If the idea of the BBC putting together a “Super Rich” season came as a surprise in itself, the fact that wealthy Russians would be appearing in it can’t have shocked anyone, and Rich, Russian and Living in London duly got last night’s opening slot. Apparently “Moscow-on-the-Thames”, or “Londongrad” if you prefer it, has a lasting fascination with television producers that so far continues proportionate with the willingness of its subjects to open up their lives to outside scrutiny.

Writer Anthony Horowitz has imbued Foyle's War with longevity by anchoring it among some lesser-known and frequently shameful occurrences in the margins of World War Two, and this ninth series opener duly embroiled us in murky shenanigans involving unscrupulous oil barons and cynical German industrialists. The former DCS Foyle is continuing in his post-war role with MI5, as the Russians continue to infiltrate remorselessly from the east while the West is still struggling to pick itself up off the cratered and rubble-strewn floor.

The ebullient presenter, writer and director Waldemar Januszczak opens his enthusiastic and proselytising hour-long film on Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) by reading out a series of disparaging quotes from other artists.

All happy families are alike, Tolstoy declares at the start of Anna Karenina, but this adaptation of War and Peace stresses how the surviving Rostovs and Bolkonskys went through various hells to get to that enviable state. In this one respect consummate mover and shaper Timberlake Wertenbaker steals a march on her author. Isn’t there a feeling of flatness when we find Natasha and Pierre sunk in seemingly trivial domestic bliss towards the end of the novel?

And so, after starting life as Miranda Hart's Joke Shop on Radio 4 in 2008, then continuing for three series on the BBC from 2009, Miranda is no more. Its co-creator, co-writer and star, Miranda Hart, has decided to pull the plug on her eponymously named sitcom.

Apologies in advance to fans of The Missing, The Honourable Woman, The Fall, Game of Thrones or House of Cards, none of which feature in the list below, but might well have done. So might The Good Wife, Ripper Street and Peaky Blinders. The fact is, in our teeming everything-everywhere world now boosted by Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, iTunes, Now TV and many more, whittling a whole year down to a handful of nuggets requires the wisdom of Solomon, the patience of Job, and the devious brain of a superhacker.

Despite appearances, Jeremy Clarkson aspires to be taken seriously, as readers of The Sun and The Sunday Times will know. With this Top Gear Special he managed it, being chased from Argentina into Chile by a stone-wielding mob that appeared to have designs on his personal safety, in an incident widely trailed in the news media at the beginning of the month.

Back for its third series [***], Sally Wainwright's saga of Yorkshire folk continues to tread a precarious line between syrupy soapfulness and a family drama with sharp little teeth. Its excellent cast helps to carry it over the worst of the soggy bits, and its best moments have a way of catching you unawares. You'd have to guess that it also scores strongly by not being crammed with serial killers, paedophiles and corrupt cops.

“But I do want to be stuck with you.” Five series and five Christmas specials down, Downton fans heard a line of dialogue they had no idea they’d been waiting for all this time. Never mind that the scenario was a straight lift from The Remains of the Day, in which the stuffy old butler proposes to the starchy old housekeeper. Stone the crows and knock us all down with a feather, Carson popped the question to Mrs Hughes. And what, of all the wonderfully blindsiding things, did she say in reply?

The Christmas scoop was the first appearance of the authorial voice, Vanessa Redgrave, playing Jennifer Worth, writing Christmas cards, looking at the photographs of herself with her two midwife friends and plunging us into memory from 2005 to 1959. She tells her husband Philip (Ronald Pickup) with tender affection how different it was, but "once a nurse, always a nurse," he responds. Bookending this episode were her words as she and Philip finished Christmas preparations, that if we are lucky we find love, and even its meaning.