Some of my best television discoveries have been through word-of-mouth, and this week’s recommendation is a show that my parents told me about, as they are not only voracious readers of the New York Times (yes, in print), but also avid watchers of shows on BritBox. They read an article about the final season of Happy Valley last year in the New York Times and asked me if I’d heard of it. I said no, but it intrigued me, so I watched the first episode and was instantly hooked. The 18 episodes (three seasons of 6 episodes each) flew by, I just couldn’t get enough.

Happy Valley is a crime drama that shouldn’t be judged by its very misleading title. The series is set in modern Yorkshire, England, in an area nicknamed Happy Valley because of the prevalence of drug use in the region. The center of the series is a policewoman, Sgt. Catherine Cawood, played by the magnificent Sarah Lancashire. Cawood is a bitter, no-nonsense, divorced mother of two who is the best cop in the world. She’s a British version of Mare of Easttown (or maybe Mare of Easttown was an American version of Cawood), the kind of character who is addictive to watch. She’s so flawed as a person, she’s a crotchety, curmudgeonly ballbuster who suffers fools at their peril. But she’s a great cop, she’s tough on the bad guys. What makes her so great to watch and even easier to root for is how much she cares about her job and cares about protecting the vulnerable and the victims. Yes, it’s the kind of character writers dream about, but, let’s be honest, it’s also the kind of character all audiences want to watch. And, I imagine, the kind of character all actors would want to play, and Lancashire eats every morsel of this role with gusto. It’s no wonder she was nominated for Best Actress at the BAFTAs (British Academy of Film and Television Arts) for the first season and won for the second.

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Everyone’s heard of Ted Lasso. What makes me laugh, though, is that hardly anybody has heard of the show that is basically a real-life Ted Lasso—and almost as good!

Welcome to Wrexham is a docu-series that centers its focus on Wrexham A.F.C. (Wrexham Association Football Club), a soccer team that plays in Wrexham, Wales. Wrexham A.F.C. is the oldest soccer club in Wales, the third-oldest professional soccer team in the world and play in the world’s oldest international football stadium. And yet, with all this history, Wrexham is widely known, especially by its loyal fans, as the most lovable losers in soccer. Despite having some glory in the past, the new century brought Wrexham A.F.C. to the lowest point it had been in in its history, with a miserable financial outlook, a crumbling stadium and a team that was relegated out of professional soccer for the first time in its history.

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In today’s world, diplomacy seems to be somewhat of a lost art. When so much is visible and accessible in a world that seems smaller than ever, the delicate nuance of negotiation behind closed doors might not be as important to the world order as it once was. When a single tweet can upend delicate balances, what is there to be accomplished from a carefully worded conversation anymore?

And yet, with so much of the world at war, we still see the need for diplomacy between powers, as it still serves as the first and most sought-after resource to settle disputes, as minor as the drawing of a border to as significant as the terms for hostage release or cease-fires. Some of history’s key moments are still achieved from detailed discussions in a closed room rather than bullets on a battlefield. Diplomacy is often the true unheralded hero in any given conflict, the one that achieves greatness without fanfare and succeeds through the omission of violence, rather than the inflicting of it.

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AppleTV+ has two limited series premiering in March and April that are about defining moments in our country’s history. One is very good and the other not so. You’ll be able to read my review of the not-so-good one, Franklin, on AwardsWatch.com on April 10 (it premieres on April 12), or you can keep reading as I attempt to convince you to watch the other, very good one, Manhunt.

Manhunt is a seven episode limited series about the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln and the subsequent manhunt to capture the assassin, John Wilkes Booth, as well as the repercussions of Lincoln’s death. It stars Anthony Boyle as Booth, Hamish Linklater as Lincoln, and Tobias Menzies as Edwin Stanton, Lincoln’s Secretary of War–and close friend–who was tasked with tracking down Booth after his escape from Ford’s Theater after shooting Lincoln on April 14, 1865.

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In 2016, the short-lived variety series Maya & Marty flew like a meteor across the television sky: bright, ambitious, packed with talent, and fleeting. Canceled after just six episodes, the show was a disaster, bombing with critics and audiences alike. It turns out, to nobody’s surprise, that it wasn’t the concept that failed, it was the format. The concept revolved around highlighting the massive talents that Maya Rudolph and Martin Short are, and someone just needed to find the right way to give each of them their star turns. It took eight years, but, finally, the promise of Maya & Marty has come to pass, as Short’s career has been re-ignited by the massive success of Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building and AppleTV+ greenlighting a series built around Rudolph, giving her all the room she needs to showcase her prodigious comedic skills in a much better format.

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I’ll admit, when I’m choosing something to watch just for fun, I often look for something that has someone I like in it. Such was the case when I pressed PLAY on the first episode of Silo, a show I had heard nothing about, except that it stars Rebecca Ferguson. You may know Ferguson from the Mission: Impossible films, but I had only seen her in Dune, where she plays Timothee Chalamet’s mother, and I instantly wanted to watch her in something else (that wasn’t a Tom Cruise vehicle). So I took a chance on this weird-looking Apple sci-fi series, which turned out to be pretty captivating.

Silo is a dystopian drama set in the future, where all that’s left of humankind is living inside a giant underground silo. Nobody knows who built the silo or why people live there, but what they do know is that there is no habitable world outside it and everyone must follow strict rules for the sake of the community’s survival.

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One of the best unexpected surprises of my life was discovering The IT Crowd. A British comedy that aired in Britain from 2006 to 2013, The IT Crowd is one of the best comedy series I’ve ever watched, and guaranteed one you have never heard of—and, if you have, it may be for the wrong reasons.

The series stars Chris O’Dowd, Richard Ayode and Katherine Parkinson as a three-person IT department at a large company in London. O’Dowd is Roy, the self-absorbed manchild, Ayode is Moss, the nerdy, brilliant social misfit and Parkinson their boss Jen, the ambitious but ineffective corporate climber who resents being stuck in the basement. While the format of the show is centered around an IT department, the stories rarely have anything to do with work, and mostly are designed to feature the actors, each of whom are brilliant and at the start of soaring careers.

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Every Memorial Day, HBO replays their seminal series, Band of Brothers, and every year, I find myself drawn in again to perhaps the most definitive narrative series about World War II. Band of Brothers, based on historian Stephen Ambrose’s book, dramatizes the battles of “Easy” Company, a parachute regiment of the 101st Army Airborne Division, one that faced some of the most brutal conditions and conflicts in Europe and came home as one of the most decorated. A companion series, The Pacific, also on HBO, focused on the Marine Corps’ action in the Pacific Theater of Operations. Both series were created and executive produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, who worked together on what many consider the seminal film about World War II, Saving Private Ryan.

It is clear that Spielberg and Hanks are dedicated to telling the stories of the Greatest Generation, of those who fought—and died—during what many call the last great war, and they will continue their efforts as long as they are able, and as long as there are still stories to tell. Tragically, there never seems to be a dearth of stories from World War II, and Hanks and Spielberg have brought us yet another monumental series dedicated to the generation that saved the world from tyranny and fascism, but this time it’s not about battles fought on the ground, it’s about ones fought in the air.

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Sometimes you just need something different. And a little wacky. And silly. And sweet. For two delicious seasons and 18 near-perfect episodes, MAX had all of it in a tiny show that everybody underestimated or ignored altogether, Our Flag Means Death. Before being cruelly and surprisingly cancelled after its second season in 2023, Our Flag Means Death carved out an adoring audience, myself included, who was devastated to see it go, but grateful that such a weird and wonderful show ever made it to the airwaves in the first place. If you blinked and missed it when it first aired, now is your chance to appreciate one of the least-heralded, best-kept secrets of the past decade.

Our Flag Means Death, created by David Jenkins, is a weird and darkly romantic comedy about the golden age of pirates. Specifically, the year is 1717 and the plot—based on a true story– centers on one English aristocrat, Stede Bonnet, played by Rhys Darby, who is bored with his life and decides to give it all up to chase his dream of being a pirate. Bonnet, nicknamed “The Gentleman Pirate,” finds his way onto a ship and quickly bonds with a ragtag band of pirates who have been left without a leader. General wackiness ensues as Bonnet’s crash course in pirating is tested when his ship crosses paths with the most famous and vicious pirate of all, Blackbeard, played by Taika Waititi, who, at first, has neither the patience nor the tolerance for Bonnet’s ineptitude. But Blackbeard quickly becomes enamored with Bonnet’s charm and style and the two forge a strong relationship, both professional and personal.

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Fashion is most definitely not my thing, but even I’ve heard of Coco Chanel and Christian Dior. And that’s exactly what AppleTV is counting on with their new limited series, The New Look, which premiered on February 14.

But before you immediately dismiss The New Look as an inside look at the fashion world (for which you may have zero interest), it is worth noting that the series is not about fashion as much as it is the lives of famous designers in France in the 40’s, especially Chanel and Dior, and their lives were much more than just sewing and drawing. In fact, you’ll be amazed to hear how much more complicated and fascinating their lives actually were, apart from any fashion at all.

The series creator, Todd A. Kessler, has an impressive resume, which includes The Sopranos, Damages and serving as the showrunner for Bloodline. All of those shows were complex, dark and violent shows about complex, dark and violent people—not exactly what you think of when you think of fashion designers. But that’s what’s so great about The New Look—it isn’t at all what you expect.

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