5 TV series and movies to watch while lobbying for four-day weeks to be the norm

Five days is too many work days, isn’t it? What lunatic decided a 5:2 ratio of work to leisure should be the norm? And what even more unhinged maniac decided it should still be the norm even though we live in a fancy-schmancy future world where technological advances mean we can achieve way more, way faster, that we used to be able to? It’s a flipping disgrace, it really is. Four days of work should be the absolute max, leaving a sensible three for, you know, telly and stuff. Such as…

Natasha Lyonne returns as Nadia Vulvokov, stuck in an endless time loop, in the long-awaited second season of the massive Netflix hit. The combination of ambitious storytelling, existential questions and Natasha's motormouthed charisma (not to mention her frankly extraordinary head of hair) is just as awesome this time round, although enormous congratulations to anyone who fully remembers what happened back in 2019’s season one: a rewatch of the first season beforehand is not a bad idea at all.

Available now on Netflix

A feature-length in-depth look at the hubris and shittiness involved in the collapse of Abercrombie & Fitch, the once hella-trendy preppy high street retailer. A&F went from ubiquitous to derided, and it had nothing to do with their style. Proof that nothing is too big to be brought down by a terrible attitude and contempt for large swathes of your target audience

Available now on Netflix

The seventh season of Reece Shearsmith and Steve Pemberton’s excellent anthology series begins with Merrily Merrily, reuniting them with their League Of Gentlemen BFF Mark Gatiss as well as Philomena Cunk herself, Diane Morgan, for a typically excellent episode set on a pedalo. The entire backlog of episodes – 37 self-contained half-hour mini-masterpieces – is up on iPlayer, a genuine treasure trove of possibly the best writing on TV.

Available now on BBC iPlayer

The final season of television’s slowest-moving prestige drama is upon us – the first few episodes of the first half, anyway – and there’s a lot of ground to cover to finish Jimmy McGill’s transition into Breaking Bad slimeball Saul Goodman. The first two episodes are on Netflix now, with a new one weekly until May 23, then a break – as if we hadn’t all waited long enough already – before the second half drops in July. Filming the final season nearly killed star Bob Odenkirk, but thankfully he lived to tell the tense, tense tale.

Available now on Netflix

Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, arguably the greatest threat to Vladimir Putin’s hold over the country, was poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok in August 2020 and fell into a coma. This documentary follows the events both before and after – the tracking down of Nalalny’s attackers, his exile and subsequent return to Russia – and how it all ties into the current horrific events in Ukraine. A powerful, thought-provoking, fascinating look at history being made in real-time.

In cinemas now