Wednesday's best TV: The Letdown and Britain’s Fat Fight with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall

Baby love: The Letdown’s Audrey (Alison Bell) with her bundle of joy

I have a mildly amusing image of a dressing gown-clad Duchess of Cambridge padding downstairs in the middle of a sleepless night with the new baby, sinking into one of her fancy sofas and flicking on Netflix. I realise that this idea is likely to be woefully inaccurate — Kate is sure to have an army of maternity nurses to soothe her little prince, and is clearly the kind of down-to-earth woman who watches telly in bed rather than in her sitting room — but humour me here.

Anyway, so here she is, logging on to the royal account, and up pops the latest recommendation from the savvy Netflix algorithm: The Letdown. Eesh. She’s in for an eye-opening 30 minutes.

For a rough idea of what is in store for the DoC, just five minutes into the first episode of this cult Australian comedy this stand-out line is uttered: “Remarkable healing power, the anus. How’s the fissure – any further tearing?”

The Letdown is about the, er, magic of childbirth and the, um, beauty that is raising a baby. But unless you are a parent, forget everything you thought you knew about child-rearing. Or, in fact, take everything you thought you knew and take it to the edge of the abyss and times it by the depths of hell.

Louis, the new Royal baby - in pictures

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There are no breezy five-hour Lindo Wing labours here. “Posterior. 36-hour delivery. Forceps, ventouse, fourth degree tear. And I’m that one in 200: the epidural pierced my spinal fluid,” recounts one new mum during a church hall parenting class like the least fun AA meeting you’ve ever seen on screen.

Our hero is Audrey (played by co-writer and co-creater Alison Bell — Australia’s answer to Sharon Horgan), who is less custom Jenny Packham and immaculate blow dry, and more Breton T-shirt, bed hair and permanently traumatised grimace. We meet her as she is woken from a nap by the local drug dealer tapping on her window. She’s parked on his turf, but baby Stevie is asleep in the back so, naturally, she offers to buy cocaine rather than risk waking her.

From here, the series covers every painful, scatological and judgemental parenting truth. There’s the mum raising her child gender-neutral (“we don’t believe in branding or defining his/her gender, we’ll wait for him/her to reveal his/her name”), a hands-off grandmother who would rather get laid than lend a hand, and an abortive attempt at a post-partum fumble. When Audrey’s partner scarpers for a boozy business trip (“I know I was mean to be babysitting. IT’S NOT BABYSITTING WHEN IT’S YOUR OWN CHILD”), she is left sobbing on a night bus.

Whether you see The Letdown as horror or hilarious is likely to depend on how near you are to the baby-making stage of life. Either way, it’s addictive viewing. Having spent a evening binge-watching the whole of the first series (available in its entirety now) I am still undecided as to whether it should be required watching for everyone even starting to consider coming off contraception, or whether this would spell the end of the human race. Although later epsiodes lack the pace of the first, the underlying warmth remains. The twilight zone between becoming a parent and actually being a parent is a stage of life rarely seen on screen, let alone discussed, so kudos to The Letdown for such a bracingly honest account.

Enjoy, your highness.

@lucyh_j

Pick of the day

Grey’s Anatomy - Sky Living, 9pm

A topical episode of the hospital drama, given the continuing controversy about the rights of “Dreamers” (undocumented immigrants who arrived in the US as children).

An agent from ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) turns up at Grey Sloan Memorial Hospital looking for Sam Bello (Jeanine Mason), a surgical intern who moved to the US from El Salvador when she was a year old.

Decisions: Sam Bello and DeLuca
ABC

Legally, she should be allowed to stay, but she knows of people in similar situations who have been deported, and her first thought is to run. Meredith (Ellen Pompeo) suggests to Sam that she could get married to DeLuca (Giacomo Gianniotti), though that might not be enough to cement her right to remain.

Other suggestions include taking on a new identity, faking her death, or driving to Canada. But if she flees the investigator, she will be classed as a criminal and further jeopardise her immigration status.

Meanwhile, the agent is chewing on indigestion tablets at an alarming rate, so Bailey suggest they run a few tests.

Screen time

Britain’s Fat Fight with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall - BBC One, 9pm

The River Cottage broadcaster likes a tussle. Previously he embarked on a fish fight. Here, he takes on obesity, the second-biggest cause of premature death in the UK (after smoking). The statistics are horrific.

Two-thirds of Britons are said to be overweight, so Fearnley-Whittingstall addresses the problem by challenging the people of Newcastle to lose 100,000lb in a year.

He demonstrates how bad habits start in childhood, asking why the manufacturers of breakfast cereals don’t carry traffic light warnings on their packets to show how much sugar is in their products. He also considers the ways in which shops tempt us into snacking by setting up a replica of a checkout in the street.

International Football Factories - London Live, 9pm

Not long now till it all kicks off in Russia — though with any luck without any kicking off — and in this trip onto the terraces Danny Dyer spends time with England fans overseas.

Back in March more than 100 people who had followed the national team to Amsterdam were arrested, which bodes well for the summer.

Keeping the peace: Danny Dyer
Dave Benett

Spooks - London Live, 10pm

A week is a long time in politics, although Ros would say it’s even longer in a political hostage situation, as she’s been stuck in a room patrolled by terrorists since last Wednesday. They haven’t even allowed the hostages to watch the royal baby news, the fiends.

In the conclusion of this tense two-part story the MI5 earwiggers are pre-occupied sussing out the true identity of the terrorists who have taken members of the Saudi royal family (and an undercover Ros) prisoner.

Adam (Rupert Penry-Jones) and his colleagues soon realise that they’re dealing with a groundskeeper’s and espionage agency’s worst nightmare — there’s a mole demolishing their handiwork. But who is it and what is their game?

Deep Dish

Stranger Things - Netflix

Series three of the retro teen drama has started filming, and a fourth series has been confirmed. S3 will have eight episodes, some of which have still to be written, but new cast members include Cary Elwes as Mayor Kline, a 1980s politician, and Jake Busey as Bruce, a journalist with the Hawkins Post with questionable morals. Busey is son of photographer Judy Lynn Helkenberg and actor Gary Busey. Another celebrity child is Maya Thurman.

Box Fresh

Archer - Netflix

This award-winning adult-animation about an American secret agent is an acquired taste, but it’s well written, cartoony on the eye and a masterpiece of ironic voiceover. The animation may be retro, but the taboo-scratching dialogue is fiercely contemporary. The series has attracted guests such as Jon Hamm and Bryan Cranston since its launch in 2009.

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