The second coming of Seinfeld
Lovesick Season 3 6 episodes, available from Friday
The name Scrotal Recall was always bound to put a sizeable number of people off and though the quirky comedy was something of a sleeper hit on Channel 4 when it premiered in 2014, Netflix wisely changed the name to Lovesick when they decided to give it an American makeover.
The plot involves a man who has embarked on a quest to inform his former lovers of his recent chlamydia diagnosis. Each episode, named for the old flame, then flashed back to their original hook-up. The STI isn’t the real story, so much as a pretext for the real story: the one about two people who are perfectly right for each other, but can’t make it work.
The cast is eminently watchable: supporting players Evie (a luminous Antonia Thomas) and Luke (hilarious Daniel Ings) are superb and generate natural and warm chemistry. The script is excellent and there is a sense that there is still plenty of room for the writers to develop these characters.
Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee
Available from Friday It used to be said that the only things that really got in the way of Seinfeld being even better than it was were the sometimes half-hearted plots. If only it were just Jerry riffing with his friends, some critics wondered.
Well now we have something like that — a series which grew out of free webisodes that Seinfeld himself put out online. The format for this series is almost exactly the same every time. Seinfeld gets in one of his hundred-odd vintage cars then calls up a comedian friend for coffee: Ricky Gervais, Sarah Silverman, Patton Oswalt. And then Seinfeld famously announces, with obvious excitement: “I’m Jerry Seinfeld, and this is Comedians In Cars Getting Coffee.”
Beyond that, there is no script — it’s just 20 minutes of two funny people talking about cars, coffee, good and bad gigs they’ve had, and why people tip after meals instead of before. And somehow it works perfectly as the comedians produce more banter and spontaneity than you ever see on a chatshow and more wit than you generally see in a scripted sitcom.
Dirk Gently Holistic Detective Agency, Season 2
Eight episodes, available Friday “Have you noticed an acceleration of the strangeness in your life?” says a polite time traveller (John Hannah) to Suzie (Amanda Walsh) a few moments before he kills her boss, the owner of dynamite company.
An acceleration of strangeness describes the second season of this series, which has been adopted from the work of Douglas Adams, but it still retains the light touch that made the first one a hit last year.
The new season opens up in the magical kingdom of Wendimoor, which is being threatened by marauders under the spell of Madge (Hannah) who has crossed over into the present day. Picking up from last year, psychic gumshoe Dirk (Samuel Barnett) has been imprisoned by the government organisation, Blackwing. Dirk’s assistant, ex-rocker Todd (Elijah Wood) is trying to reach out to the universe for clues to locate Dirk, which is apparently what holistic detectives do.
If you didn’t see the first season, it doesn’t matter, there may be a little more close attention to pay but this has its own charming weirdness that you either go with or don’t.
He Named Me Malala (2015) Available tomorrow
THE “he” of the title of this film is Ziauddin, father of teenage Nobel peace laureate Malala Yousafzai. He named her after the Afghan folk heroine Malalai, who rallied Pashtun fighters against the British in 1880. So perhaps, some speculated, a certain combativeness was her birthright. Part of the appeal of Davis Guggenheim’s documentary tribute is the light it casts on her relationship with her father.
Many of us will already know the basic story: as a 15-year-old in north-west Pakistan, she had been a precocious campaigner for the right of girls to be educated; the bullies of the Taliban boarded her school bus and shot her in the head in an act that appalled people all over the world.
She survived, was airlifted to the UK with her family where, after a number of operations, she made a remarkable recovery, mastered English and continued her now global work.