Thanks to the bizarre twists and turns of the Trump administration, we are looking forward to a summer of discontent. But there are consolations to be found elsewhere. We are living in a Golden Age of Television, for instance, and I don’t mean Fox News and MSNBC.

Even in Podunk we can see some of the offerings of the National Theatre of Britain broadcast live at a nearby theater, so a week from now I am looking forward to a version of “Twelfth Night,” one of my favorite Shakespeare plays featuring one of his plucky, endearing heroines in Viola, the drunken blowhard Sir Toby Belch, the officious steward Malvolio and a plot filled with disguises that reveal the characters’ true identities.

I stuck with the recently concluded “The Leftovers” for the full three seasons, despite the fear that it would all add up to nothing, and was rewarded with perhaps the most satisfying conclusion of a TV drama ever contrived.

The show began apparently as science-fiction with two percent of the world’s population suddenly vanishing. Or was this a crypto-religious meditation on a partial rapture? As the title ought to have warned us, however, it was really about the people left behind and their reaction to this spooky event. In particular, Kevin and Nora played exquisitely by Justin Theroux and Carrie Coon.

Both were left behind by members of their families and struggle mightily to come to terms with separation, abandonment and lack of closure, suffering something like survivor’s guilt. Much of the series detailed the grotesque ways the survivors reacted to their situation, running the gamut from cults of gaudy penitents or militant denial, to consoling cons and the creation of a new gospel.

But by the end, it became clear, in the story of Kevin and Nora, that the show was really about grief and loss and the necessity, in its face of it, to dare to succumb to love again. It was daring to devote three years of a TV drama to such a theme, and the quiet, soulful conclusion rewarded viewers who stuck with it.

Coon is a Chicago theater star with an illustrious resume, but has been little seen on TV or film– notably stealing every scene she was a part of in “Gone, Girl” as Ben Affleck’s sister. She is a wonder and ought to become ubiquitous after this remarkable performance filled with raw emotion and quiet power.

She is now also appearing in the third season of “Fargo” as yet another female Minnesota cop underestimated and patronized by her idiot superiors but smarter than all of them put together. Ewan McGregor, almost unrecognizable and actually acting for a change, is also fine as is Mary Elizabeth Winstead of the late, lamented “Braindead,” which now looks like reality TV since it concerned a Washington establishment taken over by brain eating aliens. And almost no one notices the difference.

And speaking of a Golden Age for TV actors, this weekend brings the final season of “Orphan Black” in which the astounding Tatiana Maslany plays a dozen identical twins who prove nature may be important but nurture sure can make dodeca-clones turn out very differently. So we have Maslany as a street smart conniver, assassin, soccer mom, scientist and so on, each individual and fully imagined, a tour de force. Has there ever been a sci-fi series that combined suspense and humor, humanity and creepy dystopia so cleverly? If the creators can end it as magically as it has unspooled for the four previous seasons, it will be a triumph.

And then there’s the return of “Game of Thrones” in July, filled with medieval real-politick, naked women, bloodshed and dragons. But realistically, the only reason to keep tuning in is to see what becomes of Peter Dinklage as Tyrian Lannister, the scorned dwarf who is the canniest chap in all of Westeros. He was relatively absent in the last season, and whenever he’s missing for long the show slackens and degenerates into one more sex, swords and sorcerers potboiler.

Which brings us full circle to our awful daily reality. Charlie Savage, a Pulitzer-winning national security reporter, recently said the Trump melodrama left citizens trying to decide whether they were watching a real-life version of the corrupt dynastic politics of “Game of Thrones” or a years-long episode of “Veep,” in which vanity and incompetence vie for supremacy.

However, there’s a third choice. Perhaps Trump has forced us all to occupy a version of “Billions” in which a crooked, money manipulator tries to stay one jump ahead of the law. But at least the Damien Lewis character has the good sense to simply bribe, corrupt and bamboozle the system from the outside rather than trying to become a powerful office holder himself. If only it were so.