This week's best telly includes Russell T Davies' highly anticipated new drama Nolly, the return of Iain Stirling's Buffering, a deeply personal documentary from Emily Atack, a brand new drama on Apple TV+ and Bryan Cranston returns in the second season of Your Honor.
Here are 5 TV shows you can't miss this week...
1. Buffering
Monday 30th January at 10.05pm on ITV1
Iain Stirling and Steve Bugeja's hit comedy Buffering which follows the lives of kids’ TV presenter Iain, played by Iain Stirling, and his housemates Ashley, Rosie, Greg and Thalia is back for a second series.
Over the course of the series, we’ll follow Iain and his housemates as they try to figure out how to be better at life. Whether it’s throwing house parties, job hunting, dating, visiting the countryside, putting on pub quizzes or just figuring out their true feelings for each other, the gang will always have each other when, inevitably, things don’t go as planned.
In the first episode, Iain panics they’re becoming the sort of people who rather than attend a house party, ask next door’s party to turn the music down. Desperate to cling to his youth, he decides to throw a party of their own. Problem is, it’s been a while since they had one.
Guest stars this series include Laura Whitmore, Emily Atack, David Carlyle, Tony Way, Melvin Odoom, Tyne-Lexy Clarson, Sophie Duker and Gordon Kane.
1/6 Continues weekly. All episodes available at launch
2. Emily Atack: Asking For It?
Tuesday 31st January at 9pm on BBC Two
In this deeply personal documentary, actress and comedian, Emily Atack, opens up her life, and her social media DMs, to the public as she attempts to understand why she - and so many others - are sexually harassed online on a daily basis and what can be done to stop this.
For the first time, Emily delves deep into her own story, unpicking things that have happened to her as a result of attracting unwanted sexual attention from a young age. She admits that throughout her life she has felt blamed for this negative attention and has been repeatedly told, ‘but you’re asking for it’.
During lockdown, the online abuse Emily received escalated dramatically and she began sharing this with her followers. Many of the women who follow her came forward to say it happens to them too, and that they also thought it was normal. In the film, she reaches out to some of the men who routinely send her sexually explicit content to try and understand their motives.
Emily meets with experts, including a sexual violence and abuse councillor and online safety campaigners, to learn why this has been normalised for so long and interrogates why the blame for unwanted attention is so often put on the victim.
She continues the debate that took her to parliament to try and make cyber-flashing illegal as she meets with the police to explore whose responsibility it is to make this behaviour stop, and whether enough is being done to protect young women and girls online.
Emily admits that for so long she has used humour as a defence mechanism to cope with the unwarranted attention, but now questions that maybe it’s not funny anymore as she realises she’s been carrying a lot of baggage.
In an emotional scene, she speaks to her parents about this for the very first time and reflects on how these incidents have shaped her, in the hope that she can finally stop blaming herself and realise that she was never ‘asking for it’.
1/1
3. Nolly
Thursday 2nd February on ITVX
A new drama from Russell T Davies? Yes, please! Nolly is a three-part drama which comes 40 years after Noele Gordon’s shock sacking from Crossroads. It promises to explore the all-powerful reign and fall from grace, of the inimitable Noele Gordon, TV legend and Queen of the Midlands, the darling of the establishment until it turned on her and betrayed her.
Helena Bonham Carter takes on the title role alongside Augustus Prew as Tony Adams, Nolly’s Crossroads co-star, devoted friend, confidante, and her occasional chauffeur, Mark Gatiss playing inimitable entertainer Larry Grayson, who also shared a close and enduring friendship with Gordon and Richard Lintern as Ronnie Allen, who played Crossroads’ suave hotel manager David Hunter.
Noele, or Nolly to her friends, was a legend in her own lifetime. As flame-haired widow Meg Richardson in the long-running soap opera Crossroads, she was one of the most famous people in Britain.
Then in 1981, at the height of the show’s success and the peak of Nolly’s fame, she was axed without ceremony, without warning and with no explanation. With the boss’s words “all good things must come to an end” ringing in her ears, Noele Gordon found herself thrown out of the show that was her life for over 18 years.
Nolly promises to bring the true Noele Gordon once more into the spotlight. The Queen of the Midlands, a star who could be tough, haughty and imperious, grandly sweeping into rehearsals from her Rolls Royce, but also a hard-working actress who was fiercely loyal and loved by cast and crew alike.
And at last, the biggest question of all can be answered – why was she sacked? Nolly promises to reveal the truth, the consequences, and the legacy of that terrible day.
1-3/3 All episodes available at launch
4. Dear Edward
Friday 3rd February on Apple TV+
Apple TV+'s latest original drama Dear Edward has been adapted from Ann Napolitano’s bestselling novel and promises to be a heartbreaking, life-affirming and uplifting story about survival, resilience, connection and the examination of what makes us human.
It tells the story of what happens when a 12-year-old boy becomes the lone survivor of a plane crash. As he and others affected by the tragedy try to make sense of what happened, unexpected friendships, romances and communities are formed.
The series stars Colin O’Brien as Edward alongside Taylor Schilling, Amy Forsyth, Anna Uzele, Audrey Corsa, Brittany S. Hall, Carter Hudson, Dario Ladani Sanchez, Douglas M. Griffin, Eva Ariel Binder, Idris DeBrand, Ivan Shaw, Jenna Qureshi, Khloe Bruno and Maxwell Jenkins.
1-3/10 Continues weekly
5. Your Honor
Friday 3rd February on Paramount+
Bryan Cranston returns to our screens this year as Michael Desiato in the second season of Your Honor as some will seek salvation in response to the tremendous loss they suffered, while others will seek revenge and they will all be pursued by their enemies at every turn.
Ultimately, the question remains: How far are you willing to go to protect what matters most to you?
1-3/7 Continues weekly