Images courtesy of The Idol and The Crowded Room

By Charlie Sawyer

Published Jun 9, 2023 at 12:19 PM

Reading time: 2 minutes

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There’s nothing wrong with TV sleaze, the early 2000s classic show Skins absolutely nailed it when it came to showing the slightly darker and dirtier reality of young lust and adolescence. Effy was, after all, the OG it girl. However, there are some shows which now, having marketed themselves as a sleazy fever dream, lean so far into the controversy that they end up losing all sense of meaning and impact. The toxic on-set behaviour also doesn’t really make for an enjoyable visual experience.

Euphoria creator Sam Levinson’s new show The Idol debuted this past Monday on 5 June 2023 and to say audiences were underwhelmed would be insanely accurate. It’s not even that we’re offended by the show, we’re just bored by it already. The Guardian described the concept as giving “the impression of a drama that is much better, more robust and more interesting than it goes on to become.”

Love Island is back on our screens, and as someone who used to quite literally drop everything just so that I could be sat in front of my TV screen every night at 9 pm to tune in, it saddens me to see how boring the show has become.

Even with the beauty, grace, and fresh perspective that is Maya Jama, I still feel like I’m watching the same episode every single night. Season after season, the producers pick a very similar bunch of people and seem less and less interested in switching things up.

Does anyone even care about Love Island anymore? The series once used to draw an insane amount of viewers. In fact, according to The Guardian, four years back, the show’s summer launch episode attracted 3.3 million viewers, two million more than this year—proving that everyone preferred Gary the scaffolder from Grimsby to Sophie the influencer from Sussex.

In an interview with ExtraTV, Holland revealed that he plans to take a year-long sabbatical from acting after his most recent role took a gruelling toll on him. The Spider-Man: No Way Home star spoke in length about how playing criminal Danny Sullivan in the Apple TV+ series The Crowded Room impacted him on a psychological level, leaving the young actor unable to remove himself from the character.

Holland stated: “There did come a time when I was sort of, ‘I need to have a break.’ I disappeared. I went to Mexico for a week and had some time on a beach and laid low. I’m now taking a year off, and that is a result of how difficult this show was.”

In creative Celine Song’s directorial debut, Past Lives follows the story of two childhood sweethearts who reconnect years later and experience all of the emotions that come with unexplored love, nostalgia, and, you guessed it, confronting past chapters of life.

The film stars Greta Lee and Teo Yoo as the two primary protagonists and it feels as though it’s a perfect blend between romance and philosophy. There are a lot of things left unsaid, something that adds to the ambience of the entire movie.

NPR deemed Past Lives “the most affecting love story” it’s seen in years. It’s all about the what ifs and possibilities life presents you with. And, it helps that it also has an insanely good soundtrack.

On 15 June 2023, the latest season of Black Mirror will drop, and from what we know about the upcoming episodes, it’s set to be one of the most impactful series yet.

Some of the stars featured in the five episodes include Annie Murphy, Salma Hayek Pinault, Michael Cera, Rob Delaney, and Aaron Paul.

We still know very little about the details of each episode (although I should probably refer to them as individual feature films as they’re all marketed as such). But knowing the kinds of tech fear-mongering plotlines creator Charlie Brooker has come up with in the past, it’s anyone’s guess how mental season six will truly be.