Ranking Every HBO Drama Series From Worst To Best

The police procedural is a format as old as TV itself (nearly), so it’s impressive when any show succeeds in finding a new way to tell its stories. Five Days is built around a neat device - it follows the investigation of missings people with the five episodes focussing on days one, three, 28, 33 and 79 of the search.

This is far more than a gimmick. The series takes in different perspectives - the police, the families of the missing, the journalists reporting the story. The structure gives it an immediate sense of immense tension - with each new episode, we know that things will have gotten immeasurably worse as time ticks on and hopes dim.

Both seasons had top quality casts - David Oyelowo, Penelope Wilton, and Hugh Bonneville in the first, Suranne Jones and David Morrisey in the second - and offered breathless, complex TV with a format that ensured you’d see it through to the end. It was cancelled after two seasons, which was probably its shelf life, but this is a smart and inventive show that’s worth digging out, as it’s rarely spoken about nowadays.