Yellowjackets (season 2) ★★★★
Paramount+, from March 24

This horror-charged thriller is one of the most delicious shows on television: it’s both an enthralling, emotionally knotty watch and features cannibalism. Sketched with a deep understanding of teenage dynamics and adult coping mechanisms, the first season of Ashley Lyle and Bart Nickerson’s series was a palpable surprise – an out-of-nowhere hit about a group of schoolgirls stranded in the wilderness after an air crash in 1998 and the ramifications for today’s survivors. The good news? Season two comes on strong.

Two months have passed at the remote Canadian cabin where the high school soccer team found refuge. Allegiances are forming, belief systems are taking shape – Lottie (Courtney Eaton), who previously stopped taking her psychiatric medication and felled a bear, is blessing foragers such as Natalie (Sophie Thatcher). A quarter century later and Natalie (Juliette Lewis) finally gets to confront Lottie (Simone Kessell), who has enough dedicated followers to imply she’s running a cult. The present, plainly, can never outrun the past.

Yellowjackets is expertly crafted. The storylines are doled out with unnerving economy. Flashbacks have suggested pagan worship and human sacrifice happened at some point in the 19 months the Jersey girls were lost, and the pieces slowly come together without ever allowing the pacing to feel deceptive. The two eras implicitly speak to each other. The travails of teenage Shauna (Sophie Nelisse) echo through the actions of middle-aged Shauna (Melanie Lynskey), who has once again resorted to terrible acts but felt liberated from her suburban malaise in the process.

Lottie and her acolytes, whose rituals resemble ones practised in the Canadian wilderness, are dedicated to “turning suffering into strength”. The show finds mordant humour in the tenets of wellness, and the survivors do not practice textbook hymns of self-care. Misty (Christina Ricci) is a budding sociopath, while Taissa (Tawny Cypress) is trying to quell the possessive state she slips into that has already cost her one family pet (R.I.P. Biscuit). Whatever transpires, these women are complex characters, mostly shorn of easy explanation.

One of the underlying questions is whether the descent into mayhem is a supernatural act or the result of interlocking trauma. The atmosphere and editing suggest the former, but the characters fit together so acutely that the otherworldly never overwhelms their psychology. And the creators are willing to have a fun with it: every terrified reaction shot of Coach Ben (Steven Krueger), the one adult survivor in 1998 who’s already had a leg amputated, is hilarious. His students are hungry, and eventually on Yellowjackets everyone will eat.

Swarm ★★★
Amazon Prime

If you ever thought that one of the self-contained episodes of Atlanta that told a separate story without the show’s cast deserved its own show, know that Donald Glover heard you. The Atlanta maestro is the co-creator, with Janine Nabers, of this genre-bursting drama. Swarm is a study of obsessive fandom, a bloody and unwavering horror farce, and a tragedy unfolded within celebrity’s glow.