Isobel Lewis

It slowly sets up the nuanced characters and their interlinked lives, where tension simmers behind the middle-class facade. I expect the lack of clarity will lead some to switch off, but for those who don’t, the premiere builds enough excitement – and ends on an unexpected and gripping cliffhanger – to make it worth sticking with.

Are we stupid for hoping Love Island might have changed? Maybe. But it’s the show we love to criticise and we’ll still be tuning in at 9pm every night. See you on the other side.

The first episode of season two provides an infinitely stronger setup for the season than its predecessor. It’s an effective introduction to the Doctor’s sparky new companion Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu).

While the series opener did lean into a number of cop caper clichés (the hard-nosed female detective, the dismissive male boss who refuses to listen to her), it’s Patience herself – and Purvis’s electric performance – that makes this Patience worth sticking with.

This drama is all the more punishing and pain-inducing – and gripping and impactful – because you know what’s to come. The question is not how it ends, but how we get there.

Some TV shows are worth significantly raising your heart rate for: this is one of them.

There’s little that stands out to me about Apples Never Fall which, I suspect, is sort of the point. This is a programme designed to fill the space left by Big Little Lies and the copycats that followed. Apples Never Fall didn’t have to reinvent the crime drama to be watchable, but given its revered pedigree, I expected it to at least try.

The dialogue was stilted and heavily laden with exposition, leaving the actors to struggle to make such implausible conversation seem realistic. The worst of this came during the cheesy, sepia-toned flashback scenes, where the important information was so obviously signposted it felt, at times, like a comedy parody of a murder mystery.

This muddled double bill gave little away. The next six episodes could be exciting and more focused, but from here, it's hard to understand why you’d stick around long enough to find out.

This lack of direction prevents the show from being memorable. Instead of the fast-paced, lighthearted adaptation similar to the card game, Exploding Kittens feels like learning the rules itself. You can swear you’re interested, but nothing else is going on to keep you hooked.