The box sets to keep you glued to your sofa over the new year.

In the bleak midwinter, the box set truly comes into its own. The outside world has turned to sludge, getting off the sofa feels like a faintly ridiculous notion, and you’re too far settled into your hibernatory state to make multiple decisions about viewing matter. What you need to survive January is a stockpile of top TV series – and for some reason there’s nothing more comforting than an especially bleak crime drama. Perhaps it’s because, when the world outside seems cruellest, the comfort of your living room seems cosiest. But maybe it doesn’t bear thinking about too much: in January, crime just pays. From classic police procedurals to lavish new period noirs, here are five box sets to binge on while you’re stuck indoors waiting for 2018 to get its act together.

A small rural town. A boy on a bike. A network of caves and an ominous nuclear-power plant. It’s easy to see why this 10-part German thriller, about a community of families gripped by a supernatural tragedy, has been touted as Stranger Things for grown-ups. The tone is gloomier, the young corpses grislier, and it opens with a quote from Mr Albert Einstein about the circular nature of time. The question police chief Ulrich must answer is not so much “where?” as “when?”

This lavish 16-parter follows a traumatised young detective and his nightclub-dancing assistant through the bustling squares, squalid tenements and decadent jazz bars of the Weimar Republic, as they investigate a blackmail plot involving a porn ring. Adapted from the crime novels of Mr Volker Kutscher, Babylon Berlin features panoramic period detail, Kurt Weill-esque songs by Mr Bryan Ferry, and an astonishingly brilliant performance scene in a cabaret club at the conclusion of episode 2.

Like a Norwegian Breaking Bad, this medical-cum-cop drama concerns a hardworking professional driven outside the law by his sense of honour and the vagaries of fate. In order to finance an experimental treatment for his dying wife, physician Ravn sets up an illegal clinic below an Underground station. Here he treats injured criminals with the help of corrupt civil defence officer, Leif. The latter is also an obsessive doomsday blogger, giving Valkyrien’s tone a distinctive paranoiac edge.

Beginning with a breathy cover of Nancy Sinatra’s “Bang Bang”, this new French mystery is like Broadchurch with better hair, slightly soapier acting and the turquoise waters of Lac de Sainte-Croix in place of the Dorset coast. A teenage girl disappears during the annual fete. The town’s menfolk, including the girl’s father, all seem dodgy. But then Lise, a detective from Paris who is visiting her sick mother, has her own secrets. Fifteen years ago her two best friends went missing. Could there be a link?

The BBC is making several classic series available for seasonal binge viewing on the iPlayer. This includes all four series of Jed Mercurio’s masterful police procedural, featuring knock-out performances from Vicky McClure and Martin Compston as rival recruits to an anti-corruption unit. The multiple plot twists, celebrated interview scenes and hints at a grand over-arching conspiracy mean this tense investigation into the heart of the police is well worth another viewing.

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