Summer is traditionally off-season for TV. Schedule-obliterating sport events, and the unreliable but still enticing prospect of spending evenings outside in the warm, have proven tough competition. The middle of the year became a dumping ground for misshapes (hello, Prized Apart and The Interceptor!) while most of the big guns were saved for the dark, wine-and-onesie nights of autumn and winter.
But something is in the muggy air. On-demand and time-shifted viewing have turned TV into a 24/7 medium, lessening the risk of broadcasting a potential hit when the audience are still outside playing naked Swingball. Now, every day is another chance to ensure a programme finds a following. The modern scheduler can’t afford to just bung on a load of Two Ronnies repeats before taking July and August off. Now there are new shows, bold shows, and shows that make queueing for a festival toilet or a tepid pint seem even less appealing. Here are the coolest shows for these hot months…
ABZ ON THE FARM
BBC2, July
What do you want to be doing this summer: sitting on a picnic blanket being panicked by a single wasp, or watching Abz from 5ive trying to understand the concept of a chicken? Correct answer. Good, then, that BBC2 has commissioned Abz On The Farm, a three-parter in which the former boybander and his partner Vicky will attempt self-sufficiency on a smallholding in Wales. What will Abz do when faced with such challenges as “quite strong wind” and “getting a splinter”? Sack off the sunny after-work pints and tune in to find out.
SEE ALSO Love Island, or, “16 people who seem like they are really rude to nightclub bathroom attendants attempt to have sex”, ITV.
JG
AGENT CARTER
FOX, 12 July
Marvel’s small-screen domination continues as Hayley Atwell’s Agent Peggy Carter steps out of Captain America’s shadow in this long-awaited spin-off series. Like Wonder Woman in a buttoned-up 1940s blouse, Carter takes down her detractors with cool one-liners and throws her enemies through windows in her undercover quest to save the world. This mistress of disguise is something of a feminist pioneer in postwar Los Angeles. “You know there’s a difference between being an independent woman and a spinster,” warns her roommate Colleen. And with more sass than a RuPaul’s Drag Race-themed hen do, Carter replies: “Is it the shoes?”
SEE ALSO Odyssey, BBC2. If you like your freedom fighting even more far-fetched.
HV
CORDON
BBC4, 27 June
Not original but well executed enough to chill you even on the warmest evenings, this Euro-thriller introduces us to a disparate group of people going about their business, and keeping some secrets, in the apparently safe and dull city of Antwerp. Their connection? They’re about to be caught up in a cordon sanitaire when a deadly virus starts spreading and their bit of town is closed off. Initially, the isolation is only supposed to last for 48 hours. There’s deft characterisation, stealthy pacing and a good sense of panic uncontrollably setting in. Fittingly, the dialogue is spoken in the most contagious of all European languages: Flemish.
SEE ALSO Jordskott, ITV Encore. Classic cop-faces-traumatic-past Scandi spookiness.
JS
MY MAD FAT DIARY
E4, 22 June
Forget the present and relive the build-up to what may well have been your best, most bittersweet summer – the one after leaving school. First, though, there are exams, university rejections, and life decisions to be made for Rae Earl (Sharon Rooney) and her gang of misfits, as bent on self-sabotage as ever but (surely?) destined for a happy ending. From the on-point 1998 soundtrack (Air, Eels, Beta Band and, of course, Enya) to the plaid shirts and combats, the final series of E4’s comedy-drama captures the era and time of life as impeccably as ever. You can almost taste the Smirnoff Ice.
SEE ALSO King For A Term, Sky Arts. Idris Elba writes and directs a drama about an asthmatic boy at a special-needs school, inspired by his Hackney childhood.
GT
NOT SAFE FOR WORK
Channel 4, July
Zawe Ashton graduates from stealing the show in Fresh Meat to anchoring this civil servant comedy. She’s Katherine, a policy adviser who finds herself shunted sideways from Whitehall to Northampton where she’s mortified to find her recommendations for a new “Immigration Pathway” being thoroughly derailed by new boss Danny (Sacha Dhawan), a classic example of someone failing upwards. Not Safe For Work is the perfect show to watch if you’re spending most of the summer stuck behind a desk: the watercooler comedy of Danny’s ketamine breakfast will cheer you up, the darker hints at just how broken Katherine is (careful with that stapler) should keep your holiday FOMO worries in perspective.
SEE ALSO Fried, BBC3. A comedy set in a fried chicken shop? Sounds like a recipe for a junior spesh.
RV
TRUE DETECTIVE
Sky Atlantic, 22 June
Apparently there isn’t much in the way of “time is a flat circle” banter in the new True Detective. Now that’s a shame, because my whole summer was going to be chain-smoking in a Fruit Of The Loom vest, impressing women with hot determinist chat. But what we can be sure of is that TD2 will still be heavy: heavy in the content (Chinatown-style Californian corruption); heavy in the star power (not two but three A-listers in Colin Farrell, Rachel McAdams and Vince Vaughn); and no doubt heavy in the tone. That should be enough for most fans of the original, though I’d still like an oddly menacing bloke on a sit-down lawnmower.
SEE ALSO Wayward Pines, Amazon. M Night Shyamalan drama with Matt Dillon in the lead and eerie overtones ahoy.
PM
UNREAL
Lifetime, 7 July
While the Big Brother contestants attempt to handjob each other to death over on Channel 5, Lifetime’s mockumentary UnREAL is more refreshing than that bottle of rosé you downed at the barbecue last weekend. It’s based around reality show Everlasting, where the star, sleazy Brit Adam (Freddie Stroma), troubled producer Rachel (Shiri Appleby) and a collection of desperate-for-a-date women get emotionally manipulated by Quinn (Constance Zimmer), the evil showrunner who barks things at her staff like: “You get cash bonuses for nudity, 911 calls and catfights. Now let’s make some TV!” At one point, the producers crash a contestant’s dad’s funeral to trick her into returning to the show. Bleaker than a Monday morning at Glasto.
SEE ALSO The Bachelor, ITVBe. Season 16 of the show that UnREAL is parodying.
IS
Veep
Sky Atlantic, July
Once Parliament goes into recess on 21 July and Westminster hacks head for the beach, political news – and more importantly, political gaffes – can dry up. Thankfully, it’s around that time that Armando Iannucci’s Veep returns to UK screens. The HBO production may have a gloss that puts it at a remove from The Thick Of It but, over three seasons, Veep has blossomed into a show that’s not just as good, it’s as funny. Sample Tucker-level insult: “Jonah, you’re not even a man. You’re like an early draft of a man, where they just sketched out a giant, mangled skeleton.” We left Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s Selina Meyer (pictured, below) with her installed as president after her predecessor resigned. Will she make it through the election primaries to hold on to the role?
SEE ALSO The Brink, Sky Atlantic. Tim Robbins and Jack Black star in this HBO comedy about a potentially planet-ending geopolitical crisis
WD
Wet Hot American Summer: First Day Of Camp
Netflix, 31 July
Wet Hot American Summer was an extremely daft parody of US summer camp movies of the 70s from 2001, which featured a talking can of vegetables and Paul Rudd drowning children. As that description suggests, it was brilliant, and had a cast to die for – Rudd, Amy Poehler, Bradley Cooper, Elizabeth Banks – but no one watched it, mainly because it sounded like a dirty movie your dad bought from that shop with the silver windows in 1976. In the intervening years, the film has attained a cult status, and has now been granted a prequel series by Netflix. All of that cast are returning for it, along with plenty of other famous folk such as Chris Pine, Kristen Wiig and Jon Hamm, many of whom will be gamely pretending to be teenagers while shouting “chug” and making out behind the bike sheds. Comedy heaven, basically.
SEE ALSO The Spoils Before Dying, Fox. Another silly send-up, this time of prestige miniseries, led by Will Ferrell and Kristen Wiig.
GM
Yonderland
Sky1, July
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-DRq_iqH4Y
This fantasy puppet series, created and starring the Python-lite Horrible History troupe, takes the magic of Sunday night storytelling, plonks it in Jim Henson’s oddball universe and subtly drops in the odd knob gag to satisfy the over 21s. Series two should be an ideal antidote to all those thrill-seeking, outdoorsy ventures your mates might be on, as Debbie, the bored Birmingham housewife whose gateway into an alternate universe exists in her pantry, continues to battle against the evil forces of Negatus. Who needs the lido when all this adventure exists within the closed-curtain comfort of your front room?Harriet Gibsone
SEE ALSO BoJack Horseman, Netflix. Animated comedy starring a washed-up, narcissistic celebrity horse; think Birdman does Black Beauty
Source:https://www.theguardian.com
