Everything (good) I have watched in the last month

I am truly in my telly era

I have completed tv.

I am drunk on it, bloated to the gills with it, it overfloweth from my every orifice. I have never watched so much telly in my life as I have in the last 3.5 weeks, made possible by the fact that I have not picked up a book since the day my youngest son was born. This is the longest time I can ever recall not reading. The irony of this happening a mere month after I wrote this!

You’d think that would jar - do I know myself at all? - but I’m actually glad, for the first time in memory, not to feel a pull of a book; it meant I could watch lashings of tv without compunction, like a sort of competition winner on death row. The heart wants what the heart wants and in these tender postpartum times, I have learned not to resist its yearnings.

So! For the first time ever, this newsletter features tons of tv and zero books. (But dw there are plenty of journalism reccs in the BITS section.) Aside from the hours wasted on the terrifically unsexy and hilariously miscast Obsession (this review by one of my fave TV critics is v.funny), I’ve watched so many great things. (Embarrassingly, the below isn’t even everything - I didn’t have time to write about The Night Agent or Magpie Murders or my Silent Witness revival.)

Is telly always this good? Or did I pick a prime time to be in my telly era? Ruminate on that and lmk.

Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields on Disney+ We are in the age of the celebrity doc and the whole “holding up one woman’s story as a reflection of society” has limits. But this two-parter about Brooke Shields - directed by Lana Wilson who made Taylor Swift’s Miss Americana - is terrific, because Shields really was the most famous girl (note: girl) in the world in the 70s and 80s, and a high-profile virgin at a time when America was obsessed with virginity. (See also, early 00s post-Clinton America with Britney Spears - but we know how that went.)

It also works because the talking heads are jaw-droopingly good: amongst others, Drew Barrymore, Laura Linney (who grew up with Shields) and Meenakshi Gigi Durham, who wrote The Lolita Effect, which I am now desperate to read.

Being not-yet-born when Shields was at her most famous, I actually had no idea how famous she once was. I’d seen Blue Lagoon, sure (bleurgh - won’t be re-watching that in a hurry) and her iconic Calvin Klein ads, but I knew her more for Lipstick Jungle, which her daughter hilariously refers to as “Gossip Girl with old people”. A child-model from the age of 11-months, she was tabloid-front-page famous by the age of 9 and starred in a slew of movies that would never get made today (Pretty Baby, Blue Lagoon, Endless Love). As Buzzfeed writer Scaachi Koul notes, she was famous at a time when there were 10 super-famous people, and 5 movies a year that everyone went to see. (Now of course there are too many famous people to keep track of).

She was so famous that Michael Jackson lied about dating her. That’s just one of the fascinating, eye-opening nuggets in the documentary which also includes an elegant, eloquent Shields talking about her marriage to Andre Agassi (when she played Joey’s crazy girlfriend on Friends, he was so furious she’d ‘humiliated’ him, she says he smashed up ever Grand Slam trophy he’d ever won), her momager Terri’s alcoholism (“Like any beautiful painting, I think the world should enjoy Brooke and view her” she once said of her), being raped by an unnamed Hollywood exec, how going to Princeton for four years both saved her personally but ruined her professionally and her postpartum depression. I’d totally forgotten that Tom Cruise went on national TV in 2005, to declare that if Brooke Shields had exercised more and taken more vitamins she would not have got postnatal depression. (Can we stop elevating this dodgy man and his dodgy beliefs, pls).

Ph. by Richard Avedon

The whole thing was brought nicely into the now with a dinner-table discussion Shields has with her teenage daughters about whether her films would get made now (nope) and what the difference is between her making Blue Lagoon and teens posting bikini pics on IG. “Because I have agency when I post a bikini picture”, her teenage daughter Grier says. (I’m paraphrasing but only slightly.) “Everyone in your life decided things for you”. Like Pamela Anderson, Shields is a likeable, funny and at times guile-less protagonist. She doesn’t point any figures. But she’s definitely still figuring a lot off it out. That she came out of this intact is a miracle.

Fleishman Is In Trouble on Disney+ Taffy Brodesser-Akner adapts her best-selling novel about a New York doctor, Toby Fleishman, whose high-flying, highly-strung estranged wife Rachel disappears one day, leaving him in sole charge of their two children. It’s just as good as the book, attacking with laser focus the stratums of extreme wealth in Manhattan (the Fleishmans are wealthy enough for private school, but not wealthy enough to get a taxi home from school, much to his daughter’s chagrin), post-divorce dating apps (could have done with less of Jesse Eisenberg boning), the impossible tensions of being a working parent/ the ennui of being a stay-at-home one (as embodied by our narrator, an also vg Lizzy Caplan) and postnatal mental health.

My only criticism of the show is the same as that of the book: I just wish the twist came earlier - as Clare Danes is so good and so affecting. The bit where she turns up, weeping, on her ex-client’s doorstep, not realising she has been dumped as her agent, had me in floods. My husband summarised the show as “clever people having slow-mo breakdowns” but they do them very, very well.

Rain Dogs on BBC iPlayer Daisy May Cooper plays broke writer, sex worker and single mum Costello and Jack Farthing her fucked-up trustafarian best friend Selby (with more than a few shades of Richard E. Grant’s Withnail), in this clever, crude dramedy written by Cash Carraway, which stretches the limits of ‘dark comedy’. Inspired by Carraway’s memoir, Skint Estate, everyone is joyously filthy-mouthed and while the vag chat at times wears thin, it’s excellent on poverty tourism and class (one man describes Costello as having “a food bank body” while a school mum tells Costello she should have gone to university. “I did” Costello replies brightly, “I got a first in English”).

I’ve inserted the US trailer above as the BBC one is weirdly short - but do note (and this is interesting in itself) that the trailer makes the show look quite sweet and while there are sweet notes, it’s actually pretty bleak - and the friendship between Costelloe and Selby is violent and dysfunctional. But it’s also shockingly brilliant and I was speechless when it finished. May Daisy May Cooper continue to rise and rise.

Colin From Accounts on BBC iPlayer I have recommended this gorgeous, offbeat Aussie sitcom to absolutely everyone, as it’s about as feel-good as a story about a dog getting run over can possibly be. Gordon (Patrick Brammall) is driving along, minding his own business, when a walking-by Ashley (Harriet Dyer) flashes her boob at him, causing him to run over a dog.

In less than 24 hours, the shellshocked pair become co-parents of a high-needs dog that needs wheels to get around. They name him Colin From Accounts (naturally) and so begins an unexpected and tender romance between them. The awkward chemistry between Dyer and Brammall, who co-wrote and co-produced the show is just brilliant (the two are also married in real life), and the humour is deliciously peculiar and unassuming. Even more impressive, every single supporting character - from Ashley’s awful mother to Gordon’s ex, a vet named Yvette (please say it out loud) - is golden.

Dreamland on Sky Atlantic Another short series (you’ll eat the whole thing in 2 hours, leaving you desperate for more) that I absolutely loved, about four sisters living in Margate. When black sheep of the family Lily Allen returns from Paris, all hell breaks loose. You can tell it’s a Merman production (4 sisters who hate and love in equal measure is v.much a Sharon Horgan trademark) and it’s written by the brilliant Emma-Jane Unsworth. It’s about family - obvs - but also class, gentrification (Freema Agyeman plays an estate agent furiously flogging expensive houses to second-homers, whilst saving up for her own), ambition and secrets. You’ll have read about how brilliant Lily Allen is, and she is, but my favourite is actually the droll Gabby Best. The twist is also *chef’s kiss*. I hope desperately for more series.

House of Hammer on Amazon Prime A docu-series about the myriad allegations of sexual violence made against actor Armie Hammer in 2021 and, more so, about the trickle-down effect of inter-generational toxic masculinity, coercion and violence against women in an uber-wealthy, politically powerful family. Told and co-produced by Armie’s aunt, Casey Hammer (estranged from the family), the women who made allegations against him and the TikTok sleuths who broke the story, it delves into the Hammers sordid and frankly horrifying history. “Magnify Succession a million times - and that was my family” says Casey. 

The Queen of Versailles on Prime Video, Lauren Greenfield’s 2012 doc is about Florida billionaires Jackie and David Siegel’s attempt to build the largest residential home in America. (Think, five kitchens and a pub shipped over from England.) Thanks to a combination of cash flow and natural disaster, the 90,000 sq ft house stalls (and still isn’t finished). “This is like a riches to rags story” chuckles Siegel. Or, as Greenfield puts it in an interview: “this is really an allegory about the over-reaching of America”. Should you be so intrigued to know what happens since, there is (but of course!) a new HBO show.

I have honestly made myself sick from tv but **IF*** I am to watch any more, what should I watch next? Dopesick is on my list, as I adored the book by Beth Macey (please go read! Non-fiction at its finest) and I’m also planning to watch Lewis Capaldi’s doc which sounds pretty heart-rending.

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And now for the BITS

This week: journalism, photos, memes

My favourite meme of recent times, as sent to me by The Meme Curator, my husband. Can’t decide which is my favourite, despite spending an inordinate amount of time thinking about it. Please tell me yours!

Caitlin Moran’s column for The Times on why she will not get a downstairs loo (bc she needs the space for shoes) is also delicious to me, specifically her breakdown of the 8 pairs of crocs she owns. Wearing Crocs as I type, I can 100% see how you would get there.

I enjoyed this piece by John Ellege for The New Statesman about how terrifying it is that every off-hand missive is recorded by WhatsApp f o r e v e r. I laughed when I read what one of his friends said to him -“If someone leaked my message history, I would quite simply die” - before realising that I felt exactly the same way. Never was there a greater argument for keeping it offline. This spring I am bringing back furtive whispers on a park bench.

This piece on whether therapy-speak is making us all selfish by Rebecca Fishbein for Bustle has been getting a lot of press, for good reason. I think the mainstreaming of therapy is a great thing (and I wish it were affordable for more people), but I think there are limits to our wholesale application of therapy-speak. If you were amused/ horrified by that 2019 text template, then this one is for you. (I was also thrilled to see that one of the experts Fishbein cites is the brilliant clinical psych Darby Saxbe, who I interviewed about the cognitive load for my essay collection.)

I’ve recommended her newsletter once twice thrice possibly more, but this piece on ‘succubus chic’ by Jessica DeFino is great. I’d noticed the whole heroin goth thing coming back, but didn’t have a word for it. Not only does JDF have a word for it, she has an entire theory: that it’s hot to look ill and always has been.

See: consumption as a beauty ideal in the 1840s, malnourishment as a beauty ideal in the 1990s, and the “dark bimbo” or “succubus chic” look today — cheeks pinched courtesy of fat-sucking surgery, bones protruding courtesy of Ozempic injections, expression embalmed courtesy of neurotoxin-infused needles.

Living in London, rustic kitchens like this are a million miles away, which is probably why I love surfing those on Cabana’s escapist website so much. The blues! The yellow! The pans! Really nice colour inspo for spring dressing, too (she says, wearing tracksuit bottoms and only tracksuit bottoms.)

Christoph Gollut's house in Gran Canaria, ph. by Mark Luscombe-Whyte

A dilapidated palace in Portugal, ph. by Mark Luscombe-Whyte

Speaking of kitchens, may I recommend the Kitchen Projects newsletter. Every week pasty chef Nicola Lamb breaks down the fourth wall of recipe development, giving you the secret sauce about how and why something works. She also collates great essays on food culture and history, like this post where she asks her favourite female cookbook authors to share their recipe philosophies.

Courtesy of Kitchen Projects post on cannele

I read this piece by Natasha Pasichynk in ELLE mag a few months ago and I’m so pleased to see it’s now online so you can all read it. (Although let it be on record that I think good journalism should be paid for!!!) Pasichynk moved to England with her daughter when the war broke out, leaving her husband in their native Ukraine. (Most men between the age of 18 and 60 are not allowed to leave the country.) She writes movingly about how being physically separated from her husband forged a new closeness between them.

At the most difficult moment of my life, alone with a child in a hotel next to a motorway in rural England, I found Friends on Netflix and did not stop watching until I had seen all 10 seasons; they became my therapy. Through them, I rediscovered that feeling of closeness and joy I’d had meeting my husband all those years ago. I sent memes to him, recalling the episode where Ross was in leather trousers, and Phoebe taught Joey how to play the guitar. Little by little, remembering our favourite moments, we began to text and call each other more often.

Speaking of displaced relationships enduring rupture and repair, ‘In another life she could have been my friend’ by Dina Nayeri is such a gorgeous long-read about a fractious mother/ daughter relationship.

“As adults, displaced children crave to be normal again, free from the hundreds of daily calculations and errors. We want big heavy doors separating our psychic rooms from our parents’, some distance and tangible borders between the present and the past. Sometimes, that past is embodied by a heartbroken foreign mother always knocking on our door, issuing invitations.”

Where were you when Marisa Cooper died? I was in bed, watching The OC on an illegal dvd I’d bought off eBay, and I cried so hard I hyperventilated. (Mad.) So I was tickled to discover Welcome To The OC, Bitches!, a pod by Rachel Bilson (Summer) and Melinda Clarke (Julie), specif the ep where Mischa Barton guests to discuss her character and what it was like to be that kind of mega-famous aged just 17, in early 00s Hollywood.