TV & Film Journal | 13.05.22

This week it's a small but perfectly formed queue of quality over quantity on my to-watch list to squeeze in around an apparent heatwave and all being well - a sunny holiday this weekend. As well as these, there's also Welcome to Eden and Senior Year on Netflix; both of which I'm interested in getting into but the backlog of good telly right now is real; so this week I've stripped back the selects to the below four; all of which are right up my strada and are top of the list for when I'm back from Spain. The only one I have seen already and can attest to its brilliance is Everything Everywhere All At Once. It blew my mind and a full cinema right up to the front row on a Monday evening says it all. 

 Conversations with Friends on BBC iPlayer

The long-awaited adaptation of Sally Rooney's second novel starts this Sunday, with it's ambition to compel us just as much as Normal People did way back when in lockdown - when we loved it so hard we all followed an instagram account dedicated to a metal chain just to keep the show alive. Jemima Kirke (from Girls and Sex Education), Joe Alwyn, Alison Oliver and Sasha Lane make up the four main characters and tell the story of two college students in Dublin who make an unconventional connection with an older, married couple, Melissa and Nick. I remember loving this when I first read it and partly being filmed in sun-drenched Croatia, the brink of summer is the time when you want to be watching something like this. Please be good! If you are a mega fan, there's a live panel Q&A alongside screening of the first epsiode at the BFI on the 22 May. 

Trailer: Watch here

The Time Traveller's Wife on NOW/Sky

One of those things you wonder whether it really needed a TV series given that there's a perfectly lovely movie that's barely ten years old, and knowing that most of the target audience for this series will have seen and loved that one. That being said, I'm excited to see what Rose Leslie and Theo James bring to this as it really is such a good story, they are both great actors and I'm down for an emosh, beautifully shot drama that pulls at the heartstrings. 

Trailer: Watch here

The Essex Serpent on AppleTV

We are almost at a spoilt-for-choice point on AppleTV+ right now, having just finished and loved Slow Horses, Severance and WeCrashed, when flashback to last year when it was really scraping the barrel to find anything to make the subscription worthy bar The Morning Show, we now have The Essex Serpent to binge over the weekend, coming on Friday. Ironically, this is one of the few books in the last couple of years that I just couldn't get through, so I'm hoping it translates more compellingly to television (granted there is millions of people who loved the book who'd disagree with me). It does pain me that Keira Knightley was set to play Cora before dropping out and being replaced by Claire Danes as I'd be ten fold more excited about it. Still - holding out for good things!

Trailer: Watch here

Everything Everywhere All At Once in cinemas 

Amidst the superlative-laden, rave reviews I first saw for this film on Twitter, I read somewhere that the best thing to do is go and see it with as little prior knowledge to what it's about as possible. Like, don't even watch the trailer, look up who's in it or anything else. I am so glad I followed that because honestly, watching it is just 139 minutes of wacky, incredible enjoyment and creativity that is unlike anything else. If you see anything at the cinema, see this. 

Trailer: Don't watch it!