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Television is supposed to be relaxing. Flop on the sofa, lose yourself in your favourite show and feel your shoulders unknot themselves. Yet sometimes the best episodes are the most stress-inducing. Nerves jangle. Anxiety levels spike. Before you know it, you’re perched on the edge of your seat, quietly whimpering and clutching a cushion for comfort.
We select the dozen most intense TV episodes of all time – two of which aired in the past fortnight. Well, it’s been a turbulent time. Press play and feel those knuckles whiten …
Homeland: ‘Marine One’ (2011)
It ran for nearly a decade to diminishing returns, but the debut season of the Showtime espionage thriller was downright electrifying. Bipolar CIA analyst Carrie Mathison (Claire Danes) and “turned” war hero Sgt Nicholas Brody (Damian Lewis) played cat-and-mouse to taut effect. Tension reached its nerve-shredding peak with its first series finale. Al-Qaida double agent Brody attempted to detonate his suicide vest in a VIP bunker, blowing up high-value targets including the US vice-president. He was foiled by a loose wire and a phone call from his otherwise quite annoying daughter, Dana. For a while back there, viewers were sweating like Brody in that bathroom stall.
Chernobyl: ‘The Happiness of All Mankind’ (2019)
Sky and HBO’s forensically detailed dramatisation of the 1986 nuclear disaster became IMDb’s top-rated TV series of all time. The unflinching realism was especially vivid in the fourth episode. As a team were dispatched to shoot the town’s contaminated pets (sob), “liquidators” were sent up to the still-burning reactor’s rooftop to clear radioactive debris by hand. Each worked frantically for a 90-second burst, supposedly before exposure became fatal. Immersively shot on Steadicam and soundtracked by a crackling dosimeter, it included a watch-through-your-fingers moment where one poor conscript got his foot stuck. Terrifying, not least because we know that one in 10 of the real-life liquidators died.
Happy Valley: series 3, episode 6 (2023)
The blood feud between Sgt Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire) and local psycho Tommy Lee Royce (James Norton) played out for three superlative series across nine years. It was all building towards a climactic confrontation in the last ever episode. Having dramatically escaped prison, Tommy was wounded, desperate and dangerous. Catherine was on the verge of retirement – rarely a good omen for a screen cop. As a rapt audience of more than 11m watched and winced, the “Peeping Tommy” scene saw him pop up at Catherine’s window while she dozed in an armchair. When he broke in, understated greetings (“Hello?” “Hiya”) began a slow-burning 15-minute showdown across the kitchen table.
Game of Thrones: ‘The Rains of Castamere’ (2013)
Anyone who had read George RR Martin’s novels knew what was coming and watched with queasy dread. When the Starks arrived at Walder Frey’s castle to shore up the two clans’ alliance, things seemed to be passing peacefully – until Catelyn (Michelle Fairley) noticed that the musicians had changed their tune and the banqueting hall doors were locked. Right on cue, the slaughter began. Welcome to the Red Wedding. It was this harrowing massacre in the books that convinced showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss to buy the TV rights. “The Lannisters send their regards” indeed.
The Bear: ‘Fishes’ (2023)
We nearly picked season one’s “Review”, when a food critic’s rave write-up led to the Chicago restaurant’s receipt machine spewing out hundreds of orders, while the staff fell apart under pressure. However, The Bear became even more frazzled when it left the kitchen and flashed back to a dysfunctional Berzatto family Christmas dinner. As everyone tried (and failed) to appease toxic matriarch Jamie Lee Curtis, the chaos comprised multiple timers going off, blazing rows, spilt sauce, flying cutlery and even a car crashing through the wall. A 66-minute stress bomb. Just don’t ask Donna if she’s OK.
Squid Game: ‘Gganbu’ (2021)
Every episode of the tracksuit-clad South Korean hellscape was nerve-shredding, but this one took the Dalgona cookie. When the surviving contestants paired up to play marbles, the twist was that only one from each duo would survive. They thought they were teaming up to be allies. Suddenly, they were deadly foes. As characters we’d got to know over the previous five episodes competed against each other, it was agonising to see who lived and who died. The winners were left haunted by the deaths of their friends. Brutal and bleak.
Line Of Duty: ‘Breach’ (2016)
He had been the slippery antagonist for three series of police corruption plot twists. Now the net closed at last around inside man DI Matthew “Dot” Cottan (Craig Parkinson), AKA bent copper “the Caddy”. During a riveting interview scene, gaping holes appeared in Dot’s alibi. Stalling by pretending to check his iCal, he slyly sent a fateful text message (“Urgent exit required”) and all hell broke loose. Bullets sprayed. Foot chases unfolded. Getaway cars sped. A gun-toting Vicky McClure rode on the side of a delivery truck. Jesus, Mary and Joseph and the wee donkey.
Task: ‘Out Beyond Ideas of Wrongdoing and Rightdoing, There is a River’ (2025)
Not the snappiest episode title but creator Brad Ingelsby knows how to construct killer TV. His previous hit, Mare of Easttown, featured a nerve-shredding mid-series sequence when Sgt Marianne Sheehan (Kate Winslet) and Det Colin Zabel (Evan Peters) tracked down a Pennsylvania child kidnapper. After he shockingly shot Zabel in the head, an unarmed and wounded Mare, breathless with panic, was stalked around the house in a chase reminiscent of Clarice Starling v Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs. In Ingelsby’s HBO follow-up Task, the penultimate episode saw Mark Ruffalo’s FBI taskforce and Tom Pelphrey’s Dark Hearts biker gang converge at a forest cabin. Cue a nonstop, guns-blazing 18-minute shootout in which several major characters perished.
Breaking Bad: ‘Ozymandias’ (2013)
In this pulse-pounding instalment, five seasons of villainy finally caught up with Walter White (Bryan Cranston). As our antihero’s best-laid plans fell apart, he witnessed Hank’s heartbreaking execution, lost most of his ill-gotten loot, betrayed Jesse, alienated his family, kidnapped baby Holly and went on the run. As everything blew up in Walt’s face and the foundations were laid for the show’s killer finale, it was about as relaxing as rolling a barrel of cash across a desert. No wonder it won four Emmys and was named by showrunner Vince Gilligan as his favourite episode out of all 62.
Blue Lights: ‘Ordo Ab Chao’ (2025)
The third series of the Bafta-winning Belfast cop drama has been its best yet. The penultimate episode cranked up the jeopardy to unbearable levels. Answering what appeared to be a routine callout, cocky constable Shane (Frank Blake) was stabbed in the leg. While he bled out from his femoral artery, potentially fatally, colleague Grace (Siân Brooke) drove a mob accountant to a police safe house – not realising that organised crime had ordered a hit on the convoy. As dissident gunmen moved into position for a deadly ambush, a Special Ops surveillance expert tried to talk Grace to safety on the radio. It’s always a worry when a conversation starts, “Is your vehicle armoured or soft-skinned?” “Soft-skinned.” “Shit.”
Succession: ‘Which Side Are You On?’ (2018)
Jesse Armstrong’s dynastic psychodrama was full of unbearably tense episodes – Connor’s wedding, Kendall’s 40th, Boar on the Floor, election night and the yacht were all right up there – but this was an early tone-setter. Kendall Roy (Jeremy Strong) had painstakingly put the wheels in motion for a no-confidence vote in his fearsome father Logan (Brian Cox). It crashed and burned when Logan refused to leave the Waystar boardroom, instead bullying colleagues into siding with him. Meanwhile, Kendall was stuck in traffic and sprinted through the Manhattan streets to make it in time – only to get fired and frogmarched out of the building on arrival. “That was your best shot,” snarled daddy dearest. “You lost.”
Atlanta: ‘Teddy Perkins’ (2018)
Donald Glover’s genre-bending creation specialised in surreal self-contained episodes, none better than this deeply creepy gem. When stoner Darius (LaKeith Stanfield) picked up a valuable vintage piano from a mysterious mansion and met its reclusive oddball owner Teddy Perkins (Glover himself, unrecognisable beneath mask-like prosthetics and ghostly makeup), it descended into a hallucinatory horror movie in miniature. Director Hiro Murai admitted being inspired by The Shining. The unsettling figure of Teddy bore a distinct resemblance to Michael Jackson. Get out, Darius, before it’s too late.
