The latest spin-off features the return of Rick and lover Michonne – as well as some very overwrought plots. Although there is something totally new at one point: an actual joke

Like many, I had to remove myself from The Walking Dead’s viewership around the time Negan took his bat to the heads of two long-running characters whose identities and deaths had been relentlessly teased by producers all through the sixth series, and even slightly into the seventh. What had been increasingly obvious for a long time became unignorable: this was a show that had long ago abandoned any thematic interests or narrative purpose in favour of simply devising worse and worse ways for people to die. I almost came back to watch Carl’s death in season eight because, man, I hated that child, but that felt like it would lose me a lot of moral high ground, so I had to settle for merely knowing it was at last done.

The spin-offs began in 2015 with Fear the Walking Dead (which soon got chaotically boring, too). Many others, including anthology series and ones that focus on specific characters, have followed but none has quite caught fire. A lot of hopes have been pinned on the reanimating force of Andrew Lincoln (who starred as the franchise hero Rick Grimes until the ninth series of the original’s eleven) and Danai Gurira (as Michonne, the nonpareil of apocalyptic warriors and the love of Rick’s life) who combine to form the nucleus of The Walking Dead: The Ones Who Live.

The onscreen version of the bestselling YA novels loses absolutely none of the originals’ charm. It’s fresh, lively and energetic – with actors that channel the source material brilliantly

I approached the new Netflix adaptation of Holly Smale’s bestselling Geek Girl with no little trepidation. I love that book and the five that have succeeded it since it was published in 2013, despite it being aimed at a substantially younger reading demographic than I I belong to. And I feel deeply protective of its heroine, 15-year-old Harriet Manners, who is an absolutely captivating blend of exuberance and vulnerability that needs to be preserved at all costs – a tough one to capture for any actor young enough to play the part.

Harriet is a self-declared geek with a love of odd facts, logical argument and well-researched presentations. The finer points of social interaction elude her and she spends a lot of time falling over, but she has her best friend Nat and stalwart companion Toby to catch her before she does herself too much literal or metaphorical damage. Which is not to say she isn’t, in her glorious eccentricity, a person of interest to the mean girl clique at school – but Harriet is an indefatigable optimist and carries on ploughing her wonky furrow undeterred. It is as much of a surprise to her as it is to everyone else when she is scouted by an agency and finds herself becoming an increasingly successful model. If this has just made you roll your eyes in disappointment, please return them to their original positions. Yes, Harriet’s is in some ways a Cinderella story (plus romcom once she meets fellow model Nick) but not one that ever becomes vapid – or results in any change for the worse in our redoubtable heroine. The books have charm and strength and, in Harriet, a genuinely idiosyncratic female protagonist. Smale seemed to capture a very specific form of lightning in a bottle.

Geek Girl is on Netflix

The Sherlock star is mesmerising as a grief-stricken dad whose son has gone missing – and keeps seeing a 7ft-tall Muppet. This bold, wide-ranging series aims extremely high

Eric is that rare sighting – a truly original Netflix Original. The six part series drama written by Abi Morgan (The Iron Lady, The Split) stars Benedict Cumberbatch as genius puppeteer Vincent, the creative force behind a Sesame Street-esque show called Good Day Sunshine. When his nine-year-old son Edgar (Ivan Morris Howe) goes missing on his way to school, Vincent becomes convinced that if he brings to life the new puppet Edgar had been inventing for the show, his son will come home. Enter into the proceedings a 7ft-tall Muppets-meets-Monsters Inc creation called Eric, invisible to others and voiced by Cumberbatch, who follows Vincent round as a manifestation of his hopes, fears, guilt and altogether crumbling mental health.

Cumberbatch-meets-Muppet has, understandably, been the focus of most of the publicity. But in fact, Eric the puppet is a relatively small part of Eric the show, and not the most effective part at that. Cumberbatch, as you might expect, is mesmerising as the viciously narcissistic Vincent, pretty much drunk on his own talent long before he turns to the bottle to cope with Edgar’s disappearance, and psychologically unravelling in the wake of both. His already volatile and shaky marriage to Cassie (Gaby Hoffmann, doing much with a surprisingly thin part) fractures further under the strain and his colleagues begin to desert him too. He is already mostly estranged from his wealthy parents, to the – slightly unbelievable – extent of refusing their offer of reward money for Edgar’s safe return.

Is humour hardwired into us? This powerful documentary – about comic Mark O’Sullivan creating a TV show from his childhood trauma – makes you think it might be

The standup comedian and writer Mark O’Sullivan is looking at a picture of himself as a boy, on holiday in Norfolk. “I love it,” he says. “And it makes me really, really sad.” The image is from before “it happened” – before his sexual abuse by a member of his extended family began, when O’Sullivan was 11 or 12.

O’Sullivan’s father died when his son was 15 without ever knowing his secret. When O’Sullivan tried, a few years later, to tell his mother, she “shut down the conversation”. When O’Sullivan discovered in his 30s that he was not his abuser’s only victim, he went to the police; his visit initiated a court case in which O’Sullivan testified to his abuse by the man, who was convicted and imprisoned.

These hapless subjects have all ‘fallen in love’ with long-distance partners and agreed to hook up in real life in front of cameras. Their crushed dreams are even more joy-sapping than you’d expect

Are you mildly depressed? Would you like to stay mildly depressed? Welcome, then, to The Nevermets, one of those programmes Channel 4 unofficially specialises in – potentially uplifting but in fact as relentlessly bleak an exploration of the human condition as you are likely to see, and built on a premise that is simple, brilliant and yet somehow still seems the product of sick minds dedicated to squeezing every last drop of hope out of existence.

The Nevermets follows various people who have been in online relationships for months, sometimes years, with other people thousands of miles away whom they have not met in real life. They all profess to be in love and have decided it is time to meet.

Sometimes a film, gig or sex-positive puppet show is so excruciating that awarding it one star just isn’t damning enough. How do writers who’ve written zero-star reviews feel about the worst shows they’ve ever seen now?

It’s harder to write about something you love than something you hate. But what is often forgotten is that the axiom can loop back on itself. Trying to write about something that leaves you bewildered, wondering how you sat through something with no redeeming features, can mean staring at a blank page for quite some time. It is under such conditions that the zero-star review is born.

The challenge is to stop it becoming a torrent of fury about the waste of your time and the talents of the people involved (or the corruption of civilisation itself, if you are dealing with a reality show, which is frequently the case). It’s best to get that out of the way in a first draft or a WhatsApp screed to a patient friend, family member or spouse. Then you can try to create a piece that is worthwhile – even if its subject is not.

Maria Fredriksson’s unflinching documentary about Norwegian siblings who spy a painting of the spit of their dead sister then realise it’s actually her long lost twin navigates secrets, suicide and even Nazis. The revelations just keep coming

Kari and May, devout Christian sisters from Norway, had witnessed a miracle. Would the director Maria Fredriksson like to make a film about their wonderful story? She would and she did – then continued recording as the story began to twist and fracture in ways no one could have foreseen. The result is a deeply intimate film about love, sorrow, the power of faith and the dangers of secrets.

The Gullspång Miracle begins with Fredriksson teaching the sisters how to speak naturally for the camera – an early indication that she will not be an anonymous director, but a shaper of this story. They are in the kitchen where they first saw the painting that set off an extraordinary series of events. The sisters begin recounting the story.

Fascinating and terrifying, this tale of a man who woke from a Covid coma in Glasgow accused of being a serial sex offender on the FBI’s most wanted list is the most bizarre, mind-boggling true-crime series yet

It has seemed lately as though the true-crime documentary might have had its day. Even recent offerings from Netflix, the wellspring of the genre, have begun to feel a bit tired or desperate. A four-part series from Channel 4 on the subject of a US fugitive who faked his own death seemed, therefore, an unpromising proposition.

But there is still room, it turns out, for truly extraordinary stories – especially ones aided by a cast of tremendously televisual real-life characters – to break through and make you boggle once more in disbelief at the weirdness this world can hold.

I thought this would finally be the year – but no. Oh well, I can’t find my way from my house anyway

Nice weather is here! The sun is out and the papers and the internet are filling with their annual offers of help. This is my year, at last – I can feel it! The Summer Style Dilemmas Solved are finally going to work for me! I peruse them eagerly, as I have done for the last 30 years and more, hope undimmed in my increasingly mottled and scraggy breast. But no – no, my hopes are quickly dashed. One again, this year, it seems that my Summer Style Dilemmas can only be solved by losing half my body weight and/or going back in time and making sure one of my parents mates with a gazelle instead.