Photograph: BBC/South Shore/PA
Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams on Tour (BBC One) | iPlayer
Daddy Issues (BBC Three/BBC One) | iPlayer
Bad Monkey (Apple TV+)
Emily in Paris (Netflix)
Freddie Flintoff has charisma to burn, and it’s the good kind. No “big character” overkill. His style is decent, straightforward; add a soupçon of dry Lancashire humour (“I was going to say [we’re] representing England, but we’re representing something far bigger than that. We’re representing Preston”) and he’s away.
You saw it during his England cricket career; you saw it in his revelations about living with bulimia and depression; and you definitely saw it in BBC One’s 2022 sleeper hit Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams, which followed him cricket-coaching a ramshackle team of mainly disadvantaged Preston lads to… well, not much, to be honest.
Part of its sweetness was that, technically, the team remained determinedly ramshackle (only Afghan refugee Adnan stood out), but no matter. Flintoff’s real job was to deliver pep talks, roll his eyes at sloth and backchat – basically, to be a (Goodbye) Mr Chips of the crease. Four-part follow-up Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams on Tour, also on BBC One, was slated to be similar, with a trip to cricket-obsessed India, but… something happened.
There’s a poignant “before the storm” tension to the opening scenes. When Flintoff announces the India trip to the excited team (“Sounds sick!”), the biggest problem is that only two of them have passports. Then, while filming Top Gear, Flintoff is in a horrific car crash he is lucky to survive (he has since received substantial compensation from the BBC), sustaining severe facial injuries (we’re shown a jolting glimpse of the aftermath).
When India finally happens, a year later than planned, Flintoff is still anxious, teary, suffering flashbacks (as he puts it: “Not better, different”). He’s also palpably apprehensive about the youngsters seeing the changed him. They rally like troupers: “He was there for us. We’ve now got to be there for him.”
From there, the opener takes in the culture shock of Kolkata: sights, heat, food (some sneak off for a KFC), difficulties (an autistic player struggles). Peeking ahead, there’s more about Adnan’s terrifying journey from Afghanistan to Britain. Teammates join him breaking his fast during Ramadan (scenes that offer a welcome antidote to recent events).
It’s still the case that the nearest this team is going to get to the Ashes is if someone stubs out a cigarette. It’s a challenge to get them games. (“We need to find the worst cricketers in Kolkata,” quips Flintoff). Their first game is “gully” cricket, in the streets, and… I’ll let you find out what happens.
This series is heavier (sometimes clunkier) on the therapy aspect, but maybe that’s understandable. You feel Flintoff’s relief at having other people to focus on. You sense him trying to heal. This was always an uncut gem of a show: now it has an even warmer shine.
New six-part sitcom Daddy Issues (BBC Three/BBC One), created and written by Danielle Ward, shows David Morrissey as you’ve never seen him. He’s generally known for drama (not least Sherwood, returning next Sunday). Here, he plays hopeless, impractical Malcolm. Dumped by his wife, Malcolm lives in a bedsit, doing food shops in petrol stations, offering his daughter, Gemma (Sex Education’s Aimee Lou Wood), tea in a jam jar. Gemma discovers she’s pregnant from a tryst in the toilet of a plane, and she and Malcolm end up sharing a flat.
Set in the north, it has a neat premise, with a gestation-countdown dynamic evoking 00s unplanned pregnancy films such as Juno and Knocked Up. Wood plays Gemma well: doing the “brat” thing (hunting for a sugar daddy) but still a lot more together than her father and absent mother. There are potent supporting characters, including Sharon Rooney as the jailbird sister who hired someone to push her partner off a fire escape (“I have a very strong case: sex game gone wrong”).
Initially, Daddy Issues is too jerky (crude/cartoonish). Mid-series, the writing sharpens, characterisation gels, and there’s a defiant wildness and eccentricity reminiscent of Sophie Willan’s Alma’s Not Normal and Diane Morgan’s Mandy. Alas, I can’t take to Malcolm: the most irritating male TV character since Frank Spencer in the 70s sitcom Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em. All I’ll say is: people with crushes on Morrissey may find some scenes disturbing.
US actor Vince Vaughn has been doing his wisecracking, ironic smoothie thing since the 1996 film Swingers – and he’s extremely good at it. Now he uses it to elevate new Apple TV+ comedy drama Bad Monkey, based on Carl Hiaasen’s book and developed by Bill Lawrence (Scrubs, Ted Lasso, Cougar Town).
Vaughn plays sacked detective Yancy, who’s dragged back in for a case involving a severed arm. Soon he’s rootling through the Florida underbelly, looking for clues. A woven-in Bahamas plot features Neville (Ronald Peet) and his pet monkey (wearing a nappy, maybe on the insistence of a simian intimacy coordinator). Jodie Turner-Smith plays Dragon Queen, who appears to be practising magic. Elsewhere, the cast includes Zach Braff, Natalie Martinez and Rob Delaney, gamely playing “evil” while sporting a Ned Flanders moustache.
A few episodes in, Bad Monkey is becoming a tad overcomplicated for a tissue-thin mystery (this is 10 episodes long – seriously?). Still, it looks good (sun-soaked and sleazy) and Vaughn’s slouchy sangfroid keeps things rolling along.
Since its inception in 2020, Netflix’s Emily in Paris has morphed into part hate-watch, part ice-cream headache. So it is with the latest, fourth helping, arriving in a five-part, half-series drop.
Emily, the New Yorker transplanted to Paris, played by Lily Collins, is still involved in love triangles (or are they now quadrangles?), one of them with a chef who occasionally deigns to chop a bit of garlic. The plots remain akin to being trapped, screaming, in an air-tight perfume bottle. Emily persists in being garbed like a sherbet-inspired Anna Wintour fever dream. Not that this is surprising in a series conceived by Darren Star, who was behind Sex and the City.
Emily in Paris continues to be hugely successful, showing there is a market for a photogenic boulevard of broken dreams, but – quelle horreur! – it’s not for me.
Star ratings (out of five)
Freddie Flintoff: Field of Dreams on Tour ★★★★
Daddy Issues ★★★
Bad Monkey ★★★
Emily in Paris ★★
What else I’m watching
Stags
(Paramount Plus)
From the Sex Education stable, this is a fast-moving, dark-hearted comedy drama about a British stag do ending up on a South American prison island. . Think The Hangover meets White Lines.
Hostage
(More4)
Gripping Swedish thriller, based on Kristina Ohlsson’s novel, about a plane hijack that gets ever more twisty and deadly.
Girls Aloud: Tangled Up – Live from the O2
(BBC Two)
The band toured earlier this year, but this is the 2008 tour with Sarah Harding, who died of breast cancer in 2021. Screening as part of last night’s BBC Two Girls Aloud night. Revel in stellar pop and lashings of disco drama.
