The BBC’s plan to make an increasing number of shows available on iPlayer for extended periods of time is a worry to independent production companies

From turning a truck into an amphibious vehicle and sailing it across the Channel to putting a Reliant Robin into space, Clarkson, Hammond and May clearly revel in the pure fun of their preposterous ideas

He never drank and only once fired a gun, but MacGyver always foiled the villains – including the world’s deadliest, cack-handed assassin, Murdoc

Over the course of seven series, Julianna Margulies excels as Alicia Florrick, juggling single motherhood, court cases and romance

Futurism by Forster, colonising space with Ballard and gleaming white hospitals designed by Ridley Scott – thank goodness it wasn’t all wiped

If you’re after a warm-blooded and witty crime series to counter all those stark Scandi noirs, who you gonna call? Guy Pearce’s lawyer in a cardigan is your man

After a bump on the head Briers’ Godfrey Spry believes he has to do exactly what the adverts say – with often disastrous results

Just as Lane was one of the few women to crack the male-dominated world of 70s comedy, so Butterflies gave rare subversive voice to a mature suburban woman

Stuffed with amazing footage, this magisterial history of pop – partly narrated by Liberace, partly written by Stephen Sondheim – got more than a little help from John Lennon’s contacts book

Forget Clive Owen’s variable American accent and immerse yourself in the outrageous, cocaine-fuelled world of Victorian surgeon ‘Thack’ Thackery in this fast and furious period hospital drama

The setting was a suburban garden but the bizarre adventures of Roobarb (and Custard, the pink cat) were pure anarchy

Borstal life, white-collar hooliganism and Bowie in Brecht – all gathered in a long overdue boxset of works by the ‘scruffy grammar-school anarchist’

Meatloaf-inspired phone-ins, a luddite folksinger and an anecdote about Scalextric swapped for cocaine – Norfolk’s showbiz legend returns to his radio roots

Jack Thorne’s sleek thriller, inspired by the real-life gang the Balkan Pink Panthers, features nail-biting scenes and brutal dialogue

This brilliant Icelandic elemental thriller traps a small town in a blizzard – and tosses in a headless, limbless body to unsettle the natives

The BBC’s worst-case scenario science-based drama was plausibly terrifying – even if it did have dodgy video effects and wobbly sets

The story of a Yonkers mayor’s vitriolic battle for fair housing is a gripping exposé of the corrupting power of politics – and Catherine Keener’s great as a casual racist

A young East German border guard is deployed to the west as a spy in a near-apocalyptic account of Nato’s war games, underpinned by pop nostalgia and strategic storytelling

Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone follow-up was awash with Hollywood talent – and still contains some of the best TV ever

With its anti-heroes and experiments with form, Miami Vice was a key influence on the development of today’s complex, grownup TV