You wait six months for something good on TV and then four things come along at once!
Physical, on Netflix, is a show set in the 80s about a weight-obsessed, eating-disordered housewife who discovers aerobics and makes it her entire life and also career. I have seen one episode and I already know it is going to be amazing. It stars Rose Byrne, who I think is just about the most beautiful woman alive and I’ve never understood why she isn’t more famous. I mean, she is famous, but I don’t understand why she isn’t Nicole Kidman famous, Angelina Jolie famous. Anyway, she is completely perfect for this role, with outstanding dark comic timing and a face that turns from sublime to despair on a sixpence.
Talking about excellent acting, there is actors acting their doublets off in Becoming Elizabeth on StarzPlay. This channel is, I believe, or was, the home of the brilliant Black Sails, which was a racy series about pirates that basically saved my life when Sam was about 6 months old and the days were an elbow-crawl through nettles and barbed wire. Becoming Elizabeth has the same raunchy, devil-may-care approach as Black Sails but rather than the high seas, yaaarrgghh, we are the Tudor court in the immediate aftermath of the death of Henry VIII. I had thought Catherine Parr, the King’s last wife, slid into obscurity but it shows how much I know! She went on to marry and scheme like mad with Thomas Seymour. Seymour is held up in this show as a ridiculous, half-wit “popinjay” but to me seems to be a hot AF massive saucy Welshman who is so oversexed he sort of humps the furniture and fellates his red wine goblet. Call me, boyo. The whole cast is amazing. I love love that Jamie Parker who was in History Boys, he was always my favourite, and there’s Jessica Raine from Call The Midwife in the role of her life. There’s a little bit of “Would sir forsooth that I may so gently hey nonny”, chat in this but also plenty of plain-speaking “Come on, don’t be ridiculous”, which I think is important in costume dramas for immediacy and accessibility, if not total veracity. There is more than a touch of The Thick of It to the political stuff including someone playing a bishop who I think genuinely was in The Thick of It. It’s all very good.
I can confidently say that Dexter Fletcher was my first love. He played the wisecracking American Spike Thompson in my all-time favourite show ever, Press Gang. I wanted to grow up to be shouty editor Lynda Day but have ended up more like put-upon features writer Sarah Jackson. Anyway Dexter and my husband are now friends, can you believe it. And I got to actually hug Spike Thompson once, although Dexter has grown his hair long and wears a lot of cosy cardigans and has got a geezer accent as wide as the Thames estuary. If you’re wondering if a lot of my independent creative output is named a variation of “Spike” because of Spike Thompson you would be right. But I digress. Dexter is now a film director and has directed this new-channel Paramount+ jewel The Offer, starring the dazzling Miles Teller, (what is wrong with me at the moment? I think everyone is amazing, must be hormones), and the slightly-annoying Juno Temple. The Offer is about the fraught and at times genuinely dangerous making of The Godfather, which I didn’t even realise started life as a novel. It is great fun, if a little silly and Miles Teller looks amazing in it. Or have I already said that?
I know nothing about Sherwood, but everyone is talking about it so it must be good. Although everyone watched Broadchurch and I thought that was fucking dismal.
I also just this morning was alerted to a series called Only Murders in the Building about Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez (???) playing sleuthing podcasters on Disney + and it sounds weird but wonderful and very cosy and if I get a quiet moment later I might dive into Episode 1.
How about you? Have you watched anything good lately? Please share with the group in the handy box below.
Television
Ah, Press Gang is my daughter's favourite programme now, beating even Glee. Very jel Dexter is a family friend!
I have to confess I watched the first episode of Becoming Elizabeth and hated it, but I freely realise it's because I count myself as an amateur historian and from a young age have read extensive biographies and research papers on that period of English history (when I was 10 we did the Tudors in school and even then I remember being an irritating little know it all) My standards are so high that a historical drama has to be really really bloody good for me to like it. Added to the fact that these dramas are so often marketed as "You think you know (person from history) but you don't!!!" My smug little boffin brain goes Er, well, yes I do actually. It's why I'll never see Six: The Musical. Know it alls are not the demographic.
With you with the Black Sails worship though. My blood pressure has never recovered from Season 4 John Silver. Have often wondered if I could convince my husband to chop off his leg and not wash for six months.