Hated The Idol? Watch I Hate Suzie instead
Unlike the smug, self-congratulatory, depressing slog that was The Idol, I Hate Suzie is smart and excruciating fun.
I Hate Suzie
Stan
Did anyone survive The Idol? What a smug, self-congratulatory, depressing slog that was. It’s as if the producers watched I Hate Suzie and thought, “What if we made exactly this, but stripped it of its soul?” Both shows share a similar premise: a star’s life unravels after her phone is hacked and nude photos are disseminated online. But unlike the boring, lobotomised The Idol, I Hate Suzie is smart and excruciating fun. The show was created by Billie Piper and Succession executive producer Lucy Prebble. Piper stars as Suzie Pickles, an actress who, like Piper herself, found teenage stardom as a singer. She is navigating a mid-career slump, where there’s not much on offer but crappy IP-driven superhero shows and ComicCon appearances. When we meet her, she is living in the English countryside with her wet towel of a husband (Daniel Ings) and their young deaf son, and has just been offered a career lifeline: a major role in a Disney film. Then the photos leak.
I’m a Virgo
Amazon Prime
Bravo for Boots Riley. The Coup frontman turned filmmaker has turned out a television series that is anti-capitalist to its core — and he’s done it on Amazon’s dime. The fantastically bonkers I’m a Virgo introduces us to the extraordinary world of Cootie (Jharrel Jerome) a 4m Oakland teenager who, having spent his life hidden away by his guardians, ventures into the world for the first time. Cootie embarks on his own, novelty-tinged Bildungsroman: he smokes weed, falls in love, loses his virginity (in an eight-minute sex scene, the bizarreness of which is rivalled only by Pedro Almodovar’s silent film-within-a-film in Talk To Her), gorges on junk food, and meets a ragtag group of friends who introduce him to radical politics. At only seven episodes, the series makes many critiques: Riley skewers the medical-industrial complex, law enforcement, the fetishisation of Black bodies, and soulless, corporate superhero films churned out by massive corporations. And somehow, he pulls it off.
The Bear
From July 19, Disney+
One of the most succulent television dramas in recent years returns for seconds. Jeremy Allen White is intense and irresistible as Carmy — a hotshot chef who was running the kitchen at a fine-dining restaurant in New York City until the suicide of his brother forced him to return to his hometown of Chicago to take charge of his family’s salt-of-the-earth sandwich shop, The Original Beef. The nerve-jangling first season beautifully and convincingly conjured the anxiety and tension of working in a kitchen — all barked orders and frenzied knife-wielding. It also captured the depths of grief: Carmy being so buckled by his brother’s suicide that he doesn’t know how to function outside of working. This series, wisely, steps into the light (that is to say, it no longer feels like an extended panic attack). Without giving too much away: the chef and his demons take a back seat to the show’s excellent supporting characters. Mangia!
The Virtues
Stan
Those familiar with Shane Meadows, the director behind This Is England and its TV spin-offs, know that whatever he is working on is not going to be joyous or easy. But that won’t prepare you for the obliterating force of The Virtues. The mercurial Stephen Graham (who played the neo-Nazi brute Combo in This Is England) is Joe, a recovering alcoholic whose sobriety is shaky at best. In the opening scene, he is making a cup of tea, and then he is crying. Joe has just learned that his ex, who is one of the few constants in his otherwise lonely, unstable life, is moving to Australia with their nine-year-old son and her new, conventionally acceptable partner. He can’t handle it. He falls off the wagon, brutally. His undoing takes place at a pub, in a scene that’s almost too unbearable to watch. As he becomes more inebriated, he experiences flashbacks, hinting at the origins of his demons. These flashbacks set up the rest of the series, and we follow Joseph on a path of hurt and reconciliation. Without giving too much away, Meadows has said that the drama was inspired by his repressed childhood memory of sexual assault, which makes it all the more potent.
North Shore
10 Play
This show had all the right elements: a murder mystery with international implications created by Mike Bullen, the man behind the genius British sitcom Cold Feet, and directed by Gregor Jordan (Two Hands). Throw in lead roles from Game of Thrones alumnus John Bradley and Downton Abbey’s Joanne Froggatt and you’ve got yourself a winner, right? Horribly, horribly wrong — this is one of the most insipid detective dramas in recent memory. The premise is this: British and Australian coppers are forced to work together when the body of the teenage daughter of a British trade minister washes up in Sydney Harbour. There’s some other plot about a high-stakes trade deal that is quite frankly too boring and incoherent to relay. Everything about this — the acting, the dialogue, the cultural clashes (“Australians pronounce party ‘pardy’… it’s really annoying.”) — is cheesy beyond redemption.