Screen Babble podcast: The Diplomat, Freaks and Geeks, The Hunt for Raoul Moat, and Barry - episode 22

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. 

As ever, we begin by discussing what we’ve been watching recently. Steven has recently been to an anniversary screening of Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colours trilogy (his favourite was Red), while Alex has started watching the latest series of Barry. Kelly, once again, has watched more TV than both of us put together, and tells us what she thought of The Hunt for Raoul Moat, WACO: American Apocalypse, and Rise and Fall. Alex and Kelly also discuss the most recent episode of Succession, and try to answer whether that name on that piece of paper was crossed out or underlined.

Next, Alex takes a closer look at The Diplomat, a new political thriller landing on Netflix on Thursday 13 April. The series stars Keri Russell as Kate Wyler, a career civil servant used to behind the scenes work suddenly asked to take on a much more high-profile role as ambassador to London after an unexplained attack. It’s one of Alex’s favourite Netflix series of the year so far, and comes heavily recommended this week.

Finally, Steven brings us back to the future with his retrospective on Freaks and Geeks. It stars more-or-less every major comic actor of the next fifteen years, but ended up cancelled by the end of its first series – what happened? Is it still worth watching? 

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 #22 here…

Where can we watch this week’s shows?

• The Hunt for Raoul Moat is available to stream on ITVX
• The Diplomat is available to stream on Netflix (and Alibi’s The Diplomat is available to stream on UKTV)
• Freaks and Geeks is available to stream online on Amazon Prime Video and ITVX
• Succession and Barry are available on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV
• Yellowjackets and Wolf Pack are available on Paramount+
• Ted Lasso is available on Apple TV+
• Rise and Fall is available on Channel 4 (the new name of All4, confusingly)

Screen Babble: how to follow the show

• Screen Babble is available to download on all podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify
• You can join the conversation on our Screen Babble Facebook group
• If you’ve enjoyed the show or found it useful, we’d love you to give us a rating and review, as it helps us to reach more listeners.
• You can also follow our TV coverage on Twitter @NationalWorldTV - as well as @morelandwriter and @steven_jross and @kelc100
• Do you have a TV question you’d like the Screen Babble team to answer on a future episode, or a recommendation of your own? Send it to [email protected] or [email protected]