Catch up TV review: Deep Water, Kathy Burke’s All Woman, Young British and Depressed
David Farnor | On 18, Aug 2019
What’s available on-demand on Freeview? Keep up-to-date with our weekly catch-up TV column, including reviews of shows on ITV Hub, new releases on All 4 and a guide to My5.
(For BBC TV reviews and round-ups, see our weekly Best of BBC iPlayer column. Or for reviews of the shows on All 4’s Walter Presents, click here.)
Deep Water (ITV Hub)
Big Little Lies comes to Britain in this new drama from ITV. Based on Paula Daly’s Windermere novels, the series promises a mix of complicated women, intertwining personal relationships and an abundance of dark secrets lurking in everyone’s pasts. Our main focus is Lisa (Anna Friel), who comes into contact with upper-class mother Kate (Rosalind Eleazar) when their sons, Sam and Fergus, are involved in a bullying incident. Invited to dinner with her cabbie hubbie, Lisa is enamoured with Kate’s Lake District home, by an actual lake, so much so that she has an encounter with wealthy surgeon Adam in the bathroom. In the middle of all this stands Roz (Sinead Keenan), a physiotherapist with a pile of debt on her shoulders. All of these people interact with some occasionally implausible dialogue, some convenient melodramatic contrivances and a never-ending stream of gorgeous interior decor. No matter which one of those floats your boat, prepare to dive into the intriguingly murky waters that promise to be either compellingly dark or enjoyably trashy. The whole box set is on BBC iPlayer, so it won’t take long to find out which.
Available until: September 2019
Photo: KUDOS FOR ITV
Kathy Burke’s All Woman (All 4)
“I just don’t understand what happened to the world…”
At some point in the last few decades, Kathy Burke – of Kevin and Perry, Gimme Gimme Gimme and Ab Fab fame – quietly became a national treasure. Here, she reminds us just why she’s a force to be reckoned with, as she presents a three-part documentary that doesn’t so much explore the pressures placed on young women in modern society as obliterate them with a blunt word and hard stare. It’s stirring and thought-provoking to see her look back at her own indirect role in establishing unrealistic ideals in the media by catching up with photographer Rankin, and interesting to see the frank and outspoken comedian take a more timid approach in interviewing Love Island’s Megan Barton-Hansen about her plastic surgery. And it’s downright inspiring to see her chat to Nadia Rose, whose no-nonsense confidence rooted in her own self-worth is a breath of fresh air and hoper for generations to come.
Available until: 26th September 2019 (Episode 1)
Young, British and Depressed (All 4)
“We’re encouraging young people to talk about mental health, but the support isn’t always there when they do.” That’s Sanah Ahsan in Channel 4’s probing, thoughtful, mildly alarming documentary Young, British and Depressed. A one-off episode of the reliably well-informed Dispatches explores the boom in young people being referred to mental health services, and asks some tough questions. Are we too quick to offer medication to young people with mental health problems? Is the drive to eradicate the taboo of mental health making people afraid of intense emotions and leading to rash diagnoses instead? And, regardless of your views on that, what’s the point in getting people to be honest about their mental health struggles if there isn’t any help available anyway? Interviews with those suffering “brain zaps” as a result of antidepressant withdrawal make all too clear how long-term the consequences of medicating a generation of people can be. This is an important, necessary piece of TV that should be required viewing.
Available until: 19th September 2019
