🔗 Share this article

Spooks – I Spy Apocalypse from 2003

The show kicks off with the MI5 agents locked down during a training exercise about a potential terror incident, supervised by two Home Office agents. As things progress, it becomes clear a real incident has taken place and a chemical weapon has been unleashed. The anxiety increases as incoming communications show a catastrophe taking place outside, and intensifies as the boss appears to be infected, and the two Home Office officials attempt to leave, compelling the character played by Matthew Macfadyen to decide between shooting them or permitting their exit and risking contaminating the sealed MI5 offices. As this is Spooks, the outcome is expected.

The 1984 production Threads

Threads had minimal funding yet among the scariest shows I’ve ever seen owing to its grim authenticity and bleak government data. Watched it about a month ago having watched the original; I used to visit the pub in Sheffield from the programme which emphasised the reality and the casual, straightforward government details that aired. Continuing to be utterly horrifying decades on.

Severance – The We We Are from 2022

The first season finale of Severance deserves a top spot as a tense chapter. I remained for the whole show literally perched nervously, exerting with Dylan to hold the switches that sustained the Innies’ extended time, while yelling at the Innies to disclose their facts. The final climactic moment – “she is living!” – resembled a outburst.

The 2024 Industry episode White Mischief

The fifth episode of Industry’s third season caused my heart to pound. I had to pause and get up and leave the room several times due to the immense extent of the deliberate ruin I was witnessing. Rishi Ramdani faces serious trouble at work and home – up to his eyeballs in debt to illegal creditors because of his compulsive gambling, engaging in dangerous ventures on a wager involving sterling that might cost his firm millions. Inevitably, he starts a gaming binge, uses copious drugs and alcohol and alternates between success and failure, is brutally attacked. Each instance you believe it can’t get any worse, it does. Redemption seems possible as the installment closes but he squanders the opportunity, with horrifying consequences in the concluding part of the season. Certainly required a rest afterward!

Peep Show – Holiday from 2007

The series Peep Show isn’t typically anxiety-inducing. However, the Holiday episode features such degrees of awkwardness that it will make you rise for the full show, filled with nervousness. The tension escalates as Jeremy and Mark discover being compelled to falsify about the canine they by chance collide with and later efforts to get rid of it. You subsequently use the rest of the installment doubting if it can actually be more terrible than burning, and it can be!

The West Wing – The Two Cathedrals (2001)

Nothing I have seen has been as tense than the first time I watched the concluding episode of The West Wing’s second season. The installment begins with the consequences of the death (in a traffic accident) of the president’s confidential aide and builds to a peak involving a Haitian emergency, and the fallout from the non-disclosure of the president’s MS diagnosis, along with affirmation of his plan to run for another term. Superb programming. Unequaled.

The 2018 Bodyguard premiere episode

The opening of the British series Bodyguard, with the protagonist on a train alongside his juvenile boy, is for me one of the most intense episodes ever. He notices a Muslim female heading to the toilet and senses something is wrong. The bomb squad is alerted, enter the train, and endeavor to coax the woman to remove her explosive vest. Anxiety builds to a nearly intolerable level, until, indeed, the vest is disarmed.

The 2001 Buffy episode The Body

Buffy enters her house to realize her mom has deceased from natural reasons, which is the least common kind of passing in this mystical program. The show features no musical score, a gloomy atmosphere, and we see the episode through the experience of Buffy’s dismay upon uncovering her mother.

The Sopranos – Made in America (2007)

The ultimate sequence of the series finale of the series was extremely nerve-wracking. And for those who saw it during its initial broadcast, you – at first – weren’t sure why. Tony’s enemies, real and imagined, had all been defeated. Surely this has the feel of the season one ending? “Remember the little things.” But the mood is bizarrely ominous. Approaching Twin Peaks-esque horror. The family gathers in a diner. Meadow finds a parking spot. Tony gloomily informs Carmela there’s trouble afoot with an additional associate collaborating with the authorities. Meadow secures a parking space. Unfamiliar individuals come into the diner. Stare at Tony(?) Meadow parks. Tony selects a song on the jukebox. Meadow finds a spot. The door chimes, a person comes in. It isn’t Meadow, she remains parking. Tony glances upward. Continue. It ceases. My spirit fell roughly 20 minutes after.

The 2016 The Walking Dead episode The Last Day on Earth

I remained awake to view this installment in the early morning. It was so intense after the establishment of antagonist Negan discovering the characters, savagely teasing his prey then not knowing who he killed (finished with an unresolved situation). The victim’s POV shot and the muted audio – ugh! {We then had to wait for season seven|We then needed to await season