The best new Netflix, Amazon Prime and BBC iPlayer series to watch this winter – from The Crown to Black Mirror.

Streaming TV really comes into its own in the winter. Platforms such as Netflix and Amazon Prime have dissolved traditional formats and created a new, open-ended, available-on-demand approach to small-screen entertainment. So, as the nights draw in, it’s now possible to immerse oneself as never before in a favourite show. Furthermore, with TV budgets higher than ever, the limits placed upon a show’s creators are now simply the limits of their imaginations. Still, some things never change: this season’s streaming TV highlights are a mixture of future-shock, modern manners and reassuring familiarity. There really is something for everyone.

Amazon Prime, available now

From Transparent to Fleabag, gloomy comedy has become a trope of our TV age. American stand-up Ms Tig Notaro has taken sad-com to a whole new level with this mordant, moving and yes, frequently very funny series commemorating a somewhat sticky spell in her life. In the space of four months, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, broke up with her partner and endured the sudden, unexpected death of her mother. But don’t be intimidated by this catalogue of misery; somehow, Ms Notaro has created something warm and profound out of this extreme adversity so watching is never a chore. Well, they do say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. Who knew it also made you funnier?

Amazon Prime, available 16 December

Back in the past (albeit an alternate one), big developments are afoot as this counterfactual, post-WWII drama based on Mr Philip K Dick’s novel returns for a second season. There are a few new characters joining the fold, but more importantly, this time around, we’re actually going to get to the bottom of the show’s slightly enigmatic title. Who is The Man In The High Castle? We can assure that soon we’ll find out. Amazon have been understandably cagey about the details, but this adaptation was rightly praised for its tasteful yet flexible handling of its source material, so we can confidently expect the usual slow-burning fireworks.

Netflix, available now

In an often nostalgic era, it’s cheering that the definitive streaming dramas of the year are so resolutely forward-facing. But these six new instalments of Mr Charlie Brooker’s Black Mirror explore the threats and possibilities of the future more effectively and affectingly than any other show currently on offer. Needless to say, Mr Brooker’s vision is often implacably bleak – the clue’s in the name. But the stand-out here is, somewhat surprisingly, the wonderfully inventive and entirely uplifting “San Junipero” in which Mr Brooker posits technology as a source of release and redemption rather than anger, misery and emotional torment. There’s a good chance you’ve already binge-watched the series, but if not, see this as a polite, yet firm, reminder to do so.

Netflix, available now

It’s the most expensive small-screen drama ever made. And it’s impossible to see The Crown as anything other than Netflix’s first salvo in the direction of a whole new demographic group – having captured the millennials, they’re now in hot pursuit of the Downton Abbey crowd. Starring a beautifully poised and brittle Ms Claire Foy as Britain’s girlish new monarch and Mr Matt Smith as her charismatic Greek suitor, The Crown tells the story of Queen Elizabeth II as a young woman, struggling with the demands of a uniquely exacting new job. It’s written by Mr Peter Morgan who has form for this sort of thing having earlier dramatised Her Majesty’s later life in The Queen. Expect painstaking detail, lavish on-screen largesse and a certain amount of sly wit.

BBC iPlayer, available now

By any standards, 2016 has been a tumultuous year. It’s tempting to retreat into escapism. Instead, why not allow the BBC’s documentary don, Mr Adam Curtis, to assemble some sort of narrative coherence out of the decades leading up to the apparent madness of Brexit, Syria and Mr Donald Trump? HyperNormalisation describes our journey towards a world in which leaders and citizens have seemingly lost the ability to communicate with each other. The suggestion of hidden hands on the wheel has been replaced by the even more disturbing suspicion that no-one’s steering anymore and we’re collectively accelerating towards a brick wall. Amazingly, Mr Curtis renders this gloomy premise genuinely entertaining thanks to his eye for odd, telling tonal juxtapositions and brilliantly intuitive use of the BBC’s vast current affairs archive.