Series reviews

The library's best exercise in pure tension: two free episodes built from a glance, a closed door and a girlfriend who keeps almost walking in.

A three-hander that builds its tension out of a man who will not answer, and the most persuasive argument in the library that restraint can carry a series.

The Candy Creators title that earns its price through writing rather than the name on the poster: dry, compact, and built around a door that stays shut.

The one to start with. Fifteen episodes is enough runway for an actual arc, and almost nothing else in the catalogue has that.

The only entry in the catalogue whose mechanism would stand up as a plot summary on its own. Fifteen episodes, and they are used.

The most economical construction in the catalogue: one room, one deadline, five episodes, nothing spare.

A loud, confident enemies-to-lovers two-hander whose attitude does more work than its writing, and whose most interesting promise sits behind the paywall.

The easy-going outlier of the Candy Creators strand: a sunlit workplace flirtation that knows its genre, let down mainly by the 30-token rate.

A polished, straight-faced showcase for its named lead; fans will find it exactly as advertised, everyone else is paying a premium for the name.

A confined-space series that understands why confinement works. Five episodes, one location, and a constraint doing the structural labour.

The knowing one of the 30-token household series: a houseguest whose former fame is the joke, funny when it lands and thin if the joke does nothing for you.

The library's most familiar set-up, handled smoothly, with one phone call that gives the free half real tension.

The best of the three "Yes, …" series, and the only one that writes in a consequence.

Built explicitly around who is in charge, and honest enough to make that the subject rather than the backdrop.

A countdown rather than an escalation, which makes it the more interesting of the catalogue’s two religious-framing series.

The original of the "Yes, …" trio and the most generic of the three. Competent, and the template for everything that followed it.

Yes, Director moved to a sporting setting, where the hierarchy is explicit from the first frame.

A mistaken-identity story played straight rather than as comedy, which is the braver of the two choices and the harder one to sustain.

An ensemble idea sold at a solo price: the free episodes show a corridor of doors and very little of what lies behind them.

The more fantastical of the two religious-framing series, and the looser of the two structurally.

The tightest time frame in the catalogue — one house, two people, one weekend — and that compression is the whole of its structure.

A publicity stunt given an episode count: honest about what it is, but the free half already tells you everything the paid half will do.

A single situation stretched over five episodes, and the weakest construction of everything we have opened.