Ben Carter

Blossom Vale responds to violent death with the mild alarm usually reserved for a cancelled jumble sale. A body appears beside a stepladder, Lily Petal reaches for a magnifying glass, and the local police seem content to let the new hairdresser handle the awkward questions. Nobody raises their voice. Tea remains available.

Soo-bin returns to Korea carrying flowers, an unfinished screenplay, and the confidence of a man who has never met a boundary he could not flirt through. Fifteen years after abandoning his high-school girlfriend, he appears at Yi-jae's workplace expecting their old rhythm to restart on command. She responds by hiding under a desk. Sensible woman.

A murder victim sitting underground with his severed head in his lap is a fairly decisive invitation to investigate. The trouble is that Nulla, the fictional opal-mining town at the centre of Treasure & Dirt, treats decapitation with the weary practicality other places reserve for a burst water pipe.

Maggie and Negan spend much of the Season 3 premiere trapped in a hole, which is convenient symbolism and awkward television. New showrunner Seth Hoffman inherits two seasons of unfinished wars, collapsing alliances, and character grudges, then attempts to dispose of most of them before his first hour has found its rhythm.

Alice Black has solved murders before, yet her new FBI position has her answering calls from people convinced their neighbors are spies. It is a professional demotion disguised as a probation period, the sort of bureaucratic joke nobody finds funny except the bureaucracy.

“We can talk about this later” may be the least efficient rejection in television history. Gordon is on one knee at Megan and Rumi's wedding, surrounded by friends, workmates, alcohol, and every other ingredient required for a public catastrophe. Ashley does not say yes. She also avoids saying no with enough force to stop the humiliation. The room understands. Gordon catches up eventually.

Fifteen minutes is enough time for Fightland to stage a heavyweight title bout, threaten a journalist, introduce a criminal dynasty, ruin a victory speech, kill a brother, and send its champion into a murderous rage. Some shows warm up. This one appears to regard warming up as cowardice.

Swearing before breakfast can be funny. Swearing before breakfast because somebody has decided it signals authenticity feels closer to a branding meeting with wine. Holly Willoughby Together (with Voy) arrives as a YouTube lifestyle series built around cooking, celebrity conversation, fashion, beauty and personal stories.

True crime has developed a strange habit. The facts arrive first through headlines, podcasts, YouTube explainers and social media threads, then television turns up months or years later asking us to be surprised all over again. The Idaho Murders: College Nightmare avoids that trap more often than expected. Directed by Skye Borgman and executive produced by Joe Berlinger, the three-part Netflix documentary knows the mystery has already been solved. Its real task is rebuilding the humanity that endless speculation wore away.

The third season's first cut is from catastrophe to “Six Months Earlier,” and the edit does half the season's interrogating before anyone speaks. The cold open gives Joe McNamara and her team a consequence. The rewind asks who created it, who failed to see it coming, and how many briefing rooms were involved.