Is there any actor working onscreen these days with sadder eyes than Michael Socha's?
The 'This is England' and 'Toxic Town' actor is brilliantly deployed as a down on his luck, casino employee in Tony Schumacher's latest Liverpudlian drama 'The Cage' and he squeezes every bit of sympathy from us as his character walks into one disastrous decision after another.
Socha's Matty is a decent soul with some kind of magnetic pull towards trouble - a drug addict with a gambling addiction who is stealing from his employer who also happens to have links to organised crime.
The thing is Matty's not the only employee who's robbing the casino.
Sheridan Smith's struggling mother of two, Leanne is doing it too as she tries to keep her family together.
And when she realises Matty's thieving too, they become co-conspirators.
The problem, though, is Barry Sloane's thug Gary is laundering drugs money through the casino and is looking at the takings.
It doesn't take long for him to realise that someone on the payroll is robbing from him.
Matty is mixed up too with Louis Emerick's low level drug dealer Paul who gets him to mind a holdall full of cocaine.
When Marty's teenage daughter, Freya Jones' Emily stumbles upon the holdall, she decides to get rid of it.
That raises the spectre of retribution from another set of criminals.
Leanne, meanwhile, has a feckless ex who robs her of the money she's been skimming.
This meana she and Matty have to up the stakes in terms of what they steal.
Leanne's teenage son, Anton Bibby's Thomas is flirting with criminality roo - falling foul of a gang of youths while along with her sister, Abby Mavers' Kelly, she's trying to avoid losing their council home and their nanna, played by Eileen O'Brien, going into a care home.
Gary is circling Leanne too, hoping to rekindle a relationship from their youth while his mum, Geraldine James' Nancy also takes an interest in the earnings from a casino she and her husband once established.
Her son's criminal activities attract the interest of Sophie Mensah's angry cop Ning who is looking for somebody inside the casino to help her expose his money laundering.
Gary has Shaun Mason's low level crim Alan on a state of alert as well.
Alan lives in fear about the repercussions for him of not finding who's stealing from Gary and the casino.
Just like Schumacher's superb Liverpudlian cop drama 'The Responder,' 'The Cage' focuses on characters gasping for air as they are sucked into a swamp of crime, betrayal and basic survival.
Feeling very much like a companion piece to the cop show, 'The Cage'is a taut, emotionally gruelling affair.
Just like 'The Responder,' it's a brilliantly executed piece of television with a top notch cast delivering superbly written dialogue.
Anchoring the show, Socha and Smith are fantastic as essentially good people doing questionable things for the best of intentions.
We know from previous TV roles how compelling Smith and Socha can be but they turn in career best performances as people who are also way over the heads.
They are so compelling, it's hard not to imagine them contending for BAFTA acting awards next year.
But as good as they both are, the fact is there isn't one dud performance in the whole show.
Sloane is magnificent as the principal villain of the piece who is more vulnerable than he initially seems.
Mason impresses as Gary's troubled henchman, while Mensah is terrific as a driven cop with a bit of a ruthless streak.
James, Bibby, Jones, Mavers, O'Brien, Emerick and his fellow 'Brookside' veteran Sue Jenkins, who plays Matty's elderly mum all contribute.
In the one episode where he appears, Ian Puleston-Davies brings menace to the role of Vincent, an underworld figure.
Even Mona Goodwin and Julia Papp as Matty's ex partner, Trace and Irina, a Polish casino worker catch your eye as they manage to squeeze every morsel of truth out of essentially fringe roles.
Directed with vigour and urgency by Al Mackey, the five episodes are impressively shot by cinematographer Arni Filippusson and Liam Iandolli whose work is intelligently stitched together by editors Kim Gaster and Jonathan Stenton.
But the solid foundation is Schumacher's compelling writing which establishes him as the heir apparent to another great Scouse TV dramatist Jimmy McGovern.
Indeed, if he manages to come up with another gripping Merseyside show about people trying to get by on the bottom rung of society, Schumacher could be building the most impressive portrait of a city on the brink since David Simon's 'The Wire'.
('The Cage' was broadcast on BBC1 between April 26-May 18, 2026 with all episodes made available for streaming on the iPlayer)
Last year Tina Fey, Lang Fisher and Tracey Wigfield gave us a delightful reboot of long forgotten Alan Alda gem.
Season One of Netflix's 'The Four Seasons' saw Fey share the screen with Steve Carrell, Colman Domingo, Will Forte, Kerri Kenney Silver, Marco Calvani and Erika Henningsen in a smart, acutely observed adaptation of Alda's acclaimed 1981 hit movie of the same name.
Alda had a cameo and does so again in the second season of the show which is built around the four concerti of composer Antonio Vivaldi.
Following the ups and downs of three sets of middle aged couples who gather in Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter, it had a major twist towards the end which I am now going to have to reference.
(SPOILER ALERT!!)
So if you haven't watched Season One, please stop reading this now and maybe return when you have?
After the shocking loss of Carrell's hedge fund manager Nick in a car crash, the group is trying to adjust to life without him.
Nick's ex-wife, Kenney Silver's Anne has astounded other friends by casting aside her anger over his infidelity and supporting his much younger, dental hygienist girlfriend, Henningsen's Ginny through her pregnancy.
Gathering at a hotel lodge in Spring to scatter Nick's ashes in a nearby mountain, it is clear Forte's schoolteacher Jack is also really missing his friend.
Jack channels his sense of loss into organising a memorable hike that will culminate in his wife Fey's Kate, Domingo's architect Danny, his Italian husband, Calvani's Claude, Anne and Ginny dispersing the ashes at a stunning mountain top.
Needless to say, the plan goes awry with Danny forgetting the ashes and the group ends up getting holed up in the lodge because of a security lockdown as the local police try to track down a shooter.
It emerges that Danny and Claude are mulling over whether to adopt a child of their own, while Kate worries about how Jack is processing the loss of Nick and whether it is impacting their marriage.
Subsequent episodes see the six of them spend a summer vacation at a beach resort on the Jersey Shore where Jack makes a friend, Steven Pasquale's Mark Brett who the group decides might also be a good person for Anne to date.
Anne subsequently invites all of them to a Thanksgiving with her and Nick's daughter, Julia Lester's Lila and a host of other guests.
However Jack's nose is seriously put out of joint when the guests fail to follow the traditions of previous Thanksgiving gatherings that the gang had when Nick was alive.
Winter sees the group assembling for Christmas in Claude's hometown in Italy, where strains in the various relationships are coming to the fore and where the locals think Anne looks like a traditional folk figure who is basically an old lady.
With each season getting two episodes each, Carrell gets to appear as Nick in a full flashback episode.
And while there's no questioning the continued chemistry of Fey, Domingo, Forte, Kenney Silver, Calvani and Henningsen, the Thanksgiving episode serves as a reminder of how much Carrell's philandering charmer is missed.
Fey, Fisher, Wigfield and a team of writers comprising of Vali Chandrasekaran, Lisa Muse Bryant, Matt Whitaker, Josh Siegal, Dylan Morgan and John Riggi and the cast work hard for their gags.
But that's part of the problem.
The writers almost seem to be making too much of an effort to land their jokes, despite the sterling efforts of Domingo, Fey, Winfield, Fisher and their fellow directors Jeff Richmond, Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman to replicate the same dynamics that made the first season a joy to watch.
It's not that Season Two is a massive disappointment.
It's very watchable and it's often delightful and wistfully amusing.
However you can't help but feel throughout that it's just not as funny and it is never going to quite hit the heights of the inaugural season.
Among the cast, Domingo and Kenney Silver get to shine the most, with Forte, Fey, Henningsen and Calvani having their occasional moments of glory.
Carrell's single episode appearance is as good as you'd expect.
Pasquale and Lester fit comfortably inti the cast, while Vernee Watson as Danny's ageing mum Beverly and Gail Everett-Smith as his aunt Pam almost steal the final episode.
The introduction of a new character played by a very well known Scottish actor at the end of the run opens up new possibilities for a third season.
But the question begs whether Fey, Fisher and Wigfield get the show closer to what they achieved in 2025?
Or will 'The Four Seasons' go into steep decline and ultimately disappoint?
Here's hoping that's not the case.
(Season Two of 'The Four Seasons' was made available on Netflix for streaming on May 28, 2026)
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