Tag: BBC iPlayer

Where to find it: BBC iPlayer
Length: Fifty 25-minute episodes
Synopsis: Genre-hopping blistering satire about self-involved millennials
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: satirical, engaging, constant reinvention, comic acting
What I don’t like about it: inconsistent (gets better as it goes)

Review:
Four selfish Brooklyn hipsters investigate the disappearance of a college acquaintance, things escalate. The last three seasons in particular are full of ambition and quality but nearly impossible to talk about without spoilers.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): violence, sex, swears (after switching network in season 3), slurs

Where to find it: BBC iPlayer
Length: Six 25-minute episodes
Synopsis: Pitch dark sitcom about personality disorders
Recommendation rating: 5/5

What I like about it: brilliantly funny, well-informed and acted
What I don’t like about it: the envy I feel over how genius it is

Review:
Josie has just got out of inpatient psychiatric care and is back living with her mum Deb and sister Billie, the driving forces behind Josie’s very low self-esteem and lack of stable identity. Narcissistic Deb is dating a widower for his money and Billie is desparate to find a man who won’t leave her like their dad did.

It feels like therapeutic shitposting and every laugh – which thanks to the tight script and comedic gestures of the actors come thick and fast – is tinged with an “ooof that’s dark”. It’s scarily relatable and fantastic work from writer-star Kat Sadler.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): some of the least erotic sex on television, bodily fluids, unhealthy relationships

Where to find it: BBC iPlayer
Length: Two 1-hour episodes
Synopsis: Autistic mission doc
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: autistic people
What I don’t like about it: not very informative, self-important host, inspiration porn

Review:
Chris Packham hosts this BBC documentary in which he meets four autistic people and helps them make a short film about their perspective, which they then show to their friends and family. Despite many encouragements to understand autistic people, it doesn’t do a great job of explaining us, preferring ambiguous statements about how we’re all different. Occasionally hilarious, such as using VFX to show autism as some kind of Iron Man-esque superpower, but more often manipulatively ‘uplifting’ or uncomfortably intrusive.

Mostly, the show and its host seem to have a higher evaluation of their importance than I do and spend most of the time talking down to the audience, assuming they will have many negative impressions of autistic people. Thankfully Packham, patron(ising) saint of autism, is here to realise for us that people who don’t speak are still people.

Content notes (may contain spoilers):

Where to find it: BBC iPlayer
Length: Seven 1-hour episodes
Synopsis: Seven hours of unadorned archive footage from the collapse of the Soviet Union
Recommendation rating: 3/5

What I like about it: it’s Adam Curtis, I like his style and analysis
What I don’t like about it: he doesn’t do voiceovers, no real pace or context

Review:
Curtis raids the BBC archives for footage from the USSR and former USSR from these years and assembles it into a juxtaposed tale of two, and sometimes three, Russias: that of the entrenched, corrupt and out-of-touch Communist nomenklatura, middle class Muscovites longing for economic and cultural freedom, and peasants far from Moscow whose aspirations are simpler and hardships more intense. In time the Communists are replaced by Yeltsin, whose gutsy rise to power is shown step-by-step, and gangsters become oligarchs, running every aspect of Russian society. The comments usually provided by Curtis’ voiceovers are here shown in text over the footage. Each episode is dedicated to the BBC journalists who gathered the footage. It has a tighter focus and less writing than most of his documentaries – though he takes full advantage of unspoken parallels to the current invasion of Ukraine – and doesn’t reach the career high of last year’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head but if you can sit and stare at misery for seven hours, you’ll learn a lot about a fascinating time in recent history.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): genuine war footage with dead and mangled bodies, violence, sex

Where to find it: BBC iPlayer
Length: Six 30-minute episodes
Synopsis: Mystery comedy-drama
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: scene-stealing talented kid Ollie, manages decent drama for one episode (#4)
What I don’t like about it: dull comedy, weak first half, bad twists, no resolution

Review:
Nicola makes a new friend while dropping her son Ollie at school, a fellow mum named Jennifer. Mysteries build while they bond and are largely explained by episode 4, from Jen’s point-of-view. Sadly, the first half is more annoying than compelling and the last two episodes fizzle out awfully. The only element of the show worth seeing is Ollie, played by young disabled actor Lenny Rush with perfect comic delivery. Here is a two-minute clip of him in action.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): death, hit by train, personality disorders

Where to find it: BBC iPlayer
Length: Five 30-minute episodes
Synopsis: More brilliant satire from Charlie Brooker and Diane Morgan
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: hilarious, occasionally informative, Morgan is funny in everything
What I don’t like about it: 1989 Belgian techno anthem Pump Up The Jam

Review:
Diane Morgan plays recurring character Philomena Cunk as she tries to get to grips with concepts far beyond her frame of reference. Academics attempt to deadpan their way through her hyperbolic, tangential questioning. Some brilliant satirical lines which show how the world got quite so messed up – “[the industrial revolution] ushered in an age of convenience but also threatened all life on Earth. So, swings and roundabouts really.” – and parody of the cheap flashiness of BBC documentaries.

Content notes (may contain spoilers):

Where to find it: BBC iPlayer
Length: Seven 45-minute episodes
Synopsis: The NHS is broken and it breaks the people trying to hold it together
Recommendation rating: 4/5

What I like about it: funny, good drama and acting, compelling medical action scenes
What I don’t like about it: bleak and bloody

Review:
Adam Kay adapts his best-selling memoir very well and allows his character, a great fit for actor Ben Whishaw, to be complex and very flawed. Kay is a junior obstetrician who, by and large, feels compassion for his patients and therefore is doomed to crash out of his chosen profession during a mental breakdown. He takes his stress out on his house officer Shruti and his lovely boyfriend Harry, who deserves better. It’s a compilation of all the ways that the National Health Service is fucked, strung along by fourth wall-breaking wisecracks and gruesome, tense moments of surgery. Super grim and tough to get through but it carries strong messages.

Content notes (may contain spoilers): blood, medical procedures, genitals, childbirth, vomit, death, sex

Where to find it: BBC iPlayer
Length: Six 15-minute episodes
Synopsis: Sketch show
Recommendation rating: 2/5

What I like about it: sometimes funny
What I don’t like about it: only sometimes

Review:
More misses than hits in this sketch show from Ellie White and Natasia Demetriou (the latter seen in What We Do in the Shadows). At least it’s not too long.

Content notes (may contain spoilers):