Paul Mount's TV ZONE

This issue, we’re DEAD SET on flying down to Rio to watch Netflix’s REALITY Z, battling more undead in BETAAL, sampling the curious charms of CURON, and getting caught up in the strange web of SPIDES…

Circumstances beyond our control have kept us all indoors rather more than we might have expected this year so far. Fortunately, we no longer live in a three-channel TV world (imagine that, kids!), so we’re never short of visual entertainment to keep our minds off the grim reality of life in 2020. The various streaming services have kept up regular fresh selections of shows filmed pre-pandemic as they continue attempts to keep our spirits up even when everything around us crumbles into chaos. However, there are only so many glossy supernatural/ superhero shows starring angsty teenagers that I can cope with at one time - will no-one think of the wrinklies? - so over the past couple of months, I have swerved any number of cookie-cutter series starring ballsy, empowered youngsters and cast my net a little wider in my never-ending search for something a bit different. A search for something with a unique voice and vision free from the often straight-jacketing perceived demands of current cultural sensibilities. Join me, then, as this month I hitch up my virtual rucksack and travel into TV’s nether regions (ooer) and briefly turn my back on all those glossy Hollywood teenage wet dreams and explore a few shows crafted on foreign shores where English isn’t ‘the first language’ (there are such places, honestly) and where imaginations aim a bit higher than the teenage demographic. Considering that two of my top shows from 2019 - France’s hi-tech dating app thriller Osmosis (now cancelled, sadly) and the extraordinary German apocalyptic series 8 Days (my absolute favourite show of last year, in fact) - hailed from Europe, my hopes were high that I’d find interesting, if not necessarily rich, pickings by leaving the angry teens to their own devices for a few weeks.