Hello,
Welcome to the monthly free edition of Worth Watching.
I don’t know whether you can remember this time last year (I don’t mind if you can’t, because I certainly can’t!), but there was a real lack of new drama and other shows then, as the pandemic had brought a lot of television production to a halt.
Fast-forward a year and the opposite is true. The next few months in television looks absolutely *bumper.* Here’s just a selection of shows out in the next couple of months.
The much anticipated third season of Succession is out in October.
Drag Race UK is back for its third series on BBC Three later this month.
American Crime Story: Impeachment is out (that’s the Ryan Murphy anthology that explored the O.J. Simpson trial and the murder of Gianni Versace. This series, which is likely to air on BBC Two, has Monica Lewinsky as a producer).
Strictly Come Dancing has been confirmed to return on the 18th September.
Whilst we don’t know exactly yet when Bake Off is returning, reports suggest it will likely be on Tuesday 21st September. A teaser is out too.
Both The Morning Show on AppleTV+ and Sex Education on Netflix return for their new series on the same date: 17th September.
And Jon Stewart returns to television for his first show since he departed The Daily Show back in 2016. His new series is called The Problem and new episodes will be out every fortnight on Apple TV+.
I will of course be reviewing all of these shows for you in future editions of this newsletter . If you haven’t subscribed to the weekly version of Worth Watching, you can now subscribe for 10% off (£3.15 a month instead of £3.50, or a whole year for £31.50). All you need to do is click the button and put in your details.
Here’s what I reckon is worth your time over the next week.
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McCartney 3, 2, 1 (Disney+) - All this show consists of is Paul McCartney dishing out anecdotes about The Beatles to the music producer Rick Rubin, in a relatively empty studio. Yet it is compelling because a. the setup feels like McCartney hasn’t told these anecdotes before, when he most probably has and b. the stories are interesting too.
For example, did you know that Sergeant Pepper came about after McCartney asked someone for “salt and pepper” and misheard it being said back to him? Or that the band had such memorable melodies because they often did not have recording devices when they were out of the studio. They had to make their melodies easy to remember in case they forgot them.
9/11: Inside the President’s War Room (BBC iPlayer) - As we are near the twentieth anniversary, there are new 9/11 documentaries airing on television. This results in you wondering whether there could be possibly anything left say about that horrible day that you didn’t already know. However, there’s two documentaries that do tell you more and stand out for me.
The first, Inside the President’s War Room, follows that haunting day minute-by-minute. We follow the actions of George Bush, his close team and Secret Service agents. It features the man who whispered “America is under attack” in Bush’s ear whilst the President was sitting in front of a classroom of schoolchildren. This was shortly after the second plane hit the World Trade Center.
For the next few minutes, Bush did not move from his seat. “I waited for the appropriate moment to leave the classroom,” Bush said. “I didn’t want to do anything dramatic, or lurch out of the chair, and scare the children. So I waited.”
The second documentary I want to recommend this week is Surviving 9/11 (BBC iPlayer), as it is a film by Arthur Cary. He’s a compelling filmmaker, able to bring to the screen deeply personal perspectives, but with such great respect and heart. You may have seen his film The Last Survivors, a documentary following the last living Holocaust survivors in Britain, or The War in the Blood, which explored patients undergoing a groundbreaking new treatment for cancer.
In this new film, we see the testimony of 13 people who were directly affected by the event. A question the film raises is, how easy is it to move along from a day that is memorialised every year?
When Ruby Wax Met... (BBC iPlayer) - A television trend brought on by the pandemic are shows where well-known names look back at their old television programmes and provide anecdotes about what it was like to film at the time. Michael Palin did it. Michael Parkinson has done it. And now Ruby Wax has done it … and her show is by far the most enjoyable, simply because so much of her interviews are so illuminating and fascinating. Celebrities now stick to Instagram and TikTok to showcase the sides of themselves instead, rather than risk a chat with a television presenter.
There’s an interview with Tom Hanks where he appears to be thrilled to be not asked the same old junket questions. An interview with Carrie Fisher who arrives … four hours late. When you get to her interview with O.J. Simpson, drop me a message.
Other great shows out the moment…
Stephen (ITV) is an important follow-up to the 1999 drama The Murder of Stephen Lawrence (BritBox). It looks at how a conviction was finally secured more than 16 years after his racist murder, and the continuing fight for racial justice by Doreen and Neville Lawrence.
Grand Designs is back on Wednesday evenings at 9pm (proving that Autumn is very much here). Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing is also back too.
ON TV NEXT WEEK: Nautical thriller The North Water on BBC Two, A House Through Time with David Olusoga and the Paralympics continues until this Sunday.
Channel 4 have released their schedule ahead of ‘Black to Front’, where new shows and existing ones focus on Black talent in front, and behind-the-camera. The channel has faced criticism of ‘performative tokenism,’ but has said that the day is part of long-term project to improve representation in the industry.
Here’s some TV news…
Sky One is no more. The channel closed this week, with a lot of its existing shows (yes, that includes The Simpsons) heading to a new channel called Sky Max or Sky Comedy. There’s also the launch of a new channel called Sky Showcase, which is essentially a best-of all of the other Sky channels.
It very much is an end of an era. Sky One was the oldest non-terrestrial channel in the UK. It is also older than Channel 4. Many people will remember it for countless American imports and Domino adverts in-between episodes of The Simpsons. I’ll remember it for Jon Tickle walking on custard on Brainiac.
Andrew Neil may not be returning to GB News after all. He was due to return to the network on Monday, but according to The Times there are “strained relations” between Neil and top management. He has only ever presented eight shows.
Ofcom decided not to rap P**** M***** over his comments on Meghan Markle the day that he decided to quit Good Morning Britain. A lot has been said about this already so I won’t say much more. But … seriously, six months to tell us this?
Here’s where you can find me this week…
On Must Watch this week we spoke to Paul C Brunson about the success of Married at First Sight and its latest iteration.
I was back on BBC Radio 4 Extra’s Podcast Radio Hour giving my radio recommendations for September, including Finding Q: My Journey into QAnon and Short History of…
I was a guest on Eurovision & Me, a podcast series where guests talk about their love and history with the Eurovision Song Contest on The Euro Trip.
I was also on Matt Chorley’s radio show on Times Radio talking about the licence potentially rising below the rate of inflation. It would likely mean programming budget cuts in the future.
And finally, thought I should flag this great report about ABBA from the BBC’s Lizo Mzimba, who managed to slip in as many references to ABBA as he could in his news report.
I counted “Mamma Mia,” “Knowing Me Knowing You,” “I Have a Dream,” “Voulez-Vous,” “I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do,” “Gimme Gimme Gimme,” “On And On And On,” “Should I Laugh Or Cry,” “Dream World,” “Head Over Heels,” “The Name of the Game,” “Take A Chance,” “Two For The Price Of One,” “All Is Said and Done” and “Thank You For The Music.” It really is quite a ridiculous one minute of television.
Thanks so much for reading. Have a good evening.
Scott Bryan / @scottygb
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