It’s customary at this time of year to remark on the nights drawing out, daylight hours extending. But let’s be honest, here, what we really notice is that it’s still dark when we wake up and when we get home from work.
The one balm to the frustration is more telly hours in the day. More scripted, more documentaries, more new faces, more screen time to obsess over. Late winter/early spring has become prime scheduling real estate for TV networks, streamers and good old terrestrials alike — and 2022 is no exception, with a bevvy of riches coming our way.
The bumper crop will kick off with Ben Whishaw donning his doctor’s dress-up for a sensational reimagining of Adam Kay’s best-seller, This is Going To Hurt, and Nicole Lecky’s Mood will turn her magically into the name on everybody’s lips by March.
These are the tip of a televisual iceberg which can guarantee that by the time the nights properly retreat, you’ll be ready to go out and see actual life again.
This Is Going To Hurt
USP: Paddington in Scrubs
The absolutely wonderful character actor Ben Whishaw brings to life Adam Kay’s best-selling memoir about his turbulent time as a junior doctor. We open with Dr Kay presiding over a woefully under-resourced labour ward, delivering babies in lift shafts when things go right, sobbing into his locker when they go very wrong (advance warning: you’ll be in pieces) and inadvertently showing his penis to his grim superior when they go awry. Kay’s life at home, where he’s hiding a boyfriend from his mother and workmates, is almost as dramatic as on the ward. Funny, yes. But tough, too. A flawless adaptation.
One to watch: Ambika Mod is phenomenal as Kay’s beleaguered young underling, Shriti.
8 February, BBC iPlayer
Inventing Anna
USP: The Manhattan Princess who fooled a city
Handily dubbed “everything that is wrong in America right now”, Anna Delvey was the nom-de-plume of a fantasist who came from nothing and kidded the cream of New York society into believing that she had everything. Until she ended up the most notorious young female fraudster in a state penitentiary. Delvey’s story, told dexterously in New York magazine, was swiftly optioned by Shonda Rhimes for her Shondaland Production company, the best at producing pacey, effective drama with an irony so arch you could drive a double decker bus under it. Will fill the gap left by the Monica Lewinsky story, adequately. A new American scandal is upon us.
One to watch: Ozark’s Julia Garner gets the role of a lifetime as Delvey, with heavy rumours that she’s in line to play Madonna in her biopic next.
11 February, Netflix
Bel Air
USP: The Fresh Prince gets fresher still
With original Fresh Prince, Will Smith on course to scoop an Oscar for his amazing turn in Kind Richard, the timing could not be more perfect for a modernized, scrubbed up and reinvigorated update on the show which first sent his assured screen presence whirling into overdrive. Forgoing comedy for drama, this new iteration of the franchise sees our young Prince (Jabari Banks) arriving from a juvenile criminal past with the wrong folks of Philadelphia to stay in aunt and uncle’s LA mansion, a sort of super-posh reform school. A sharp rewiring, file under highly promising.
One to watch: Jabari Banks is indeed fresh out of the box in his first screen role, anointed and blessed into the role by Smith himself.
February 14, Peacock on Sky and NOW
Jeen Yuhs
USP: Oh come, all Ye’s faithful
Notoriously camera-shy, cowering wallflower, famed attention-phobe (!) Kanye West is gifted a TV vehicle from the open wallet of Netflix. In many ways, it feels like the heavy eye make-up, the his’n’hers radical Rick Owens outfits and the off the cuff Instagram party shots with Madonna et al of Kanye and his new belle, Uncut Gems actress Julia Fox, during their arresting recent spell at PFW was all part of a dress rehearsal for this first act proper. The three part documentary – “a Kanye West trilogy”, no less – will take a trip back to his humble beginnings in Chicago. And therein the humility will almost certainly end. Expect plenty of God. He’s still on that tip.
One to watch: Directors Coodie and Chike are as yet relatively unproven documentarians. West knows exciting new talent when it emerges - expect big things from them forthwith.
16 February, Netflix
Louis Theroux’s Forbidden America
USP: The next gen readying themselves to storm the White House?
The master takes his awkward, endearing and effective investigative skills into the heart of America’s young, to discover an alarming new extreme alt.right emerging with big brand appeal for kids. This isn’t rusty old Republicans wanting to uphold the status quo. This is a youth cult living on the hinterlands of suburbia, hungry for aggro, allergic to danger.
One to watch: Can we talk, for a second, about Louis turning into a topless midlife thirst-trap on socials?
22 February, BBC iPlayer
Mood
USP: Influencer culture: the full horror
Aspiring East London rapper and singer Sasha Clayton (writer and star, Nicole Lecky) has the early stages of her ascent to stardom totally derailed when she gets chucked out of her home and decides that becoming an influencer might be the short-cut to her starving artist money worries. There is trouble, and lots of it, ahead, as her socials mentor Carly presents a series of poisoned apples which look like golden fruit. Adapted from Lecky’s fundamentally brilliant one woman Royal Court show, Superhoe (they should’ve kept the title), Mood is as stinging on the underside of 2020s fame as Billie Piper’s I Hate Suzie and just as riveting.
One to watch: This is Lecky’s star-making vehicle. She already looks perfectly at home on the Graham Norton sofa. There’s plenty more where that came from.
