Shasarak

Almost faultless. The format is interesting: an initial one-hour episode, then the rest are 30 minutes, to mimic the way the original novel was published in serialised form. There's a lot of deliberately modern camera work - hand-held cameras, crash zooms, etc. (An attempt to draw in a younger audience, possibly). It has a quite extraordinary ensemble cast - almost every character is played by someone well known. It's probably unfair to single anyone out (though Charles Dance is simply superb as Tulkinghorn); really, almost every character is played delightfully well. It was one of the first BBC shows to be shot in high definition, so they tried really hard with the scenery, props, costumes, etc. to make sure everything could stand up to that level of detail, and it really shows. And an excellent script by Andrew Davies, too!

The first season gets off to a very uneven start; but from the second half of the first season onwards, it's brilliantly funny.

I know I'm going to get (ahem) "Lynched" for this, but Twin Peaks is a series whose appeal almost entirely escapes me. It is slow, clumsy, tonally confused, deliberately incomprehensible, often poorly acted, and suffers from muddled writing as well. I don't deny its enormous influence and legacy, but with all the hype surrounding it, I had expected something truly special; instead I found myself constantly thinking "when is this going to get good?" - and it never did.