman trapped by duty, and the boorishness of the royal classes - with James Purefoy both regal and exasperated as King Louis XV and British newcomer Louis Cunningham as the Dauphin, Marie's naïve and detached new husband.
Series one ends on a mixed note, with both birth and death. The tone turns as bleak as the weather in series two, with the country in the grip of a bitter winter and a deepening financial crisis, while Marie is still pining for Fersen, writing secret letters to him and hiding them, unsent. Then, a thief makes her way to the palace. There is a lot going on here - the storylines can get tangled amid the opulence and intrigue - but much will be revealed if you stick with it. (Two series).
Phoebe Waller-Bridge narrates a documentary series about the life of an octopus
Year: 2025
Certificate: 12
From sitcoms to James Bond films, Phoebe Waller-Bridge isn't likely to be a victim of artistic pigeon-holing any time soon. This two-part documentary series sees the Fleabag star stretch things even further as she turns her attentions to wildlife filmmaking, producing and narrating this look at the life, from birth to death, of a Giant Pacific Octopus.
It ticks all the usual nature doc boxes with sumptuous photography and wry revelations about the fiercely intelligent sea creatures, but as you'd expect from Waller-Bridge, it also contains a good few surprises. Not least interviews about our eight-legged friends. A scientist attempting to save them and an explorer trying to understand them are predictable inclusions, but just what is 30 Rock star Tracy Morgan doing here? It turns out that the Emmy-nominated actor and comedian is an octopus fanatic... (Two episodes)
Horrible Histories spin-off that uses comedy and music to explain science to children
Year: 2025
Certificate: u
Horrible Histories is one of the great CBBC success stories. Starting as a series of books then becoming a fully-fledged TV show in 2009, this genuinely hilarious sketch show, known for its ambitious song and dance numbers, has managed the neat trick of both educating and entertaining the nation's youth for years. Here they're doing the same for science, and with many familiar faces from the original show.
The series opens by going all in on the music side, delivering a blizzard of numbers riffing on gravity that use the songs of Wicked (Defying Gravity become defining, for instance) as a jumping-off point, and ends with a evolution-themed cover of Oasis's Roll With It - a less familiar track to today's children than the Wicked playlist, presumably, but done with gusto.
The furry alien replacement for Rattus is less instantly convincing but change is hard in TV - especially when it comes to beloved shows - and will doubtless cause a little friction with fans. The scientific concept of friction is one of many explained here, handily enough, while the further curious should head to BBC Bitesize for an array of curriculum learning resources. (15 episodes)
Reality TV star Molly-Mae Hague lets the cameras in for this series about her life
Year: 2025
Certificate: 12
After shooting to fame on Love Island and making appearances in numerous episodes of the At Home With The Furys reality shows (alongside her ex-partner Tommy Fury), Molly-Mae Hague now headlines her very own fly-on-the-wall documentary series.
In the wake of her high-profile split from Fury in 2024, the show follows the feisty and sometimes outspoken Hague as she charts a new life, coping with motherhood, juggling the demands of a life lived in the tabloid spotlight and attempting to set up her own business, Maebe.
Anyone who enjoyed her previous reality show outings is going to find a lot to enjoy here as the series promises to go behind the headlines to reveal the real Molly-Mae. The quality of the production is much higher end than your average reality series as it does so, too - witness all that swooping, thoughtful music in the background - which occasionally sits amusingly (deliberately, presumably) at odds with such moments as her ordering a Chicken Big Mac from a drive-through.
This first series was released in two chunks, with the second half arriving on 9 May and tracking the consequences of the New Year's Eve kiss between Molly-Mae and Tommy. (Six episodes)
Jane Seymour stars as a sleuthing Dublin professor in this lively mystery
Year: 2022-
Certificate: 15
It feels like Jane Seymour is having a ball in this show, which is far from just another cosy detective drama. Seymour's Harry Wild is a Dublin literature professor who abuses students in her departing speech. 'You are a shameful waste of skin and air,' she says, before downing shots and romancing a younger man at her retirement party. A woman of such energies will require a powerful distraction after leaving work and she finds it in applying her literary knowledge to solving murders.
Harry does it all in her own way, though, and seeing her go about that with such vigour is the joy of watching this show. Series two opens on fairly serious form with Harry caught in the middle when her sleuthing partner Fergus reunites with his long-absent mother. A murder case also hits close to home and she investigates that, too. The third series begins with the lead singer of Hot Boy 4 plunging to his death - was it murder, or suicide? And, if it was murder, was it the result of band rivalry, an obsessive fan, or something else? (Four series)
Alicia Vikander and Elisabeth Olsen star in a dark sci-fi film about parenting
Year: 2025
Certificate: 18
In a near-future world where resource scarcity and overpopulation have pushed mankind to the brink, young couple Mia and Aaryan (Elisabeth Olsen and Himesh Patel) decide that they want to have a child. First, though, they must pass a series of tests set for them by scrupulous assessor Virginia (Alicia Vikander), who moves in with them for seven days.
As Virginia sets challenges and adopts the demanding persona of a small child, she relentlessly pushes the couple's psychological buttons and forces them to reconsider not just their relationship but their places in society as a whole.
Understated and clever, this stripped-back science-fiction film uses its high-concept subject matter to ask telling questions about modern life. Olsen and Patel are excellent as the wannabe parents, but Vikander steals the film with a tour de force performance as the manipulative and relentless Virginia. (114 minutes)
Vince Vaughn and Susan Sarandon star in a comedy drama about an Italian restaurant
Year: 2025
Certificate: 12
After the death of his mother, blue-collar New York worker Joe (Vince Vaughn) decides to jack in his dead-end job and throw everything into setting up a traditional Italian restaurant in her memory. The twist? He's going to recruit actual Italian grannies (nonnas) to come there and cook the recipes that have been handed down through their families for generations. Will it work? Can the restaurant pull in enough diners? And can Joe stop the nonnas waging outright war with each other in the kitchen?
Sweet, funny and wholesome, this is a lovely based-on-a-true-story movie about family, food and tradition. And with Susan Sarandon, Lorraine Bracco, Talia Shire and Brenda Vaccaro donning aprons as as the squabbling cooking grannies, it definitely has the right recipe for success. (111 minutes)
James McAvoy headlines an unsettling psychological horror movie
Year: 2024
Certificate: 15
When holidaying Americans the Daltons - Ben, Louise and young daughter Agnes (Halt And Catch Fire's Scoot McNairy and Mackenzie Davis, and My Life With The Walter Boys' Alix West Lefler) - befriend British family Paddy, Ciara and son Ant (James McAvoy, Aisling Franciosi and Dan Hough) during a trip to Italy, it leads to an invitation for them to visit the Brits at their remote farm in Devon.
It seems like a great chance for Ben and Louise to leave behind their marital problems for a few days, but the stay soon turns ominous. As their hosts' strange and slightly menacing behaviour ramps up, the Daltons begin to wonder if they'll ever be allowed to leave the farm alive.
A creepy and unsettling psychological horror drama, this is an excellent showcase for McAvoy's ability to move with whiplash speed between genial bonhomie and terrifying intensity. (110 minutes)
Documentary examining the killing of Jason Corbett by his wife and father-in-law
Year: 2025
Certificate: 15
After the death of his first wife, Irish widower Jason Corbett looked to have found a fairy-tale second act when he married American au pair Molly Martens. Relocating to North Carolina, they established a home with Corbett's two small children Jack and Sarah. Then, on 2 August 2015, everything turned dark when Corbett was killed following a violent altercation with Martens and her father Thomas, a former FBI agent. Was it an act of self-defence? A planned killing? Or something else?
This true-crime documentary investigates, digging into the complexities of their marriage while trying to clear up the events of the night that Corbett died. Interviews with Martens and her father feature, but so too do conversations with Jack and Sarah, who were just ten and eight years old at the time of the killing, and whose subsequent custody was hugely controversial. (102 minutes)
Colourised footage brings the impact of Luftwaffe raids to extraordinary life
Year: 2025
Certificate: 12
Colourised footage is a familiar feature of documentary making these days, but it's still remarkable how much more it brings the past to life than black and white. Such is certainly the case with Britain And The Blitz, a feature-length documentary from Ella Wright (JFK: One Day In America) that puts restored and colourised archive footage to creative use, following several real-life figures through the Luftwaffe's bombardment of this country.
Footage takes us onto the streets of London, inside buildings such as the Tate Gallery, around the country following evacuees and other Luftwaffe raids and onto air bases, as Spitfires scramble and RAF staff track them on the ground. The latter include Edith Heap, a plotter at RAF Debden who we hear describing her work, and a romance with a pilot. We also hear from Joan Wyndham, a 17-year-old art student who 'met this really good-looking man called Rupert' - romance and seizing the moment is a running theme, understandably - and from Bernard Kops, then a 13-year-old living in the East End, who remembers Churchill visiting during the Blitz.
There are glimpses of what it was like for the other half, too - we hear Princess Elizabeth's first ever broadcast, at 14 - but mostly this is a ground-level portrait of what it was like for ordinary people and, by the end, you'll find yourself marvelling at what they endured. (67 minutes)
Rollicking game show where the audience is very much involved, hosted by Dermot O'Leary
Year: 2025
Certificate: 12
Dermot O'Leary hosts a game show where an audience of 50 start off with £250k to share between them. That's more money than the programme makers can actually afford to give away (this is Dave after all, not Netflix), so if they want the money the audience has to stay completely silent. If any of them makes a peep, they lose £5k for a small noise and £10k for a big one.
It's a tall order even without the dirty tricks rolled out to entertain, embarrass or shock the audience. These come from a cast of comedy and cabaret acts - Katherine Ryan and Seann Walsh among them - who comment on proceedings behind the scenes. Mean ploys are used throughout to make the audience turn against each other, and scary frights are unleashed designed to make them jump. Overall, the result is rather chaotic, but enormously good fun. (Six episodes)
Harrowing series based on Margaret Atwood's book, starring Elisabeth Moss
Year: 2017-
Certificate: 15
Margaret Atwood's chilling 1985 novel about the takeover of the US by religious zealots and the terror that follows was made into a movie in 1990 with Natasha Richardson and Faye Dunaway, and was also the inspiration for this harrowing series.
The story is set in the near future, where an extreme Christian movement overthrows the President and Congress and suspends the Constitution on the pretext of restoring order. They form a new regime turning the US into the Republic of Gilead and pass draconian laws that rob women of all their rights - they lose their jobs and have their bank accounts frozen. Those who can have children are separated from their families and forced into sexual servitude amid a fertility crisis sparked by environmental pollution.
These women are known as Handmaids, and they must carry babies for the richest and most powerful men in the country and their barren wives. The show follows Mad Men star Elisabeth Moss's Handmaid character Offred (it means Of-Fred, the name of her master) as she adjusts to her distressing new life, while hoping she'll one day be reunited with her daughter.
Any show that runs and runs - the sixth and final series hits Prime Video on 3 May - no matter how successful, risks getting tired and stale and this did sag a bit during the middle series as the bleak and despairing tone became pretty unrelenting. The fifth series, though, marked a high point that came close to the blistering opening run while the current sixth series - arriving weekly - is also its last. (Six series)
Abi Morgan's drama about a brilliant detective troubled by visions of a colleague
Year: 2015
Certificate: 15
It's not the first time a sleuth has found himself haunted by the ghost of his murdered ex-partner. Remember Randall And Hopkirk (Deceased), the 60s show revived in 2000 by Reeves and Mortimer?
There was a comedic tinge to both those series but not in River, where the title character is a hugely successful DI with an 80 per cent clear-up rate and an extremely heavy heart after the loss of friend and ex-colleague DS Jackie 'Stevie' Stevenson, played by Last Tango In Halifax's Nicola Walker.
It is her whom River (Mamma Mia star Stellan Skarsgård) sees in the passenger seat of his car, and in various locations around his home, as he tries to come to terms with her recent murder. Troubled but brilliant detectives are a familiar sight on TV but everything about this six-part series - the way it's shot, scored, written and performed - moves the story on with energy and intelligence, as River tries to discover who killed his beloved friend and ex-colleague. (Six episodes)
Compelling medical thriller set in the aftermath of a crisis
Year: 2025
Certificate: 15
The second series of this medical thriller - combining the best bits of ER or Casualty with a police procedural - has a lot to live up to. It doesn't disappoint. In a tautly written opening episode, the medical crisis is delivered with ruthless efficiency and we are once again thrown deep into the turmoil of an NHS doctor being pushed and pulled in multiple directions at once.
That doctor is psychiatrist Dr James Ford, played by Tom Hughes (rather more crumpled in appearance than we're used to seeing the actor best-known as Prince Albert in Victoria). Scruffy he may be, but Ford carries himself with authority and compassion, and just about manages to be in two places at once. But halfway through the first episode, a crisis unfolds.
Helen Behan and Jordan Kouame return as doctors Norma Callahan and George Adjei of the Medical Investigation Unit, who investigated Niamh Algar's Dr Lucinda Edwards in the first series. Yet their involvement isn't the most interesting part of this show. Ford, played with a sad intensity by Hughes, plus the people he works with - from his harried superior (Zoe Telford) to the combative paediatric doctor Sophia Hernandez (Selin Hizli) - are where the real interest lies. For all his professionalism, you know there's more to Ford and Hernandez than merely being overworked and underpaid. (Five episodes)
Glossy and addictive hospital drama from top TV producer Dick Wolf
Year: 2015-
Certificate: 15
This long-running US show from legendary producer Dick Wolf (Law & Order) is the closest thing on our screens to that classic medical series ER. The show deals with the ethics of money and treatment in US hospitals but it's also soapily addictive, and is packed full of beautiful medics.
Those medics include maverick surgeon Dr Connor Rhodes (Colin Donnell), grounded nurse April Sexton (Yaya DaCosta), psychiatry chief Dr Charles (Oliver Platt, the most famous face on the cast and essentially playing the old wise man of the hospital) and Dr Natalie Manning (Torrey DeVitto), a widowed paediatrician in the emergency department (ED) who has the occasional romance with the show's central figure - plastic surgeon turned ED physician Dr Will Halstead (Nick Gehlfuss).
Will has had some crazy storylines over the years and is the brother of Detective Jay Halstead, a character in one of Med's two sister shows, Chicago PD. The other is Chicago Fire and the three occasionally run crossovers that unfold across multiple episodes. The latest series of all three shows is on Sky/Now. (Ten series)
The lives of drivers on and off the track in the high-speed US motorsport
Year: 2024
Certificate: 15
Nascar is a glamorous, dangerous, high-octane sport. But what goes on behind the scenes as the drivers of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing zip around the track, one bad decision away from a very nasty accident? Find out in Netflix's series, which tracks the 2023 Nascar Cup Series Playoffs and championship race and gets up close with top competitors including Ryan Blaney, Tyler Reddick and Ross Chastain.
While this is produced by Nascar studios and is very much an inside product, that also means the filmmakers have access to some very impressive footage, so there should be plenty here to appeal to fans. And, for the rest of us who want to understand why someone would want to drive at 200mph around a track with 38 other cars, there's ample insight into that, too. (Two series)
Dark and twisted serial killer thriller from Spain
Year: 2023
Certificate: 15
A dark crime thriller from Spain that borrows its villain from American Psycho, while an eccentric criminal psychologist teams up with a thoughtful detective to hunt him down.
Set in the northeastern medieval city of Valladolid, it opens with the discovery of a young woman's lifeless, mutilated body. Her eyelids have been sliced off and a darkly poetic message left in her mouth.
The detective who responds to the first victim is Sancho, a gentle sort who was supposed to be leaving Valladolid to take his ailing mother, who has Alzheimer's, to Madrid. Instinctively, he knows the killer's grandiose MO has all the hallmarks of a serial killer. And he's not wrong. (Six episodes)
LA-set drama show adapting Judy Blume's novel about teenage love
Year: 2025
Certificate: 15
When Los Angeles high schoolers Keisha and Justin (Lovie Simone and Michael Cooper Jr) begin dating, they find themselves facing a ton of milestones, but almost an equal number of stumbling blocks too. They might be each other's first love, first kiss, first sexual partner, but is that enough to keep them together in the long term in the face of pressure from teachers, friends, sports coaches and families?
A modern and confident adaptation of Judy Blume's 1975 young adult novel, this drama series updates the well-loved book sensitively and intelligently to the world of 2018 Los Angeles. It draws round and believable performances from its young cast, successfully capturing the intensity of emotions that teenagers feel as they ride the rollercoaster of love, romance and aching heartbreak for the first time. It's been shepherded by Mara Brock Akil (Girlfriends, Being Mary Jane) and directed by Regina King, who is better known as an actress (Watchmen, Shirley) but is also an accomplished presence behind the camera. (Eight episodes)
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