Have you ever been in love? And did they love you back? OK, show-off, that’s enough. Finding chemistry with another person is hard to accomplish in real life and it’s very hard to portray on screen. You know that feeling when you’re watching a show that’s otherwise brilliant, but the couple around which the show revolves feels as believable as a midday life insurance ad?

If we’re naming names, the relationship between Jon (Kit Harington) and Daenerys (Emilia Clarke) on Game of Thrones required more suspension of disbelief than believing that dragons were real. You cannot CGI chemistry into existence, no matter how hot the people involved are! Get it wrong, and it could ruin the legacy of an entire show – which is why I have been annoyed at Friends pushing Rachel and Joey together since 2003.

Luckily for us, there are a lot of excellent romantic pairings on TV at the moment. I found season two of Netflix’s Bridgerton a little “Rachel and Joey” for my taste (and as my sister said at the time, “I just don’t believe sisters would betray each other like that!”) but the recent spin-off Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story has chemistry in spades. This could just be that the central match of Queen Charlotte (India Amarteifio) and King George (Corey Mylchreest) just crackles and pops a lot more, or because this story comes straight from Shonda Rhimes herself, the long-running queen of will-they-or-won’t-they on TV.

In a Shonda Rhimes show, couples can have chemistry even when one of them is long-dead and no, I am not joking. Paramount+’s Yellowjackets may be a little uneven in its second season, but the relationship between Taissa (Jasmin Savoy Brown and Tawny Cypress) and Van (Liv Hewson and Lauren Ambrose) both in flashback and present day, is the low-humming heartbeat throughout the whole series; sweet, genuine and tragically doomed to fail – falling in love while starving in the wilderness isn’t ideal, you know. And although it feels frivolous to highlight, Bel Powley and Joe Cole are remarkable in Disney+’s A Small Light, playing Miep and Jan Gies, the couple who helped hide the Frank family when the Nazis invaded the Netherlands. Their relationship isn’t the main focus of the story, but Powley’s natural effervescence paired with Cole’s steady restraint make them an excellent match.

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Of course, great chemistry can happen when two characters are sworn enemies, too. And not just in that screwball comedy “these two people couldn’t be more different!” way – though that trope has spawned some of my all-time favourite TV couples. (Pacey and Joey forever, no I will not be taking any further questions about Dawson’s Creek at this time.)

The Great on Stan has just returned for its third season, a delightful warping of the story of Catherine the Great’s overthrow of her husband Peter in 18th century Russia.

In the show, Catherine (Elle Fanning) does overthrow Peter (Nicholas Hoult), but she doesn’t end up assassinating him – ahem, allegedly assassinating him. Against her better judgment, she is unable to ignore his handsomeness and is overcome with lust for him, despite the fact he’s a maniacal dumbbell.

This show sounds demented, and it is, but Fanning and Hoult’s comedic pairing is so acidic and electric that they’re able to sell every absurd aspect of the show (even Peter having sex with Catherine’s mother and then accidentally pushing her out of a window. Don’t worry, Catherine knows).