Worth Watching: 'Boyzone: No Matter What' and 'The Fear Clinic'

It's your Worth Watching briefing.

Hello,

Welcome to Worth Watching.

And you did it. You made it through January intact.

Surprisingly, there aren’t that many good shows on TV this week (especially when there is a Traitors-shaped void), but there are some good shows around the corner.

Big Boys is returning for its third and final series in the next fortnight.

A Thousand Blows, Steven Knight’s new Disney+ drama on the Victorian crime and boxing world starring Malachi Kirby and Stephen Graham, is out in February.

And the third series of the much anticipated White Lotus is out in March.

---

Sad news for cycling fans (and especially my Dad). ITV4 will no longer show the Tour de France from next year. Live race coverage will only be available to watch on TNT Sports, which is behind a paywall.

And it is quite the pricey paywall too. It used to be £6.99 to watch the Tour on Eurosport (via Discovery+). Yet, with Eurosport closing and folding into TNT Sports, you will have to fork out £30.99 a month to get the same coverage.

You’ll also get Premier League football along with others for that fee, but it does really feel like a demotion for viewers. Some limited highlights will be available on the Freeview channel Quest (a channel I had never heard of).

It makes you wonder whether the next generation simply won’t get into elite cycling because not enough of it is on a mainstream free-to-air broadcaster.

SHOWS TO WATCH THIS WEEK

A couple of weeks ago, I recommended Brian and Maggie, a two-part drama looking at the famous 1989 interview between the political interviewer Brian Walden (depicted here by Steve Coogan) and PM Margaret Thatcher (Harriet Walter).

Just to let you know that after being behind a paywall for a little while, both episodes of the James Graham drama are now available to watch on Channel 4 streaming.

---

Boyzone: No Matter What (Sky Documentaries – from Sunday) - At a first glance you might think this is a straightforward upbeat documentary on Boyzone, the Irish boyband that took the charts by storm in the late 90s. In fact, it’s a candid and unexpectedly raw account of the darkness can come with instant fame.

The documentary covers similar ground as Boybands Forever (the excellent BBC documentary by Louis Theroux and Nancy Strang). The most compelling part of this one though is how it hones in on the intrusive tactics of the tabloid press. It includes the terrible outing of band member Stephen Gately, along with the homophobic insinuation that his lifestyle had somehow contributed to his death in 2009 (when he died of natural causes).

Note to free subscribers: from this weekend the newsletter will be £4 a month, or £40 a year. Sign up below to get it at the current price of £3.50, with a free trial until next week.