Pick of the week
Slip
Zoe Lister-Jones is the creator and star of this seven-part oddball existential drama. Mae Cannon is a study in early midlife ennui. Approaching 40, she is bored of her long-term relationship and tired of waiting for some meaning to emerge from her life, which she compares to “a super-banal dream where nothing really happens”. But then something does start to happen: she has a one-night stand and finds that her orgasms open up portals to parallel lives she might have lived had different roads been taken. It’s a neat premise, exploring the universal human longing to discover how alternate versions of ourselves might have evolved, and it is realised with humour and heart.
ITVX, from Thursday 8 August
***
The Influencer
Another Korean show that renders future-shock satires like Black Mirror all but irrelevant: this contest gathers 77 influencers with massive social media profiles (models, singers, actors) and pits them against each other in a last-person-standing popularity contest. They’ll be expected to compete in a range of challenges and be eliminated one by one. Oh, and like the prisoners of late capitalism they are, they’re all wearing weird dog collars on their necks that display their current status in both the game and the wider culture. It’s very strange, undeniably intriguing – and more than a little dystopian, too.
Netflix, from Tuesday 6 August
***
Love Is Blind UK
Since 2020, this high-stakes dating show – in which young people get engaged before meeting in person – has gained a worldwide following, spawned multiple spin-offs and generated a good deal of controversy over allegations of cast mistreatment and sexual assault. This inevitable UK version is hosted by Emma and Matt Willis and contains plenty of the now familiar borderline emotional manipulation and carefully staged catharsis. Expect tears and tantrums – Love Is Blind is never particularly edifying but, if you’re that way inclined, it’s infuriatingly watchable.
Netflix, from Wednesday 7 August
***
The Umbrella Academy
The superhero drama based on a series of comic books written by My Chemical Romance singer Gerard Way (and definitely bearing spiritual traces of his emo roots) returns for a fourth and final season. The Hargreeves siblings have lost their superpowers, which inevitably demands a whole new level of cooperation. That isn’t going to be easy given their perpetual bickering but the emergence of a mysterious group called the Keepers is set to focus their minds. Can the family pull together, find their missing father and rise to a final challenge?
Netflix, from Thursday 8 August
***
The Mallorca Files
This detective drama began life as a BBC weekday afternoon show in 2019, but three years after its second season it has now found a new home on Prime Video. It’s the most amiable and escapist of cosy crime series, with Elen Rhys and Julian Looman starring as slightly uptight British detective Miranda Blake and her amiable, mildly dopey German partner in crime-fighting Max Winter respectively. Expect a steady diet of kidnappings, inventive robberies and the odd murder, all played out in front of a divine, sun-dappled Balearic backdrop.
Prime Video, from Thursday 8 August
***
Yo Gabba GabbaLand!
A gentle, albeit slightly garish kids’ show spun off from the long-running TV and YouTube series Yo Gabba Gabba!, hosted by cheerful teenager Kamryn “Kammy Kam” Smith. Like most studio-based children’s television, it’s a colourful mixture of music, dancing and learning, with fun, strong and simple moral messages to be discovered by youngsters and reinforced by friendly adults. There’s also a selection of familiar faces from the original series scattered around in animated style, so this new world will also feel familiar to long-term fans.
Apple TV+, from Friday 9 August
***
Blue Ribbon Baking Championship
If you enjoy baking but find Bake Off too quaint and cutesy, this new competition may appeal: it applies the formula to the milieu of the US state fair where blue ribbons are coveted and furiously contested awards. Ten bakers, all of whom have won these prizes, are gathered in a new tent, competing for a very chunky $100,000. Jason Biggs (of the American Pie franchise fame) hosts and the judges are a formidable bunch including author and chef Sandra Lee, award-winning artisan baker Bryan Ford and former White House pastry chef Bill Yosses.
Netflix, from Friday 9 August
