“OH MY GOOOOOD!!!! YOU HAVEN’T WATCHED (dot, dot, dot), ITS THE BEST THING EVERRRRRRR!! THEY TRACK OF FAMILY OF REAL LIFE ZOMBIES… OK, REAL ZOMBIES, DEAD, OBVIOUSLY, THROUGH THEIR CHRISTENING, BARMITZVAH, WEDDINGS, ITS BRILLIANT. FILMED IN THE CZECH REPBULIC, DUBBED INTO URDU AND SUBTITELED IN GREEK BUT ITS JUST SOOOOO VISUAL. ONLY 37 EPISODES, HOUR-AND-A-HALF EACH, JUST TAKE A FEW DAYS OFF AND BINGE-WATCH. YOU’LL THANK ME!!!!!”

Everyone has a ‘must watch’ and, to be honest, they’re all shit. Addictive shit, which is the secret of a ‘good series’. It’s like watching darts, boring as all fuck but once you get the rhythm of the numbers, you can’t look away. And so with 95% of Netflix/Apple/Amazon, even the revered i-player.

We don’t watch much tv. We either don’t have time or Mel falls asleep. And thus we’re very selective what we do watch. First rule, obviously, for anyone over 33, is ‘no fucking reality shows’. Whether filmed here, in New Jersey, California or Melbourne. No faux marriages or other ‘dating’ shit, disabled or otherwise. And obviously everyone goes for their preferred genres. Ours is definitely ‘thriller’. Yet the best thing to come out of the entire Covid business, the 2 years of hell, was ‘the Queen’s Gambit’. And the amazing ‘Heist’, a Spanish series about… well, a heist. But quite a brilliant one and with quite amazingly gorgeous women in it. Otherwise, all just different levels of shit. Other than… the BIG TWO! The ones where you’re sitting on your sofa, unmoving, for 9 months until the next series starts.

Fauda is one. It is brutal, both physically and emotionally, it’s bloody, violent, loud, exiting, totally edge-of-the-seat gripping and… it’s Israeli. The devil’s nation. Apparently. You shouldn’t watch Fauda before retiring for the night. Your heart won’t return to resting values for at least an hour. The new series has just begun and it’s very October 7.

And the other; the absolute best thing ever to reach our screens, is, of course, Slow Horses. Read the books, they’re incredible. The TV series though, are sublime. Gary Oldman at the best he will ever be because there could never be a better role for him to play than Jackson Lamb. Kristen Scott-Thomas is allowed to give the full ‘ice maiden’ and hams it up to the max. This series has a different script writer from the last 5. And I know her.

And thus warned her of the awesome responsibility she’s signed up for. She has the God-given duty to maintain the incredibly high standards, sufficient to keep MEEEEE happy. She even emailed me yesterday to see if I was ready to pass judgment. But I have to finish Fauda first. Otherwise I get confused, watching two series simultaneously. Slow Horses, I’m ‘saving’. Once I got involved in watching ‘Married at First Sight’ and ‘The Night Manager’ alternately and couldn’t understand why Tom Hiddleston had just murdered his wife of 3 days, and why she no longer had an Australian accent.

So there you have it. Other than the News (hate it but can’t ever miss it) and, obviously, football, if I can bear it, there is NOTHING to watch other than Fauda or Slow Horses.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx