Ben Carter

Sonny Cooke keeps being nice to people who would quite like him to stop. Played by Sam Nivola in Hulu's Phony, he is attentive, helpful, friendly across school social groups, and faintly exhausting. When classmates challenge his relentless pleasantness, the comedy comes from the distance between his intentions and their reception. Nivola makes the friendliness sincere enough that the irritation stings without making the other teenagers seem monstrous. Sonny has learned how to offer people attention. He has rather less experience of people declining it.

A tale of two halves, and two seasons: A statistical overview of why Philippe Clement’s Canaries have endured early Championship struggles

Chunkz has the right response to Romesh Ranganathan's put-downs: send something back. Their exchanges give Would You Rather: Decide to Survive a welcome little contest inside the advertised one. Ranganathan can deliver an insult with the air of a man reading out a parking restriction, but a quick reply prevents him from owning the conversation. That resistance matters. Prime Video has assembled ten British online personalities for six episodes of communal inconvenience, and the host needs people who can interrupt his authority. Otherwise, he would be supervising a school trip with unusually strong engagement figures.

Steven Jr. has decided to concentrate on the family business, which would sound reassuring if he weren't collecting a new romantic interest from the airport on the day his brothers need to discuss their father's prison sentence. The third season of The McBee Dynasty gives his declaration of responsibility just enough room to become evidence against him. McBee Farm & Cattle needs leadership. Steven needs the house cleaned before Allie Eklund arrives. Delegation begins at home.

“If you want the dress, job for it,” advises Ellie White, with the confidence of someone who has successfully removed thought from the motivational speaking business. The podcasters in Ellie & Natasia dispense this sort of verbal rubble into their microphones while their headgear grows increasingly elaborate. The conversation barely develops; the costume department supplies the escalation. It is a useful division of labor for a podcast whose hosts have so little to contribute.

Brooklyn McCrystal joins Tinder looking for a lead, finds the profile her missing friend had shown her, and gets a phone number for investigators. Sydney Loofe, 24, has disappeared after a second date with a woman calling herself Audrey. McCrystal's intervention gives the search something usable, and the detective discussing it has to acknowledge both its value and its danger. His gratitude comes with a professional obligation to discourage a repeat. The tension needs little embellishment: McCrystal is trying to reach someone the police urgently need to find.

While Ollie and Jess are enjoying a day in Blackpool, their parents are having sex in a GP surgery. Danny Brocklehurst's six-part ITV drama Adultery places these excursions alongside each other, giving two generations a temporary release from ordinary life. Ollie's mother, Beth, and Jess's father, Tom, are attempting to recover something their children have barely begun to experience. The parallel gives the affair an immediate emotional reference point. It also leaves the teenagers unwittingly supplying the romantic ideal their parents are busy endangering.

The curtain at Sundersheim's Pumpkin Festival opens on a spectacle nobody ordered: mayor Katarina Vinson's body, Wanda standing beside her, and blood supplying an exceptionally unhelpful explanation. The staging does several jobs at once. It interrupts the Klatts' tentative return to ordinary life, puts their daughter in police custody, and gives an entire town the same incriminating image. Where's Wanda? Season 2 understands the usefulness of an audience within the audience. Before Wanda can explain herself, her neighbors have effectively attended the prosecution's opening presentation.

The ten-minute delivery guarantee in Minimum Wage runs into a practical obstacle: the employee making the delivery is dressed as a pizza. The costume interferes with his steering, and the trip ends in a lake. There is a pleasing chain of stupidity here.

Agnes van Rhijn has a president coming to dinner and a sister who controls the money. The second arrangement considerably complicates the first. Hosting Grover Cleveland promises to restore Agnes's social standing after her son Oscar's financial disaster, provided Ada will fund the restoration.