AZSeries: series from A to Z, from Marvel's Agent Carter, Travelers and Kyle XY to Cranford, Open All Hours, The Good Life and Boston Public, and where to watch them

The shape of the collection

Of the 151 series, 113 were made wholly or partly in the United States, 34 in Britain, and 18 in Canada, Australia and New Zealand; a few co-productions are counted twice. Comedy is the largest list, with 87 titles, and Drama follows with 76. Fifty-five are listed under Family, 59 under Workplace, 36 under Fantasy and science fiction, 31 under Period drama and 25 under School.

The collection reaches back half a century. Thirty-two series began before 2000, 26 between 2000 and 2009, 23 between 2010 and 2014, 33 between 2015 and 2019, and 37 since 2020. The older titles include some of the best loved British comedies of the 1970s and several American dramas that shaped the form; the newer ones include a number of short series made for streaming services that passed by too quickly.

The home page follows the plan of the site it is named for. Under the slate header runs a strip of letters, from A to Z, and each letter opens the series whose titles begin with it. Below comes a row headed Latest Episodes: wide stills from the series whose newest seasons were broadcast most recently, each marked with its count of seasons and episodes. Then come the poster rows, first the most popular series of all and then a row each for comedy, drama, and fantasy and science fiction. Every poster carries a small yellow star and the score given to the series by its viewers.

A list called Short series gathers the 41 titles of ten episodes or fewer, for those who would like to see a whole story in a weekend, and the Top rated list holds the twenty series with scores of 7.5 and above.

Fantasy and science fiction

Thirty-six series are listed under Fantasy and science fiction, and they give the catalogue much of its character. The selection keeps to adventure and wonder and leaves aside horror.

Travelers is the place to begin. In a distant and ruined future, the last survivors have learned to send a human mind back through time into the body of a person in the present day, at the moment that person was recorded as about to die. Five such travellers arrive in the lives of an agent, a young mother, a student, a social worker's client and a recovering addict, and must carry on those lives convincingly while working, on orders from an unseen Director, to change the course of history. The Canadian series ran for three seasons, with Eric McCormack at its head, and it is thoughtful, tense and unusually humane about the people whose places the travellers have taken.

Marvel's Agent Carter is set in New York in 1946. Peggy Carter, who served with distinction in the conflict just ended, finds herself answering telephones in an office of men who think little of her, and so takes on secret missions of her own with the help of an impeccable English butler. Hayley Atwell is a delight, the period design is gorgeous, and the eighteen episodes can be enjoyed by viewers who are new to the films from which the character came. Marvel's Runaways and Marvel's Cloak & Dagger are stories of teenagers discovering unusual gifts, and The Tick is a cheerful parody of the whole business, in which a meek accountant becomes the partner of a large blue hero who is very keen and very vague.

The classic television heroines are here. Wonder Woman, with Lynda Carter, ran from 1975 and remains the definitive screen version for many who grew up with it. The Bionic Woman, from 1976, follows Jaime Sommers, a tennis professional rebuilt after an accident, who teaches school between assignments. Relic Hunter sends a professor of ancient history, played by Tia Carrere, around the world in search of lost treasures, and The Librarians: The Next Chapter continues a much loved adventure series about the guardians of a magical collection.

Time travel is a favourite theme. Voyagers!, from 1982, pairs a swashbuckling time traveller with a clever boy of eleven who knows the history that his partner has forgotten; each episode sets some famous event back on course and sends young viewers to the library. Quantum Leap, the new version of 2022, has a physicist leaping from life to life across the decades, putting right what once went wrong. Seven Days allows its hero to go back exactly one week. Being Erica, from Canada, is gentler: a woman in her thirties, convinced that her life went astray, is given the chance by an unusual therapist to revisit the days she most regrets.

Kyle XY begins when a teenage boy wakes in a forest outside Seattle lacking memory, language and even a navel, and is taken in by a psychologist and her family; the series is as much about the warmth of that household as about the mystery. Eerie, Indiana is a little masterpiece of the early 1990s, in which a boy newly moved to an apparently ordinary small town keeps a file on its secrets, which include a pair of twins who sleep in plastic containers to stay young. The Middleman is a fast, funny comic-book adventure about a young artist recruited as a trainee by a hero who drinks only milk.

The larger adventures include Terra Nova, in which a family joins a colony sent eighty-five million years into the past; La Brea, in which a sinkhole in Los Angeles drops a group of strangers into a primeval land; FlashForward, which opens with everyone on earth losing consciousness for two minutes and seventeen seconds and glimpsing their own future; and The Lost Room, a superb three-part mystery about a motel room key that opens any door. Mako: Island of Secrets, from Australia, is a bright series for younger viewers about three mermaids and a boy who falls into their moon pool. Once Upon a Time in Wonderland sends Alice back down the rabbit hole. The Storyteller: Greek Myths, from the workshop of Jim Henson, retells four ancient stories with puppets and actors. And The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the BBC version of 1981, remains the funniest account ever given of the end of the world and what comes after.

British comedy and drama

Thirty-four series come from Britain, and the comedies among them include some of the best loved programmes in the history of the BBC. Open All Hours is set in a corner shop in Yorkshire. Arkwright, its owner, played by Ronnie Barker, is a master of the hard sell with a stammer and a devotion to his till, which snaps at his fingers; Granville, his nephew and errand boy, played by David Jason, dreams of a wider life while delivering groceries by bicycle. Four series were made between 1976 and 1985, and forty years later Jason returned as the shopkeeper in Still Open All Hours.

The Good Life began in 1975. On his fortieth birthday Tom Good gives up his job designing plastic toys for cereal packets and, with his wife Barbara, turns their suburban house and garden into a smallholding, with pigs, hens and a goat, to the horror and fascination of their well-to-do neighbours Margo and Jerry. Richard Briers, Felicity Kendal, Penelope Keith and Paul Eddington made the four friends real, and the series is as fresh as ever on the subject of what people actually need.

George and Mildred follows a mismatched couple who move to a smart suburb. Bread is the story of the Boswells of Liverpool, a large family presided over by a formidable mother, making ends meet with wit and cheek. Auf Wiedersehen, Pet is a comedy-drama about a gang of British bricklayers who go to work on a building site in Germany and share a wooden hut; it made stars of its cast and is remembered with great affection.

Chef gives Lenny Henry one of his best roles as Gareth Blackstock, a cook of genius and of volcanic temper at a country restaurant, whose insults are as elaborate as his sauces. Teachers is a comedy-drama of a staffroom whose members are barely older than their pupils. The Catherine Tate Show and Harry Enfield and Chums are sketch shows whose characters entered the language, and Look Around You is a perfect parody of the schools science programmes of the 1970s, in which serious voices explain entirely invented facts.

The modern workplace comedies are sharp. Twenty Twelve follows the committee charged with delivering the London Olympics, led by Hugh Bonneville as a man whose every sentence begins with the word so; it is a mock documentary of rare precision. Trollied is set in a supermarket in the north-west, and The Job Lot in a job centre. Stella, written by and starring Ruth Jones, follows a single mother of three in the Welsh valleys through six warm-hearted series. Bad Move takes a couple from the city to a house in the country that is rather less than the brochure promised. Citizen Khan is a broad family sitcom about a self-appointed community leader in Birmingham and the wife and daughters who run rings round him.

Period drama

Thirty-one series are listed under Period drama. Cranford is the jewel. Drawn from three short novels by Elizabeth Gaskell, it is set in a small Cheshire town in the 1840s, a town run by its ladies, where the arrival of a young doctor, a railway or a piece of lace swallowed by a cat is an event of the first importance. Judi Dench, Eileen Atkins and Imelda Staunton lead one of the finest casts ever assembled for television, and the series moves between comedy and sorrow with complete assurance. It holds one of the highest scores in the catalogue.

Doctor Thorne is Julian Fellowes's adaptation of the novel by Anthony Trollope, a story of love, money and a secret of birth in three bright episodes. Daniel Deronda, from George Eliot's last novel, was written by Andrew Davies, who also adapted the most famous Jane Austen series. David Copperfield, the BBC production of 1999, has a very young Daniel Radcliffe as the boy David and Maggie Smith as his aunt. Jane Eyre of 1983, with Timothy Dalton as Mr Rochester, is the most complete version of the novel on screen, in eleven half-hour parts.

Dickensian is an ingenious invention: the characters of a dozen novels by Charles Dickens live as neighbours in one London street, years before their stories begin. Belgravia: The Next Chapter and The Forsytes return to two famous families of fiction. To the Ends of the Earth sends a young aristocrat, played by Benedict Cumberbatch, on a long sea voyage to Australia in 1812, and Tutankhamun tells the story of Howard Carter's years of searching in the Valley of the Kings.

What distinguishes the British classic serial is its patience. These productions were made by people who assumed that the audience had read the book, or meant to, and who took pride in leaving its shape intact. Scenes are allowed to run; minor characters are given their due; a letter may be read aloud in full. Viewers used to quicker storytelling sometimes need an episode to settle into the rhythm, and are then reluctant to leave it. Watched in order of their settings, from the Regency voyage of To the Ends of the Earth through the early Victorian world of Cranford and Jane Eyre to the late Victorian society of Daniel Deronda, they offer a painless course in the history of the nineteenth century, its manners, its money and its railways.

American drama

The Drama list has 76 series. The older American dramas here are among the foundations of modern television. Lou Grant ran from 1977 to 1982. Its hero, a gruff and decent newspaperman played by Ed Asner, had been a character in a famous comedy; moved to a drama of his own, as city editor of a Los Angeles daily, he presided over five seasons of stories about what reporters owe to the truth and to the people they write about. It won the highest award for drama series twice, and its newsroom has been the model for every one since.

The White Shadow, from 1978, follows a retired professional basketball player who takes a job coaching the team at a tough inner-city high school in Los Angeles. It was among the first American dramas with a largely Black cast of young actors, and it dealt honestly with the lives of its players. Boston Public, created by David E. Kelley in 2000, is set among the teachers of a large state high school, led by a principal of great patience; across 81 episodes it mixes comedy, argument and real concern for what schools are asked to do. Eight Is Enough, from 1977, is the family drama of a newspaper columnist in Sacramento and his eight children, and Life Goes On, from 1989, was the first series to give a leading role to an actor with Down syndrome, as the elder son of a warm suburban family.

thirtysomething, which began in 1987, changed the way television talked about ordinary adult life: two friends who run a small advertising agency in Philadelphia, their wives, their children and their unmarried friends, simply living. Men of a Certain Age, twenty years later, did the same for three friends approaching fifty, played by Ray Romano, Andre Braugher and Scott Bakula, and is one of the most quietly truthful series in the catalogue. Commander in Chief imagines the first woman to become President of the United States, with Geena Davis in the part.

More recent dramas include As We See It, a tender and funny series about three young adults on the autism spectrum who share a flat, with autistic actors in the leading roles; Party of Five, in which five brothers and sisters must look after one another when their parents are sent back to Mexico; Good Sam, about a gifted heart surgeon who becomes head of department when her celebrated father falls ill, and must supervise him when he returns; Dear Edward, about a boy of twelve and the people whose lives are joined to his by a single event; and The Republic of Sarah, in which a history teacher discovers that her small New Hampshire town was left off the map and may declare itself a country.

Rise follows a teacher who takes over the drama department of a high school in a Pennsylvania steel town and stages an ambitious musical. Roadies, created by the film director Cameron Crowe, goes on tour with the crew of a rock band. Signed, Sealed, Delivered is about four postal workers who trace the owners of letters that went astray, and Off the Map and Heartbeat are medical dramas, the first at a clinic deep in the South American jungle.

True lives

Several short series tell real stories. The Jacksons: An American Dream, from 1992, follows the family from a small house in Gary, Indiana, to world fame, and The New Edition Story does the same for the Boston boy band of the 1980s. Elvis covers the singer's rise from a schoolboy in Memphis to his return to the stage in 1968. George & Tammy is the story of the country singers George Jones and Tammy Wynette, with Jessica Chastain and Michael Shannon doing their own singing. Dolly Parton's Heartstrings turns eight of her songs into eight separate stories, each introduced by the singer herself.

Harley and the Davidsons shows three young men in Milwaukee at the start of the last century building a motorcycle in a shed. Thai Cave Rescue retells, with the cooperation of the families, the saving of twelve young footballers and their coach from a flooded cave in 2018, an event that the whole world followed. Nolly, written by Russell T Davies, gives Helena Bonham Carter the role of the star of a long-running British serial who was abruptly written out at the height of her fame.

American comedy

The comedies of the United States make up the largest single group in the catalogue. The 1970s are represented by What's Happening!!, about three friends growing up in the Watts district of Los Angeles, one of the first comedies about Black teenagers and a favourite in reruns for decades. From the 1990s come Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, in which a former basketball player becomes a substitute teacher and shares a house with two friends; The Jamie Foxx Show, with the future film star as a hopeful actor working at his aunt and uncle's hotel; Cybill, in which Cybill Shepherd plays an actress whose best roles are behind her; and Suddenly Susan, with Brooke Shields as a magazine columnist.

The Parkers has one of the highest scores on the site. Nikki Parker, who left school to bring up her daughter Kim, enrols at the same college at the same time as Kim, to the daughter's dismay, and pursues a handsome professor with unshakeable optimism; it ran for 110 episodes. Half & Half is about two half-sisters in San Francisco who grew up apart and become neighbours as adults, and All of Us about a newly divorced television presenter, his son and the two women in his life. The Golden Palace follows three of the four heroines of a famous comedy as they buy and run a small hotel in Miami.

The family comedies of the last twenty years are well represented. Are We There Yet? continues a pair of popular films about a newly blended family. Complete Savages has a single father and five sons. Growing Up Fisher is drawn from its creator's own childhood with a father who was blind and concealed it from almost everyone. The Unicorn is a warm comedy about a widower with two daughters whose friends decide that it is time he met someone. Splitting Up Together, Happy Together, Outmatched, in which a working couple in Atlantic City find that three of their four children are certified geniuses, and Poppa's House continue the line, and United States of Al is about the friendship between a former Marine in Ohio and the Afghan interpreter who comes to live with his family.

Workplaces of every kind appear. Less than Perfect is set among the assistants at a television news network. Kitchen Confidential, from the memoir of a famous chef, gave Bradley Cooper an early leading part. American Auto goes inside the head office of a car maker in Detroit, DMV behind the counter of a licensing office, and Carol's Second Act to a hospital where Patricia Heaton plays a retired teacher beginning again as a junior doctor at fifty. Getting On is a wry comedy of a ward for elderly patients. Web Therapy has Lisa Kudrow as a therapist who believes that three minutes by video call is quite enough for anyone.

Politics supplies a small shelf of its own: The Mayor, in which a young rapper runs for office to promote his music and wins; 1600 Penn, a family comedy set in the White House; and Graves, about a former president with second thoughts. Rutherford Falls is a clever comedy about a small town, its founding family and the Native American nation next door, written in part by Native writers. Welcome to Flatch is a mock documentary about two cousins in a small Ohio town. Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat repeats, in a new setting, the experiment of surrounding one unsuspecting person with a cast of actors.

For younger viewers there are Unfabulous, with Emma Roberts as a schoolgirl who writes songs about her life; Side Hustle, about two friends who take on odd jobs to pay for an accident with a boat; Fred: The Show; and Jane by Design, in which a schoolgirl is mistaken for an adult and hired by a fashion house.

Canada, Australia and New Zealand

Eighteen series come from Canada, Australia and New Zealand. From Canada, besides Travelers and Being Erica, come Mr. D, a long-running comedy about a teacher who is rather less qualified than he lets on; Son of a Critch, the comedian Mark Critch's memories of growing up in Newfoundland in the 1980s as a boy of eleven who talks like a man of sixty; and Moonshine, about a family and their ramshackle summer resort on the south shore of Nova Scotia.

Australia sends Doctor Doctor, in which a celebrated heart surgeon from Sydney is sent back to his country home town to work as a general practitioner; Rosehaven, a gentle and very funny comedy about two friends at a family estate agency in rural Tasmania; Upper Middle Bogan, in which a doctor from a comfortable suburb learns that she was adopted and that her birth family run a drag-racing team; and Dive Club and Mako: Island of Secrets for younger viewers. From New Zealand comes 800 Words, about a newspaper columnist, recently widowed, who buys a house by the sea on impulse and moves his two teenagers across the Tasman to a town where everybody knows everything.

The workplace

Fifty-nine series are set where people earn their living, and the list is a tour of the working world. The newsroom of Lou Grant and the classrooms of Boston Public have been described. Press sets two rival London newspapers, one earnest and one popular, on opposite sides of the same square. Twenty Twelve and Trollied are the British office and shop floor at their funniest. The Job Lot finds comedy among people looking for work and the staff who are meant to help them.

Hospitals appear in Good Sam, Heartbeat, Off the Map, Doctor Doctor and, in comic form, Getting On and Carol's Second Act. Best Medicine, new in 2026, moves a brilliant and tactless surgeon from Boston to a fishing village in Maine, where he must treat sore throats and learn manners. Kitchens appear in Chef and Kitchen Confidential, and the hotel trade in The Golden Palace and Moonshine. Almost Family is a drama about three women who discover that they are sisters, and Benched a comedy about a corporate lawyer who lands, after a very public loss of temper, among the public defenders.

Some of the most enjoyable are about the business of entertainment itself. Roadies and Soundtrack follow people who work around music. Nolly is set in the studios of a television serial. Web Therapy laughs at the fashion for doing everything by screen. And Alex, Inc. is based on the true story of a radio journalist who gave up a steady job to start a company making audio programmes, and recorded the whole adventure.

Romance

Twenty-four series are listed under Romance. With Love follows a brother and sister of a large Mexican-American family in Portland through one year, each episode set on a different holiday. Up Here turns the doubts inside two young New Yorkers' heads into songs. Jane by Design and Alone Together are light comedies of young people finding their feet. Being Erica is as much about love as about time, and among the period dramas Doctor Thorne, Daniel Deronda and Jane Eyre are romances of the first rank. The Unicorn and Men of a Certain Age show the subject from the other end of life, with men in their forties and fifties learning to begin again.

Sport and dance

Eleven series touch on sport. The White Shadow is the classic, a drama in which the game is the way into the lives of the players. Back in the Game is a comedy about a former softball star who coaches her son's hopeless baseball team with the help of her cantankerous father. Dive Club follows a group of teenage divers in a small Australian coastal town. Hangin' with Mr. Cooper begins with a basketball player whose professional career has ended, and Citizen Khan is devoted to cricket in spirit if seldom in practice.

Why short-lived series deserve a second look

A number of the series on AZSeries lasted a single season, and it is fair to ask why a guide should recommend something that its own makers ended. The answer lies in how television works. A series can be cancelled for reasons that have little to do with quality: the wrong evening, a change of management, a rival programme, a budget that outran its audience. Terra Nova was among the most expensive series of its year. Kitchen Confidential was shown out of order. The Middleman was ahead of its time, and Eerie, Indiana found its real audience only when it was repeated years later.

There is also a pleasure peculiar to the short run. Thirteen episodes can be watched in a fortnight, and a story that was shaped for one season often has a completeness that longer series lose. FlashForward, Threshold, Debris and Heroes Reborn each tell a large tale in a small space. Commander in Chief and The Mayor imagined public figures who had yet to exist. Viewers who are willing to accept that a few threads are left untied will find in these series some of the most inventive work in the catalogue.

The long-running comedies have the opposite virtue. The Parkers, Eight Is Enough, Lou Grant and The Jamie Foxx Show each run to a hundred episodes or so, and can be dipped into at any point. A household that wants a series for a season of weeknights, to be watched in any order while supper is cleared, will find a good choice among them.

Performers to follow

Several well-known actors can be seen here at the start of their careers or in roles away from their famous ones. Daniel Radcliffe is ten years old in David Copperfield. Bradley Cooper leads Kitchen Confidential years before his film fame, and Emma Roberts is thirteen in Unfabulous. Benedict Cumberbatch carries To the Ends of the Earth in one of his first leading parts. David Jason appears as the young Granville and, forty years on, as the shopkeeper himself. Judi Dench, Lenny Henry, Ronnie Barker, Ed Asner, Geena Davis, Lisa Kudrow and Ray Romano each lead a series of their own, and Lynda Carter and Lindsay Wagner remain, for many viewers, the faces of the characters they played.

School stories

Twenty-five series are set in and around school, and they span the whole period of the catalogue. The White Shadow and Boston Public are the major dramas. Teachers and Mr. D are comedies of the staffroom, British and Canadian. Rise is about a school play, and What's Happening!!, Unfabulous and Complete Savages see school from the pupils' side.

What these series share is respect for the work. Teaching is shown as difficult, comic, exhausting and important, and the best of them give as much time to the adults' doubts as to the pupils' troubles. A household with a teacher in it will find a good deal to recognise, and a household with teenagers may find the dramas a useful way into conversations that are hard to begin directly.

Family viewing

Fifty-five series are listed under Family. For a room that includes children under twelve, the safest choices are Mako: Island of Secrets, Voyagers!, Eerie, Indiana, Wonder Woman, The Bionic Woman, Kyle XY, Unfabulous, Side Hustle and Are We There Yet?. The Storyteller: Greek Myths is superb for children old enough for the myths themselves, which have their frightening moments, and The Good Life and Open All Hours have delighted three generations at once since the 1970s.

From about twelve, the range widens to include Marvel's Agent Carter, Travelers, Terra Nova, Eight Is Enough, Life Goes On, Party of Five and the period dramas. Some series were written chiefly for adults and are included because they are thoughtful and free of cruelty: thirtysomething, Men of a Certain Age, Lou Grant, Getting On and Roadies have grown-up themes and occasional strong language. The official services listed by JustWatch show an age rating for every series, and it is always worth a glance before the first episode.

Short series for a weekend

Forty-one titles have ten episodes or fewer. The period dramas lead: Cranford in seven parts, Doctor Thorne in three, Daniel Deronda in four and David Copperfield in two. The Lost Room tells its whole mystery in three long episodes, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy takes six half-hours. The true stories are short by nature: Thai Cave Rescue has six parts, George & Tammy six, and Harley and the Davidsons three.

Among the newer series, As We See It runs to eight episodes, Up Here, a musical romantic comedy set in New York in 1999, to eight, and The Boroughs, an adventure of 2026 set in a retirement community where something strange is happening, to eight. The Runarounds follows a group of school-leavers in North Carolina who form a band for one last summer. Social Distance is a set of eight short stories, filmed by their casts at home, about the spring of 2020. Powerless is a comedy about the office workers of a city full of heroes, and Extrapolations imagines, story by story, the coming decades of a warming world.

Using AZSeries

The site is built around the alphabet. The slate header carries the name on the left, with the letters AZ in a red block, then the menu and the search box. The menu opens the full index of Series, the lists for Comedy, Drama, Fantasy and SF and Family, the A to Z index and My List. Beneath the header runs the strip of letters; a click on any letter opens the series that begin with it, and the first symbol in the strip opens the complete index.

Type a title in the search box and matches appear as you type. The search also understands a request for a particular episode, such as a title followed by season 2 episode 3, and will take you to the series that has one. Every series has a page of its own. At the top are the poster, the title, the years of broadcast, the genres and the number of seasons and episodes. Below come the story, the creators and the leading actors, and then a list of seasons with their episodes and air dates.

The Watch now button sits beside the poster. Choose your country from the list, press the button, and JustWatch opens with the services that carry that series where you live: subscription services, shops for purchase by season or episode, and free services supported by advertising. A fair number of the older comedies and dramas here have found a second home on free services, and the short-lived series of recent years often remain on the service that first made them, so both columns are worth a look.

My List is the place for series you have noticed and mean to return to. On any series page, the Add to My List button saves the title in the browser you are using, and the My List link in the menu brings up the whole collection, letter by letter if you like. A button on that page writes the list to a small file, so that it can travel with you to a second computer or a telephone. Since the list lives in your own browser, there is neither an account to create nor a password to remember, and nobody else can see it.

A walk through the alphabet

Since the alphabet is the idea of the site, here is a short tour of it, with one or two suggestions for each stretch of letters.

From A to C: Auf Wiedersehen, Pet for comedy with a heart, As We See It for something new, Boston Public for a long drama, Bread for a family that talks as fast as it thinks, Chef for the pleasure of a well-turned insult, and Cranford for everything.

From D to H: Daniel Deronda and Doctor Thorne for a rainy weekend, Eerie, Indiana for the young and the curious, Eight Is Enough for a family large enough to field a team, The Good Life for self-sufficiency in the suburbs, and Half & Half and Hangin' with Mr. Cooper for an evening of easy laughter.

From J to M: Jane Eyre in its fullest version, Kyle XY for a mystery the whole family can follow, Lou Grant for the best newsroom on television, Life Goes On for its warmth, and Men of a Certain Age and Mr. D at either end of the scale from wistful to silly.

From O to S: Open All Hours, The Parkers, Quantum Leap, Rosehaven and Stella make a pleasant week of half-hours, with Rise and Roadies for those who like music with their drama.

From T to W: Travelers and Terra Nova for adventure, Twenty Twelve and Trollied for the British at work, Voyagers! for a history lesson in disguise, and The White Shadow and Wonder Woman to finish in the 1970s, where the collection began.

A first month

For a newcomer, here is one way to spend four weeks with the collection.

In the first week, begin Travelers. The opening episode explains its idea with great clarity, and the first season of twelve episodes is a complete story in itself.

In the second week, watch Cranford across three or four evenings, and keep a half-hour each night for Open All Hours or The Good Life.

In the third week, try the 1940s with Marvel's Agent Carter, whose first season has only eight episodes, and let the younger members of the household choose between Mako: Island of Secrets and Eerie, Indiana.

In the fourth week, start one of the long American dramas, Boston Public or Lou Grant, and end the month with the three parts of The Lost Room, which is as neat a mystery as television has produced.

After that the letters are yours to explore. The Top rated list holds the twenty series with the highest scores; the year lists let you move from 1975 to the present; and the Short series list is always there for a free weekend.

How the series were chosen

Every title on AZSeries was selected by a person and checked by hand. The starting point was the record of English-language scripted series held by TMDB with a poster, a still image, a written description and a fair number of ratings from viewers, in comedy, drama, family, fantasy and science fiction, which gave more than a thousand candidates. From that list we set aside crime and detective series, horror, reality and talk programmes, daily serials, and comedies made for adult audiences; we also left out a small number of older comedies whose humour rests on national stereotypes. Series of more than 120 episodes were excluded as well, since they are better served by guides of their own. We then read the description of each remaining series, kept those that a household could watch together, and looked a second time at any that raised a doubt.

The result has a clear character: 87 comedies and 76 dramas, 59 set in the workplace, 55 family series, 36 of fantasy and science fiction, 31 in period costume and 25 about school, with many titles counted under more than one heading. Each series appears on AZSeries alone among our sites, so the catalogue is its own. Posters, cast lists, episode lists and descriptions come from TMDB, and the Watch now links are provided by JustWatch, which records where each series is officially available country by country.

Questions and answers

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