A series to be welcomed by suckers for sentimentality (but perhaps not those in a fragile state of mind), More than Blue (Netflix) wastes little time in providing a taster of the tragedy and tears that define this Taiwanese retelling of the 2009 Korean film of the same name – and the 2018 Taiwanese film that retold that story. Chang Kun-cheng’s beloved record shop must close because leukaemia is about to beat him. His dutiful son, Chang Che-kai (Fandy Fan), with college entrance exams looming, knows he should be studying, but his father’s illness derails his ambitions. As does having to work nights at a convenience store. Pushing him over the edge, however, (and supplying a vital dose of humour) is troubled new girl in school, Sung Yuan-yuan (Gingle Wang), a firebrand who repeatedly beats him up while seemingly on a quest to get herself expelled. They soon become a mutual-admiration society – which is where their problems really begin. Chang, playing the guitar given to him by his father (thereby trowelling on more sentimentality), becomes, with Sung, the songwriting partnership K and Cream, specialising in doom-laden ditties (naturally). Will their young love be given a chance? Can it survive their next desolate chorus? Some considerable time later, when a CD they cut resurfaces at a record-company meeting, their tragic story can be told in full, in flashback. One of their saccharine songs is thought perfect for a new album by vocalist A-Lin (appearing as herself) but copyright must be secured, which means tracking them down – a mission led by record-company executive Wang Po-han (Wang Po-chieh), who knows a few of K and Cream’s buried secrets. More than Blue is a 10-episode test of the viewer’s emotional mettle and capacity to absorb a soundtrack bursting with bereft ballads. You won’t be dancing in the aisles. Panic stations A mission of a different sort awaits Mackenzie Davis and Himesh Patel in the timely, post-apocalyptic drama Station Eleven (HBO Go). The 10-part series tracks the heroic attempts of survivors of a swine-flu pandemic, which has killed billions of people, to build a world fit to inhabit. Perhaps one with no more pig slaughtering. Beginning with a King Lear who is even more bewildered than usual, because he is having a heart attack onstage, this menacing drama takes chronological leaps while assembling the events that end in catastrophe – although the really scary part is what comes later, across a shattered globe. Patel is Jeevan, a struggling online content creator who earns 15 seconds of fame by emerging from the audience to try to save Lear, portrayed by Hollywood A-lister Arthur Leander (Gael García Bernal), using skills picked up watching ER . Next, the world also starts to go downhill for Jeevan, on a Chicago train, when he receives a call from his doctor sister warning him: “We’ve never seen a flu like this, it’s f***ing chaos. It’s too late to run. People are walking around already exposed and they don’t even know. Avoid contact with anyone.” If this is television art imitating life, we can expect more of it. Clearly, there’s no quick fix for the problems piled on by the pandemic, because decades later it’s every ragged refugee for him or herself, with some remaining pockets of civilisation shrunk to the likes of a patched-up troupe of Shakespearean actors who are trying to “make the world make sense”. Among their leaders is Kirsten (Davis), a killer haunted by pre-apocalypse memories. At least, in this broken world, (defunct) mobile phones and apps are again spellbinding novelties, so it can’t be all bad.