Pick of the week
Chad Powers
The search for the new Ted Lasso goes on with this American football-based series. It centres on Russ Holliday (Glen Powell), a superstar quarterback whose career falls apart after a spectacular, self-inflicted on-field disaster. His name is mud but when he learns that a struggling team (the tellingly named South Georgia Catfish) are hosting tryouts for new players, he changes identity and relaunches himself as Chad Powers. The premise is contrived – Russ’s dad, conveniently, is a prosthetics artist – and the narrative overfamiliar. But even so, as Holliday’s new personality sees him shedding his arrogance and becoming a more reflective man, there’s fun to be had with this goofball identity crisis.
Disney+, from Tuesday 30 September
***
Monster: The Ed Gein Story
“There’s something real dark about you Eddie Gein.” Quite the understatement. This latest addition to Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s Monster anthology serials dramatises the life of one of America’s most notorious killers. It posits Gein (played as a blankly dissociated shell of a man by Charlie Hunnam) as a near-prototype for Buffalo Bill of The Silence of the Lambs notoriety – Gein had a taste for making keepsakes from the remains of his victims and this fact is exploited for maximum creepiness. It’s never knowingly understated and not for the faint of heart or the weak of stomach.
Netflix, from Friday 3 October
***
Ozark Law
The hit Netflix drama set in this US region got plenty of mileage out of the idea of wealth and poverty existing in close proximity. This series explores the slightly less exciting reality. Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks area is extremely picturesque and something of a tourist trap – but the local economy depends on the police keeping it safe. There’s not much money laundering but plenty of low-key crime-fighting on display. We join the cops as they move along unruly drunks, tackle burglaries and, thrillingly, confront someone who is illegally parked.
Channel 4, from Tuesday 30 September
***
Love Is Blind
This slow-release dating show has made it to a ninth season. It still somehow manages to be simultaneously cold as ice and wildly emotionally overblown, the format toying cynically with the feelings of its overconfident but brittle participants for our guilty pleasure. This time, we’re in Denver, Colorado, where a group of well-scrubbed twenty- and thirtysomething normies will enter their pods, begin their blind courtships and hope for the best. Why anyone would want to subject themselves to this process remains a mystery for the ages.
Netflix, from Wednesday 1 October
***
Dudes
What does masculinity mean in the 21st century? It’s a question that is being addressed increasingly frequently by TV dramas and comedies. This German series is not entirely resistant to the usual tropes of the emerging genre; it follows the travails of a group of 40-ish friends who find the encroaching modern world somewhat challenging. One of them is struggling with his new partner’s demanding libido. Another has been replaced at work by (gasp!) a young woman. And a third has retreated into a world of computer games. Not groundbreaking.
Netflix, from Thursday 2 October
***
Borderline
This drama, which has echoes of The Bridge, is involving despite utilising one of the most evergreen crime drama cliches of them all: the mismatched but effective detective duo. The action takes place on the Irish border where polite, dutiful Northern Irish cop Philip Boyd (Eoin Macken) is paired with Aoife Regan (Amy De Bhrún), an abrasive counterpart from south of the border. Their mutual disdain is instant but, as their murder case expands and takes on political ramifications, they aren’t going to be rid of each other for quite a while.
ITVX, from Friday 3 October
***
Bardot
Partly because she withdrew from the public eye when she was 39 years old, the French movie star Brigitte Bardot always retained considerable mystique, even when she was one of the most instantly recognisable women in the world. A new documentary about her premiered at Cannes this year and this French series offers a dramatised version of her story. It stars Julia de Nunez, who embodies Brigitte very convincingly and begins when she poses (somewhat questionably, at the age of 15) for the cover of a brand new magazine called Elle.
Channel 4, from Friday 3 October
