All 4, 4OD – Channel 4’s streaming platform has had many guises over the years. For now, however, it’s simply known as Channel 4. And while it might be your first port of call for a sitcom ( and all live there), you might never think of looking there for a new drama.
But the streamer has a real treasure trove of undiscovered and underrated gems. Not only does it have a selection of original programmes to choose from, but it also offers a wide range of shows from other platforms, including Disney+ (which would otherwise cost you £5.99 a month). Channel 4 is completely free, but if you do want to get rid of the adverts, you can upgrade to Channel 4+ for £3.99 (though I’d advise against it – when else are you going to have time to make a cup of tea?).
So, if you’re looking for your next binge watch – whether you want a gritty crime series or a historical dramatisation of true events – you could do worse than looking through Channel 4’s archives. Here are the most underrated dramas you’ll find:
Dennis Kelly’s genre-bending thriller is one of the best TV series of all time, but it rarely gets the attention it deserves. The premise is a little wacky – a disparate group of readers discover that an unpublished version of their favourite graphic novel has predicted major world disasters, and are pursued by a shady, secretive and violent organisation as a result. It’s a highly stylised and inventive series (I hope you like yellow) that manages to be gory, funny, creepy and exhilarating all at once. It’s worth watching for Neil Maskell and Paul Ready’s dead-eyed assassins alone.
The Light in the Hall
Joanna Scanlan crops up more than once in this list – but The Light in the Hall (or in its native Welsh) is among her most subtle, affecting work. Scanlan plays a woman, Sharon Roberts, who has never got over the murder of her 15-year-old daughter Ela almost two decades earlier. The man responsible has never shared the details of Ela’s death – but not for lack of trying; he has “dissociative amnesia”, meaning his memory of the event has gone… for now.
If you saw Olivia Wilde’s recent film and wished it went just a bit further, let me introduce you to . Said couple are the irresistible Becka and Danny (Jessica de Gouw and Sam Heughan), who welcome their new neighbours, devout Christians Evie and Pete (Eleanor Tomlinson and Alfred Enoch), into their sexy world of non-monogamous swinging. Unsurprisingly, it all starts to become about more than sex, as the couples begin to develop romantic feelings.
With so many detectives on television, it takes something special to make a new kid on the block stand out. Patience (Ella Maisy Purvis) isn’t your usual miserable middle-aged bloke with a drinking problem – she’s a young woman with autism who works in the criminal records office. So, while she’s not a detective at all, her neurodivergence helps her spot patterns better than the rest of them, much to the delight of homicide investigator Bea Metcalf (Laura Fraser), who could do with Patience’s help with solving a murder or two.
Inspired by the career of former editor Joanna Coles, is set in the offices of a glossy women’s magazine, Scarlet. We see the inner workings of the fashion closet, the features desk and the social media department through the eyes of three millennials finding their feet in the cutthroat world of modern journalism: Jane Sloan (Katie Stevens), Kat Edison (Aisha Dee), and Sutton Brady-Hunter (Meghann Fahy). Above them is the terrifyingly adept editor-in-chief, Jacqueline Carlyle (Melora Hardin), who ultimately wants her employees to succeed – but doesn’t always make it easy for them to do so.
Originally only available on Disney+, this visceral series about the Troubles is based on the true story of Irish mother-of-10 Jean McConville, who was abducted and murdered by the IRA in 1972. It’s told from the perspective of Dolours Price, who was involved in the crime, as a middle-aged woman (Maxine Peake) recounting her memories to a journalist writing an oral history of the period. It’s a violent, often difficult to watch series – but one well worth the effort.
France’s 16th century Queen Catherine de’ Medici was known as the “Serpent Queen” because she was a slippery, untrustworthy character, thought to have used a secret deadly poison against her political enemies. In this excellent series, Samantha Morton (most recently seen as Circe in ) plays Catherine with a little more depth, arriving to court as an orphan, sent by her uncle (who just happens to be the Pope) to marry soon-to-be King Henri, despite being deemed as unworthy by the Royal Family. She convinces Henri to marry her, however, and from that day on Catherine realises she has the serpentine skills to have her own way with the Kingdom.
Maggie Gyllenhaal plays Nessa Stein, an Anglo-Jewish businesswoman who wants to install fibre optic cables in the West Bank. But the project is stalled when her business partner suddenly dies by suicide and her close friend is kidnapped. What follows is a heart-stoppingly tense spy thriller that has the power to shock at every turn. When was first broadcast in 2014, it was depressingly foresighted as Israel launched air strikes on Palestine after a spate of Hamas rockets. More than a decade on, not much has changed.
This three-part drama deserved all the anger and action inspired by Mr Bates vs the Post Office when it was broadcast in February this year. But for one reason or another, it flew criminally under the radar. It stars Jason Watkins and David Thewlis and tells the story of how water contaminated with sewage led to the death of an eight-year-old from E-coli poisoning. It points the finger squarely at the water companies, the Environment Agency, and councils for creating and ignoring sewage spills, making for a maddening and shocking series.
Cop shows are taken far too seriously – but not on Channel 4. comes from the same pen as creator Paul Abbott and is set in a Mancunian police station, where potty-mouthed officers are overseen by the equally sweary, no-nonsense DI Viv Deering (Joanna Scanlan). Their first case revolves around a serial killer who is targeting girls with Down’s syndrome, though as their investigation gains momentum, it soon becomes clear that the killings have a connection far too close to home for DI Deering.
One of the best parts of Channel 4 is its selection of foreign language dramas under the Walter Presents banner. Among them is this moreish Dutch legal thriller, which focuses on the 12 people in the jury of a different murder case each series. In the first, the suspect is a teacher who is accused of killing two victims decades apart, while the second series – subtitled – sees a young woman accused of killing her stepmother with the help of her dad.