If you're a cricket or a tennis tragic, TV's got you covered for the silly season. There'll be the Big Bash on Ten, all sorts of Tests and one-dayers on Nine, and the Hopman Cup followed by the Australian Open on Seven to take you right up to the launch of My Kitchen Rules.

But story tragics will be less well served by mainstream TV over the next seven weeks. The only new dramas on offer will be B-listers such as American Horror Story, Castle, Bones and Covert Affairs, while the new comedy pool will be as shallow as Two Broke Girls, Mom and Cougar Town.

This is not a tragedy, it's an opportunity. Let's use the empty airtime to catch up with the talked about series we didn't quite get around to, or couldn't afford to pay for, in 2014. On rainy days, stay inside and binge, so you'll be prepared for the arrival of the 2015 seasons of programs that caused American commentators to declare 2014 "the golden age of TV drama".

This list might also be useful if you're still seeking gifts for the dramaphiles among your friends and family:

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Game of Thrones, seasons 1-5: You didn't want to pay $89 a month to Foxtel, and you didn't want to do anything illegal, so you found the media buzz frustrating. Learn what the fuss is about with 50 hours of violence, sex, visual splendours and scary surprises before season 6 arrives in April. Warning: there will be moments when you feel compelled to scream at the screen, because your favourite character has just been slaughtered, but by season 5, three apparently secure heroes will emerge. There's no need to read the books.

Fargo, season 1: A black comedy in 10 episodes, vaguely related to the Oscar-winning Coen Brothers movie, in which the pleasures include Martin Freeman's Swedish/American accent, Billy Bob Thornton's sardonic menace and the deceptive simplicity of Alison Allison Tolman✓, who plays the hero-cop. Season 2 will be on SBS mid-next year.

House of Cards, seasons 1 and 2: Kevin Spacey got all the coverage as the upwardly mobile vice-president, but Robin Wright as his unflappable partner is even more intriguing over 26 hours. The next season will launch the Australian version of Netflix in March and cost about $10 a month., 

True Detective, season 1: Be prepared for a disappointing conclusion, but the first seven episodes have such wonderful dialogue delivered so intensely by Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey that you're happy to forgive and desperate for more (coming mid-year).

Orphan Black, seasons 1 and 2: Tatiana Maslany plays all 10 clones of a small-time criminal who grows over 20 hours into a fierce mother and unstoppable investigator.  Season 3 will start on SBS in April.

The Fall, season 1: Gillian Anderson is the emotionally aloof but sexually voracious detective on the trail of an Irish psycho killer played by Jamie Dornan, who gives a preview of how he'll play the sadist hero of 50 Shades of Grey. Season 1 has only five episodes, and you'll be desperate for season 2, which just finished on Foxtel, so you may have to wait a few weeks for the DVD or download that reveals what happens.

Justified, seasons 1-5: A modern western created by the 20th century's cleverest crime writer, Elmore Leonard, unfolds over 65 episodes, mainly concerned with the feud between enigmatic  Marshal Raylan Givens and philosophical killer Boyd Crowder, with Australia's Damon Herriman as an ambitious hillbilly. The sixth and final season starts on Foxtel's FX channel next month, so start your catchup now.

The Good Wife, seasons 1-5: This superbly written legal soap has been shamefully neglected by viewers, possibly because the protagonist (Julianna Margulies) was so wimpy in the first season. Now that she has turned into a kick-arse politician with as many ethical issues as her husband, it's time to give her another chance before season 6 resumes on Ten in February.

The Newsroom, seasons 1 and 2: Aaron Sorkin, creator of the perfect president in The West Wing, now creates the perfect TV network, while savaging the shallowness of modern media. The characters are absurdly idealistic at times, but that beats cynicism. The third and final season is about to end on Foxtel, and you'll need that download to complete your education.

The Tunnel, season 1: The English/French adaptation of the Danish/Swedish thriller The Bridge. The original series has now reached season 3, and keeps getting better, but summer is not the time for subtitles. Buy The Bridge (and Borgen) if they're on special next month, but leave the Nordic bingeing for winter.

The Hopman Cup is January 4 to 10 and the Australian Open January 19 to February 1 on Seven. The Big Bash Twenty/20 cricket airs on Ten from December 28 to January 28. Bones, Seven, 8.30pm Mondays. Castle, Seven, 9.30pm Mondays. Cougar Town, Seven, 11.30pm Sundays and Mondays. Covert Affairs, Seven, 10.30pm Sundays. 2 Broke Girls, Nine, 9.30pm Tuesdays. Mom, Nine, 10pm Tuesdays. American Horror Story, ELEVEN, 9.30pm Mondays.

A leap of faith
It's the silly season, so of course Shaun Micallef is going to get serious. Tonight on SBS he presents Stairway To Heaven, a documentary about Hinduism, filmed in India this year between seasons of Mad As Hell, in which he was inspired by the televised journeys of Michael Palin and Stephen Fry. We had this conversation …

The Tribal Mind: Many viewers will be surprised to see you in this, because they'd assume you're a sceptic, from the way you mock the politicians in Mad As Hell.

Shaun Micallef: It's something I'm really interested in, which is people's unquestioning commitment to faith. There are people who have that, and I don't have that, and I find it a very enviable thing.  The premise of what we hope will be a series was to just go off and immerse myself in these communities – seminaries, monasteries, wide open spaces in India – and meet these people and just see what it is that makes them so certain, to go in with an open mind, to not be cynical or even sceptical, to be genuinely curious and just observe.

The difficult thing for me was getting rid of the feeling that I needed to make jokes all the time. If there was going to be any humour there, I should let it occur naturally. It's got nothing to do with comedy, it's about life.

TM: I understand you thought about being a priest when you were a teenager. Are you still a Catholic?

SM: Yes, we still celebrate the feast days, we've brought our children up in the Catholic Church. If it's all up to me, I'm in big trouble. There's got to be some grand architect.

TM: Did the experience of making Stairway To Heaven transform you?

SM: Maybe it didn't change me, but it gently moved me to look in a different direction. If I'd sorted it all out in one documentary, there wouldn't be any reason to do another one. I haven't quite got the answer to the meaning of life yet, but it's not a bad objective for a TV series.

TM: So if it becomes a series, we can follow your trajectory …

SM: Until I'm a pure beam of energy.

Shaun Micallef's Stairway To Heaven is on SBS tonight at 7.30.

Media make mayhem
Sophie McNeill thinks she was given the task of producing the ABC documentary Inside Schoolies, along with colleague Winsome Denyer, "because we're, like, the only people under 30 in TV current affairs". Her age did give her an advantage in talking to the 17-year-olds who invaded the Gold Coast last month.

"One kid asked me if I could tag him in the nude," she recalls. "Another kid said to me, 'You could be the answer to my dreams.' I said 'I'm married, I have two children' and he said 'At least you're experienced.' I think he'd possibly had a few drinks."

Her other advantage was that the documentary makers were not setting out to moralise or sensationalise – simply to examine what happens during an annual event which parents find traumatic and teenagers find exhilarating.

"For tens of thousands of Australian families, this is something that gets debated and argued about in the household," McNeill says. "For teenagers it's one of the biggest things that happens to them apart from the exams that they have in year 12. This is the thing that keeps them going. For a lot of parents, because of the bad headlines over the years, it's an ordeal.

"It's peak time for everything that a parent has ever worried about – drugs, drunking, violence, depression, social media; it's all happening at schoolies. The kids are so candid. They tell us a lot of things about their lives, When was the last time you saw a 17-year-old on television explaining their life? I learned a huge amount."

McNeill says the commercial media have exaggerated what happens during Schoolies weeks, and the vast majority of the 25,000 teenagers who head for the Gold Coast have a fine time and return home unscathed.

"We were filming the commercial media up on the balcony literally waiting for a fight to happen. That's why they cover this event. And fights happen every Friday night in Surfers Paradise, year round. It's not just Schoolies. A lot of the people who end up getting arrested aren't even Schoolies. They're what they call Toolies, which are the older crew who come and hang around and cause trouble for these underage kids.

"There's such a large police presence, volunteer presence, there's so much effort gone into looking after these kids and making them safe. Ten years ago there was a lot more mayhem going on. These days it's an incredibly well organised, well co-ordinated event."

So the program will be reassuring to parents? Not entirely, says McNeill. "A lot of what goes on at the Gold Coast is up in the hotel rooms. There is such a big police presence. You don't drink on the beach. A lot of what parents are worried about is happening behind closed doors in the hotel rooms, so it was really great for us to get that access to kids and see what was going on. It's something the police aren't seeing, the volunteers aren't seeing."

McNeill declined to go into further detail about the sordid side. She may be a responsible ABC documentarian, but she wants to maintain some suspense.

Inside Schoolies: You Only Live Once is on ABC on Tuesday at 8.30pm

For more, go to smh.com.au/entertainment/blog/the-tribal-mind.