The Undeclared War, streaming on C4

Whoa. Channel 4. You’ve thrown the kitchen sink at this one haven’t you?

The Undeclared War comes headlined with weighty talent. Simon Pegg. Brilliant Oscar-winner Mark Rylance. Adrian Lester.

Out of the pocket of the same team behind the Beeb’s Wolf Hall, the thriller involved its creator spending three years tapping (not literally) into the world of British cyber intelligence.

Which makes the show’s portrayal of GCHQ (Government Communications Headquarters) all the more terrifying, especially when you consider its premise.

Plucked from her training, talented, analytical Saara (Hannah Khalique-Brown) is plunged into the centre of one of the UK’s worst cyber attacks, brought in on a year’s work experience just as insidious, unknown terrorists (naturally the Brits suspect Putin and his cronies) have taken down 55% of internet-based services, including banking.

Head of operations Danny (Pegg) and his team are scratching their heads over the dilemma, which falls just as prime minister Andrew Makinde (Lester) is rallying for another term in office.

How is it that a 21-year-old student, one sitting in a room with supposedly some of the brightest minds in intelligence, could find a new riddle within the fiasco? A new virus, within the virus. One her mentors have failed to notice...or, more likely, been too bored to compute, the entire office approaching the national crisis with about as much urgency as a sloth swinging on a tree.

It’s not just the audience at home that picks up on this. At a COBRA meeting, where Danny duly applauds Saara for her tenacity, one senior official questions why they’re celebrating the fact a work experience student has outshone a whole team of paid professionals. What would have happened if she wasn’t there?

There are talks of taking a swing at Putin, despite, at best, his involvement being an assumption. “We could take control of his car, make it go faster,” someone suggests, adding they could also jiggle his plane about a bit.

“We will defend ourselves with all the force available within the law,” the PM counters.

Saara, who loves a puzzle, having spent hours doing them with her dad through his lifetime of depression, cannot let go of the case, despite colleagues telling her to leave the various wormholes she uncovers alone. Could one of them be in on it?

And she makes unlikely friends with former GCHQ employee John (Rylance) who’s been excised from retirement to help out in the fray...but seems to spend most of his time correcting grammatical errors on the internal office communications forum. Strange, quiet and almost tormented in nature, there’s a sense that there’s more to John than we quite know. I sense a Kaiser Soze moment coming on down the line. But maybe I’m just too suspicious!

Charlotte Smith-Jarvis

Man vs Bee, all episodes streaming now on Netflix

Rowan Atkinson’s return to the small screen was always going to create a bit of a buzz.

Beloved for his roles as two of comedy’s all-time great characters, scheming Edmund Blackadder and hapless Mr Bean, he’s back in the new Netflix show, Man vs Bee.

Co-created by Atkinson with Johnny English writer Will Davies, it’s familiar territory.

Here he plays house-sitter Trevor (who definitely owes a debt to Frank Spencer as well as Mr Bean), and the series of bite-sized episodes (they’re ‘chapters’ of about 10 minutes long) begins in the present day with him up before the court, charged with a montage of misdemeanours.

It then jumps back in time to his first day on the job, when he arrives at the preposterous Grand Designs-style mansion of Nina (Jing Lusi) and Christian (Julian Rhind-Tutt).

Trevor’s not in a brilliant place. Distinctly accident-prone, he’s been fired from his last jobs after incidents with a supermarket trolley and a paper shredder respectively.

His wife has divorced him and he’s trying to get the money together to take his daughter on a camping trip.

As Trevor rings the doorbell, a pesky bee buzzes around his head – which he provokes by swatting it away - and when the door is opened it flies into the house.

Expecting their usual house-sitter, Orlando, the jet-set couple are so focussed on finding their monogrammed espadrilles and getting away that they only have time to bark scant instructions before they leave.

The house is fully automated and the codes he needs are the dates of famous naval battles, but Trevor’s not to worry – it's all in the manual.

Oh, and he’ll also be looking after their dog, Cupcake, who under no circumstances should be let into the library which contains numerous eye-wateringly expensive and irreplaceable works of art.

And there also just happens to be an E-Type Jag in the garage.

A bee with a vendetta, a multi-million-pound art collection, an unruly dog, an automated house and one of the world’s most expensive cars. What could possibly go wrong?

In true slapstick tradition, everything has been set up ready – all the audience has to do is sit back and wait for disaster to unfold.

Which it starts to do when the couple are barely out of the door and the user manual for the house goes up in smoke when Trevor is trying to warm up some pea and ham soup.

Cover your eyes as he tries to repair a Mondrian using tomato ketchup – which is a stroke of genius, it has to be said.

There’s no doubt that Atkinson is a master of physical comedy – think Blackadder’s eye-rolls and Mr Bean’s pratfalls.

But there’s a fine line between comedy and tragedy – and rounding out Trevor’s backstory adds some poignancy among the belly laughs.

Emma Lee

Sherwood, all episodes on BBC iPlayer

The BBC is on fire at the moment, in terms of drama, with This is Going to Hurt, The Responder, The Tourist and now Sherwood, the compelling story of the hunt for a crossbow killer in a former mining village (not that they like being called ‘former mining villages, as we were told).

With an absolutely stellar cast which included Lesley Manville, David Morrissey, Joanne Froggatt, Lorraine Ashbourne, Stephen Tompkinson, Philip Jackson, Mark Addy, Adeel Akhtar, Robert Glenister…(it goes on), Sherwood was filled with deeply buried secrets, old wounds, and a community that couldn’t stop picking at scabs, to coin a phrase.

The only duff moment in the six-part series was when BBC1 kept Wimbledon on and moved Sherwood to BBC2 with barely any warning: I had to be stopped from phoning in to complain, like in the olden days. I am jealous of any of you who get to binge-watch the entire thing in one glorious session – a drama that managed to be engaging, intelligent, at times darkly funny and also heart-breakingly tragic. Writer James Graham has been commissioned to write series two and I look forward to see what he’ll bring us next – hopefully lots more sweeping shots of gorgeous Sherwood Forest again (the other true star of the show).

Stacia Briggs