Jessica Jones (Season 2)

Marvel is, of course, crushing it on the big screen - need I remind you of Black Panther's commercial, critical and cultural impact? But the situation on the small screen is a little sketchier. Sure, there have been imaginative knockouts like Legion but other titles and characters are finding the transition to TV a bit tougher.

I know I'm finding this to be the case with Netflix's efforts to tell the stories of more street-level superheroes like Daredevil, Luke Cage, The Punisher and Iron Fist, with the quality of their individual shows ranging from satisfyingly serviceable (in the case of some of the best Daredevil episodes) to frustratingly misjudged (I can see what the makers of Iron Fist were aiming for but, boy, did they miss the mark).

For mine, the best of the bunch so far has been Jessica Jones, the adventures of a New York private investigator with enhanced strength, physical invulnerability, a fondness for booze and a neat line in grouchy one-liners.

In the first season of her show, Jessica (played by a perfectly-cast Krysten Ritter, all world-weariness and coiled rage) took on toxic masculinity in the form of Kilgrave, a downright evil bastard who used his superhuman powers of persuasion to take advantage of women in the worst possible ways. In a conclusion that pleased pretty much everyone, the season ended with Jessica snapping the dickhead's neck.

The new season begins with Jessica dealing with the internal and external fallout of her actions. Clients view her as a vigilante who'll do their dirty work, and she herself is wrestling with the consequences of taking a life.

Her best friend Trish (Rachael Taylor) urges Jessica to confront her past, especially the mystery of 20 missing days after a car accident left Jessica orphaned ("Kilgrave isn't the only ghost inside your head"), but her hard-bitten heroine would prefer to drown her sorrows and snark wise at anyone who thinks they've got her number ("How rapey of you," she snaps at a rival PI who sneers that he never takes no for an answer).

But when it appears there's some truth in the rantings of a seemingly crazy client claiming to have superpowers - and who says "I think they made something worse - a monster" of the malevolent medicos who gave them to him - Jessica is on the case. Between court-ordered anger-management sessions, that is.

Jessica Jones has become even more relevant and resonant in the era of #MeToo and Time's Up, and these new episodes deftly balance a classic neo-noir tone with something extremely modern, tapping into a mood of justified female disillusionment and anger. And while many of these binge-watch shows can come to feel like an obligation a few episodes into their run, there's a compelling and compulsive quality to this story - you may find yourself staying up a little later than expected to see how it plays out.