ere were times when I worried the BBC had forgotten they'd commissioned a third series of Happy Valley. Sally Wainwright had busied herself with passion project Gentlemen Jack and started work on a new Disney+ series, The Ballad of Renegade Nell. It had seemed Happy...
Happy Valley: How Sally Wainwright crafted the truly outstanding British drama.
Shockingly, I only watched Sally Wainwright’s Happy Valley for the first time earlier this year. As incredibly late to the party I was, I’m glad I amended this, as the BBC crime drama encapsulates everything I love about television. As it returns to our screens later...
How Russell T. Davies revolutionised TV queerness
One of the scenes I remember most vividly from Cucumber, Russell T. Davies' underrated 2015 mini-series - which could somewhat reductively be called Queer as Folk for the 21st century - is a sequence in which three characters, all men, all queer, get ready for a night...
Clocking Off, BBC1
If the BBC took advertising, then Clocking Off would be sponsored by the Ford Transit. Like Cold Feet, it is also set in Manchester, but this time recognisably so since everyone talks with a Northern accent, lives in a terrace near the City of Manchester Stadium and...
The Second Coming, ITV1
Nonsense. In this tale by Manchester-based writer Russell T Davies (Queer As Folk), the Son of God returns to Earth and lands in Manchester. He performs a couple of miracles, convinces the world that he’s genuine, and stays in Manchester, telling the human race that...