Stephen Fry called it the ‘best show on TV’ and Kathy Burke can’t hold back the tears. Jay Blades and his team of fixers on becoming the comfort TV smash of 2019

A moving rave documentary, a triumphantly twisted crime drama and canal boating with zombies … here are the unmissable shows that may have passed you by

Villanelle was too sadistic, the world of Westeros was too silly and Line of Duty swerved disastrously off-piste. Here are the TV turkeys of the year

From Game of Thrones to BBC Parliament via a fascist Emma Thompson, there were champions and tyrants aplenty on our screens this year. Here are the best – and the very worst

The return of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s charming nihilist brought us more horrified hilarity – plus the wonders of the Hot Priest

This tale of the 1986 Soviet nuclear meltdown combined disaster movie and conspiracy thriller into a near-perfect example of TV making

Russell T Davies fleshed out the bad news cycle with this staggering tale of an every-family struggling to survive as the UK descends into a nightmare future

Stephen Graham returns as Shane Meadows’ muse in a series that starts as a desperate trawl through abuse and survival and evolves into a devastating depiction of everyday heroism

This heartbreaking series about a rape case proved that true-crime can be gripping without being gratuitous – and it gave us the buddy-cop duo the #MeToo generation deserved

Natasha Lyonne’s existential black comedy used a Groundhog Day time loop to explore addiction and trauma in a smart, poignant and hilarious way

The king of bad chat and awkward mansplaining was back on a BBC sofa in one of Coogan and co’s most nuanced creations

A note-perfect portrait of division and dysfunction, it was the TV show for our times – and its finale was earth-shattering

Sam Levinson’s drama might have looked like a sex-and-drugs shock-fest, but at heart it was a tender tale of adolescent angst