The 15 best TV shows on Binge

With a flurry of crime dramas already out there, it’s hard to know which ones are worth investing your time in. The Twelve is unique in that it’s told from a series perspectives — from each of the twelve jury members, the legal team and the defendant. 

The case not only investigates one high profile murder case but two. The first is the recent murder of an amateur investigator and writer, Amanda Taylor, who was digging into a suspicious cold case double-murder from the 1960s. While both cases unravel simultaneously leaving audiences stunned, the sub-plots digging into the lives of each member of the jury are just as fascinating. 

The Twelves stars some big names in the acting business and plenty of familiar Aussie faces, Sam Neill (Jurassic Park, Untamed), Danielle Cormack (Underbelly, Wentworth Prison), Marta Dusseldorp (A Place to Call Home), Damien Strouthos (Wonderland), Frances O’Connor (Wednesday, The Conjuring 2) to name a few.

If you were a fan of The Office and ever wondered what all that Dunder Mifflin paper was used for, this sitcom is your next biggest binge. Writer Greg Daniels (The Office, Parks and Recreation, King of the Hill) has paired up with Michael Koman (Saturday Night Live, Nathan For You, Space Force) to form the ultimate comedy duo. 

The Paper is filmed in the same mockumentary-style as The Office but follows the staff at a failing Midwestern newspaper printed on (you guessed it) Dunder Mifflin paper. 

The story opens on the team at the Toledo Truth Teller welcoming a new editor-in-chief with huge ambitions. His goal? To turn a ragtag group of volunteer reporters who understand nothing about journalism but a big appetite for the job into something great. To say his work is cut out for him is a massive understatement.

The effortlessly charming and intelligent Berg (a young Ryan Reynolds) is failing upwards in anything he puts his mind to, while his best friend the sensitive and driven Pete (Richard Ruccolo) stumbles his way through crisis after crisis in his career and love life. Joined by Sharon (Traylor Howard), who landed herself a lucrative but soul crushing job straight out of uni, the three college besties are just trying to figure their stuff out.

With cameos from Blink 182, and a Nathan Fillion character arc, Two Guys and A Girl (and for a couple of season's A Pizza Place) is a chaotic snapshot of being a young adult in the 90s.

It’s little surprise that Damen Lindelof’s follow-up to the critically acclaimed Watchmen and The Leftovers would be good, but there’s a joy to be found in just how clean a break Mrs Davis is from the showrunners’ recent foray into the world of prestige drama. This zany and colourful series follows a defiant nun (Betty Gilpin) who teams up with her old flame (Jake McDorman) and is tasked with finding the Holy Grail as part of a quest to destroy an impossibly powerful and omnipotent AI called Mrs Davis. That premise is as high concept as science fiction TV gets, but the show doesn't take itself too seriously and is all the better for it. Mrs Davis is ambitious, ridiculous and utterly unique among this year’s crop of new original series in ways that make it very easy to recommend.

A group of objectively horrible, entitled 20-somethings get caught up in a missing person plot. I can't say much more without giving away the plot, but lets just say that it goes place. Search Party is a gripping yet hilarious watch that really plays with genre expectations. Although you may not love the characters as people, you'll love watching them. Once you get started, it is impossible to look away.

After being turned into a zombie, Liv takes a job at the morgue. It might not be how she pictured her life, but at least she can eat brains without resorting to brutal slaughter. Each brain she eats gives her access to the deceased's memories and personality, which she then uses to solve the mysteries of their deaths. While business begins to boom at the morgue, her snacking uncovers a complex underground zombie society in their midst. The sophisticated set up comes complete with Uber Eats for brains, and spray tans for blending in, but its mere existence threatens to rock the world as we know it.

The Bold Type is a comedy-drama about three millennial women navigating their careers at a New York fashion magazine. Hailed as the Sex In The City of this generation, the show actually defies any expectations that might imply. Sure there is fashion, fast wit, relationships, and work drama but The Bold Type offers all that with a refreshingly optimistic take on political and social issues of the day. The feel good series may just inspire you to embrace your own boldness.

From the same brain as Rick & Morty, Community follows a disbarred lawyer Jeff Winger back to community college. Against his best judgement he falls in with a misfit study group and shenanigans ensue. At first the show is a standard look at day-to-day college life, but builds exponentially to high-concept episodes like campus wide paintball competitions, stop motion, and movie homages. 

Superstore is the latest in a string of workplace sitcoms that have nothing to do with the workplace. Sure the Cloud 9 big-box store provides a solid basis for the intersecting storylines, but the real human interest part lies with the employees. The cast of larger-than-life characters deal with crazy customers, power struggles, and the monstrosities of minimum wage. Young pregnancies, visa issues, wage theft, a love story - Superstore deals with it all.

Another reality show spin off in the same vein as The Great British Bake Off, but this time it is about sewing. Home sewists face off against each other in challenges, drafting designs from scratch, reworking old fabrics, and making perfect prototypes of premade patterns. It retains the same helpful and wholesome vibe as the Bake Off, but this time we’re swapping whisks for needles. A great watch for crafters, sewists, and lovers of puns.

In the same breath Josh and his girlfriend break up, he realises he’s gay, his mum is recovering from a suicide attempt, and he is moving back in with her. That is episode 1. Please Like Me is a compelling Australian series about navigating your 20s. Anyone who has been through them can attest, your 20s are the trenches. You’re not quite an adult but you’re compelled to act the part, the adultier adults around you are working through their own stuff, friends are forging their own paths, and you’re just trying to scrape by. I’ve never watched a more relatable and down-to-earth representation than the warmingly funny Please Like Me. It is a wonderful next-door-neighbour comedy that occasionally rips your heart into pieces.

A series about two flawed people who seemingly hate everyone except for each other, Difficult People revels in its cringe. It isn’t as awkward as Nathan Fielder’s work, but it tugs at the same pit in your stomach. The show follows two struggling comedians in New York who have become entirely jaded with the industry, and people in general. Rather than avoiding them, these two instead set out to make every situation worse. Maybe not on purpose, but it is hard to think it could be accidental. From selfies at funerals to double lives, Difficult People answers the question: could it get any worse?

We join Julio Torres on an epic, surreal adventure to find his lost oyster earring. He is floating his way through life, not really working, not really sure of what he wants apart from getting his earring back. Fantasmas has Torres’ trademark fantastical, dali-esque styling, complete with characters that could have tumbled from the diary of a mushroom trip. Tilda Swinton plays the voice of water, Julia Fox is Mrs. Claus, and Kim Petras play a mermaid. It is queer, it is camp, it is psychedelic, it will have you aching for a reality outside of this one.

A lot of what put Foxtel programming on the map is syndicated American content. But now that HBO Max is here, a big chunk of that content is gone. What's not gone and is absolutely essential viewing for fans of Australian crime drama is Mr Inbetween. That clunky title refers to Ray Shoesmith (Scott Ryan), a middle-aged guy who has to deal with the typical struggles of broken family life alongside the realities that he's an assassin for hire. While there's plenty of quality drama – including some tear-jerking moments and even entire episodes – most episodes have a healthy dose of crass Aussie humour that always keeps the entertainment value high. Whatever emotion pulls you in, the more you watch, the more you'll learn that Ray's smile is a very dangerous thing.

There have already been two movie adaptations of the late, great Frederick Forsyth's classic The Day of the Jackal. And while both are enjoyable in different ways, this latest iteration of Forsyth's tale may be the best yet. The show sagely splits its focus between Eddie Redmayne's ruthless role as the titular Jackal and Lashana Lynch's Bianca Pullman, the cop whose obsession with the Jackal may lead to more than just career suicide. Even if you're familiar with the other versions, the 10-episode run of the first season has new and familiar reveals that will keep you glued to the screen until the finale. No spoilers, but when the credits roll on the finale, you'll be shocked and curious about what's coming next.