Joel Fry-days: Play for Today: Series 2, Episode 1 – Wild (2026)

Okay, not a drill, we have another new Joel Fry project! And honestly, while this one-off TV dramedy is fairly good, his character/performance is just excellent! I know I sound embarrassingly easy to please throughout most of my reviews, but it’s not my fault that Fry keeps playing characters I adore so much.

Play for Today is a revival of a BBC anthology series from the ‘70s-’80s, with each episode telling a self-contained story (and the new series makes a point of showcasing new writing/directing talent.) In Wild, three old friends from university head to the Scottish Highlands for their 27th annual wilderness camping trip. It’s Lou’s turn to plan it this year, and he’s got big ideas, ranging from doing things old-school (with a map and no phones) to filming the trip for posterity via GoPros. Naturally, it’s not long before everything starts going wrong. As the guys get bug-bitten, lost, and hungry, tempers flare and longstanding insecurities/resentments start coming out. Will they—and their friendship—survive this camping trip?

The premise is pretty basic, from both a comedy and a drama perspective, but for the most part, I enjoy how the story digs into it. All sorts of wilderness mishaps in store, and the guys’ bickering verges on childish at times. Lou presents as a cross between a bumbler who thinks he knows everything about the great outdoors (this is the year he’s finally gonna catch a rabbit, he swears!) and a trip tyrant who’s weirdly insistent about his rules, even as things go off the rails. But while there may not be method in his madness, there is a deeper reason behind it. Alistair, who’s married with a young child, frequently becomes the butt of the joke for the other two, who paint him as the guy who got lame after he settled down. And Lou also uses Alistair as an object lesson for Dev, who’s irritated that Lou refused to let his girlfriend accompany them on the trip. It’s painfully obvious that Lou, as he clings onto their university glory days, is afraid of losing Dev to “lame” married life, so the dynamic between the three men partially becomes a power struggle over which way Dev wants his life to go. As for Dev, he’s not quite sure himself, and Lou and Alistair sort of become the devil and angel on his shoulder as he considers his future.

More than anything, this is a story about men being afraid to be open and vulnerable with each other. They sublimate their feelings into camping and squabbling because they can’t let themselves be honest about their fears and insecurities. It’s literally the meme, “Men will [do anything] before going to therapy,” and for the guys to get through this trip in one piece, it’s going to take more than just their wilderness skills.

Despite the beautifully expansive setting of the Scottish Highlands, this is quite an intimate story. While Dev’s girlfriend and Alistair’s family get name-checked, the only characters onscreen are the three guys. I’ve seen Daniel Mays in a number of things, most memorably his guest-starring episode of Doctor Who (“Night Terrors,” from the Eleventh Doctor era,) and he gives his all as Lou. The guy is kind of a mess but desperately trying not to be, clinging tight to this camping trip with both hands even as things fall apart. I’ve seen Amit Shah, who plays Dev, in various sundries—he’s a Doctor Who alum as well (he was in the Thirteenth Doctor’s debut episode,) and he had a small role in an episode of White Van Man with Joel Fry! Even though we only see the three guys on this particular trip, both the story and Shah’s performance do a nice job of showing how Dev regresses to his university self when he’s around his mates, especially Lou, who eggs him on. 

That leaves Joel Fry as Alistair. While IMDb credits him as such, the other guys spend a good 95% of the story calling him “Al.” But since sans-serif fonts can’t distinguish between a lower-case “L” and an upper-case “i,” we’ll stick with “Alistair” so it doesn’t look like this guy is called “Artificial Intelligence.”

Oh, man. Alistair—my sweet, asthmatic, uncool dad-friend. What a guy! He tries to join in with Lou and Dev’s laddish mockery, but he’s not very good at it, either stumbling over his words as he tries to come up with a zinger or being too earnest to keep it up when one of his mates looks bothered by it. So instead, he becomes the prime target of mockery. Lou is particularly invested in making him look bad, and he sucks Dev into it too. They gripe about Alistair’s asthma making him the “weak link” who slows the group down (Chekhov’s inhaler makes its appearance in the first five minutes of the episode,) but then they laugh at his insistence that he can keep up with them. Condescendingly, they urge Alistair to stay in his lane and play to his strengths, which include “[smashing] the school run out the park” (“I’m never late,” he agrees stoically) and “[thinking] of the perfect Secret Santa gift.” Insert The Good Place meme: “That’s an unmarried-bros insult. It’s devastating. You’re devastated right now.”

I’m reminded a lot of Daniel from Alice and Steve, another of Fry’s characters who’s emasculated a lot for being a gentle wife guy who doesn’t perform masculinity the “right” way. While Alistair is quicker than Daniel to stand up for himself, he’s also quicker to be negatively influenced by his friends’ insults. The cracks about his asthma are a particular sticking point for him, and he gets himself too invested in trying to prove he can keep up with the others, to his own detriment.

Look, I love Alistair, okay? I love him. Like all three guys, he’s a bit too allergic to admitting vulnerability, although he’s at least made a little more progress on that front than Lou and Dev have. He touts the waterproof rating of his GPS. He covers his face with both hands when a swarm of midges descends, creating temporary strategic openings for his mouth when he needs to talk. He sometimes plays peacemaker and sometimes gets swept up in the bickering. He mumbles apologies when he fumbles a big armful of firewood moments after describing himself as “steady [and] composed.” He hums and sings to himself. He has hard limits where he absolutely will not let his friends talk shit.

Joel Fry’s performance hits all the right notes. Alistair is caring and observant and pedantic, sweet and dorky, by turns confident and insecure. Just a terrific character! The little details in Fry’s acting keep Alistair feeling specific and grounded—although the character is a fairly recognizable “type,” he feels well-rounded on the screen.

Accent Watch

Southern British English, maybe a bit London.

Recommend?

In General – I probably would. It paints in fairly broad strokes sometimes, but it’s ultimately a nice story, and the three guys are very believable as old university mates whose friendship is being held together (yet simultaneously tested by) camping trips.

Joel Fry – 100%, yes! Alistair is fantastic, and Fry is really great here!

Warnings

Plenty of “don’t try this at home,” language, and thematic elements.

Y tu Luna también: Pan y circo: Season 1, Episode 6 – “No One is Illegal: The Migrant Crisis” (2020)

This is a pretty strong episode. In the U.S., there’s so much political discourse over people’s lives at the southern border, and it’s interesting to look at that conversation from a Mexican perspective. Here are some highlights from the discussion:

• One of the guests, a reporter, asserts, “The reasons people leave their country, those haven’t changed. It’s a primal act” – He goes on to add, “Nobody leaves the country they were born in with two babies on their backs to go to another country they don’t know just because.”
•  An indigenous activist migrated to the U.S. as a young child – She describes her experience leaving the “universe” of her small rural community, saying, “So, suddenly, there’s no river. I don’t know anyone, no one speaks my language, no one understands my food. So it was like a very difficult experience of being an unwilling immigrant.”
•  More than in any other episode, this one includes footage from the U.S. – new clips, snippets of political speeches (guess whose?), and xenophobic Americans screaming lies about migrants.
•  The reporter breaks down that, despite the fearmongering in the U.S., the “migrant caravans” are simply a means for vulnerable migrants to secure safety in numbers on a treacherous journey – “The caravans were nothing more than a barely natural impetus of people who decided to share their sorrows and who decided to share the road, and they understood that, having three of them was better than being alone. If there’s 20, that’s better than one.”
• Another guest is the former Mexican ambassador to the U.S. – He points out how strong xenophobic anti-migrant sentiment can be in Mexico against Central Americans, asking, “How can we do what we are doing and then demand that the U.S. respect and protect the social and labor rights of our Mexican diaspora in the United States?”
• One guest, a musician, shares her experience as a Mexican American – “I feel that you grow up on a tightrope, like on a scale where you’re always kind of changing and despised from the country your dad, your mom are from, which is Mexico. And when you’re in the United States, you’re always like… ‘Oh, you know, where are you from?’ ‘Oh, like, I’m from LA.’ ‘No, but where are you really from?’”
• The reporter makes an interesting observation about “charity,” saying, “I think, in large part, the acceptance or disdain of communities has to do with how good we feel if I take a blanket one day and say, ‘I’m so fucking good.’ Or, ‘This pound of rice I gave, I feel so good’” – He argues that part of the current backlash against migrants is because people don’t know how to reckon with migrants “who believe they have a right to demand mercy.”

In his role of gently guiding the conversation, Luna makes both personal observations and larger social points. After acknowledging that he’s crossed the border numerous times as an adult, he adds, “I’m not bragging. Crossing borders having resources is very easy, isn’t it?” Later, he brings up the issue of anti-migrant backlash in Mexico, talking about the mayor who railed against migrants while calling himself “the Trump of Tijuana.”

And in a smaller amusing bit, I like the opening scene where the chef talks to Luna about his own experience crossing the border regularly. Parts of the discussion, of course, are serious, as he describes how much tenser it is to go through checkpoints under the Trump administration. But when he talks about taking his son back and forth across the border for school and extracurricular activities, I like when Luna exclaims, “Hold on. I won’t walk with you anymore. Did you just say ‘soccer’? No way!” Hee! It’s cute.

Other Doctor Lives: W1A: Series 3, Episode 4 (2017)

*Spoilers from episode 3*

After a bit of a shakier outing last time, this one is pretty good. While there’s still plenty of the show’s circular dialogue, it’s brought up against an important deadline, which ups the drama to the proceedings.

The rumors over the BBC Big Swing Band and the problems with the Syncopatico auto-captioning software combine to create a perfect shitstorm. When a news story covers Jools Holland’s call to boycott the BBC over the issue, the captions render his name “Jews Holland.” That’s the disaster Ian and Anna walk into as they return from a meeting with Fiona. They’d been waylaid when Anna passed out in the taxi, but she insists she’s fine now and doesn’t want Ian to say anything about it. By the time they get back, they have an hour before one of them is due to go live on-air with the BBC’s official response to the whole thing.

Our character of the week is Neil Reid, played by David Westhead. Another one of the execs, Neil is Controller of News and Current Affairs. He’s the one who’s been dealing with the captioning debacle, and unfortunately for him, the latest Syncopatico upgrade is too shoddy to be accurate but too robust to switch it off. He has little time for wishy-washy business speak, and in any given executive meeting, he’s usually one of the few people speaking in complete sentences that have subjects and direct objects.

The whole thing is a mess. During the emergency meeting to address the crisis, a pair of junior execs keep reading out the names of celebrities who’ve voiced their support for the boycott, Siobhan keeps announcing how many minutes they have left, and Faiza has turned up just in time to imply that it’s all Lucy’s fault. Meanwhile, the paramedic told Anna to try and “have an easy day,” but now she’s the one who’s being tapped to make a statement on the news, without anyone knowing what that statement should actually be. And even though Anna doesn’t seem to react to this, Ian is clearly concerned on her behalf.

Okay, so we’ve gone from On Your Bike as a TV chat show, to Cycle Shorts as a series of video selfies of people saying, “This is me on my bike,” to now a series of video selfies of people just saying, “Me.” The idea is to start an online trend to build buzz ahead of the BBC Me launch, and Siobhan wants to get some “Super Me’s,” celebrities filming themselves saying, “Me,” to get people excited to join the bandwagon. Since celebrities come to the BBC regularly, Will is stationed in the lobby with a phone to recruit some to record themselves for the campaign. Let’s just say Will isn’t the ideal person to explain a request clearly and succinctly to a busy celebrity.

David Tennant’s narration didn’t stand out as much to me today, but here are a couple good lines:

• “In the meantime, the live interview about the BBC Big Swing Band on the 1:00 news isn’t getting any less live or any further away.”
• “In the end, after all the talk about exactly how much time they’ve got left, it turns out the answer is they haven’t even got enough left to address the question of what they’re going to do if they run out of it.”

Other Doctor Lives / Joel Fry-days: W1A: Series 3, Episode 3 (2017)

Despite the presence of Joel Fry, not my favorite. This one leans pretty heavily into the “everybody at the table talks a lot without actually saying anything,” although it does still have some entertaining parts.

The BBC is going full steam ahead with their Less is More initiative, looking for places to reduce/combine programming. When it’s pointed out that the BBC has six different orchestras/bands, the executives float the idea of downsizing them, with the BBC Big Swing Band under particular consideration. Siobhan and her team have been asked to look at Jack’s reworking of On Your Bike, now called Cycle Shorts, to potentially use as a trailer for BBC Me. After an upgrade, Syncopatico’s autocaptioning software is spitting out some unfortunate errors.

There are times when the drivel in the executive meetings gets into a good groove and it’s a fun skewering of corporate nonsense. Other times, it starts to feel like that scene from Extras where all the characters on Andy’s sitcom are just sitting around saying their catchphrases at each other in turn—only here, the catchphrases are things like, “Yes, no, brilliant,” “The fact is…”, and “So that’s all good then.” That’s kind of what this episode is like for me. The characters are batting words across the table, each trying to avoid having to say a fully formed, coherent thought.

As such, when they start getting press about the rumors that the BBC Big Swing Band is getting axed, at that point, nobody knows whether or not it’s actually happening. One thing that does come through loud and clear? Anna is anti- all things Lucy. There’s a nasty moment during a meeting where Lucy is trying to get Simon to clarify something, and she softens it by saying, “I mean, I might be being stupid…” Instantly, Anna snaps off one of her go-to catch phrases: “Yes, exactly.” And the whole mess with the Big Swing Band kicks off when Lucy points out that her grandparents are avid listeners, which causes Anna to not not think they’re ripe for the chopping block.

As someone who used to interpret in a public school where teachers would turn on the god-awful auto-transcriptions on YouTube videos, the captioning subplot is a lot more successful for me. An engineer touts the upgrade’s 93% success rate, but it trips up the most on proper names, a la “President Tramp” building his wall along the border of “Max Sicko.” As one exec notes, proper names are arguably “the most important 7%” of the news, so this is a major problem. By the way, back in the pilot, there was a sight gag about Syncopatico’s atrocious captioning software, so I appreciate seeing it brought up here as an actual story.

Here are my picks for David Tennant’s best narration today:

• I like this description of what Jack has turned On Your Bike into with Cycle Shorts – “In many ways, it’s a perfect example of exactly the sort of selfie-centered content that will lie at the heart of the new channel and that may well be the model for how television will work in a world where no one watches it anymore.”
• The narrator explains that a famous musician has weighed in on the Big Swing Band rumors on Twitter, “...and worse still, a lot of people with opinions have already liked that.”

Our character of the week is Michael Chung, played by Will Sharpe. He’s a young Fun Media employee who’s been brought to London from the New York office. Michael has been painted as a whiz kid when it comes to marketing—in the season premiere, BBC Me was his brainchild. Whenever we see him, he stands silently while Siobhan’s team riffs on their ideas. But when someone asks him for his input, he lets loose with a robotic-sounding monologue, leaving the other characters aghast at his brilliance.

Adding another character into the scenes at Fun has meant less Karl. Although he never has that many lines, a good amount of humor with Siobhan’s team often comes from Karl’s offbeat responses. Here, as in episode 1, the usual pitch session is truncated to build up to Michael’s clincher. Karl/Joel Fry only gets a couple good moments here. My favorite comes when Coco is contemplating how to create a theme event for the BBC Me launch centered around Cycle Shorts:

COCO: “Yeah, so like, maybe you have it somewhere you can only get to by bike.” 

KARL: “Yeah.” 

BARNEY: “Okay, like where?” 

COCO: “I dunno. Maybe more like…” 

KARL: “Yeah, France.”

And both Barney and Coco turn to him with the most dumbfounded look. I’m the number-one Karl defender out here, but I’ve never claimed that he doesn’t say some truly wild things, and that’s part of why I love him!