Breaking Bad
This is a rite of passage when it comes to box sets. I don’t like blood or violence, so at times I’m only part-watching behind a cushion, but nevertheless found it totally addictive. How the characters develop is brilliant and Walter brings a whole new dimension to meeting the kids' chemistry teacher next term.
Narcos
Love, love, love this. It takes a few episodes to get into (and who wants to read Spanish subtitles anyway?), but then you’re hooked, consumed into 1980s Colombia and everything to do with Pablo Escobar. A truly fascinating story and incredible scriptwriting that makes you love the baddies. In our household, we now have a historical period in time labelled LAN (life after Narcos), where no other box set will do.
Ozark
Director and lead actor Jason Bateman is fantastic. The story sucks you in from episode one: how the misdemeanour of one family member can affect and infect the whole family group. Also, a good beginner's guide to money-laundering, with a casino thrown in too. The watch-out is the cinematography, which makes everything look dark blue. At first I thought it was our TV or that the Ozarks always gets dark by lunchtime. Either way, watch with the lights out in order to see the screen and add to the suspense.
Fleabag
Watching box sets raises the question: what’s the rule of watching without your partner? Is there such a concept as box-set cheating? Fleabag was my first solo box set; after one episode, I was all in, and it has become a solo guilty pleasure I’ve yet to admit to. It’s not just the refreshing and hilarious approach of Phoebe Waller-Bridge talking to camera but, along with the rest of the nation, I totally fancy Andrew Scott’s character, the hot priest – gay or not.
Jean-Paul Belmondo
Off brief, but why only commit to a box set – why not a genre? You then don’t have to calculate how many hours, days, weeks or months it takes to consume a box set; you can just go with the flow and dip in and out. The pressure of choosing a box set at times is another chore; go retro and ditch the box sets for a season. I’m currently working my way through the films of Jean-Paul Belmondo.
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