Products are independently selected by our editors. We may earn an affiliate commission from links. So why not extend our gaze across the culture as well? Lord knows there are more than enough movies and books and memes and music to recollect. Perhaps the richest field is TV? Why not spend much of the next quarter century rewatching them? When Industry was first unveiled, it seemed an unlikely proposition: a Succession -meets- Skins drama set inside a cut-throat London investment bank, with a pilot episode directed by Lena Dunham.
What a delight, then, to see it bloom over three seasons into one of the brilliantly written, funniest, and most stylish shows on television. How to watch: Stream it on Max. There are certain works that feel like they help give shape to the understanding of a generation, and with its acute sense of stalled promise, inequalities inherited at birth, and the difficulty of sustaining love across those chasms, Normal People , both the book and the show, feels like one of them.
How to watch: Stream it on Hulu. This French espionage drama is the 21st century spy show I measure all others by. A slow-burn that, over five faultless seasons, immerses you in the operational and office life of French DGSE officers, The Bureau which has been remade as a slick if somewhat lesser American version, The Agency , starring Michael Fassbender is still, to me, the paragon of French TV coolβa confident, ratcheting chronicle of intelligence officers who go to psychological extremes in the name of national security.
Incomparable stuff. How to watch: Buy episodes on Fandango at Home. I defy you to find a better police procedural than the French genre drama Spiral , which ran for eight electric seasons. The model here is Law and Order : Spiral balances the muscular doings of a special Paris crime unit with the officious prosecutors who put the bad guys away. How to watch: Stream it on MHz Choice. When it aired in , Fleabag felt like a bolt from the blue.
Sure, there had been shows that broke the fourth wall, but none did so with quite the same conspiratorial panache as Phoebe Waller-Bridge , delivering her straight-to-camera confessions with winking glee and singular wit. It was so distinctive, in fact, that its creator had the good sense to call it quits after a stunning second season. It was a bittersweet goodbye, but its two perfect seasons will be forever undiluted.
