PicoBlog

Hello,

There’s good television out at the moment, so let’s get right to it.

SURREAL DRAMA OF THE WEEK

Bodies (Netflix - all eight episodes) - It starts like a typical police procedural. A police officer stumbles across a dead body on the street. She takes in the culprit found at the scene for questioning, who denies having anything to do with it.

Then something weird happens. We go back in time to 1941. We see a different detective discover the same body at the same place. And then the timeline goes back again, this time to the late 19th century (you’re getting the gist now); same body, same location, different detective.

This eight-part drama then follows the three different detectives as they investigate the same murder in three different eras. And, weirder still, these deaths are all connected to the same person, who seems to be alive throughout all three time periods.

With a nod to sci-fi, and with constant flash-backs and flash-forwards, is the plot confusing and near incomprehensible at times? Yes! Is it also a lot of fun? Also yes!

I like how, in a saturated market of police procedurals and crime thrillers, this show spins the genre in a different direction. It also stars Stephen Graham, who has hardly ever been in anything bad.

A SPOOKY SHOW FOR HALLOWEEN

Uncanny (BBC iPlayer - new episodes each week) - Based on the hit BBC Sounds podcast, this series features host Danny Robins as he investigates real-life spooky events, along with the person who witnessed them. Danny says that the purpose of this show is to work out whether the paranormal activities can be explained away with science (i.e. is mould in old flats causing people to hallucinate? etc.). However, the real reason this show exists is to scare you shitless, with unsettling production and spooky sound effects making their testimonies truly haunting. Hardly anything scary is ever shown on the screen. It is all about letting your mind run away with itself.

It’s also a show that you have to watch with the lights turned off. Heck, they tell you to do just that at the very start of the episode.

THE DADDY OF ALL NATURE SHOWS

Planet Earth III (BBC One and BBC iPlayer - new episodes every Sunday) - Of COURSE I would recommend Planet Earth III. It’s Planet Earth III, for God’s sake!

Of course, it goes without saying, but the nature footage is spectacular. The first sequence in the opening episode follows a whole set of seals ganging up together to force a great white shark out of their territory (fun fact: the footage has now been given to scientists to work out exactly what is going on). With the series exploring how nature works alongside humankind, later in the series you’ll see monkeys stealing iPhones and sunglasses off people, only to give them back once they have been traded for food.

The show’s real strength is in the stories of the production team who manage to film it in the first place. One team spent more than 50 days on an expedition just to film one short sequence. Another camera operator spent 300 hours in a hideout, waiting for an alligator to potentially attack some deer.

This season also saw changes to the way they film — largely because of Covid restrictions, but also to reduce their environmental impact. One sequence, later in the series, follows some octopi on the sea floor; it was filmed by a submarine that was controlled remotely from a flat in Bristol. Just imagine, imagine, if the wi-fi went down.

NOT A HALF BAD WATCH, ACTUALLY

Coleen Rooney: The Real Wagatha Story (Disney+, three episodes) - Yep, absolutely everything that could possibly be said about the Wagatha Christie case has already been said. It, of course, began when Coleen Rooney publicly accused Rebekah Vardy on Instagram of selling private stories to the papers. There has now been a TV courtroom drama, and even a West End play (nicknamed The Scousetrap).

But that doesn’t mean this three-part series retelling the case from the perspective of Coleen Rooney isn’t worth a watch. Coleen is a gifted storyteller, bringing all the receipts (and WhatsApp chats between her and Vardy), and pinpointing the suspicions that led her to think that Vardy was the one responsible. The third episode is particularly interesting — looking at the defense her lawyers used in the High Court. There’s hardly anything revelatory here, but you don’t really care either.

And hey, a documentary like this is a nice step change from those bleak traditional true-crime dramas that are endlessly popping up.

YOU COULDN’T MAKE IT UP.

The Greatest Show Never Made (Amazon Prime Video - all three episodes) - A documentary looking at a truly bizarre set of events.

At the height of early-noughties reality television, came a magazine listing which appealed for contestants and touted a big money prize. Many members of the public applied — thinking it was going to be the next Big Brother or X Factor — with a lucky few asked to quit their jobs for a year and head to a secret South London location to start a secret task.

Only, when they arrived… the show they thought they had applied for didn’t actually exist. There was no set. There was no production company. There wasn’t even prize money. The whole event had been planned by just one man. He had no television experience, and not long afterwards the ‘contestants’ found out that he had been working at Waterstones. This rather surreal series explores what on earth happened and, more importantly, why it all happened — reuniting all the contestants to talk about their experiences.

WHERE TO FIND ME THIS WEEK:

• I wrote for The Guardian about the challenges facing daytime television: “Channel 4 cited changing audience habits as a reason for the cancellation of Steph’s Packed Lunch, only months after Ofcom announced the biggest decline in broadcast television viewing (AKA people watching live television) since records began. This decline is now not just happening with younger viewers, but also with older viewers, the demographic we mostly associate with daytime television.”

• I review programmes for the Must Watch podcast every Monday, which you can subscribe to on BBC Sounds.

AND FINALLY…

Who wouldn’t want to start a weekend with a snort from Wendy Williams…

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