Debi Enker
December 2, 2025 — 8:30am
Save
You have reached your maximum number of saved items.
Remove items from your saved list to add more.
Save this article for later
Add articles to your saved list and come back to them anytime.
Got it
How do you choose what TV series to watch? And what keeps you hooked? Many of our viewing decisions are driven by the buzz of the new, that excited chatter that accompanies the latest must-see arrival. But one of the pleasures beyond the thrill of discovery can come from familiarity, the satisfaction that accompanies a show that rewards investment over years.
Editor’s pick
There’s an art to nurturing a satisfying series beyond an absorbing debut season. It requires skill and vision. Some writers and producers manage it, others definitely don’t. And when they drop the ball, a special kind of bitterness comes from devotees who feel betrayed by a second-season slump. Hell hath no fury like fans who feel dudded. Just look at the disapproval heaped on the last two instalments of Squid Game and the sophomore outing of Nobody Wants This, or the chorus of “meh” in the wake of Wednesday’s return.
It’s disheartening to discover that a show that you’ve loved has lost its spark or run out of steam. Maybe the eagerly awaited encore feels like it’s not progressing so much as rehashing established elements because it’s already used up all the good ideas (see The Night Agent). Maybe the characters seem stuck in a rut and predictable (see Industry). Maybe it jumps the shark, launching in directions so wildly implausible that it feels like the product of desperation rather than inspiration (see Big Little Lies).
So how do producers keep their productions humming along with energy and inventiveness? Over the past year, we’ve been treated to a trio of decidedly different series that illustrate how to accomplish it in style.
Bump (Stan*)
Jacinda (Ava Cannon), Santi (Carlos Sanson Jr), Oly (Nathalie Morris) and Angie (Claudia Karvan) in Bump: A Christmas Movie.
This local charmer started out looking like a domestic comedy, but over five lively seasons propelled its characters in a range of happily surprising and rewarding directions. Creators Claudia Karvan and Kelsey Munro and their writers delighted in expanding the scope of the show and its vibrant, loving, messy, multicultural community.
Beginning with an unexpected birth and introducing stunned teenage parents and their equally startled family members, Bump grew into a warm-hearted, bittersweet survey of modern Australian life that never sacrificed its sense of humour. Taking in four generations, three families and an assortment of friends and workmates, it eventually tackled marriage and divorce, birth and death, love and loss. Big stuff that was surveyed with a keen eye and compassion.
Bump has now capped off its run with a just-released Christmas movie.
Unforgotten (BritBox, Stan, ABC iview)
Jess James (Sinead Keenan) and Sunny Khan (Sanjeev Bhaskar) in season five of Unforgotten.
Equally impressive is the English crime drama Unforgotten, created and written by Chris Lang. The fifth season in 2023 moved adroitly beyond the exit of Nicola Walker, one of the original stars. Sinead Keenan arrived as an initially brusque new-broom boss determined to clean up what she saw as inefficiencies in a police department focused on cold cases. In this year’s sixth outing (only on ABC iview), she settled into a mutually respectful and productive partnership with her deputy, played by Sanjeev Bhaskar, who’s become the show’s invaluable anchor.
Lang’s structure remains the same for each season, as does the potent mood of melancholy that runs through the series. But that in no way diminishes the ongoing impact or appeal. Seasons begin with the discovery of a body – or bits of one – and the introduction of an array of seemingly disconnected people. Gradually, links begin to emerge in what becomes an intricate web of characters.
The question of whodunit, and more importantly why, drives the plot, but what’s consistent through the series is its emotional power, the emphasis on how an unexplained disappearance, or a violent death, can affect a host of people. What invariably accompanies each mystery is an aching sense of sadness.
Blue Lights (SBS On Demand)
Blue Lights follows recruits as they deal with everything from domestic disputes to lingering mistrust within the Belfast community.SBS
Created by former journalists Declan Lawn and Adam Patterson and set at the fictional Blackthorn police station, this Belfast-based crime series opens with a tried-and-true set-up favoured in police, hospital and legal dramas: the induction of a group of rookies. As they learn about their roles and responsibilities in the organisation, so do we.
Here, it’s a crash course in the operations of the Police Service of Northern Ireland and the challenges it faces with everything from domestic disturbances and teen homelessness to organised crime. In this city, there’s also the legacy of bitter sectarian division, the scars still painfully evident along with an ongoing threat of blood flowing.
The scripts are cleverly constructed: call-outs can see the “peelers” involved in brief encounters, maybe helping a bewildered dementia sufferer find his home, or caught up in tracking gang activities which can stretch over multiple episodes or even seasons. The scenes of the constables chatting, sitting in their cars while monitoring a suspect or waiting for their next job, allows for more personal conversations too: the music they enjoy, the food they eat.
Related Article
Amid that survey of everyday police life, the first season also featured a shock shooting – a killing that ratcheted up the stakes and created a tension that pulses through the entire drama with profound implications for a range of characters.
Lawn and Patterson have built a richly varied workplace family at Blackthorn and the latest, gripping season casts a wider net around the city, surveying the affluent suburbs of south Belfast, white-collar criminals and the activities at an elite private club. It also fleshes out some of the already engaging and beautifully cast core characters, revealing more about their personal lives. The season ends with some juicy dangling threads, neatly setting up the fourth instalment.
*Stan is owned by Nine, the publisher of this masthead.
Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.
Save
You have reached your maximum number of saved items.
Remove items from your saved list to add more.
From our partners