Wayward, The Savant, Guinness, and Romesh Ranganathan

Hannah Fernando: 00:00:00

Foreign hello and welcome to Binge Watch, the podcast, where we take a look at the hottest new TV and film releases on streaming television platforms. I'm Hannah Fernando, the group editor of Woman and Woman and Home magazine.

Ian MacEwan: 00:00:16

th September: 2025

Hannah Fernando: 00:00:49

And we'll also be checking out Ramesh Can't Knock the Hustle on NOW tv and Meeting the Savant, played by Jessica Chastain on Apple tv. But first, Ian, what is in the news, please?

Ian MacEwan: 00:01:01

Sean Bean will appear as the Sheriff of Nottingham in a new series about Robin Hood on mgm. What else is in the news?

Hannah Fernando: 00:01:10

Hannah and Robin Rylan will yet again be heading off on their travels, this time to Greece on a new BBC travelogue. That's not the one we talked about yesterday last week, was it?

Ian MacEwan: 00:01:20

No, that was India. But yes, that's a good job, isn't it? I'd love to be doing it.

Hannah Fernando: 00:01:25

We need a new career.

Ian MacEwan: 00:01:27

One day Travelogue podcast. That's the future. But I digress. Decent selection this week.

We've got a period drama, a couple of modern dramas and oh, another travelogue, would you believe it? So we're going to start on the Netflix with a new series called Wayward. And here's a clip.

Hannah Fernando: 00:01:52

In the hills and valleys, there is a place where your teenager can grow and thrive. My name is Evelyn Wade. I'm the lead youth counselor here at Tall Pines Academy.

We use groundbreaking therapeutic techniques to solve the problem of adolescence.

Ian MacEwan: 00:02:15

So this is written by and stars Canadian comedian and actor Mae Martin, who I first became aware of when they were on Taskmaster. So yes, quite a talent as a previous series in which they played opposite Charlotte Richie won a bafta.

This to some extent is inspired by their childhood when May dropped out of school and experimented with drink and drugs and got kicked out of the family home.

It's all about a so called therapy school called the Lone Pines Academy, which is headed by this woman called Evelyn, played by the brilliant Toni Collette. And she's pretty disturbing in this.

So yeah, this is a place where you frustrated parents can send their troubled teens and they literally come in a van go into your kid's bedroom, grab them by force and just take them away.

So yes, it's in the Vermont town of Lone Pines and May Martin plays Alex, who is a cop from Detroit who has moved there with his pregnant wife played by true detectives Sarah Gaydon. His wife's called Lauren and she grew up there. Okay.

And first day on the job with the local police force, she comes across this student from the academy running barefoot through the woods, having escaped and just saying, don't send me back, don't send me back. Yeah.

So meanwhile in Toronto, this student called Abby, played by Sydney Topliff, she's hanging out with Layla, played by Alvia Alan Lind, who who the parents think is a bad influence. Okay. And after one escapades too many. Yes. She is taken away. Abby is taken from her bedroom in the night and packed off into van. Off to this. Yeah.

Life changing regime. So yeah, I, I really liked episode one of this. I thought it was very interesting. Yeah.

Martin, you might have seen her in the comedy Feel Good which she also wrote and she, she co starred with Ghosts actor Charlotte Richie. So yeah, bit of a different role for Toni Collette who is just endlessly versatile, isn't she? She's great in this.

And I, Yeah, just the idea of this really, you know, tough love school where God knows what's going on behind closed doors but it doesn't sound good. Is. Yeah, that's interesting. And also the fact that the cop's wife did go to the academy back in the day, so that adds a little bit extra to the mix.

So yeah, I thought it was very good. What did you think, Hannah?

Hannah Fernando: 00:05:16

It's the stuff of nightmares is what this is. It really, really is. Do you know what's absolutely fascinating?

I've loved what I've seen so far just simply because it's horrifying and captivating in equal measure really.

The, the idea that anyone could be forcibly taken in the middle of the night and taken to an academy to be sorted out is just kind of disturbing, I'm sure you'd agree anyway. But also the fact that there's no kind of measuring of this, oh, you know, one overdose too many or they bad influence on their sister.

In this instance, they must go, you know, midd of the night, off they go when they're asleep and they can't put up a fight. And then of course, as you quite rightly said, what goes on behind closed doors, what really happened in that scenario.

And then of course when you see Ryan running through barefoot begging not to be taken back. You can only wonder what might be going on and what's happening. And if there's any kind of level of brutality, it's.

Sadly, it's something that probably, well, it has happened in years gone by, hasn't it? And it's. And it's very much a cult type feel about this. And it's.

I think that's probably why it's as fascinating as it is, because it sort of is based on a reality of sorts. I really like what I've seen so far. And we'll keep watching.

Ian MacEwan: 00:06:37

Yes. And I think there was a documentary series about a school like this and probably on Netflix.

And for me, it brought back many happy memories of boarding school. Not. Not really. Listeners, we move across to Netflix for our next offering. It's an eagerly anticipated period drama called House of Guinness.

And here's a clip.

Hannah Fernando: 00:07:05

I, Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness, hereby give all my brewery concerns to my two.

Ian MacEwan: 00:07:09

Sons, Edward and Arthur, jointly and equally.

Hannah Fernando: 00:07:12

We expected Sunday morning.

Ian MacEwan: 00:07:14

I feel it wise not to burden Benjamin and Anne with the temptations that come with.

Hannah Fernando: 00:07:18

For.

Ian MacEwan: 00:07:26

The death of your father has served to poke a stick in a hornet's nest.

Hannah Fernando: 00:07:31

Yes, the House of Guinness. This absolutely is what Netflix is all about. This is an absolutely brilliant drama. It's.

There's no expense spared with this, particularly the Guinness brewery, which is an incredible. I suppose they put it together as a set, but it's an absolutely amazing set.

And this is set in the: 1800

This is exactly where it centers.

And you start the drama when the owner, the person that set up so Benjamin Guinness senior, the guy that can be credited for the success of that brewery, which is sort of, we all know it, don't we? Even now dies and you see the reading of the will. And what I like about this so much is, yes, the situation is amazing. Yes, the script is amazing.

Yes, the acting's amazing. Like, there's not, in my opinion, there's not a lot wrong with this.

But what I really liked and what you don't always get in sort of period dramas like this is things that you can absolutely relate to in modern day.

And of course in this, you absolutely can, because this is about the carving up of a will where there are four children and only two of them are left. Everything and how that pans out. Because, of course, there's Bitterness, there's upset, there's reason.

I'm sure that he saw good reason to do this, but then you see the huge fallout. And this is a company that employed an awful lot of local people.

So as soon as they saw weakness, there was kind of, there was fighting back at this family. There was always.

There's also a situation where one of the sons, he's, he's gay, he gets followed by the police and then you see someone being beaten up. Because of course at this time it wasn't, it wasn't legal. And so that's really upsetting as well. So there are lots of.

So although this tells a story that's very brilliant and you'll learn lots from it at the same time, I really love the fact that it relates absolutely to modern day life. Of course this is happening all the time where families are red. Wills, contest wills, you know, some children.

It's kind of in my mind, I find it really hard to imagine ever loving one child more than another child or wanting one child to have more than the other. You're brought up as equals and so this really resonates, I think. Yeah. Really, really enjoyed what I've seen. What did you think?

Ian MacEwan: 00:10:25

How good is Stephen Knight?

Hannah Fernando: 00:10:28

So good.

Ian MacEwan: 00:10:29

Yeah. I mean, obviously he's best known for Peaky Blinders but he's done lots of other stuff including this town about the Scar band. Yeah.

This has got a lot of the sort of great elements from Peaky Blinders. So yeah, it's kind of, there's an industrial backdrop if you like, in terms of the brewery. The music is great.

As with Peaky Blinders they use some modern music from people like Kneecap, which works incredibly well. Great cast. So we've got Anthony Boyle is playing Arthur Guinness.

Probably the, the most famous, I guess Louis Partridge from Enola Holmes plays Edwards. You've got James Norton. Yes. As Sean Rafferty and you've also got Dover Kerwin.

So yeah, you've also got kind of Irish Republicanism is part of the backdrop because the Fenian so called Fenians look at Guinness, the Guinness family as people who've kind of cozied up to the Brits really. So yeah, there's, there's a succession style family drama. You've got interesting historical backdrop. It all looks amazing.

And you've got James Norton striding around with a top hat on with kind of, you know, and all these great shots of the brewing process. It's just, you know, you know, if Steven Knight is, is behind it, it's going to be Quality, and it absolutely is.

We move across to Apple TV plus for our another new drama series called the Savant. And here's a clip. What are you doing there? All day, all night, Sometimes.

Hannah Fernando: 00:12:21

I track people who are planning the tech. My job is pretending to think like them to stop those people from doing really bad things.

Ian MacEwan: 00:12:30

FBI, on your knees.

Hannah Fernando: 00:12:33

That's why we call her the Savant.

Ian MacEwan: 00:12:36

So being Apple, of course, you get two episodes up front and then they drop weekly. Okay. And this stars Oscar winner Jessica Chastain. And she plays Jody Goodwin, who is a Cincinnati mum. Her husband Charlie is an army medicine.

They've got two kids, but little do they know that mum's job that she does in her kind of home office in the backyard is tracking and interacting with people online who may pose some kind of terror threat. Okay, so kind of going into these far right chat rooms using an alias. Yeah, so it's a very interesting subject. I don't know why it.

I didn't particularly get drawn in. I think I was a bit more interested in the domestic drama.

So, I mean, she's obviously quite tightly wound because all of this stuff is going on and then she's watching one of her kids playing a football match and the kid gets fouled and she just really loses it with the kid who did it. But, yeah, I mean, Chastain, she's just quality, isn't she? She won an Oscar for the eyes of Tammy Faye.

And, yeah, her online avatar is called Fleshy mf. Make of that what you will. So, yeah, it's. It's. I think it's hugely topical.

You know, the time is right for stuff like this, and she's great in the lead, so, yeah, I thought it was well done. What did you think, Hannah? Did this sort of ring alarm bells in terms of, like, online stuff and social media and so on?

Hannah Fernando: 00:14:30

Yeah, it really did, actually. The whole. The whole online thing is so scary.

As a parent of teens, actually children, I should say children, because we know, we see children want, you know, being pushed around in buggies with phones in their hands. They're, as I described, one click away from hell at any one time.

Particularly if you're on something, you know, where they have videos to, you know, suggested videos, because you look at one thing and two clicks and you're into something else. And this is the problem.

And also children who aren't mature enough to understand what a friend is or someone, you know, it might not be who they say they are because, of course, they're, you know, they're innocent they're naive at that age and their brain's not mature enough to be able to deal with it. So it absolutely did.

But also it really touches on extremism and that sort of scary part of society that we don't subscribe to, which is, you know, I see myself as very sort of central in everything that I approach because I like that sort of that debate, that conversation and being able to understand different people's views, that kind of extremist level is quite, is scary too, isn't it? And in a society that we live in now, probably it, we're even more aware of it. So again, I think this really resonates well.

Ian MacEwan: 00:15:49

Yes, Hannah. We were hoping to preview the ITV series the Hack, all about the News of the World phone hacking scandal and starring Toby Jones and David Tennant.

But alas, we didn't get any screeners, did we? We're going to move over to NOW TV for our next offering, which is called Romesh Can't Knock the Hustle. And here's a clip.

Hannah Fernando: 00:16:19

Ramesh Ranganathan crafted his Hustle tour to encapsulate the human experience. But he fact checked none of it.

Ian MacEwan: 00:16:27

How you doing, Ramesh? I'm not gonna lie, feels unusual.

Hannah Fernando: 00:16:30

Ramesh will now travel the world. Oh my God. Doing the research he should have done a lot earlier.

Ian MacEwan: 00:16:36

This is like an anxiety drink.

Hannah Fernando: 00:16:41

This is Can't Knock the Hustle. Yes. So this is a four part series. You know what, Ramesh Ranganathan has really grown on me over the years.

I remember him starting in years gone by and me thinking, gosh, I'm not sure about this guy at all.

But somehow he's just sort of become part of our everyday and he's become one of those comedians that's so kind of mainstream and doing programs like this epitomizes that, doesn't it? So this is all based on his, his.

I didn't actually see him, but he was, he went to the O2 and he did a stand up special called Hustle and it was all about him exploring his theories on life and work and self improvement. And this is him going and trying to put that all to the test, I suppose. And this is intriguing. I've talked a lot about how this kind of resonates.

This is intriguing because this is all about really as a society, how obsessed we are with working. You know, they often say in Britain we've got it wrong, don't we? We're working to be able to. Is it working to live rather than living to work?

We don't get it right here. We're just so, we're so busy. We're, we kind of, we grade ourselves on how, on our successes and how well we do.

And I think that's deep rooted from the sort of the minute we're born really, isn't it? And our education and what have you. So this really kind of questions absolutely all of that.

So you see him journeying across India, South Korea, Canada, America. One of the ones I think that struck him the most and struck me was he meets this monk in India. The monk gets him to burn his trainers.

Now anyone knows, Romesh knows, he loves his trainers, he has lots of trainers and he burns them. And it's part of an exercise to try and detach himself from material things.

And I often think this, we went to Sri Lanka last year and it made me realize how little we all need and yet how much we all have. And I think that's what's really interesting about this because of course Ramesh brings the fun side to this.

He brings the fun side to quite, and actually quite a serious topic, isn't it? Are we all working too hard? You know, are we trying to self improve and improve and improve and improve? What is success? Is that actually happiness?

So I think he, I don't know, I, I thought this worked really well because as you say, loads of travelogues at the moment, but this one's slightly different. I think it makes you question everything.

Ian MacEwan: 00:19:13

Well, we've got to that time, Hannah, where we find out what the hell you've been binge watching this week.

Hannah Fernando: 00:19:19

Well, of course, Strictly, it was the opening night and of course I was watching that. This, doesn't this tell you we're in the run.

Run up, run down, whichever way you want to look to Christmas now the nights are drawing in I'm getting up in the dark. Strictly is upon us to bring the the glitter to a Saturday night.

Ian MacEwan: 00:19:39

And I watched something altogether less uplifting on itvx. It's a superb documentary all about the VIP lane PPE contracts that were awarded by the government during lockdown. And it will make you very angry.

Well, we just got time to look ahead to the next week's offerings. So what is on the binge watch menu, Hannah?

Hannah Fernando: 00:20:06

Alan Partridge is back. Oh yes, he's back. It's got Walnuts is back on a beam and he's tackling Britain's mental health.

Ian MacEwan: 00:20:15

And Matthew McConaughey gets on board the lost bus in a new fact based drama on Apple tv. Plus so we look forward to those and much, much more. But in the meantime, dear listeners, keep.

Hannah Fernando: 00:20:33

Watching.

Ian MacEwan: 00:20:35

After the recording of this podcast, Apple TV announced that it is postponing the release of the savant. And as soon as we hear more, we'll let you know.