The best film of 2021 was one few people even heard of: The Electrical Life of Louis Wain, directed by the Brit Will Sharpe. A fantastical biopic, it told the story of the English visual artist who popularized cats in the Victorian era through his surreal illustrations. Benedict Cumberbatch portrays the lead in his finest performance to date, and the sublime Claire Foy inhabits his wife, Emily. After tragedy strikes the couple, Wain’s fragile mental state leads to an increasingly psychedelic style and a nervous breakdown. Sharpe, all of 35, displays a dazzling visual palette, his own art matching that of his subject. After a brief, limited run in theaters, it was released on Amazon Prime with little fanfare. That’s a shame: The picture is a masterstroke.

With his limited series Landscapers, released on HBO last December, Sharpe outdoes himself. Technically, the series is true crime. But the actor-turned-director transforms the genre utterly. In fact, it’s one of the most imaginative television projects to date. The closest precedent would be The Singing Detective, Dennis Potter and Jon Amiel’s film noir musical of 1986. Sharpe and his co-creator, Ed Sinclair, tell the story of Susan and Christopher Edwards, the British couple convicted in 2014 of murdering her parents 15 years before. In bringing it to the screen, they eschew every police procedural convention you expect. In their place, they deploy a half-dozen different styles in a bold, seamless tapestry — from expressionism to surrealism and more. Sharpe even works in Brechtian style, one of the hardest to pull off on screen. Yet he does so with confidence, using projections, direct address, and metatheatrical stunts. The result is luminescent.