Lucy Mangan

Bloodlands is shaping up to be a fine addition to the growing genre of Irish noir, which draws power from its concentration on place as well as plot. And it stands as an enjoyably dense and astute thriller (with enough black humour threaded through to let it breathe) in its own right.

It remains – even after half a dozen such series when the lure of attempting to mess with perfection must be becoming nigh overwhelming – just Nadiya, the kitchen counter, the camera and the magic they make among themselves. And Nadiya herself remains untouched by her increasing fame or fortune. She is just there, as happy, smiling, authentically, effortlessly herself as she ever was.

Fictional narratives need resolution; any promised here is undercut by the suggestion that nothing ever really changes.

It’s a Sin looks set not just to be to Queer as Folk’s companion piece but its companion masterpiece.

Resident Alien knows what it is doing and does it with admirable sincerity. It deploys well-worn tropes without cynicism and plays with others without winking exhaustingly at its audience.

A cracking, challenging read has become a cracking, unchallenging series and both do their jobs perfectly. Joy.

It’s all deliciously, confidently, stylishly done. The parodies are fantastic fun, the jokes are great, the performances (especially from Olsen and Bettany, whose chemistry is a joy in itself) are wonderful, and it has the glorious air of something shaped by people who know exactly what they’re doing, where they want to go and how they’re going to get there.

It is a precious hour of tranquillity, this vision of talented people giving their best, taking the job seriously but without being ridiculously overinvested or intense. The retention of perspective is rapidly become the most appealing thing about these shows.

If you squint hard, you may see an allegory emerging from the sight of the white Christians imposing their ways and means on a populace that was managing perfectly well without them. But, for the most part, it feels as if they are just playing at it.

Show every sign of having watched one too many episodes of Downton Abbey. ... I felt by the end of the first episode it had delighted me with its presence long enough, and yet … and yet … Was there not, after all, room for just one more? And, perhaps, another after that?

There is not quite enough story – there’s a lot of Sam staring into mirrors as she cleans them, and it takes her and Jess for ever in TV terms to do very little preparation for their sort-of heist, when it could have borne a much greater weight of fun-and-not-wholly-plausible-IRL detail, in accordance with the long-proved truism that the viewing public loves “how-tos” – but, overall, this is the kind of solid, well-made nonsense that is such a rare and precious joy.

On Pointe doesn’t have the emotional heft of, say, Cheer. Backstories of emotional neglect and physical abuse overcome through athletic prowess and devotion to training were never going to be a mainstay here. But it is uplifting, nevertheless.

You can fast-forward through the dance bits or the narrative bits as taste dictates and probably improve your viewing experience. But I hope the sweat expended by the youngsters in uniformly excellent performances brings them all every kind of success.

Although the writer doesn’t quite capture the power and zest of authentic teenage – especially female – speech, it at least doesn’t have them communicating in overscripted zingers either. An almost unimpeachable array of performances sell it well, and overall you buy it.

If The Trial doesn’t quite reach the dizzying heights of last year’s A Very English Scandal, about the 70s equivalent of Keeler and its fallout, it remains a furiously fast, fun ride which doesn’t let the deeper, darker issues fall from its grasp.

It is not the fact that there is nothing new on show. Delivered with enough panache, there will always be an appetite for traditional sci-fi tropes reassembled to bang home the usual messages. But Raised By Wolves does not have panache – and the thin, unsophisticated story it comprises stands naked, particularly cruelly so in a post-Westworld landscape.

Kirkwood’s world is a fully realised one, recognisable to us all (if slightly more semen-spattered than we’re used to). That it often plays at length like a workplace comedy – the bored rattling off of health and safety questions and answers after the shoot (“Did you feel like you were raped during this shoot?” “No”) – means your defences are down when the moments come that confront the business they’re in.

Everything remains charming, good hearted, solidly made, stolidly paced and altogether restorative to one’s fractured mind and splintered spirit in these wretched times.

While The Pack is obviously better than the typical British pet show in every conceivable way, it doesn’t work. It’s bloated: a lot of time is spent on slow-motion scenes of the dogs and people running through emblematic national scenery or joyfully burrowing/tug-of-warring/staying-then-fetching (dogs only, usually). For the most part, it is intensely boring.

The Outpost is Game of Thrones meets Xena: Warrior Princess, as written by Enid Blyton. Or a monkey.

By the time we arrive at the midpoint of the miniseries, things are chugging along as pleasingly and efficiently as you would expect from the Luther creator Neil Cross. ... A large part of this success must be laid at Tovey’s feet. His Everyman, suffering as an essentially good person trapped in a worsening hell not of his own making, is absolutely agonising.

It’s occasionally charming – and mostly slightly dismal.

All of the drama of the 1980s bubbles away underneath, and its soapiness rarely jars like it once did. It is a delicious stage for brilliant actors to do their best work.

As well as wit by the bucketload and a searching intelligence informing the whole, the series has the thrilling confidence of a collaboration between people who trust each other implicitly and, secure in that knowledge, have been able to give the best of themselves to us. It’s a wild ride that feels like an absolute gift.

The Queen’s Gambit functions best and for the most part as a wish-fulfilment, rags-to-riches fantasy.

A beautiful, moving, horrifying adaptation of her unsimple tale, that honours the source and its subject.

The fact that it is set in an alternative universe where neither Brexit nor the pandemic dominate each character’s every thought gives this unspooling tale of greed, weakness and corruption a generic or pleasingly retro mood, depending on your take. So far, I would plump for pleasingly retro. It is good to be reminded of the enduring truths.

All is gloriously as it gloriously was. Which is to say – charming, batshit, hilarious, determinedly low stakes, entirely absorbing and restorative throughout.