TELEVISION
Our Picks of the Week
SATURDAY APRIL 15 YOU & ME
Don’t miss the bus
Screening: TVNZ 1, 8.35pm Streaming: TVNZ+
Russell T Davies is on board as executive producer of this three-part drama and has championed it as “a beautiful drama, the likes of which we don’t get enough of ”. Harry Lawtey ( Industry) plays Ben, a young Northerner in London who meets Jess (Sophia Brown,
The Capture) in a romcom coincidence. Love blooms, but then tragedy strikes. Meanwhile, Emma ( Jessica Barden,
The End of the F---ing World) is processing her own trauma. Where will it all take them? Critics have differed on the extent to which Davies, who discovered series writer Jamie Davis when they shared a studio in Cardiff, has brought his magic with him. The
Guardian hailed it as a “sentimental charmer” and the Daily Telegraph called it a “Halifax Building Society advert with sad bits”.
SUNDAY APRIL 16 THE SURROGATES
The complex business of having someone else’s baby Screening: TVNZ 1, 9.30pm
This 2021 three-part BBC documentary follows five young British women and the couples (plus one single man) they have chosen to help by volunteering as surrogate mothers. It was produced in partnership with the Open University, so there’s no tabloid sensation and it takes a gentle, often informal approach to its subject. In the UK, surrogacy is legal as long as no money changes hands – so why do women do it? There are, as you may expect, a range of motivations and philosophies in play. It’s a window into the world of ordinary people who have embarked on an extraordinary process.
MONDAY APRIL 17 BLOW UP
Twisting with Jaquie Brown Screening: Three, 7.30pm, and Tuesday, 7.30pm
See story, opposite.
THURSDAY APRIL 20 THE DIPLOMAT
Diplomacy on the London front Streaming: Netflix
The first fruit of a multiyear deal between Netflix and executive producer and showrunner Deborah Cahn, whose portfolio includes writing and producing on
Homeland, The West Wing and
Grey’s Anatomy. Kate Wyler (Keri Russell, The Americans) is an American diplomat destined for a post in Afghanistan but who unexpectedly finds herself appointed as the new US Ambassador to the UK. Here, the crises are of a different stripe and her marriage to fellow career diplomat Hal (Rufus Sewell,
Amazing Grace) bears the strain. Cahn recently called
The Diplomat “a show about the transcendence and torture of long-term relationships. It’s hard to keep a relationship going, be it a marriage or a military alliance. We change, the world changes, and yet we want these relationships to go on forever. It’s a show about a bunch of good people doing their best to keep their global and personal partnerships intact without killing each other.”