THE year was highlighted by massive cutbacks in production allocations, with Netflix, whose series are of dubious quality, the only streamer to keep up. The attack on writers continues and there is also a general ideological trend toward conformity (Russian, Chinese, Syrian and Iranian bad guys abound) that saps creativity and complexity.

Nevertheless, spanning the globe, there were enough series of interest to compile a list of the best culled from over 120 series watched this year.