Screen Babble podcast: Drive to Survive Season 5, You & Me, and Years and Years - episode 14

Screen Babble is your essential guide to everything on television, from the mainstream to the marginal. NationalWorld’s podcast producer Kelly Crichton, news and trends expert Steven Ross, and critic Alex Moreland discuss what is – and what isn’t – worth watching. This week, we’re also joined by special guest Susanna Sealy, a sports journalist here to tell us all about the new series of Netflix’s Drive to Survive.

As ever, we kick things off by discussing what we’ve been watching recently. Steven checked out Jack Thorne’s National Treasure on his brand new television, and Alex is still working through Sherlock and Luther – but this week it’s Kelly who’s watched the most TV, sharing her thoughts on crime dramas Better and The Gold, medical drama Grey’s Anatomy, and Netflix documentary The Swimmers. Kelly also watched The Masked Singer finale, which – no spoilers – she was right about when she predicted who Rhino was in an earlier episode.

Next, Alex takes a closer look at You & Me, a new drama arriving on ITVX this Thursday. It’s a romance with the structure of a thriller, charting a relationship across two timelines, either side of a tragedy that divides the characters’ lives into Then and Now. The question is, though, does that structure accentuate the drama or obscure it? Is You & Me poignant and moving, or contrived and superficial?

Steven takes us back to the future and revisits Years and Years, Russell T Davies’ 2019 dystopian drama now available on Disney+. Does the series feel prescient, or is it a little bit dated now? Is it something you could watch in one sitting, or is it too intense for that? And has Davies ever assembled a better ensemble cast than this?

Finally, we’re joined by special guest Susanna Sealy, NationalWorld’s sports writer and resident Formula 1 expert. Susanna has seen the new series of Drive to Survive – arriving on Netflix on Friday – and breaks down what works and what doesn’t. How does it compare to Full Swing and Break Point? What does Netflix do that once created controversy at Sky Sport? And why did Max Verstappen leave – and why is he back?

Don’t forget to check back tomorrow for Steven’s Weekend Watch Mini-Babble, previewing all the best TV to watch over the next few days.

Listen to Screen Babble #13 here…

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