This is TV Podcast Industries. It's the middle of summer, and I'm talking about what I'm watching while we're not podcasting. Welcome back, fellow TV watchers. It's been a very, very hot summer in Ireland and very much across lots of Europe. And we're on a bit of a break. We're off on holidays for two weeks. Chris is just...
finally moved into his new house and he's setting all that up. And while we're on a break, I thought I'd share some of the shows that we've been watching to give you something to watch while you hide indoors from the shiny hot sun. Because there's been lots and lots of great stuff to watch. Stuff that we're not going to be covering on the podcast. But we did want to give you some recommendations of things to watch, as I say, maybe during the late nights or maybe if you want to get some respite from the heat outside, sit indoors and watch a good TV show while you give yourself a bit of a break from the sunshine. Take care out there. It's been really, really hot all across Europe. So I hope you're having a good break. I hope some of you are getting away on holidays as well. And we will be back at the end of July with Spider-Man brand new day. But for now, it's just me talking about the things that I've been watching over the last couple of months.
weeks and things that are going on at the moment. First up, I want to talk about Tip Toe. This is the show from Russell T. Davis, a really strong, really powerful drama set in Manchester. Russell T. Davis is well known as the person who brought back Doctor Who from its days in the wilderness, but also probably most well known for his series Queer as Folk, which was set in the queer district of Manchester, featuring lots and lots of grace characters, all of the LGBTQ community and what they were going through back in the 90s. Here we see Russell T. Davis back here in angry form. He really wants to tell a story about...
What life is kind of getting like at the moment, aggression that's going on online between people is now spilling out into the streets and spilling out amongst people, lots of distrust between different communities of people. And it's something that's becoming very scary. He tells a story about two neighbours, Alan Cumming and David Morrissey, who live next door to each other in Manchester. Alan Cumming just recently split up with his husband and David Morrissey having problems of his own with his wife and his kids. And as their lives intertwine across the course of the four or five episodes, things get really, really tense and really, really difficult to watch. It starts out and tells you exactly what's going to happen in the show.
major trigger warning that initial moment is what the whole series is leading to but it's a fantastic really well written really well acted show highly recommended if you're looking for some some serious drama to watch during the summer time tiptoe is a really difficult watch at times but there's also some fantastic moments paul reese as the aging drag queen melba has two fantastic moments in the show well worth watching just for those moments and well worth pushing through. It's a very strong, very well-written show, so I highly, highly recommend that. That's available on Channel 4 in the UK and Europe, and I know they've done deals for Australia, and I know it's coming to the US as well pretty soon, but the episodes should be coming over the course of the summer, but I highly recommend that one to begin with. After that, I'm a huge Game of Thrones fan, and I know loads of us have seen loads and loads of Game of Thrones, but I want to highly recommend the brand new season of House of the Dragons Season 3 is out. The first three episodes of aired as I'm recording this. The first two episodes were just absolutely epic, just brought you back to those times in Game of Thrones when the massive budget was out there on screen. There's huge dragon battles going on between multiple dragons.
as one of the best ocean battle scenes I've seen on TV in the second episode absolutely excellent really really good but if you do want something lighter in the world of Game of Thrones there is Night of the Seven Kingdoms which came out earlier on this year with Dunk and Egg played by Peter Claffey and Dexter Saul Ansel lots of fun lots of adventures really small story set around a tournament with a hedge knight a lowly knight in the realm trying to earn his keep by going to a massive tournament and on the way he meets young Egg a mysterious bald child who very precocious very funny he wants to be the squire for this hedge knight as he battles his way through the tournament really fun very different for Game of Thrones very short episodes as well but absolutely heartbreaking at times as well a really well told story definitely something to recommend especially if you're someone that has kind of moved on from Game of Thrones and don't want to see something similar to Game of Thrones is a very different style to this one but certainly well worth a watch as well speaking of funny another comedy show one of my favourite shows Hacks came to an end this year in the final season season 5 it's a comedy show starring Jean Smart who you may remember from the show we covered Watchmen she is the central character in this a stand-up comedian who's trying to do everything in this final season to get everybody to her massive show that she's booked out in Madison
square garden so it's really good as the plans get more and more complex to get this massive gig sold out for fantastic stuff Hannah Einbinder is the co-star in there and Megan Stutler and Paul W Downs other members of the cast everybody really gets a good episode in this final season or great moments in this final season they really nailed the landing if you want to know how you end a comedy show that could go on forever this is definitely the way to do it it was really really good My other major recommendation at the moment, two final ones, X-Men 97, it's four episodes into the second season of the show. I really enjoyed the first season, but I'm not a massive X-Men fan, so I know this one is definitely one for the X-Men fans. If you enjoyed the cartoon when you watched it as a kid back in the 90s, or if you enjoyed the comic books, this pulls from every era of the X-Men. It pulls from a huge roster of X-Men characters, most of which, or a lot of which, I don't know, I must say, but I'm really enjoying the storytelling in this. It's a really interesting way of telling the series. It comes from the former executive producer from the show, Bo DiMeo. He was involved in both the first and second season of the show, so I don't know what the third season has to come, but he did deliver an excellent X-Men show.
the first season and the second season's been really good as well and the team they're pulling together and creating this really good show to watch so if you're looking for some Marvel stuff that we're not covering on the podcast check out X-Men 97 last one for me is The Vampire Lestat the third season of the Alan Rice books started out with the first two seasons being Interview with the Vampire this third season is The Vampire Lestat all about Lestat the rock star telling his stories of his history through his songs and how he is interacting with this new idea of fame that he's come across Absolutely fantastic. Sam Reid, who plays Lestat, if you've seen him in the first two seasons, he is even better in this third season. He just embodies the character of Lestat, one of my favourite fictional vampires out there, Lestat. But there's so many other great characters in this. It's a really complicated show, really interesting seeing the perspective of the vampire Lestat after the first two seasons dealt with the perspective of, well, what we thought was Louis de Pont de Lac, and it turned out to be another character. And as this season's progressing, you're seeing things from a different perspective. So well worth watching, especially if you've seen those first two seasons. Fantastic show. Other than that, some other recommendations from the rest of the team here. John has been watching the fourth season.
of The Legend of Vox Machina on Prime Video. He's a massive fan of that show, tends to watch it while I'm recording and editing other podcasts that he's not on, so I haven't seen a huge amount of it, but he's saying this fourth season is really, really good. He's enjoying some of the new characters and enjoying the team being back together as well. Really good. Chris, in between Moving House, has been watching Shrinking on Apple TV with Jason Segel, and Harrison Ford has been highly recommending that to me for months and months and months. So, yeah, go have a watch of that if you have a subscription to Apple TV. And as you'll probably see from the other recommendations that I've gotten from some of the other listeners, I think it's probably time for me to bite the bullet and add another service, Apple TV, too.
to my list of subscription services that I have I think I have six at the moment and I just was avoiding Apple because I don't have a discount for it so yeah but there's tons and tons of great stuff to watch over there so that's over from Chris and from John other things to do and to watch Taskmaster as a show I highly recommend find a participant or a contestant that you like on any of the seasons there's about 20 I think now or 21 seasons so far find one that has a contestant that you like and I hope you'll fall in love with that and then you can watch all the rest of the series each season has five competitors in it, five contestants in it who do tasks to impress the Taskmaster. They're always very silly, always very funny, and the cast list is incredible over the course of the last 20 years. The most recent season had Amy Gledhill, Joanna Page, Joel Domit, Amanda Iannucci, and Kamal Ninjiani, who you'll know from things like The Eternals and from his comedy career. Definitely well worth a watch this season. It was really, really good fun and really enjoyable to have a big American Hollywood star on board along with the usual English comedians as well. So I highly recommend that. Something a bit different as well. You can find that over on YouTube if you're not in the UK or Ireland. You can find it on YouTube. Each of the episodes are available there worldwide as far as I know.
And if you're a bit of a gamer, if you fancy playing some video games while you're hiding from the sun, I've been playing Lego Batman. I'm a huge Batman fan. Really enjoy the Lego games. They're always fun. I don't have any kids. It's just for me to play some fun Lego-type games. But the new Legend of the Dark Knight on PlayStation 5 is really good fun. It takes a view of all of the versions of Batman right back to the 60s, all the way through the Nolan films, the Tim Burton films, all those different versions of Batman, all the video game versions of Batman, and all the way up to the present day, and melds them all together into a pretty comprehensive and pretty comprehensible story telling you how they've moved through all the generations. So you have Robin,
becoming Nightwing, you have... Barbara Gordon becoming Backgirl. And you have all the rest of the villains. Of course, Joker going all the way from Cesar Romero right up to the most recent version, Heath Ledger's version. They didn't get to Barry Cohen, unfortunately, but I'm sure they'll get a download of him in the future as well. But I highly recommend that. I've just finished that the last couple of weeks. I've finished the story, but loads and loads of collectibles to get around. So that's always well worth the bang for the buck that you get from a Lego game. It usually lasts me about five or six months, which is great fun. One other one for film and TV fans, 007 First Light, the first Bond game in many, many years, just came out a couple of months ago. It started that. It's kind of the way that James Bond becomes 007. You get to train as if you're Bond. Really good.
really fun action game starring Patrick Gibson who you may know from Dexter Original Sin. He plays the main role of Bond. Yeah, really good fun and you get to learn loads and loads of techniques that Bond uses in various missions. Very, very cool. So I've been playing that a lot as well. That's all my recommendations. They were Tiptoe, House of the Dragons Season 3, Night of the Seven Kingdoms, Hax, the final season, Season 5, The Vampire Lestat, X-Men 97, John recommended Vox Machina Season 4 and Chris recommended Shrinking on Apple TV along with Vox Machina Season 4 as well.
So lots of stuff to keep you company and keep you going up until the next time we're back here on TV Podcast Industries. This was inspired by a question that I got him from Coffee and Vodka. He shared some recommendations as well. He was recommending X-Men 97, Vampireless Stat. He also recommended Banshee, which is on HBO Max for any fans of The Boys who are missing Anthony Starr. He recommended that again. I started off watching that. I watched the first two episodes of that. Yeah, it's really enjoyable. It's a very violent show. Really good. It's kind of got that Reacher type style to it. But Anthony Starr, once again, playing another reprehensible character, let's say. Well worth checking that one out. Joe Herbst also has recommended tons of Apple TV shows. He's suggested Severance, Silo, Murderbot, Dark Matter, Plur...
Pluribus Foundation for All Mankind, Monarch, and Mythic Quest, which has Rob Mack from, it's obviously in Philadelphia. And so lots and lots over there. I think he's just getting me to buy the Apple TV subscription as well. So lots and lots of stuff to watch. I know I watched Pluribus last year. I really enjoyed that. That was a fantastic show starring Ray Seahorn. Really, really good. So highly recommend watching that if you do have an Apple TV subscription. Penny Lennox recommends Hacks and The Pit. The Pit is a show that I feel like I would absolutely love, but I can't watch medical dramas. I think as far as I can push it is to scrubs anything beyond that with the way they show the injuries and operations.
I'm just a bit too squeamish for that even though I'm a massive horror fan I can't take it in real life so I haven't watched any of The Piss even though it's on HBO which I do have I haven't watched any of it yet but maybe someday I'll get to watch the episode that has our wonderful friend Drew Powell from Gotham who got lots of plaudits for his episode of The Piss maybe I'll just watch that episode and see how I go Philip Aguirre also recommends Shrinking as did Chris and he says he's starting on the show The Comeback which is from Lisa Kudrow who you know pretty well from Friends it's her comedy show which has three seasons and interestingly she does one per decade season one was back in 2005 season two in 2014 and season three came out this year in 2026 so look out for season four I guess in 2037 maybe and tell us what you're thankful if you have any shows that you want to recommend to our listeners or to us you can email us to feedback at tvpodcastindustries.com we'd love to hear from you thanks so much for listening to us throughout the first half of 2026 we've got lots and lots of stuff coming up for the rest of the year this year Check out our website over at tvpodcastindustries.com. Subscribe to the podcast there to get access to all the shows we'll be covering for the rest of the year. And you can also see the schedule for the rest of the year. Anything that I see coming up that we hopefully will be covering, you should see it over there on the schedule. Thanks so much for joining us. We will talk to you again in a couple of weeks' time. Enjoy the break from us. We're going to have a great time in the sunshine on our holidays as well. And we will speak to you when we get back. But until then, keep hydrated, keep wearing sunscreen, and keep eating ice cream. Bye now.