10 best shows you slept on in 2018

Harlots

Technically, Harlots is a period drama, but it uses its historical setting to tell a very modern sort of story, tackling thorny issues of sex work, sexism and consent. (Technically, it didn’t debut in 2018, but this show is good enough to bend the rules a little bit.)

The series follows two rival bawd houses in 18th-century London, a time in which about one in five women were in sex work. The beauty of Harlots, however, is that the show doesn’t turn its characters into ciphers or stereotypes, instead highlighting a diverse group of women all trying to make their way in a world that repeatedly denies them any sort of agency over their own lives.

Yes, it’s a show about sex, but the sex work is actually the least interesting thing about Harlots, and is frequently depicted in a sort of disinterested, mundane fashion. Nothing is lurid or framed through a male gaze. It’s a fact of these women’s lives, not something titillating for them. Instead, the story is really about power, and how women use the only thing they have access to – their bodies – to try and claim some for themselves. Some are successful. Some are not. And some end up worse off than when they started.

Season 2 sees the rivalry between Margaret Wells and Lydia Quigley escalate even further, with each managing to have the other thrown in jail at various points and both struggling to maintain success in the world of men. The show’s been renewed for a third season after some shocking developments in the season 2 finale, and has never felt more wide open story-wise.