Screen Babble podcast: Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story, The Royle Family, and Polite Society – episode 24

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. Kelly has finished watching police drama Blue Lights and started watching Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney’s sitcom Catastrophe, while Steven has seen John Wick: Chapter 4 (finally working out the context for the scenes he watched being filmed in Paris a few years previously). Alex, much-missed by all last week, has started watching sci-fi drama Mrs. Davis and the popular-ish sitcom The Mindy Project, and continued with Barry and Succession. He also recently saw Polite Society, which he’d very much recommend. 

For our closer look this week, Alex reviews Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story. Netflix’s new prequel/spin-off charts the early love story between Queen Charlotte and King George – but how does it compare to either series of Bridgerton that we’ve seen so far? Has Bridgerton been getting more restrained since the first series? And will this spinoff be the biggest royal event of the month? 

Steven, meanwhile, has another Coronation-themed choice: The Royle Family. (Get it?) How does it compare to other late 90s/early 2000s comedy? Where can you see its influence on the shows that came after it? And which royal and/or Royle family has contributed more to society? 

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 #24 here…

Where can we watch this week’s shows?

• Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story is streaming on Netflix from Thursday 4 May
• The Royle Family is available now on Britbox
• Succession and Barry are available on Sky Atlantic and NOW TV
• Mrs Davis is available on Peacock in the US, but doesn’t yet have a UK release date
• The Mindy Project is currently available on Amazon Freevee
• Blue Lights is available now on BBC iPlayer
• Catastrophe is available on Channel 4 online (the new name for All4)
• John Wick: Chapter 4 is in cinemas now
• Polite Society is in cinemas now (and you should really go and watch it)

Screen Babble: how to follow the show

• Screen Babble is available to download on all podcast platforms, including Apple and Spotify
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• 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]