Baby, it’s cold outside and who wants to deal with that? Better to light a fire, hide under the covers, grab a whisky or glass of wine, and get the best out of winter by binge-watching awesome TV shows. We’re deep into television’s golden age and there are literally hundreds of phenomenal series just one click away, but here are five gems that you might have missed. You can thank us later.

High Maintenance

First released as a Vimeo series in 2012, High Maintenance was picked up by HBO last year, but the original web episodes are still the best of the series. Creator Ben Sinclair plays the nameless lead character, a deadpan marijuana delivery guy who peddles his wares around New York.

Each episode is devoted to a different client, taking you behind closed doors and into brief vignettes of big city life – sometimes weird, sometimes poignant, always brilliant. Sinclair and his wife/co-creator Katja Blichfeld tapped some incredible up-and-coming acting talent to make the show, and their writing is always on-point.

From gender-dysphoria to Brooklyn AirBnb nightmares to lonely cancer diagnoses, High Maintenance presents fascinating character studies through a haze of weed, with a beautifully dry sense of humour.

You’re The Worst

You’re The Worst focuses on a burgeoning relationship between two dysfunctional misanthropes against a backdrop of Los Angeles hipsterdom. The lead characters are Jimmy, a narcissistic novelist, and Gretchen, a hot mess music PR rep, both of whom are relationship-avoidant until they meet each other.

Jimmy and Gretchen are great, but the real stars of this brilliant black comedy are their best friends, Edgar and Lindsay. Edgar is an Iraq War veteran with PTSD and Lindsay is a hypersexual trophy wife who married a nerd for money. One is sweet, the other is eclectic, they are both totally original, and the series develops surprising depth as it cruises along.

Fleabag

Based on Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s one-woman stage production, Fleabag is like Bridget Jones on the dark side of the moon, the diary of a middle-class British singleton’s life in which all characters, including the lead, are quite spectacularly awful. But god, are they funny.

Floating around the acidic, chaotic title character is a brittle, uptight older sister, a drunk and flirtatious brother-in-law and the ghost of a best friend, who once helped Fleabag make sense of the world but sadly died in a traffic accident.

It’s a powerhouse ensemble, which is part of the pleasure, but Fleabag herself is the glowing core. When not masturbating to Barack Obama’s speeches or pulling heinous male specimens for meaningless sex, she’s wrestling with insecurity, failure and grief, eked out of the narrative in ever-surprising ways.

Escape The Night

A YouTube Original, Escape The Night is for all those who spent their after-school hours watching YouTubers quick-cut their way into superstardom. The brainchild of vlogger/ man of 1 billion+ views Joey Graceffa, Escape The Night brings together the cream of the YouTube celebrity crop for an addictive murder mystery series. Tune into season one to see digital divas including Lele Pons, Eva Gutowski and Timothy DeLaGhetto meet their maker in a Jazz Age mansion.

Just launched, season two corrals YouTubers such as Andrea Russett, Tyler Oakley and Jesse Wellens for another deathly house party, this time set in the Victorian era. For fans, this is an orgasm of high profile cameos/collabs. Others may simply enjoy getting drawn into an opulently realised murder mystery.

Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

It’s hard to pin down the specific charm of this nutty musical sitcom, but lead actor/creator Rachel Bloom is certainly at its core. She plays Rachel Bunch, a neurotic, depressive high-powered real estate lawyer who ditches her job and relocates to West Covina, California, hoping to rediscover the happiness she once felt with her ex-college boyfriend, Josh.

Josh has a girlfriend, West Covina is a dump and Rachel (the character) is borderline psychotic, all of which we discover through sunny slapstick and the occasional low-budget Busby Berkley sequence. The show is darker than it looks and Rachel is forever throwing herself under the bus, or climbing up a stripper pole, in pursuit of a laugh. Give it a go and you’ll be pleasantly surprised, we promise.

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Clear your schedule, because you’ve got shows to binge. Start off with the not-to-be-missed YouTube Red Original, Escape The Night. Season two is now available to stream here.