HBO

Fans celebrate 26 September as The Last of Us day, as the cordyceps virus infected their apocalyptic dystopian world on 26 September 2003 and kicked off the events of the series. To commemorate, Sky has released the trailer for The Last of Us series two, featuring Pedro Pascal and Bella Ramsey reprising their roles as Joel and Ellie.

The first series introduced viewers to Pierpoint & Co, a leading investment bank that expects nothing less than perfection from its employees. A crop of young starters have to do everything they can to stay ahead.

As if the work wasn’t enough, there’s also the lifestyle. The drugs, sex and drinking prove just as demanding as the never-ending office hours.

Series three will see Pierpoint put everything on so-called ethical investing. Part of their strategy involves Sir Henry Muck (Kit Harington, Game of Thrones), a major player in green energy.

Written, produced and led by Coel, First Day on Earth will follow Henri (Coel), a British novelist in a severe rut. When she is offered a job on a film in Ghana, West Africa sounds like the perfect escape from her dead-end relationship and lack of writing work. What’s more, her estranged father lives in the country, and she’s hoping that she can reconnect with him and her heritage.

For one of the most powerful programme chiefs in the UK, Zai Bennett, Managing Director of Content for Sky UK and Ireland since June 2019, wears his authority lightly. He is responsible for a portfolio of services that includes Sky Atlantic, Sky Comedy, Sky Documentaries and Sky Arts. He has helped to nurture such hits as I Hate Suzie, Gangs of London, Bulletproof, A Discovery of Witches, Save Me, In the Long Run, Breeders and Brassic.

We’re meeting to discuss one of those stories. Carraway’s debut TV show, Rain Dogs, the brilliant dark comedy she created, wrote and executive produced with BBC and HBO, premiered earlier this year. She’d had TV developments in the past, “but nothing ever got off the ground because my life was too chaotic,” she explains. “I just wasn't ready.”

If there was doubt before, there is none now: The Last of Us and The Super Mario Bros Movie have proved that games can transfer successfully to TV and film.

Audiences and box office have been astonishing: HBO’s post-apocalyptic series The Last of Us pulled in 30 million viewers per episode, while Super Mario – despite a critical lashing – is closing in on $1bn in ticket sales.

BBC and HBO’s Industry features university graduates striving for permanent positions at Pierpoint and Co, an esteemed investment bank. Where we left off in series two, Harper (Myha’la Herrold) and Eric (Ken Leung) had just pulled off a dramatic deal with Bloom (Jay Duplass) and secured themselves new positions at Pierpoint, but not without the help of some very illegal insider trading.

From the brilliant new voice of author Cash Carraway, Rain Dogs follows a dysfunctional family on the fringes of society attempting to go straight in a crooked world. Costello Jones (Daisy May Cooper) is a devoted mother who wants more for her young daughter, Iris (newcomer Fleur Tashjian).

As she hustles to survive, Costello leans on Selby (Jack Farthing), Iris’s pseudo father (and Costello’s pseudo soulmate) and Gloria (Ronke Adékoluejo), a loyal yet chaotic godmother and best friend.

Halifax is the Lourdes for lesbians,” said producer-director and former Chair of RTS Yorkshire Fiona Thompson at “Celebrating Gentleman Jack: Changing lives”.

Not a sentence many would have anticipated hearing, but this is only one of the consequences of the so-called “Gentleman Jack effect”.

Anne Lister, Sally Wainwright’s eponymous Gentleman Jack, born in 1791, was a Halifax industrialist, landowner, diarist and self-assured lesbian, and hero of possibly the most important TV drama of recent times.