FROM Narcos to Ozark, viewers’ fascination with the grisly business of international drug trafficking shows no signs of easing off. If anything it it is flourishing, particularly on streaming services.

You can see why the genre is successful. Drugs dramas offer viewers jeopardy and violence from a safe distance.

There are ridiculous amounts of money swilling around, enough to make otherwise sane individuals do crazy things (we’re looking at you, Marty and Wendy Byrde).

Plus the viewer gets to travel the world from the comfort of their sofa and see life in other places, even if it doesn’t always look very nice when we get there.

Zero Zero Zero (Sky Atlantic and NOW TV, Thursday, 9pm), based on the novel by Roberto Saviano, ticks all the boxes for the genre. Glossy, violent, multiple locations, plenty of bad guys and a few questionable women, it clearly means business from the off. Adding to its pedigree are its directors, Stefano Sollima (Gomorrah) and Janus Metz (True Detective), a score by Mogwai, and its central star, Mr Gabriel Byrne no less. No one does classy hoodlum like the suave Irishman.

READ MORE: Teddy Jamieson meets Gabriel Byrne

The tale opens with an adrenaline shot of a scene with Byrne before looping to the wide open spaces of the Calabrian mountains where a boss of the local mafia, the ‘Ndrangheta, is emerging from his hiding place, a hole in the ground. He has called a meeting of fellow bosses to make them an offer they … well you know the rest. In this case the offer is cocaine at a bargain price, if they all invest vast amounts of their ill-gained to buy it.

From the buyers the focus switches to the sellers in Monterrey, Mexico, and on to the “deal makers” in New Orleans. That’s where Byrne comes in as Edward Lynwood, a man who can get anything anywhere for a price. Helping him in the family business is his daughter Emma (Andrea Riseborough, Birdman, The Death of Stalin). Kept on the sidelines, but aware of everything going on, is Lynwood’s son Chris (Dane DeHaan, Kill Your Darlings, The Place Beyond the Pines).

Meanwhile, watching events in Mexico is a specialist team of soldiers determined to put an end to the carnage on their doorstep, even if that means adding to it.

After all that talk of grubby deeds and dirty money, time to raise the tone with Britain’s Lost Masterpieces (BBC4, Monday, 9pm). Back for a fifth series, you get a lot of bang for your cultural buck with presenters Bendor Grosvenor and Emma Dabiri.

Working from the Art UK website, which bills itself as “the online home for every public art collection in the UK”, Grosvenor and Dabiri go in search of works which are unattributed, or possibly wrongly identified. Their first stop is the Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, where Grosvenor believes a lost Trevisani and a Joos van Cleve are housed, awaiting discovery.

Grosvenor is the art historian, digging into the story of the art work and the life of its creator. Dabiri handles the social history end, which includes looking at the buildings that house the pieces.

The slyly humorous Grosvenor gets the better end of the deal, flying off to talk to experts and getting to stand by conservator Simon Gillespie as he cleans centuries of dirt from paintings and reveals their true glory.

They are a highly watchable trio, with the double act between Gillespie and Grosvenor a particular joy. If you like a nice scarf (and who doesn’t?), Gillespie is your man.

Cometh another lockdown, cometh the return of Grayson’s Art Club: Get Creating (Channel 4, Sunday, 7pm). One of Channel 4’s biggest hits of the first lockdown, pulling in upwards of one million viewers an episode, Grayson’s Art Club is open to all, the only entry requirement enthusiasm and willingness to have a laugh, even if it is just at your own efforts.

The programme should really be titled Grayson and Philippa’s Art Club since it also features the artist’s wife, author, psychotherapist and broadcaster, Philippa Perry. Maybe that title change will come in the third series, the one that will have absolutely nothing to do with any lockdown and will simply be there for the joy of it.

Sunday’s standalone programme looks back at the last series and promises to inspire us to “get creating” for the upcoming new run. Last time round the grand finale was set to be an exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery. Alas, the doors remain shut due, you’ve guessed it, to the lockdown.

If you are still in the mood to create, stick around for The Great Pottery Throwdown (Channel 4, Sunday, 8pm), and finish the night with one of the more fabulously inventive, and fun, costume dramas around, The Great (Channel 4, Sunday, 9pm). Knocks polka dots off Bridgerton any day.