This is the first online show that managed the feat of making me part with actual money, all US$1.99 of it so far, but I'll be back for more episodes of the new series. The comedy follows a Brooklyn weed dealer as he makes his deliveries, and part of the joy is that we get to peer into the lives of his customers. Essentially these are character portraits viewed through the purple haze.
It's as good as any HBO-style comedy, which is why the show has just been bought by the cable channel, which will air their next series. The latest series is on video sharing site Vimeo, part of their plan to dabble with Netflix-like programming. Behind it all is a husband and wife team, Katja Blichfeld and Ben Sinclair, a casting agent (30 Rock) and actor respectively. Sinclair plays 'the guy' - the amiable dealer who moves between his customers acting as matchmaker, priest or just shocked observer. Sure the stoned conversations - "would you rather shoot a baby out of a catapult or catch a baby that was shot out of a catapult?" - are part of the fun, but at the heart of the show you'll find a brilliantly observed drama of life as it is actually lived. Charming, insightful and delightful. And bloody funny even without herbal enhancement.
Holy crap this is awesome, and educational to boot. Hilary Mantel's depiction of the life of Thomas Cromwell, the Steven Joyce of King Henry VIII's court, has made the transition to the TV screen not only intact but somewhat enhanced. A killer cast is part of the magic, with stage legend Mark Rylance (as Cromwell) occupying the screen with such magnetic power you feel yourself being sucked into the very pixels. It's a slow burner, but by the time you get to the final scene, you will be so badly hooked that the end of the six-episode series will feel like a death in the family.
3. UnREAL (Lightbox)
Shiri Appleby and Constance Zimmer in TV series UnReal.
A must for anyone who loved or hated The Bachelor, this satirical soap opera lifts the curtain on a Bachelor-style reality show and finds the sort of vileness you suspected but have never seen. "Let's give them something they want: ponies, princesses, romance - I dunno it's all a bunch of crap," says the hard-bitch producer Quinn as the show opens.
At this point, the cameras roll and the first girl arrives in a white carriage, which looks like the one they used on Kath and Kim. Cue the regulation score and crane shot, and for a moment you feel as if you are watching The Bachelor, but are soon shaken awake by a barking Quinn (Entourage's Constance Zimmer) calling cut because the first girl is black and "not a wifey". The script is rather heavy handed; "just be a good meat puppet" etc, but it's not a deal breaker. Best line in episode one: "That's not a bush, it's a fricken shrub."
A 26-part masterpiece from the BBC (1964). You might feel shell shock from all the World War One-themed drama of late but this documentary is well worth the effort, not to make it sound like homework. Sure, it doesn't have Shavaughn Ruakere flashing her Victoria Secrets and it is in black and white, but this is a fascinating encyclopedia of that war in detail.
I first read about this in AA Gill's collection of his wonderfully mean-spirited television writing, Paper View. He considers it the Citizen Kane of TV, and wrote of his disappointment that the BBC had never been able to re-screen it due to copyright reasons. He eventually found a DVD at the BBC shop but I had the advantage of the YouTube search window. And there it was, in all its glory.
Complete with a brilliantly grim BBC Orchestra score and the rich, royal, vowels of narrator Sir Michael Redgrave, who poetically sets the scene in Europe just before war broke out: "It was a world of firm beliefs, the established order is widely accepted, the father at the head of the family and the monarch the head of the nation and God in his heaven."
Search guide: The Great War BBC 1964, or just click here. "I'll kick you in the Balkans." Or if you can't concentrate for more than four minutes at a time, why not learn your way through the bloody history via this tremendous WW1 Rap Battle.
5. Bloodline (Netflix)
Kyle Chandler in the Netflix Original Series Bloodline.
Lightbox has the best TV online but there are some goodies on Netflix, even on the anorexic local version. Comedy Grace and Frankie is great, Vikings is superb, (though only Lightbox has the new series) But Bloodline is my pick for the most compelling drama, on any medium. It's a slow moving family saga set in the Florida Keys, with yet another remarkable performance from the greatest Australian actor of all time, Ben Mendelsohn, who inhabits the role of the black sheep of the family so completely it's almost uncomfortable to watch. You have to persevere a little, but after four or five episodes the dark tangled world comes alive to such an extent you struggle to think of other shows as powerful or gloriously tragic. And what a cast, aside from the show stealing Mendelsohn there's Sissy Spacek, Sam Shepard, and Linda Cardellini (Mad Men). A menacing masterpiece. I've only got one episode to go and I'm savouring it like the last scorched almond.
