There’s something about The Big Bang Theory that makes it pure gold to crash on the couch with at the end of a tough day at work. US TV comedy has not been this addictive since Friends vanished from our screens a decade ago.
Neverwhere began life as a six-part BBC Two series in 1996. Sadly, a limited budget restrained its potential and it was in prose that the story truly came alive. Neil Gaiman, then known primarily for his comic work, is now a world-renowned author whose work straddles the worlds of prose, film and television. Neverwhere has never gone away though, with a comic version, stage adaptations and attempts at a movie in the intervening years.
Rush is a decidedly middle-of-the-road (sorry) drama buoyed by solid central performances.
Richard B. Riddick has had something of a varied life on screens both big and small up to this point. His first appearance in 2000’s Pitch Black was a screen-dominating, career-defining performance in the middle of one of the most superior sci-fi B-movies since the turn of the millennium.
These days you’ve got to be careful when using the ‘B’ word around crime dramas. It’s not a term that should be deployed frivolously, but at the risk of getting some people in a tizz we’ll use it here: What Remains is getting pleasingly Broadchurchy.
If Season 25 experimented with the tone of Doctor Who, ‘The Greatest Show in the Galaxy’ counts as one of the more offbeat offerings, with ‘Paradise Towers’ writer Stephen Wyatt returning to provide a tale of sinister clowns, a Psychic Circus and an audience with an insatiable appetite.
Autumn’s drawing its brittle fingers around us, so you know what that means: it’s time to enjoy a bowl of soup, a blast of central heating, and for a sumptuously knitted BBC Two Slanket of period drama to be thrown over us.
August brings the ‘Destiny of the Doctor’ series to the Eighth Doctor. While there have been various companions to draw on for other eras of the show, choices are rather limited here with Paul McGann’s single television outing. Luckily the job can fall to one of his audio companions.
In a world where Russia has apparently been flicking through the Maggie Thatcher Manual for Disposing of Gays, a West End revival of Alexei Kaye Campbell’s rainbow-flag-waving debut play The Pride seems an appropriate response.
There isn’t a lot that needs to be said about the soundtrack to BBC One’s The Paradise, it’s that good. So good, that it is probably the finest album of TV music you’ll be able to buy this year.