American Horror Story

This is the show that refuses to just carry on. Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk built it so each run is its own sealed story, a new set of people dropped into a new nightmare, with only a shared universe humming underneath to tell you it is still the same show.

That structure does something clever to the dread. You never get comfortable, because the rules of what frightens you are being rewritten every time you come back. Some strands lean on real, half remembered history, which gives the fear a colder, more familiar edge than a purely invented monster ever manages.

It runs long enough that there is always another season waiting once one world has finished with you, each one its own beginning, middle and end rather than a single story dragged out.

It suits a night when you want to be unsettled rather than soothed, ideally with the lights down low and nothing pressing to do straight after.