When it gets going, the Netflix show is a pleasingly fraught watch about an Iranian mole, packed with risky missions and heroic acts. Breathtaking stuff

The Night Agent started life as a determined little underdog. Uncool, old-fashioned and on the wrong side of Netflix’s tendency to hype some shows while leaving others unloved, it had to fight its way into the streaming platform’s most-viewed section and critics’ best-of-2023 lists, which it did simply by being a sturdily constructed, twist-packed conspiracy thriller. Once viewers switched it on, they couldn’t switch it off.

It concerns Night Action, an awkwardly named arm of the American intelligence services that is so secret it doesn’t officially exist. When we met him, Peter Sutherland (Gabriel Basso) was its most junior employee, answering the landline phone that rang in the White House basement when an agent needed assistance. By the end of the first season, Peter’s courage, hand-to-hand combat skills and, most of all, his unswerving, country-serving, square-jawed moral code had seen him single-handedly foil a presidential assassination plot.

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© Photograph: SIVIROON SRISUWAN/NETFLIX

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© Photograph: SIVIROON SRISUWAN/NETFLIX

Mystery, magic and mayhem reigned behind the scenes as well as on screen. Mädchen Amick, Joan Chen, Dana Ashbrook and others recall the making of the beloved TV series – and the genius of David Lynch

David Lynch’s cult TV series Twin Peaks arrived in a world largely unprepared for its mix of glossy Americana, surrealism and horror. Since it was first broadcast in 1990, it has become part of television’s DNA, and stands as one of the greatest achievements of the lauded film-maker, who died last week.

Mark Frost (co-creator): I first met David Lynch in 1985. I had seen Eraserhead in 1979 at a midnight showing in Minneapolis, and I walked out with the oddest feeling and said: “Someday I’m going to work with that guy.” Six years later, a mutual agent of ours thought the two of us would be good to collaborate on a project they were representing, and fostered an introduction. We hit it off from the very first moment. We were laughing within minutes. We loved all the same movies, we knew all the same directors. That project went away, but then another agent approached us and said: “What do you guys think about doing a television project together?” We had nothing to lose.

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© Photograph: Cinematic/Alamy

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© Photograph: Cinematic/Alamy

It’s Always Sunny’s Kaitlin Olson is incandescent as a police-department cleaner with an IQ of 160 whose crime-solving skills prove second to none. It’s such fun it should be showered with special awards

There is an episode of 30 Rock in which the star of the SNL-like show-within-the-show, Jenna Maroney, gets the lead role in a planned new police procedural: Goodlooking. She solves crimes by being really good at looking at things. Lo, and not for the first time where 30 Rock’s inventions are concerned, it has come to pass. And gloriously so. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you … High Potential.

Kaitlin Olson (Hacks, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and no relation to the twins) plays Morgan, a feisty single mother of three, owner of many fantastic furry coats and a cleaner at the local police department. This includes the homicide offices, which is where she accidentally knocks a file to the ground and – as she gathers the spilled pages and photographs back together – solves the crime. She is a “good looker”, you see. I’m sorry, no. She is, we learn when the police tackle her about the untoward alterations made to their crime board by a civilian, a “high potential intellectual”. This is different from merely being clever. It means you also have great creativity, a photographic memory, obsessional tendencies and an ability to see further into brick walls than most – including grumpy police detectives.

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© Photograph: Pamela Littky/Disney

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© Photograph: Pamela Littky/Disney

“If you could put anything in front of him yesterday, he would have signed it,” said Ronny Chieng. “Melania, now’s your chance to update the prenup.”

Got something you’d love to ask the former Baywatch star about her life and new career directions? Now’s your chance

Director Gia Coppola had only one actor in mind to star in The Last Showgirl: Pamela Anderson. Having watched Ryan White’s Netflix documentary Pamela, A Love Story, Coppola knew she would be perfect as Shelly Gardner, an ageing Las Vegas dancer facing the closure of Le Razzle Dazzle, the classic revue she has starred in for three decades. The problem was, Anderson’s (now former) agent threw the script in the bin. Coppola did not take no for an answer. She got in touch with Anderson’s son Brandon Thomas Lee, who made sure the pitch reached his mum. Now trailing accolades, award nominations and an Oscar buzz, the film is bringing the 57-year-old icon something she struggled to find earlier in her career: respect.

Having risen to fame as a Playboy Playmate, Anderson became an international superstar in the 1990s in Baywatch, which cemented the sex-symbol image she struggled for years to shake off. Recently, however, her public persona has morphed into something much more multilayered, thanks not only to the Netflix doc but also to her thoughtful 2023 memoir Love, Pamela and her well-received Broadway debut the previous year as Roxie Hart in Chicago. As she said in a recent magazine interview: “The stars have aligned.”

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© Photograph: Aeon/GC Images

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© Photograph: Aeon/GC Images