Negotiations: notes on Minx, Ipcress File and Inside Man

As the year starts to wind down, spotlighting three series that brightened my 2022.

Minx has flown under the radar; it’s a comedy about a woman determined not to fly under the radar, so there’s some sort of poetic injustice to that. I heard very few people discussing it while it was airing, and when it was ultimately picked up for a second season by HBO Max, there was hardly a murmur. And now that HBO Max is being absorbed into Discovery Plus, and a lot of its scripted shows — even ones that have been renewed — may fall by the wayside, I still don’t hear anyone talking about it, or fretting about its future. But it’s the best new comedy I saw in 2022: not just a vivid evocation of life in America in the early ‘70s, but a resolutely apt analogy for life in America in 2022.

Rating Richard Armitage

I discovered Richard Armitage alongside millions of other TV viewers, only ten years later. That sounds like an oxymoron, so let me explain. North & South, the miniseries that made Armitage a star, aired on BBC in 2004 and was released on DVD a year later — but I didn’t come across it until 2014. Nevertheless, it was my introduction to Armitage, and just like audiences a decade earlier, I was transfixed; I proceeded to seek out as many of his performances as I could. I’m not one to let an actor dictate my TV viewing — I tend to choose properties based on the creator and/or the premise — but Armitage is one of a handful of artists whom I determinedly follow from show to show. (Others include James Norton, Nicola Walker, Ben Whishaw and Mireille Enos.) I make a point of researching what they’re up to next, and I make a point of tuning in. I trust them to choose smart properties, and I look forward to seeing what they'll do with them.