Joanna Robinson On Netflix’s Increasing UK Presence, Sharon Horgan’s ‘Youth,’ and ‘Slow Horses’ Season 6, Episode 2.

Key takeaways

• Netflix UK's upfront revealed three shows aimed squarely at prestige and comedy audiences: Witch Hunt (a dark drama about a modern-day witch hunt starring Sarah Lancashire, written by Abby Morgan), a satirical crime thriller from Black Mirror creator Charlie Brooker starring Paddy Considine, and a Bob Mortimer/Richard Ayoade game show riding the Taskmaster wave. Robinson and Ryan read this as evidence that the runaway success of Adolescence and Baby Reindeer is pushing Netflix back toward awards-caliber UK programming after years of formulaic sitcoms and melodramas.
• Netflix ordering a second season of The Beast in Me (after Matthew Rhys won the Emmy for limited series just days earlier) strikes both hosts as a rules violation similar to past moves by Big Little Lies and FX's Shogun. They argue Rhys should "give the Emmy back," and question whether creator Howard Gordon (known for grim Homeland plotting) will keep piling misery on Claire Danes's character rather than finding a fresh direction.
• Streaming price hikes are approaching a breaking point: Disney+ ad-free is now $21.99/month, up dramatically from its launch price. The hosts compare this to airline pricing psychology (make the base experience worse so premium tiers feel necessary) and speculate services may eventually lock in multi-year price guarantees like Disney does with park passes, while cracking down harder on password sharing.
• Sharon Horgan's Youth (HBO) continues her 20-year pattern of writing women doing recognizable life stages "later than you'd expect"; Pulling covered singles in their 30s, Catastrophe new motherhood, Bad Sisters murder later in life, and now Youth tackles a 50-something divorced book agent navigating dating, aging parents, and an adult son who moves back home (the "sandwich generation"). The show's publishing-world subplot, including a fading romance novelist's problematic Western manuscript, adds comic texture reminiscent of Younger.
• Slow Horses season six feels structurally different: it's the first season built as a direct continuation of earlier series (Olivia Cooke's Sid returns, Hugo Weaving's character resurfaces, Struan Loy's death opens the season), and Diana Taverner (Kristin Scott Thomas) is now First Desk; finally getting what she wanted only to discover the job is broken. Director Adam Randall shoots London grittier and grayer than before, and the violence (strangulation in episode two) feels more visceral, pushing Jackson Lamb into rare rattled territory.
• On the New York Times' 100 Best TV Shows of the 21st Century list, Robinson admits her ballot skewed toward personally formative shows (Justified, Lost, Midnight Mass, Taskmaster) rather than consensus classics, deliberately omitting Mad Men, Breaking Bad, and The Wire because she assumed others would cover them; a strategy she compares to "voting green in a blue state." Ryan's list leaned more toward critical consensus (Andor, The Wire, Deadwood, Succession, Mad Men), and both lament near-misses like Industry, Friday Night Lights, and Westworld.

Notable moments

• "Give that Emmy back"; Ryan's blunt verdict on Matthew Rhys after Netflix ordered a second season of The Beast in Me days after his limited-series win.
• Rhys reportedly keeps his second and third Emmys in the basement until his wife Kerry Russell wins one; charming, but Ryan still wants the trophy returned.
• Robinson on Disney+'s price hikes: "what is Disney Plus providing for you that you can't get on Hulu?"; especially with the MCU and Star Wars TV slate thinning to almost nothing (Wonder Man season two canceled, Daredevil ending with season three).
• The flying-versus-streaming comparison: making the base experience deliberately uncomfortable (ads, fees) so viewers pay up for relief, likened to airline seat upgrades.
• A tangent on a Boston Globe story about a COVID-conscious lesbian bar community in Western Massachusetts going viral, becoming "the joy of my life" for Robinson.
• On Slow Horses' new tone: "it feels like an almost slasher horror movie" this season, with characters being hunted and erased rather than solving a mystery.
• Robinson confessing her NYT ballot felt like showing up to a costume party alone: "no Mad Men, no Breaking Bad, no The Wire, are you kidding me?"
• Kristin Scott Thomas's Diana Taverner finally reaching First Desk only to discover, as showrunner Will Smith/Mick Herron reportedly frame it, that leading government feels like running a corporation still answerable to shareholders.

Time saved: 1 hour, 4 minutes.