What to watch
MAMMALS
Amazon Prime Video
Anyone familiar with Sky TV drama Britannia will know that writer Jez Butterworth (who also wrote hit play Jerusalem) treats narrative formulae and genre tropes with the same contempt on screen as he does on stage. While staying in a cottage on a Cornish babymoon next door to Actual Tom Jones (naturally), top chef Jamie (James Corden, returning to acting and genuinely excellent) discovers that his wife, Amandine (Melia Kreiling), is hiding a secret. At the same time, their lives are hit by a devastating event. Jamie’s sister Lue (Sally Hawkins), meanwhile, is disengaged, while her husband, Jeff (Colin Morgan), immerses himself in his work as a lecturer on reproductive habits in the natural world (note the title). Ostensibly a darkly romantic comedy-drama, Mammals is stripped of any sense of moral judgement and instead injected with surprise at every turn, from Jamie trying to piece together their lives to the surrealism of Lue’s imaginary world. The occasional elements of magic realism culminate in the series’s last scene which is both hilarious and bizarre, while presenting a fascinating conundrum for Butterworth, should he decide to make the second series that this six-parter merits.