Recommendations: “Borgen,” "Call My Agent" and “John Was Trying To Contact Aliens”
It’s your latest “Worth Watching” email.
Hello,
Scotty here. Welcome to the latest Worth Watching Newsletter.
There’s still a week or so to go until the big Autumn dramas kick off properly, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t many good shows worth watching. Here’s some picks:
John Was Trying To Contact Aliens (Netflix) - An utterly majestic short film about a man who went to extraordinary lengths in attempting to contact aliens in outer space, whilst living with his grandparents in rural North Michigan in the 1960s.
John Shepherd [pictured above] constructed his own electronic equipment; equipment so huge that it spilled out of his bedroom and ended up taking nearly the entire house. Believing that aliens would be respond to his signal with the universe language of music, he started to broadcast different genres of music to outer space (his signal was strong enough to pass the moon). So he started a radio station, aimed at aliens, featuring everything from electronic music to reggae.
The documentary is only 15 minutes long, a delightful buffer between shows.
Call My Agent (Netflix) - A delightful French comedy drama looking at the inner-workings of a Parisian talent agency, where celebrity egos fly and a missed opportunities by an agent can ruin a career. I’m still on the first series, which was filmed in 2015, but it feels a lot fresher than other workplace comedies I have seen of late. In fact, come to think of it, remember work places?! Remember those?!
Borgen (Netflix) - If you have been meaning to watch this much-talked about Danish political thriller, which first debuted in the UK on the BBC neatly ten years back, now is your chance as Netflix has just acquired the rights to all three seasons. In fact, Netflix have even announced a fourth series (but you’re going to have to wait a bit).
The fictional drama follows the unexpected Prime Ministerial victory of politician Brigitte Nyborg, and her following tumultuous term. There’s a realness and a charm to this series, an honesty that other political dramas lack, simply because producers feel that politics should be shown to be be polished and sexy.
You might not understand the inner workings of the Danish parliamentary system (I didn’t), but luckily not knowing doesn’t ruin your enjoyment of it. I didn’t understand a good third of The West Wing and I have a politics degree.
Oh and by the way, Netflix are touting that Borgen comes with new English dubbing, but don’t bother with it. Just leave the text on. It’s always better to immerse yourself in the text and the language anyway. Plus, it forces you to stop checking your phone for an hour, which can only be a good thing.
Louis Theroux - Life on the Edge (BBC iPlayer) - As well as his podcasts series on BBC Sounds (featuring the most NSFW Miriam Margoyles interview I have ever heard in my life), Louis Theroux has started a new BBC Two series where he rewatches a lot of his old documentary work, and tries to track down previous interviewees, finding out what has happened in their lives since.
Rather interestingly, just like other shows that have existed in some form since the 90s (like the Big Brother Best Bits series that aired on E4), there are re-evaluations of his earlier work and questions about whether he would have done these episodes any differently if it had been filmed today. The first episode tackles quite a lot of his earlier work that you might have not seen before, so it takes a little bit longer to get into it than you might expect. It’s worth sticking with.
Here’s some interesting news and tidbits from over the last week:
The BBC Two / Netflix series Giri/Haji has been cancelled after one season, even though one of the actors (Will Sharpe) won a BAFTA for his role in it. Luckily, the series was self-contained, so it’s still worth your time. It’s on Netflix.
SM:TV Live is coming back … as a documentary. A few years ago at the BAFTA TV Awards Ant & Dec announced told journalists that they were working on a one-off comeback, only for everything to go wrong with Ant’s personal life. Now the show will return as a documentary, which is probably the right idea as ‘Wonky Donky’ can’t really take place during this social distanced age anyway.
Bake Off has been confirmed to return to our screens on Tuesday 22nd September at 8pm. The whole thing has already wrapped filming (they did it in a massive bubble) so there’s no risk of it falling off the air.
And finally, ITV have announced that the next series of Doc Martin (yes that series is still going) will be the last. The show started in 2004. 2004!
On Must Watch this week, Hayley and I reviewed Netflix’s Away and Sue Perkin’s latest documentary, which is all about the stories you don’t tend to hear about on the US-Mexico border. If you don’t have time to listen, BBC 5 Radio Live have both the reviews of Away and Perkins on their website.
Let me just point out that I feel bad for saying “I’ve filled in tax forms that were more uplifting than this” during my review of Away, ever since I read some irritated comments by some accountants in the comments below.
Oh and some shows coming soon: Des is coming to ITV (a three part drama looking at the serial killer Dennis Nielsen) and there’s also The Duchess, made by the comedian Katherine Ryan. Oh and Gogglebox starts again this evening on Channel 4.
I’ll leave you with this.
Have a great weekend. If there are any shows you love and think others should watch, simply respond to this email and it might appear in a future newsletter.
Scotty / @scottygb
that politics degree, why? ;)