Tag: All4

Where to find it: Channel 4
Length: Twelve 20-minute episodes
Synopsis: Forest-based midlife comedy-drama
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: righteous anger, rural setting, occasionally funny, Ryan, Tony
What I don’t like about it: attempts to build lore in second season

Review:
Linda, menopausal and aggrieved by a poor division of household labour, hops on her motorbike and leaves her husband for a life in the Forest of Dean. Features a number of carthartic and quite funny rants about suburban life, marriage, cancel culture. The characters are a mixed bag, some being broad satirical caricatures while others are surprisingly well-rounded. A solid, easygoing short show.

Content notes (may contain spoilers):

Where to find it: Channel 4
Length: Ten 20-minute episodes
Synopsis: Mycologist has a cure They’re willing to kill for
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: humour, animation, themes
What I don’t like about it: ugly style, incohesive plot

Review:
The animation team from Scavengers Reign return with another imaginative anime-inspired adult cartoon in which a renegade Paul Stamets type finds a panacaea and fights against a deep state-big pharma conspiracy. Though the character design is bafflingly offputting, the visuals come into their own during the psychedelic trip scenes. The plot can feel perfunctory but it’s well-paced enough to go with it and the writing is psychological and satirical. Unlike Scavengers Reign, this has been renewed for another season and is well worth following.

MILD SPOILERS: My favourite touch, which I’m certain was intentional, is when the panacaea is given to an autistic child and he remains autistic. I held my breath for a minute there!

Content notes (may contain spoilers): body horror, violence, weapons

Where to find it: All 4
Length: Eight 25-minute episodes
Synopsis: Mawkish miniseries
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: good acting, Yorkshire setting
What I don’t like about it: inspiration porn bullshit

Review:
A neurodivergent kid, raised in isolation by his mentally-ill father, is forced to finally leave the house which has been his only surrounding after his father swallows a shotgun. He moves in with distant family and, as they’re trapped by an oppressive normality and world-weariness, his childlike oddity proves inspirational to them. I really didn’t appreciate it but the neurotypicals say it’s “uplifting”.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): suicide, hit-and-run, sex

Where to find it: All 4
Length: Six 25-minute episodes
Synopsis: Flatmate frienemies fuck with each other for fun
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: absurd humour, fun acting
What I don’t like about it: fast pace seems forced and annoying at first

Review:
Britcom mainstay Robert Popper’s latest sitcom finds two young women living together in London. Becca (Melissa Saint) and Charlie (Tanya Roberts) both work assistant jobs that they hate and spend the rest of their time nihilistically dicking around and amusing themselves at the expense of each other and anyone unlucky enough to cross their path. They clearly have a love for one another but express it through pranking and teasing.

Panned by the papers, this show certainly isn’t unmissable but it’s a little better than the aging journalistic establishment give it credit for and, after weathering the first couple of episodes, its awkward absurdity made me laugh several times.

Content notes (may contain spoilers):

Where to find it: All 4
Length: Six 25-minute episodes
Synopsis: Sheltered kid goes to uni, rooms with a sweet lad, later makes terrible sitcom
Recommendation rating: 1/5

What I like about it: has one good joke when the inexperienced lead drinks poppers, the non-Jack characters are alright
What I don’t like about it: the writer and the show are just awful

Review:
Creator/writer Jack Rooke adapts his deeply uninteresting life story into a sitcom that will set your teeth on edge. Rooke’s character is about to go to uni when his dad dies so he defers a year, then is thrown in a shed with another “mature student”, Danny. Danny is one of my favourite character types, an extroverted, masculine ‘bro’ or ‘lad’ type, stripped of any of the toxic traits that often accompany them in real life – a fantasy character Ted Lasso built a whole show around.

Unfortunately, the POV and narration is provided by Jack, an insufferable prick who seems all too much like what he presents himself as: a working-class kid who has gone to uni and now views himself as above his background. The script is peppered with cringeworthy references to working class culture; the following, while not a direct quote, is the kind of line you can expect: “I haven’t been so shocked since Derek was voted off X Factor, my mum dropped her Take-a-Break magazine and I spat out my McCain oven chips – only 50p from Farmfoods!” It’s a special kind of torture being in his presence, even through a TV screen.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): drugs, sex, depression

Where to find it: All4
Length: Six 25-minute episodes
Synopsis: A young mum tries to rebalance her life in East Yorkshire
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: funny, Yorkshire
What I don’t like about it: it’s not quite great

Review:
Follows Toni, who is struggling with identity as her kid has just grown out of needing constant attention, along with her older sister and more experienced mum Paula and her young, unattached friend Rana, representing two identities Toni feels caught between. Mostly I just like hearing coarse Yorkshire women cackling with each other, reminds me of home.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): sex, one of the leads is a cop

Where to find it: All 4
Length: Nineteen 25-minute episodes
Synopsis: Teens come of age in the run-up to the Good Friday Agreement
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: funny, good characters, actors and writing, Orla
What I don’t like about it: occasionally pushes its smarts too far, characters take a while to bed in

Review:
This Channel 4 sitcom follows five teenagers in mid-90s Derry: studious and artistic Erin, her lovely and weird (autistic, whether the creators understood that or not) cousin Orla and friend Claire, whose principles never survive first contact with her own panicky self-interest. Joining them is their coarse and impulsive schoolmate Michelle and her despised English cousin, James. Other characters include Erin’s family – Ma Mary, Da Gerry, Grandda Joe (who hates his son-in-law) and monotonous Uncle Colm – and classmates and staff at the girls’ Catholic school, including shrill and cutthroat head-of-class Jenny and the wonderfully cynical and sardonic Sister Michael.

If this feels like a lot of characters to have thrown at you in a review, it’s not much better on the show but you get an understanding of and affection for them by the end of the first series that grows throughout. As it moves on, they use more archive footage and real events to tie their story into Northern Ireland tentatively embracing peace in the late 90s, this can be impressive but can sometimes push itself into showing-off territory. It’s a good and funny show with one of the strongest ensembles I’ve seen.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): sectarian conflict and hate, sex, alcohol, drugs, death