Yahoo News The best TV to watch this week: The Walking Dead, Man Down and The Man Behind the King's Speech
This week, shuffle towards the screen for the 100th episode of The Walking Dead and watch Greg Davies go snooker loopy in the new series of Man Down.
*Warning: here be a few spoilers…*
The Walking Dead
The start of the eighth series is the 100th episode of Rick Grimes’s continuing struggle to secure access to adequate showering facilities, a statistic that will surprise viewers who endured the last run and its unending cycle of hope-squashing brutality.
Negan’s boot has been grinding on the script’s windpipe for an age, choking impetus and draining our heroes of colour, which brings the series to the most significant fork in the its history; a continuation of Negan’s terror empire or the rejuvenation of those heroes the audience is so invested in.
Those side-quests of the last series were sops to the crushing oppression and the sense that Rick and his pals would see out the rest of their days balled up in a corner, arms wrapped around head to protect from Lucille’s tickling.
Aware of the urgent need to give us all something to live for (there are enough tyrants out here), the 100th episode hands the initiative back to Rick and hands him a golden opportunity to retire his nemesis. But that would be too rapid an exit for a character who has been long-anticipated and has defined the lives of characters and audiences.
That’s why with Negan almost surrounded we enter James-Bond-villain-explaining-their-plan-territory with Rick electing to conduct a long conversation rather than pull his trigger. Your mind drifts back to Scott Evil from Austin Powers when he so rightly asked his dad, ‘Why don’t you just shoot him now?’.
We are, at least, travelling towards a new phase which must signal the downfall of Negan and this 100th episode delivers pleasing grandstand set-pieces, although glaziers will be disturbed by one scene of window-smashing barbarity.
Monday October 23, 9pm, Fox
UK premiere: King George VI: The Man Behind the King’s Speech
When reluctant king George VI ascended to the throne in the wake of his brother’s scandalous abdication, he could have won over the public very quickly had he started his first speech with, ‘Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking...’. The public would have had a good-natured titter like a friendly crowd at a wedding and his debut would have been noted as a gentle success.
However, his team of writers were too concerned with things like ‘gravity’ and ‘seriousness’. George VI also suffered from a stutter which threatened to prevent him from communicating with the country.
Monday October 23, 8pm, London Live
Man Down
What The Exorcist did for pea soup, Man Down will do for the humble full English. The opener to the fourth series of Greg Davies’s rampant and splendidly unrestrained comedy features a scene where the culinary pinnacle of British cuisine is violated in a manner that will stick with viewers, so much so that hardened full Englishers might begin to opt for avocado toast to stop the memories flooding back.
The emphasis soon returns to the cheerful destruction of the oblivious Dan (Davies) and his ongoing failures, this series watching how he deals with impending fatherhood as his beloved and very pregnant Emma (Jeany Spark) returns from America.
The odds of him handling parental responsibility are against him, but might be prevail? No. Not when Dan can’t find a new home, organise a loan, or avoid a confrontation with a snooker legend.
Wednesday October 25, 10pm, Channel 4
