The top 10 TV shows that got me through lockdown
Settling down to watch one of my lockdown TV faves
I don’t know about you, but I thought I’d watch a lot more TV than I did through the thick of lockdown. In the same way that my concentration span for book reading waned, so my appetite for sitting on the sofa gazing at a screen when I spent so much of my day looking at a laptop or phone, diminished as well.
I didn’t go on a complete TV starvation diet though (heaven forbid). These are the shows that kept me either entertained, on the edge of my seat, shaking my head in disbelief, laughing out loud or just feeling better for watching. They are served to you in absolutely no order of preference and come from both terrestrial and subscription channels.
Staged, BBC
With television production decimated by COVID-19, you can just imagine the panicked conversations amongst the TV powers-that-be about how to fill the schedules with anything original.
Well hats off director Simon Evans - who should have been staging a production at the Chichester Theatre - for writing and directing this marvellously witty, clever series that not only manages to make the most of lockdown production restrictions, but play on them with such entertaining results.
David Tennant and Michael Sheen in the BBC series Staged
And hats off, too to David Tennant and Michael Sheen for being game enough to portray such hilariously exaggerated versions of themselves (lank-haired, grumpy and gobby in the case of David. Shaggy-haired theatrical and self-important in the case of Michael), and to their real-life partners for joining in the fun so whole heartedly. (A mention too, to their remarkably co-operative children - 5 of them in David’s house, a young baby in Michael’s - for somehow not interrupting the home-filming of each of the six, 15 minute episodes ).
The actors’ real life partners, Georgia and Anna respectively, prove themselves to be equally game for a laugh
The premise of Staged is that David and Michael were about to go into rehearsals for a production of Six Characters In Search of an Author, which Simon was to direct, but with lockdown having put paid to that, he suggests they do the rehearsals on-line instead.
The spats that ensue between the two actors, ineffectually umpired by an increasingly desperate Simon; the steadying input of the men’s long-suffering partners, and the interjections from two marvellously surprising showbiz cameo appearances, make for a thoroughly enjoyable reflection of the challenges of theatrical - and everyday - life in lockdown.
Michael McIntyre’s Big Show - The Best Bits
Whilst new programmes may become ever-harder to come by, some of the reruns that are gradually filling the schedules are more than worth the revisiting.
For my money Michael McIntyre is one of our best comedians and entertainers, and I’m a big fan of his hilariously entertaining Saturday night Big Show. So I guess it stands to reason that any programmes that pick out the best moments from those shows is going to be a fail-safe winner with me.
Michael McIntyre and Gary Barlow spring a karaoke surprise on some unsuspecting audience members
I mean, what’s not to love about Kylie and Gary Barlow singing along to members of the audience secretly recorded doing (predictably excruciating) karaoke to their songs, or of the response of Judge Rob Rinder being woken in the middle of the night to play the Midnight Game Show, or of the replies to the deliberately ludicrous text McIntyre sent to all the contacts in Olly Murs phone?
Even if you’re not already an enthusiastic viewer of this slick, funny, at times astonishingly clever (the lengths they go to to surprise audience members is quite amazing) show, I’m willing to guarantee you’ll find plenty of moments from these highlight programmes that will turn you into a convert, and have you settling in for a good laugh when a new series of shows can be back in the schedules.
Michael McIntyre’s Big Show Best Bits, BBC iPlayer
Cheer, Netflix
The Navarro College cheerleading squad in action in the original Netflix documentary, Cheer
Who would have thought that a documentary series following the fortunes an American college cheerleading squad as they prepare to compete for the USA’s most prestigious national cheerleading competition, would make such compelling watching. Not me for sure. But that’s exactly what this fascinating, surprisingly affecting 6-part series is.
I can’t say I knew (or, frankly, cared) much about cheerleading, beyond the fact that cheerleaders are those wholesome, pom-pom waving troops of lithe-limbed young men and women who entertain the crowds in breaks of play in football and basketball games.
Well I know a lot more now. And have a whole heap more respect for the remarkable athletes each of these skilled, dedicated, insanely hardworking young people are.
Watching the - quite literal - ups and downs of the Navarro College troop as they practice their ridiculously difficult, dangerous routine, and learning the stories of the students and their often heartbreaking backgrounds, it’s impossible not to come to care deeply about each of them. And to share their pain - both physical and emotional - as they push their bodies to the limit, all too frequently injuring themselves in the process, to achieve the perfection that’s demanded of them by their tough but devoted coach, Monica.
Navarro squad Head Coach, the formidable Monica
A slice-of-life look at a world, unfamiliar to anyone living outside the US, that will flip and fling itself into your heart.
Tiger King, Netflix
Another slice of American life is on offer in this, also original to Netflix, documentary. But it couldn’t be more different from the (mostly) clean-cut chronicles of Cheer.
There’s a reason the subtitle to Tiger King is: Murder, Mayhem and Madness. If you’ve seen a more beyond-belief bonkers show on television I’d really like to know what it is.
Joe Exotic the self-styled Tiger King
There was so much written and said about it when it first came out, I’m sure you probably know it’s about the shenanigans and machinations of the insanely larger-than-life (for which read frankly insane) characters who inhabit the underbelly of the big cat breeding world in central America.
There’s so much to unpack in that previous sentence alone, it’s hard to know where to start. I’ll simply settle for saying that just when you think things couldn’t get any weirder, darker or more unbelievable……they do.
A lot of the treatment of the animals is hard to stomach (there’s no deliberate cruelty, but plenty to agonise over in the attitudes of the - did I mention, certifiable? - private zoo owners to keeping big cats in captivity) but it’s hard not to be mesmerised by this head-shakingly, bizzare insight into a world you never knew existed.
Unorthodox, Netflix
For a riveting drama that gives an insight into another hidden world, but this time one bound by archane traditions and religious rules, don’t miss Unorthodox.
Set in the ultra-religious Hassidic community in Brooklyn, this based-on-a-true-story, 4-part series introduces us to Esty, a young orthodox woman about to embark on the arranged marriage that is her religious destiny.
Fiercely independent and intelligent, Esty struggles to adhere to the rules and expectations of a Hassidic wife, and although her new husband, Yakov, is a fundamentally kind man, his limited - for which read non-existent - sexual experience, is a cause of heart-searching dis-satisfaction and increasing misery for the young woman.
Amit Rahav as Yakov and Shira Haas as Esty in Unorthodox
At the end of the first episode, Esty takes a shocking decision and the result of, and fall out from, that, for her and the members of her community, unfolds over the next three absorbing, hour-long episodes.
Unorthodox is a riveting, involving production with a central performance by Israeli actress Shira Haas that is simply mesmerising. With a faultless supporting cast and a meticulous recreation of the lives and homes of the Hassidic community, this is TV drama at its best.
Oh, and when you’ve watched the series, be sure to look at the documentary about the making of it too. It’s fascinating.
Normal People, BBC
Another of the most talked-about lockdown TV series, and deservedly so. The affecting, tender and at times tempestuous, love-affair between privileged but neglected Marianne, and Connell, the much-loved son of a single working mother, is played out over their time at school and university.
The love story between Marianne and Connell begins when they are sixth-formers at school
As they move in and out of each others lives, drawn together by their irresistible attraction, but repeatedly sabotaged by their different circumstances, situations and life-experiences, the power balance between the pair shifts at each stage, but their abiding love remains an inexorable tie that keeps them returning to each other.
Beautifully written (the series is a faithful and impeccably crafted adaptation from. Sally Rooney’s best-selling book) and superbly acted, this is a modern-day love story that will have you rooting for the protagonists every, at times faltering, step of the way. You won’t want it to end.
Gogglebox, Channel 4
A programme where you watch people watching television - well, that’ll never work. Except that, of course, it does. And is ridiculously entertaining in the process.
How entertaining can it be watching people watching television? Very, it turns out!
Gogglebox is my not-so-secret-now TV watching pleasure. I’ve never sat through a programme without laughing out loud at some point, or come away feeling just a bit brighter and better.
And if that isn’t just the TV tonic you need sometimes, I don’t know what is.
Fauda, Netflix
If you like your TV drama to have you chewing through your fingernails, then Fauda is the show for you.
Some of the Fauda cast of characters, armed and ready for their next deadly mission
Now in its third series, this high-octane, pulsingly tense Israeli-made show takes us inside an elite Israeli Defence League unit operating undercover in the Palestinian territories. The dialogue is in a mixture of Hebrew and Arabic, but the subtitles are no impediment to the pace of the butt-clenching storylines.
Frequently brutally violent, Fauda portrays a world where the heroes are as flawed as the supposed villians. Where the lives of both Palestinians and Israeli characters are shown in all their dimensions, with their dedication to family as important as their commitment to the causes they believe in and the atrocities they’re willing to commit to defend them.
Fauda - which means chaos in Arabic - may not be easy or relaxing to watch, but you definitely won’t forget it in a hurry.
Queer Eye, Netflix
If, on the other hand, you prefer your TV served with a generous helping of life-enhancing, uplifting, almost always tear-jerking, positivity, then settle down and indulge yourself in a series, or better still all five, of Queer Eye.
At the helm of this flamboyant, whole-life make-over show are Bobby (in charge of design), Antoni (food), Tan (fashion), Jonathan (hair and grooming) and Karamo (lifestyle and self-development). I told you these were whole-life makeovers.
The Queer Eye fab five - Bobby, Karamo, Antoni, Jonathan and Tan
Each week the Fab Five (as you will come to know and love them) descend on someone who has been nominated to be the beneficiary of their combined expertise and wisdom. The transformations they achieve are wonderful to behold. But you will learn and benefit as much from what the boys do and say, for and with the men and women they help, as their, always overwhelmed, subjects themselves.
I absolutely defy you not to be in happy tears at the end of every episode.
Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads, BBC
The original Talking Heads programmes written by the peerless Alan Bennett, were broadcast in 1988 and 1998, and have now been remade, along with several, new and equally exquisitely penned additions, for the lockdown television audience.
The star-studded line up for the 2020 version of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads
With stars including Martin Freeman, Sarah Lancashire, Kristin Scott-Thomas, Jodie Cromer, Tamsin Gregg and Harriet Walter, have brought their interpretations of Bennett’s frequently moving, sometimes darkly comic, often surprising monologues, making them just as compelling for a new television generation as they were for the previous ones.
I haven’t watched them all yet - I’m enjoying spacing out these little televisual gems, but I can certainly recommend every one of the perfectly formed pieces I’ve seen so far.
Is/are your favourite lockdown TV programme/s on this list? If not, what would you add?
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