This England (Foxtel/Binge) is the best drama on TV right now as it lays bare the goings-on of Boris Johnson’s UK government during the coronavirus. Kenneth Branagh will have you believing he is Boris Johnson as he lurches from one crisis to the next.
This is England
The former PM is portrayed as eternally optimistic and friendly but delusional. His key advisor Dominic Cummings (Simon Paisley Day) is the bigger villain as he ignores his own isolation rules to take a family holiday, while exhausted staff at hospitals and nursing homes are facing unimaginable horrors.
The National Health Service also features heavily in This Is Going To Hurt (Foxtel/Binge). Ben Wishaw plays an unflappable but overworked doctor delivering babies in an overcrowded hospital. It’s equal parts funny and horrible real for those who can stomach gory operations. One to watch.
This is Going to Hurt
The Real Love Boat Australia (10) told Mediaweek that its cast “aren’t the quintessential genetically blessed talent that you normally get on all these kinds of shows”. Except they sort of were and all these dating shows are starting to look very familiar.
Is it weird that 10 made no attempt to explain to their target audience what The Love Boat was originally? Star-studded, retro marathons on Saturdays in the lead-up to it? Nah, instead they ran with an ad that said it was “Love Island on a Boat”. That quote is either a compliment or a sick burn, but either way, few people watched.
Hopefully, there will be more interest in Todd Sampson’s new Mirror Mirror: Love & Hate (Monday on 10). He is investigating the dark side of social media and suggesting that parents might need to be more involved in what their kids are doing online.
Blonde
Could some grandparents explain to the same kids that Marilyn Monroe wasn’t just some tragic victim, as depicted in Andrew Dominik’s horribly awful Blonde (Netflix)? Unbearably long and unnecessarily invasive, just when you think it can’t get any worse, a camera is inside the superstar’s cervix.
There have been many biopics of Marilyn, including a telemovie of Blonde (7Plus) from 2001 starring Poppy Montgomery, Richard Roxburgh and Andrew Clarke. Surely it’s time though for a female director to look at her life, and highlight her intelligence, her talent, and the joy she created for so many people.
Top photo: Todd Sampson’s Mirror Mirror
Read more Mercado on TV columns here.
Mercado & Manning weekly TV podcast
Listen now on your favourite podcast platform for 30 minutes of TV reviews and recommendations every week from Andrew Mercado and James Manning. This week Andrew and James recommend This Is Going To Hurt on BBC First and the Prime Video documentary The Sound of 007. First up on the episode they pull apart the legend of Marilyn Monroe and look at what Netflix has served up in Blonde.
Listen online here, on the LiSTNR app or your favourite podcast platform.