Without ever getting embroiled in tabloid mayhem, even if he has confessed that he’d like to have a go on Strictly, David Morrissey has patiently turned himself into a quiet superstar.

The first series of James Graham’s Sherwood, shown in June 2022, introduced us to the Nottinghamshire town of Ashfield, a former mining community devastated by pit closures and the miserable aftermath of the 1984 miners’ strike. The town was torn by personal and political feuds, and the murder of former miner Gary Jackson was like throwing gasoline on long-smouldering embers.

It seems cricketer-turned-TV star Freddie Flintoff was lucky to survive his crash in a Morgan three-wheeled roadster in December 2022, and his recuperation has been painful and traumatic. As he explained in the opening episode of his second Field of Dreams series, the accident, which occurred during filming for Top Gear, is going to have long-term consequences. “I struggle with anxiety. I have nightmares, I have flashbacks. It’s been so hard to cope with.”

This heist-orientated black comedy could appeal to fans of the likes of Steven Soderbergh’s Ocean’s Eleven or the same director’s Out of Sight, without ever quite matching their zip and sparkle. But there are enough loud bangs and big bucks to provide an entertaining night in (presupposing there are suitable lubricants to hand), though you wouldn’t think so from some of the ferociously negative reviews it’s been receiving.

The music scene on the New Jersey shore in the late Sixties and early Seventies must have been a thing of wonder, a kind of Merseymania-on-Sea. Its mix of soul, R&B and primitive rock’n’roll fuelled countless groups, not least Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes and eventually Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band. Stevie Van Zandt was a key member of both of those outfits.

“Family-friendly fun” seems to have mutated over the years into elaborate films featuring high-octane animation, starry voicing and often mushy sentiments. In older children’s TV, gone are the days of actual humanoids mucking about with stun guns. Only Doctor Who has continued to deliver the teatime goods.  

Laura Lippman’s source novel for Apple’s new drama became a New York Times bestseller when it was published in 2019, and director Alma Har’el’s screen realisation has fashioned it into an absorbing dive into various social, racial and political aspects of mid-Sixties America.

Jenna Coleman seems to pick her roles with care, whether it’s Queen Victoria, the girlfriend of mass murderer Charles Sobhraj in The Serpent, or “occult detective” Johanna Constantine in The Sandman, but her antennae may have been a bit awry when she climbed aboard this one.

The Jetty is long on atmosphere and scenery but short on plausibility, and hammers away at its themes of abused women and abusive men so relentlessly that there’s not much room for anything else.

Any show making its debut in the midst of Wimbledon and the Euro-football, plus a spectacular performance by Lewis Hamilton at Silverstone, is likely to be gasping for air, and BBC Two’s ditzy new cop series didn’t so much charge out of the blocks as trip over them. Masterminded by Ben Schiffer, the eight-part series is based on Barbara Nadel’s Inspector Ikmen novels, which are much loved by their readers.

Showing over four consecutive nights, Night Caller is a stripped-down psychological thriller which steadily boils up to a conclusion which is both shocking and tragic.