Caprica (2010)

I love when you get a series which you absolutely adore, which compels you to watch it as soon as you can and which leaves you wishing there was more at the end of the episode. Caprica is just one of those series.

I know, it's such a me cliche, but it is brilliant.

You don't need to have watched the precursor, Battlestar Galactica, although it helps since it gives every event that extra ring of doom.

Caprica is a mixture of Corinth's excesses, modern-day Kabul and 1950s New York. The designers have created a complete universe with its own aesthetic and even musical styles to suit the cultures it invented (have you ever wanted to hear a Greek prayer fo the dead sung as a rap? Well now you can!).

It covers big themes like racism and technology, and even bigger ones like loss and family. It also offers a radical view of a society where same sex marriage is utterly normal, even if you're a badass gangster, as are group marriages. And this is on American TV?

Speaking of badass gangsters, one of the main character groups followed is the Adams family, aka the Adamas. This is all back story to the BSG series, which largely concerned the Adamas, but now there's whole other generations to love and despair of.

I could say more about how awesome Caprica is but you should just go off and watch it. It's not sci-fi, not really: it's just a superb drama which happens to have a robot who's also a teenage girl as a protagonist.