Amelia Dimoldenberg says publicists ignored her interview show for years but she can now be picky over A-list guests

Just a decade ago, Amelia Dimoldenberg found it impossible to drum up any mainstream celebrities to come on her mock date YouTube show, in which she chats awkwardly with guests over chicken and chips.

Even persuading a local actor connected with her London youth club to come on took years of prodding. Managers of A-listers with movies or albums to push instead battled to claim a spot on the hallowed cushions of the primetime TV chatshow sofa.

For decades my life was soundtracked by comedy duos, mostly male, discussing their friendships. When I gave them up, I felt as if I was having a mental reboot

I have always loved podcasts. The genre of audio I have come to think of as Two Men Talking (In Excessive Detail About Their Lives) has been one of my favourite forms of entertainment for decades. It started with a semi-religious devotion to a Sunday morning XFM show hosted by Jimmy Carr and the comedy writer Iain Morris, but as the years progressed and podcasting boomed, I was soon spoilt for choice. Eventually there were enough comedy duos candidly discussing their hopes, fears and awkward social interactions to fill every moment of my day.

I was initially drawn to these podcasts because they made me laugh, but from the start I also found them hugely comforting: there was a period in my teenage years when I couldn’t fall asleep without mainlining episodes of Adam and Joe’s BBC 6 Music show, waking up each morning relieved I hadn’t been strangled by my iPod earphones in the night.

The long-running drama reaches Hitler’s rise to power in its final season as its creators reflect on the unsettling parallels between Weimar Germany and the present day

It’s the global hit TV series that pulled audiences straight into the chaotic hedonism of 1920s Germany, dramatising the brilliance and brittleness of a newly built democratic system with unprecedented ambition.

But in the 13 years that the German makers of Babylon Berlin have worked on the show, modern democracies from the US to Hungary to South Korea have come under pressure in ways the creators say they could never have imagined when they started.

The long-running drama reaches Hitler’s rise to power in its final season as its creators reflect on the unsettling parallels between Weimar Germany and the present day

It’s the global hit TV series that pulled audiences straight into the chaotic hedonism of 1920s Germany, dramatising the brilliance and brittleness of a newly built democratic system with unprecedented ambition.

But in the 13 years that the German makers of Babylon Berlin have worked on the show, modern democracies from the US to Hungary to South Korea have come under pressure in ways the creators say they could never have imagined when they started.

From a man with triple lives to fake family deaths, the lies told by seemingly devoted partners in this series are shocking. But this is more than true crime entertainment – it is an enraged warning for other victims

A model turned DJ, Liv Nervo had forged an enviable career travelling the world with her sister and musical collaborator, Mim. Old cliches about being a strong, independent woman and not needing a man aside, it’s clear that Liv already had a fantastic life before she met her former partner, Matthew. A successful businessman, their paths first crossed when she played a private party on Richard Branson’s Necker Island. “I thought I had found the best guy in the world,” she says. “But it was all a lie.”

So begins the second series of Love Cheats, a stark and shocking true-crime show about people who think they’ve found the love of their life but are instead being pulled into audacious romance scams. Series one featured a fraudster impersonating a member of the nobility while leaving their victims to foot the bill for their lavish life, and another faking terminal cancer. Series two keeps the bar for grim deception high, beginning with Liv’s whirlwind romance with Matthew, who was desperate to have a family with her. Mim was equally taken in by her sister’s devoted new partner, who had made his fortune selling honey but wasn’t a fusty corporate type. “[Liv] used to date men with a briefcase,” she clarifies. “I would never date a man with a briefcase!”

Suranne Jones and Rose Leslie are back trying to stop a third world war in the Arctic. There’s plenty of action – but it’s hard to root for heroes whose biggest personality traits are ‘being nice’ and ‘wears good glasses’

Like many a police procedural, Vigil always begins with a cold open. This time round, however, it’s absolutely freezing. We are, as per, thrown headlong into a niche and tangentially Scottish military world where a murder has occurred. The first series took place on board a nuclear submarine (the show is, confusingly, still named after the vessel), while the second split the action between an army airfield in Scotland and the fictional Middle Eastern nation of Wudyan.

For its third outing, we find ourselves in the (real) Arctic region of Svalbard. The area is supposedly demilitarised, but four British special forces agents are working undercover at a research centre, and tonight their mission is to extract a Chinese scientist who has made a discovery that could either save or destroy the world. En route, they’re ambushed by Russians who want whatever world-saving-or-destroying stuff she’s got. The scientist escapes – but one of the Brits later turns up dead in a Russian enclave.