Fern Brady: Autistic Bikini Queen

Monday

Netflix

Only Fern Brady could promote a stand-up special by talking about the ins-and-outs of euthanasia. Okay, a lot of comedians could do that, but Brady’s deadpan sincerity is what sells it. Plenty of comics aim to offend for its own sake, but the Scottish comedian’s pitch-black material feels genuine, giving it a rare potency. There’s the sense that, at any point, she could interrupt the audience laughing to say “No, no: I really mean that.”

She minces particularly few words about having kids: “Imagine being so lonely you literally have to shag your friends into existence.” By Brady’s own admission, the show has very little to do with autism, bikinis or queens, but it will be funny. – JM

Love Triangle

Tuesday

E4, 9.00pm

Imagine your luck. You’re given the option to choose between two hand-picked suitors. After texting both of them, you get to take your favourite on a blind date. Then, in an effort to speed things up, you move in with them. Everything’s great, until the other suitor also turns up. That’s right: the one you rejected.

This is the fate awaiting six ‘pickers’ who will choose between two potential partners. What follows may not always be pretty, but it’ll be hard to look away. – JM

The Red King

Wednesday

Alibi, 9.00pm

THE RED KING

Exiled to the rural island of St.Jory in a punishment posting, Grace uncovers dark secrets hidden within the community's roots.#TheRedKing starts 24th April at 9PM only on Alibi. pic.twitter.com/5pqnka1A9T

— Alibi Channel (@alibi_channel) April 5, 2024

Anjli Mohindra (The Lazarus Project) stars as police officer Grace Narayan, a former high-flying cop who, after making a faux pas, is forced to take a “punishment posting” at a small English island. Not long after the move, Grace unearths a long-forgotten case of a missing teenage boy.

Through her conversations with a large cast of characters, played by stars including Bridgerton’s Adjoa Andoh and Byker Grove’s Jill Halfpenny, Grace’s island experience turns into a folk horror, as she discovers a cult called the True Way and a devotion to a pagan god, the red king. – ECS

Dead Boy Detectives

Thursday

Netflix

It’s hard enough solving crimes when you’re alive, so spare a thought for these two (lost) souls.

George Rexstrew (Findhorn Case 31.08.18) and Jayden Revri (Fate: The Winx Saga) star as Edwin Paine and Charles Rowland. The two teenagers decide the afterlife can wait: they have work to do.

The duo first appeared in Season of Mists, the fourth volume of The Sandman comic book series written by Neil Gaiman. Now, Gaiman returns to executive produce this new adaptation, set in the same universe as Netflix’s live-action take on The Sandman. – JM

Morten

Friday

Channel 4

Channel 4 have a track record of streaming some of the best foreign-language TV through its video-on-demand service Walter Presents. Through this banner, it aired the criminally underrated German spy thriller Deutschland 83.

Enter Morten Mathijsen, the smooth operator rising up the ranks of Dutch politics. Mathijsen (Peter Paul Muller) fancies himself as prime minister material, but when Kelly de Nooijer (Claire Bender) discovers a manuscript, his dreams could go up in flames. – JM