Black Mirror (Netflix)
Best Interests (BBC One) | iPlayer
The Full Monty (Disney+)
Count Abdulla (ITVX) | itv.com
Back in 2019, I was a little disappointed with series five of Black Mirror. Three limp episodes – one of them starring Miley Cyrus as a pop star sucked into a hologram. What was this: Tales of the Totally Expected? Or, exhausted? It felt as if Charlie Brooker and Annabel Jones’s futuristic, dystopian concept had lost its briskly chilling horror/sci-fi pep. Now back for a five-part series, the Netflix anthology show feels once more like a big TV event, and with ChatGPT upon us, the timing couldn’t be sweeter.
A recurring Black Mirror theme is of humanity locked in a mutually abusive relationship with technology, AI and media. In the opener, Joan Is Awful, the titular heroine (Annie Murphy from Schitt’s Creek) finds her unfulfilling life turned into a TV show starring Salma Hayek on the Netflix-a-like platform Streamberry. With a strong cast that includes Michael Cera, the result feels clever, meta and naughty – until it doesn’t, and starts to feel arch, hyper and laboured.
The second episode, Loch Henry, is great: starring Myha’la Herrold (from Industry), Monica Dolan and John Hannah, it’s a shivery hack through the rotting ethical undergrowth of the true crime genre. The remaining three episodes travel back in time. Beyond the Sea, set in an alternative 1969, is about US astronauts who can still remotely exist on Earth via replicas. I can’t reveal what happens (I’m contorting myself like a critic-pretzel to avoid spoilers) but, starring Aaron Paul (Breaking Bad) and Josh Hartnett – both superb – it’s the most Twilight Zone-esque of the tales, brilliantly evoking the darker heartbeats of the era and the Moon-style melancholy of deep space.
The penultimate episode, Mazey Day (by far the weakest, with a derivative twist), comments on parasitical 2001 celebrity culture. Finally, the playful, sulphurous Demon 79 – the only one to be co-written, by Ms Marvel creator Bisha K Ali – stars Anjana Vasan (We Are Lady Parts) as a put-upon shop assistant. In 1979 Britain, as the National Front is rising, a mischievous demon (Paapa Essiedu, tarted up like Bobby Farrell from Boney M) appears, demanding a human sacrifice to avert Armageddon. Think: Bedazzled meets Dexter with a growling undercurrent of nationalism.
While the new collection isn’t perfect – Black Mirror still has a tendency to get knocked off course by an overload of Hollywood presence – this is an assured return to form: a much tastier geek-noir pick’n’mix.
Jack Thorne (Help and Kiri) isn’t one to duck difficult subjects. Now the screenwriter, playwright (his acclaimed The Motive and the Cue is currently playing at the National Theatre) and disability rights advocate brings us the BBC One drama Best Interests. In four parts, it’s a gruelling portrait of a family ripped apart by agonising decisions about their terminally ill daughter, Marnie, who has a form of muscular dystrophy.
When Nicci (Sharon Horgan) and Andrew (Michael Sheen) first appear, they’re enjoying a rare break (cue vigorous bonking in a train loo and atop a kitchen counter). From there (spoilers ahead), it’s a slide into hell: Marnie deteriorating into a coma; outside interests working their own agendas; stressful legal action; and the couple fracturing. Nicci is frantic to keep Marnie alive. Andrew wonders whether the medical team is in fact right to oppose prolonging her suffering.
Recalling real-life cases such as that of 12-year-old Archie Battersbee, this is a highly charged story, and great pains are taken to tell it in the round (Alison Oliver beautifully portrays Marnie’s struggling, sidelined sister). I must say I prefer Horgan in the blackly comedic roles that made her name. She holds her own here, but Sheen is just so good, managing to convey his crumbling insides with just a shrug of the shoulders or a glance. Looking ahead, there’s a degree of repetition and slack (at least one episode could have been chopped), while Marnie, though wonderfully played by Niamh Moriarty, seems a somewhat muted presence. Still, Thorne gets his essential messaging through (disabled lives have worth; disabled people are people), and, by God, he knows how to make the breaking human heart speak.
On Disney+, there’s an eight-part TV comedy drama based on the heroes of the 1997 award-garlanded film The Full Monty, in which desperate Sheffield men turned strippers memorably disrobed to Donna Summer’s Hot Stuff.
Again scripted by Simon Beaufoy (aided by Alice Nutter), the story is moved forward 26 years, “seven prime ministers and eight northern regenerations”. Most of the gang are present, including Mark Addy and Lesley Sharp as Dave and Jean, Steve Huison as Lomper (now married to marvellously supercilious Dennis, played by Paul Clayton), Tom Wilkinson as Gerald and Paul Barber as “Horse”, struggling on a mobility scooter. They’re led by Robert Carlyle as Gaz, salt-of-the-earth grifter who first appears trying to get on a bus with a mattress.
Gaz has a wayward daughter and a disabled grandson. Elsewhere, personal problems abound (loss, sorrow, an affair), as do socioeconomic struggles exacerbated by the cruel welfare system. Social injustice is frequently crowbarred in (though one tragic storyline is concluded with jaw-dropping originality) and there are times when it feels like a glummer, aged-up Brassic. Nor is there any “full monty” striptease climax (not so much as a tweak of a dingy vest strap). Still, there are glimmers of the grit and sweetness of the film, and this is a cast with charm to burn.
You may think the schedules are already stalked quite enough by supernatural forces, but Count Abdulla (ITVX) is a six-part horror comedy with a Muslim twist. Written by Kaamil Shah and directed by Asim Abbasi, it tells the story of a lovelorn British-Pakistani doctor (Arian Nik), who gets bitten by an East End dominatrix vampire (played by Jaime Winstone as a kind of Cynthia Payne of the undead) and henceforth flinches from garlic naan and feels the urge to drink from blood bags.
A few episodes in, it’s clear Count Abdulla owes a sizeable debt to What We Do in the Shadows, and it can all get very rough and silly. But it’s energetic, imaginative and has plenty of fun with the race-horror mashup.
Star ratings (out of five)
Black Mirror ★★★★
Best Interests ★★★★
The Full Monty ★★★
Count Abdulla ★★★
What else I’m watching
Staged
(BBC One)
First shown on BritBox, the third series of the hit thespy lockdown comedy that continued beyond lockdown. It stars Michael Sheen (also appearing in Best Interests) and David Tennant as “themselves”, spatting and schmoozing in video calls, with other famous faces pitching in.
Forced Out
(Sky Documentaries)
A harrowing documentary about gay service people being hounded out of the British armed forces (it was illegal to be gay in the UK military until 2000) and how activists fought for years to achieve change.
Africa Rising with Afua Hirsch
(BBC Two)
This three-part series celebrates creative life on the African continent. In the opener, journalist and broadcaster Afua Hirsch looks at Moroccan culture, from rug-making to dynamic feminist artists.
• This article was amended on 18 June 2023. The actor who appears in Best Interests is Michael Sheen, not Martin Sheen as an earlier version stated in the subheading.
