This is the second part of a two-part round up of not-so-recent television I’ve been watching. There was a sizeable reduction in what I was able to get to over summer due to the great events such as Glasto and Wimbledon, but I’m back in front of the little grey box again and there’ll be more to discuss soon. Meanwhile, these shows caught my eye over the past few months.

Doctor Odyssey

Finally the second part of this show was available on Disney+ and I wrapped it up pretty quickly. This is such a silly but glossy and fun show, featuring rich people getting up to all sorts of mischief on a yacht that usually ends up in some kind of medical drama. Joshua Jackson fronts the doctor team and gets up to plenty of shenanigans himself, but it’s all done in a sort of tongue-in-cheek but not disrespectful way that makes it entirely captivating and watchable.

High Potential

Another Disney story-of-the-week show, this time featuring a brilliant Kaitlin Olson as an overly smart single mother that gets hired by the police to help them investigate things. It’s not entirely believable or a new idea but the cases are interesting and even though she mostly solves things just be looking, it’s quite fun to be along for the ride.

Suspect: The Shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes

I watched this series which was just the tip of the iceberg of this bigger story, that I then read more about in the excellent Three Weeks in July. But this show does a great job of explaining what happened and where the failings started to add up, whilst being sympathetic to the victims and survivors. I feel like there’s still a lot more to tell of this story as well.

Étoile

This series about two ballet companies in New York and Paris that are struggling to survive has already been cancelled which I was gutted about because I really liked it! It had a quirky style and some really brilliant characters that were artistic and infuriating but you cared about what happened to them. A shame but never mind, it was worth watching while it was there!

Reacher, Series 3

You’ll know, I’m sure, that I’ve been powering through the Reacher book series, and have almost caught up to date with it now, so this series had even more resonance after I’ve been living with the character in my head for so long. And I really loved this adaptation that closely followed one of the books I had recently read, it was well made, the characters were well drawn and you really got sucked in to what was going on and hoping it all worked out for the best.

Andor, Season 2

I ended up writing two posts during and after the original Andor series that basically went ‘oh no, this is so boring but hopefully it will get better’ and then ‘wow this was the greatest show ever’. And the second series was that to an even further extreme. The first half was SO DULL, drawn out, random threads there for no reason, are we even going anywhere with this? But once it kicked into gear, the last few episodes were absolutely incredible and somehow made it all worth it. I read later that this was about five seasons worth squished into one so that might be why the pacing was all off. Either way, I’m glad to have watched it but absolutely would not recommend it.

Alison Hammond’s Big Weekend

Alison Hammond has an incredibly infectious personality so it’s no surprise that I loved this show where she invites herself round to spend a weekend with a celebrity and find out more about them. The selection of people was random (Perrie from Little Mix, Luke Evans from films, Lenny Henry, Jimmy Carr, Mel B and Tony Bellew) but even if you don’t think you’re interested in them, Alison gets them to open up and share things that make everyone relatable and interesting. She’s not afraid to go for the deep stuff, either, but somehow manages to keep it light and engaging even while these people are opening up their hearts to her. I hope there’s more because it was great stuff.

So, summer rolls on but the TV hours have definitely started ramping back up again so watch this space and I’ll report back very soon.