📺 The Rookie, Netflix ★★★★

When we moved to Cairo and were in the processing of settling down and we would want to wind down with some TV series that would take our brain off the crazy days we were having. That is when I came across The Rookie. We love Nathan Fillion from the days of Castle and so we started with the pilot episode.

And soon we got hooked on to it and soon we became fans of the show. The writing was sharp, the woman characters has a strong personality, the show had a good moral compass and the jokes were 🤌🏽.

Soon Netflix let us know that they have the show only till Dec 31st. We didn’t want to let go of what we had and binge on all the episodes we could lay our hands on. After years, we were back to binge watching 2-3 episodes a day! The cold winters in Cairo helped too in us cozing up in the TV room!

And do we finished 5 seasons in a record time. The last we watched a TV series in such a record speed was for Spooks.

📺 The Good Doctor, Prime Video ★★★★

We watched the series finale of Good Doctor a couple of days ago. We started watching this after we finished watching House. Both were created by David Shore.

We in general are suckers for good episodic drama be it either in medical or legal. So it was no surprise that we gravitated towards this. Also unlike House, the approach is all positive and has less sarcasm and meanness. So it made the watch all more fun.

They would regularly kill off characters and bring in new ones. But then it helped the plot move in new directions and kept the story fresh. While talking of characters, I want to quickly mention about the lead character Dr. Shaun Murphy played by Freddie Highmore. This is one of the finest performances of someone in the autistic spectrum, by someone who is neurotypical.

When the series finale started, I was wondering aloud how would they wrap it up. But then towards the end I realised, if writers wanted to they could bring any series to an end at any time. Here they brought the plot to some cliffhangers, cut to “10 years later” and neatly tied it all up. In an way I appreciate showrunners letting a show end when they don’t have any thing new to add!

📺 Beef, Netflix ★★★★★

A few weeks ago, we finished season 1 this series. We absolutely loved it. It touches on so many aspects of the mental health and with so much compassion.

This was the first time I was watching Ali Wong and Steven Yeun perform. And both were so good in their roles!

The last episode of the season, was one of the best “tripping” experiences brought out on screen.

Started watching a new 📺 TV Series — Criminal Record on Apple TV+ this week. We are just 3 episodes in and what a brilliant series it is already!

Cush Jumbo and Peter Capaldi are acing it as expected! Their scenes of face-off are such a treat.

📺 Slow Horses, Apple TV+ ★★★★★

Last week, I finished the 3rd season of Slow Horses. IMO, it is one of the best spy series on TV. It is not stuffed with action, but rather more like tense spy drama. It has a lot going for it — good writing, cracker dialogues, great characters and actors, good ol’ British humour and crafty twists.

My earlier benchmark for good spy drama on TV was Spooks (2002-2011). I know it is a couple of decades old and I am dating myself here, but it’s characters — Sir Harry Pearce and Ruth Evershed, were immortalised by their actors. One can draw a parallel for that relationship in Slow Horses between Jackson Lamb and Ruth Evershed. Each character in Slow Horse is an odd ball and their quirks add so much to the drama!

Cannot wait for Season 4 to be streamed!

📺 Killer Soup, Netflix ★★★★

Finished this TV Series last week. We quite enjoyed the over the top acting, paired to a dark comedy and thriller setup. Every actor seems to be having a good time in their roles and it was fun to watch them all.

What did not work well for me was the constant switch in languages, that was totally out of sync with the milieu and background of those actors. But that is a minor irritant and this is worth a watch!

As Sucharita says in this video, the core plot is inspired from a real life incident, which in turn was inspired by a movie scene. What a full circle the idea has gone through!