The Internet changed the way people live their everyday lives, and the visual media hatched a groundbreaking form of storytelling... the web series. Possibly the best part of the web series phenomenon is the ability for artistes to tell stories to a wide audience or, specifically, to their audience. I was initiated into this young and sensational form of art with Narcos.

This raw, gritty series chronicles the gripping story of the drug kingpin Pablo Escobar and the relentless efforts of law enforcement to meet him head-on in a brutal, bloody conflict. Binge-watching Narcos made me feel that I was in the Colombian jungle and the hot humid air touched me through the screen. It was beautiful, addictive, and its narrative form of storytelling was the silver lining.

Narcos led me to Breaking Bad, where a high-school chemistry teacher takes up a new career as a Methamphetamine producer in hopes of earning enough money to take care of his family. Okay, so what is the big deal about it I thought. But voila! I was experiencing an amalgamation of Pulp Fiction, Scarface, The Usual Suspects, The Departed, Goodfellas, American Beauty, Heat, The Terminator, and yet for its strength and purity of vision, for its unique calibration of its core characters, for its completely original premise, Breaking Bad evolved into this fascinating, once-in-a-lifetime classic.

Ozark Still from the series

Since then we, web series and me, have come a long way, changing day to day! House of Cards corrupted me, Peaky Blinders made me a gangsta, Mindhunter numbed me, Big Little Lies gave me goosebumps, Jessica Jones seduced me to become a Bourbon fan, Atypical made me love life a bit more, and then Fleabag hilariously broke my heart. I decided to take a break because I felt I was reading less and watching more. That is when Broadchurch happened to me!

There’s a string of good, great, super shows, and then there’s Broadchurch. The murder of a young boy in a small coastal town brings a media frenzy, which threatens to tear the community apart. Local detectives Ellie Miller and Alec Hardy are assigned the mysterious case. But there’s more to this than what meets the eye. Perfectly written drama, with stellar cinematography and terrific performances, Broadchurch is a deliberate, gradually unfolding mystery procedural which is raw and riveting, funny yet tragic. Broadchurch is a masterpiece, all three seasons!

To lighten up my mood I chanced upon Sex Education without much expectations. To my surprise, it turned out to be the most honest coming-of-age show I’ve seen in a long time. Sex Education is racy yet profound, hilarious and heartfelt, and in an ingenious way has a thing or two for everyone to learn. The acting is top-notch. Beautifully mounted, it is unlike anything you have seen before.

Otis and Maeve’s unrequited love story left me wanting for more. I was down and out when the scintillating Watchmen struck me like lightning! Set in “an alternate history where masked vigilantes are treated as outlaws, Watchmen embraces the nostalgia of the original groundbreaking graphic novel of the same name, while attempting to break new ground of its own.” Watchmen is a bold, ambitious show, which strikes a hard-to-achieve balance between spectacle and staying grounded.

The world of Watchmen is similar to ours except there’s no Internet, squid sometimes rain from the sky and Robert Redford has been the US president since the 1990s. Not only does it attempt to take one of the most sacred and misunderstood graphic novels and update it, but it does so by putting Black American trauma at the forefront. Watchmen is the ultimate neo-noir science fiction superhero series, dark and violent, action packed and truly emotional.

The Blacklist Sourced by the Telegraph

It is extremely difficult to binge anything else after experiencing such an extravaganza, but what if you find yourself in a time machine which takes you back to April 1986, when an explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant became one of the world’s worst man-made catastrophes! The series Chernobyl dramatises that “disastrous nuclear accident and tells the story of the brave men and women who made incredible sacrifices to save Europe from unimaginable disaster”, all the while battling a culture of disinformation. Emotionally tormenting and politically relevant, Chernobyl champions truth-telling, captured in breathtakingly striking images — the dreamlike, socialist-realist spring colour of the pre-disaster city of Pripyat, the eerie horror of birds dropping from the sky and deer decaying in the forest, the yawning wound of the wrecked reactor and radioactive particles settling softly on hair and faces like deadly snowflakes.

Chernobyl is so intense, gritty and humane that it got me transfixed for a couple of days and I had to re-watch some of my favourite zany satires like BoJack Horseman to lift my spirits.

The sprightly me found a new friend in Park Hae-young, the young charming police officer and criminal profiler from Signal, “a Korean crime thriller series where the past and present collide through a mysterious walkie-talkie”.

The screenplay of Signal is clever, surprising, and gripping at every turn. The quirky scheme of the supernatural element makes the story even more remarkable. The overlapping scenes from the past and present merge seamlessly together, resulting in a narrative that keeps you on the edge of your seat, episode after episode.

The Koreans just know how to crack unique ideas and yet keep the storytelling simple and poignant.

The Blacklist, which is fast-paced and thoroughly entertaining, is in one phrase “evil genius”. If you watch one episode of The Blacklist, you will watch the next. And every time you think you are smarter than ‘Red’, he will with his patent smirk profess, “Let me put your mind at ease, I’m never telling you everything.”

I also finished watching Giri/Haji, a series which is complex but often deadpan funny. Pulpy crime flick meets family drama in this soulful thriller set in Tokyo and London that deals with Japanese gangsters and British cops.

This visually startling series is like no other thriller made in the past decade. No carpet music, no soaring melodrama... but a subtle, witty, cross-cultural pollination with a butterfly effect that lasts forever. Don’t binge, just watch at ease. Burn yourself slowly in this daring examination of morality and redemption.

Ozark is my all-time favourite web series. Marvellous scripting, exquisite acting, impeccable making, Ozark tells the story of “the Byrdes and their teenage kids, Charlotte and Jonah, who are, for all intents and purposes, an ordinary family with ordinary lives. Except for the job of Marty, a Chicago financial advisor who also serves as the top money launderer for the second largest drug cartel in Mexico.”

Ozark is darkly entertaining, and just when you think it can’t get any darker or disturbing, Ozark rips the rug from underneath you. Absolutely phenomenal!