Glow season two: Will these tales of women in the ring have a vice-like grip on our attention?

Feel the pain: Awesome Kong (Kia Stevens) proves more than a match for Debbie (Betty Gilpin)
Beth Dubber/Netflix

Nothing can dent Ruth Wilder’s cheer.

As the second series of Glow (Netflix) unfolds, the actress-turned-wrestler is progressively belittled and betrayed but she remains defiantly upbeat in her role as self-appointed Head Girl of her raggle-taggle crew of women.

The programme is based on a real professional wrestling circuit in Eighties Los Angeles. Its name stands for Gorgeous Ladies of Wrestling — think big hair, bigger eyelashes and plenty of sparkly spandex. But not much actual wrestling, yet.

In series one, Ruth (Alison Brie) joined the circuit when she was unable to get work as an actress and, thanks to her new wrestling crew, she transformed into a confident woman who helped other women.

Glow: Now on Netflix
Erica Parise/Netflix

On the women theme, the show is executive-produced by Jenji Kohan (creator of Orange is the New Black) and created by OITNB’s executive producer Carly Mensch and Liz Flahive, who produced Nurse Jackie. The first series was nominated for 19 awards and earnied Brie a best actress nomination at the Golden Globes. High hopes, then.

Now the wrestlers are making a TV show, and the highlight of this episode is the energetic set-piece romp in a mall where they fight over dresses, shoes and at hairdressers. Is it girl-on-girl violence with a wider commentary on consumerism as they hope, or, as the cameraman says, is it way dumber than that? It’s left to the viewer to decide.

The troupe of wrestlers ticks all the diversity boxes. There’s the black one, the plus-sized one, the English one — played by singer Kate Nash — and the Mexican one. It’s a coup getting such a mixed cast but it would be better if they were given more to say. But this is just episode one, so hopefully it will develop. As it is, it’s just basic bitchy rivalries and digs about leotards.

Brie, the all-American one, is supposed to carry it. She was brilliant in Mad Men as the calculating Trudy Campbell.

Season two: Mariana Palka and Britney Young star
Erica Parise/Netflix

Here, as Ruth, she verges on the one-dimensional with her big sincere eyes and let’s-all-support-each-other schtick. She even wants to be friends with their sexist curmudgeon manager. She cheers him up with a miniature of vodka even though it’s only 9am and offers to be the Alma to his Hitch — Alfred Hitchcock’s wife, who was “invisible but indispensable, the woman behind the man, who is as important as the man and helps the man be great by getting the job done.” Right on, sister — well it’s a step for a sexist underside of Los Angeles in the Eighties.

There is romantic tension between Ruth and the cameraman, who deadpans that he is used to working with so many women because he used to shoot porn, and jealousy from working mother wrestler Debbie (who has previous beef with Ruth from season one when Ruth dallied with Debbie’s ex).

While Ruth is trying soft diplomacy, Debbie (Betty Gilpin) goes for the jugular, getting a lawyer to draw her up a contract for the TV show and giving the woman at the dry cleaner’s a lecture about why her female wrestling costume is as important as a male superhero’s cape, all while balancing her baby on one hip.

Lead: Kate Nash stars in Glow
Erica Parise/Netflix

There are zinging one-liners and a few moving moments, particularly when Debbie gives Ruth a lift — the best conversations often happen in cars, where you don’t have to make eye contact.

The music is good — there’s a rousing title sequence and later Billy Joel’s You Made it Right and Just like Honey by The Jesus and Mary Chain. But all that knowing earnestness gets in the way of it being properly engaging. You can feel them trying hard to tick boxes — and that comes at the expense of real fun.

London Live

Food Junkies - London Live, 7pm

An omission in the exploration of Austrian cuisine this evening came as a shock to us so we need to give you fair warning; there is no sampling of Viennetta, due to it not qualifying as an Austrian delicacy. Frankly they don’t know what they’re missing.

That let-down aside, there are plenty of other dishes for rapper Mr Shemzy to sample when he has a tour of the nation’s plates while never leaving the capital. Elsewhere, there’s a meat masterclass, which probably won’t have a vegan option.

Beautiful People - London Live, 10pm

As England football fans bask in the achievement of qualifying for the knockout stages at a World Cup with the minimum of fuss — and with a hatful of onion-bag fillers to boot — this week we meet the Ghost of England Football Past — when England failed to qualify for the 1994 World Cup.

That October of 1993 is the backdrop to Beautiful People, a film which proves football isn’t a matter of life and death; the war in Bosnia rages and those displaced by the conflict struggle to make a new life in London, this deft and even at times funny film knitting together several stories of survival and prejudice.

In Pictures | England World Cup defeats on ITV since 1998

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