7 hours ago
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For those of us who like to stay indoors, it has been a bad summer. The World Cup ate up all traditional television scheduling, and the streamers apparently declined to counterprogramme. The Bear came and went before anybody noticed, and House of the Dragon conclusively disappeared up its own bottom.
If you’re anything like me then you clung to the good stuff (basically Disney’s Furious and nothing else) like a life raft, eking out new episodes like someone in a desert sucking condensation off the underside of a tarpaulin. But forget summer. It is now autumn, and television is back. In fact, I can’t remember a time when television has come roaring back with quite the same ferocity as it has this month.
Everywhere you turn there is something new and unmissable. And I suspect you haven’t even seen your favourite TV show of the year yet.
For me, the big one is Sky and HBO’s new divorce drama War (main pic). Watching it feels like scratching an itch I didn’t know I had. About the messy divorce between a fading Hollywood star (played by Sienna Miller) and a tech billionaire (played by Dominic West), and the warring lawyers who represent them, it sits precisely at the midpoint between Rivals and Succession – knowingly trashy, but also hugely smart. It’s so unbelievably propulsive, every episode ends with a whopper of a cliffhanger scientifically engineered to give you whiplash. And on top of that, Pip Torrens gets to play the haughtiest lawyer in all of recorded media. It is an absolute joy of a thing.
But also – Slow Horses is back! And that performs a little miracle of its own, too. The show is so long in the tooth that you would probably expect a significant drop off in quality. And yet its new run (its sixth) may very well be its strongest yet (despite the less than enthusiastic views of my colleague Jack Seale). Its plot has been slimmed down to its barest essentials – the whole thing is basically just a chase – and it is far more muscular as a result. Everyone is brilliant in it. The writing still sparkles, despite the departure of show-runner Will Smith. There’s a chance that there might not be much more of it to come, especially if Jack Lowden ends up becoming James Bond, so we really need to relish it while we can.
Even the remakes and spin-offs are unnecessarily good. I found myself watching the second season of The Paper – Greg Daniels’ cousin to The Office – with a mixture of ticklishness and irritation. Ticklishness because it’s warm and funny, and has an ensemble cast (pictured above) that has really started coming into its own; and irritation because it’s only 10 episodes long. The show has the potential to be one of those all-timers, like Friends or Cheers, that you can stick on years from now as you go about your business because you’re so familiar with – and fond of – the characters. At this rate, though, it’ll take 20 years to build up enough episodes to let that happen. There is a possibility that I’m just being greedy, but it’s only because I like it so much.
And in the remake department, Reckless (ITVX here, SBS in Australia) is a spin on Neil Forsyth’s impeccable Guilt, that manages to retain all the tension and momentum of that show while adding layers of interesting new dimensions.
But there are so many other things to look forward to. Rivals is back soon. So is The Celebrity Traitors. Sharon Horgan has a new show, in the form of Youth. Apple’s Brothers, about Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, looks incredibly diverting. Even if it ends up being bad, Amazon’s Blade Runner 2099 series should be absolutely fascinating. And, if you’re my dad, then the new Reacher spinoff Neagley is essentially the moment your entire life has been leading up to.
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I have barely scratched the surface here, which is slightly terrifying. For the first time in ages, there might be more good television than spare hours in the day. What an unusual feeling that is.
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