Duck: Friends, keeping your beak-holes high and your flippers shiny can be hard these days, but we’re here to put a little Brit-pep in your flippers.
Star: As Brits who live in the U.S.A, we stream super-frothy British shows whenever we can, not least to cut through the political pond-slop of the moment. Glad to share our recommendations for keeping you sparkly when the greyness sags your beak.
Duck: As a duck, I’ll be responsible for gauging the diversity and inclusion in this beak-tingling shows. Okay. Let’s paddle to it!
1. Hustle Rebellious Con Artists Who Choose To Live By Their Own Ducking Ethics:
Star: The Hustle team are con artists with a ducking important motto—you can’t cheat an honest man. In fact, the “marks” who these ethical con artists target are the very dregs of moral corruption, such as law-breaking politicians with selfish ducking agendas, rich white businessmen who call those who aren’t ludicrously rich “the great unwashed,” and tricksters who steal money from seniors who have very little of their own. Seeing these marks get a taste of their own medicine via MASSIVELY clever and intricate cons is REBELLIOUS FUN AT ITS FINEST. Also, the gang’s we-only-con-those-with-miserable-ethics rule is, for us, refreshingly poetic.
Over to Duck for a diversity and inclusion report:
Duck: Look, friends. Hustle was filmed back in the Aughts, and sometimes my beak-holes royally twitch because of the damaging racist and misogynistic stereotypes we sometimes see here. At the same time, Hustle is one of the first British shows we ever watched that has a Black male star—Mickey, who is played brilliantly by Adrian Lester.
Hustle is also one of the first places where we saw warm queer portrayals. Okay, so this really tickles my haddock: In an early season of Hustle, a con artist, Danny, actually tells a gay woman, “You’re a lesbian? There’s nothing wrong with that.” It may seem like an obvious, patronizing line to audiences today, but given when this show was filmed, such a statement was actually kind of legendary. It’s true that there’s nothing wrong with being queer, (my human ought to know), though it took most British TV a long time to say the words.
Star: Score, my duck-friend!
For me, the real heart of the show lies in the grifters’ faithfulness to one another as chosen family. Aware that society has treated them all so unfairly, they’ve built their own way of living. It’s fun as duck. Guaranteed to put a mischievous smile on our beaks.
Watch Hustle on Amazon (it’s on Prime at time of writing)
2. Father Ted Slapstick priests who are super-ducking bad at being even slightly religious:
If you’re put off by religious shows, fear not! Father Ted is about the silliest priests in the world who live on Craggy Island, the silliest place in Ireland (and yes, fear not, it’s fictional). Fathers Ted, Dougall and Jack all live in the same house with their overwhelmed yet sparklingly plucky housekeeper Mrs. Doyle. And none of the priests in Father Ted are even slightly good at being a priest.
Duck: I’ll add that my feathers are usually on edge when I encounter bishops, but Father Ted smooths them out and makes my beak-holes honk hysterically.
Star: Perhaps the best way to describe Father Ted is via episode titles, which include “Kicking Bishop Brennan Up The Arse,” “Cigarettes, Alcohol and Rollerblading,” “Chirpy Burpy Cheap Sheep,” and “Speed 3.” Slapstick abounds. And I mean ABOUNDS.
If that doesn’t whet your appetite, I’ll say this: What happens when twelve priests visit a department store and get lost in Ireland’s biggest lingerie section? It’s potentially the biggest scandal the catholic church has ever faced. And it’s an absolute riot.
Duck: My duck-diversity report, which is only slightly soggy, would be super-ducking long if I listed the ways in which this show, which hails from the nineties, puts its flipper in the oopsie bucket. To sum it up, Craggy Island residents are predominantly white—and not in a ‘duck way.’ Also, just for those who are sensitive to it, be aware there’s a lot of humor around alcohol.
Another issue. Fiddle my feathers if Graham Linehan, who co-wrote and created many of the episodes, isn’t notoriously anti-trans. But we choose to separate his bigotry from his art. Still, not everyone can do that, and we totally understand why. That’s why we mention it here.
Although there is very little racial diversity in Father Ted, there is a wonderful episode where a Chinatown appears on Craggy Island when Ted is away. Upon Ted’s return, the story pokes fun at how embarrassed he is at being branded a racist—a label he totally deserves—but amazingly, the episode is funny as all duck without once poking fun at the Chinese characters at all. Quite a delicate ducking balance. The result? Much quacker-laughter.
Father Ted. Zero ducks, but nothing makes us laugh harder.
Watch Father Ted on Amazon (on Prime at time of writing)
3. Rivals (Disney Plus): Soap-operatic, addictive yarns about posh, rich people who have a lot of sex.
Star: Like the book by Jilly Cooper, Rivals, the series, which is set in the 1980s, features a rivalry between Rupert Campbell-Black, a British right-wing M.P. and Lord Tony Baddington who runs a local commercial TV station. What I always loved about Jilly Cooper’s novels is what makes Rivals truly great: Frothy beak-tickling yarns about folks with lots of money who always long for more power and make duckloads of whoopie—usually with people they really shouldn’t be in bed with.
Duck: The novels themselves are so thick that I use them for flipper-lift exercises. Needless to say, my flippers are exquisitely well-built.
Star: Want to find out more? We wrote a whole post about Rivals here. It includes diversity ratings.
Duck: You mean I don’t need to include my own diversity and inclusion analysis?
Star: Please go ahead if you’d like!
Duck: While Rivals’ characters are predominantly white—and not ducks, I might add—we do see a strong Black female character called Cameron Cook who kicks flipper but often gets the short end of the beak. There are a duck of lot of extra-marital affairs too, which you have to be comfortable with, otherwise you’ll have a duck of a dreadful time. And by the way, we’re ducking thrilled that Rivals contains some lovely gay characters too!
Watch Rivals on Disney Plus.
4. One Foot in the Algarve (from One Foot in the Grave, season four): A comedy about curmudgeonly seniors who always get into the most ludicrous situations.
Star: Where to begin with the absolute duck-shaped silliness of One Foot in the Algarve? The series this episode comes from, One Foot in the Grave, is about the Meldrews, Victor and Margaret, and their retirement, which is usually super-ducking bonkers because Victor is AT A TEN ABOUT EVERYTHING. He’s beak-to-flippers angry about every bizarre thing that happens to him, and because of his silly rage, MORE silly things happen.
For instance, (expect some light spoilers here), in One Foot in the Algarve, Victor gets followed by donkeys for the most ri-duck-ulous reasons, and the donkey scenarios just get more and more laugh-out-loud funny. But if you’re going to tune into One Food in the Algarve, you’ve got to love watching cantankerous doofuses, otherwise you’ll get your flippers in a knot.
Duck: Considering One Foot in the Algarve was released in the ’90’s, it doesn’t do too badly when it comes to diversity. We have some awesome black and brown characters who are allowed to be super-ducking funny, and of course, One Foot in the Grave in general puts the spotlight on seniors in a super-ducking awesome way. Seniors are allowed to be funny, quirky, angry, foolish, and sage. A white woman has a romance with a man of color, which, for the ’90’s, kicks duck-butt. Yes, LGBTQIA+ inclusion is lacking, and there’s a paltry number of ducks, but it was the ’90’s, so we’re not spitting our pondweed about this.
Star: Little note. If you’re squeamish around dead bodies, there’s some “dead body-part humor” in this episode.
Honestly, One Foot in the Algarve is GUARANTEED to make us both quacker-laugh, no matter WHAT is going on.
Watch One Foot in the Algarve on YouTube
DEI and content note: Bravo to this series for starring two retired seniors! But folks, if you get squeamish around bits of dead bodies—which don’t seem very realistic and make for laugh-out-loud humor—this particular episode isn’t for you.
5. Poirot: I’ll be honest. These days, we aren’t big murder mystery fans. There’s only one exception, and that’s anything by Agatha Christie. Poirot is a delightful cozy featuring Christie’s famous Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot, and the earlier seasons are absolutely the silliest things in the world. What real-life murderer goes to these ri-duck-ulous lengths to commit a crime?
Duck: I knew a goose-murderer once. She made the feathers of the birds who disliked her into soft, bouncy comforters. It was ducking awful. I only use blankets these days.
But on the diversity front, we are a mite lacking. We do sometimes see black and brown characters in Poirot, but at times, the stereotypes are more problematic than my grandmother’s flipper-spun gouda. Gay and lesbian characters aren’t portrayed as having happy-quacky lives either. But then again, the series of Poirot do span the decades, so the later episodes tend to be more politically aware.
But where the duck are the ducks? We deserve to be suspected of murder, especially under cozy circumstances.
Star: The good news? David Suchet who plays the title role is SUPER-DUCKING FABULOUS. I simply can’t cope with any other Poirot. Oh, and if you want something a little more dark and brooding [no duck reference intended] check out the final season (no. 13). It’s sweepingly gorgeous and chillingly dark. But for us, when we need to lift our flippers and put a sparkle in our beak-holes, the earlier seasons are the place to be.
Watch Poirot for free on Roku
Watch Poirot via Britbox/Amazon
Featured image by Star Tavares, using images from Canva and Star’s own art.
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