Must Watch reviews: Adults, Turning Point: Generation 9/11, Tea with Judi Dench

Every week, the Must Watch podcasters review the biggest TV and streaming shows.

This week, Hayley Campbell and Scott Bryan join Naga Munchetty to review ‘Adults’, ‘Turning Point: Generation 9/11’ and ‘Tea with Judi Dench’.

What do the Must Watch reviewers make of them?

A one-off programme in which Judi Dench welcomes old friend Sir Ian McKellen to her home for tea and a candid conversation about their lives on and off the stage.

From Shakespeare, stage fright and the insecurities of acting to the worldwide fame of the Lord of the Rings and James Bond movies, they reflect on success, failure and the importance of never taking either too seriously.

Hayley and Scott think Tea with Judi Dench is a Must Watch.

Scott says, "them talking so frankly made me realise that even really successful people can have and do have big failures across their career. You can't always have constant success."

He appreciates the level of authenticity throughout the programme and the fact it was “more than just legend meeting legend and them just celebrating each other's success… The conversation moved into unexpectedly quite tender areas and quite vulnerable areas.”

Scott says he wished it was longer, “when the closing titles came up at the end of this, I was thinking to myself, 'is that it?’ I was enjoying myself so much that I wish we had it even just for another 15 minutes”.

"The most profound moment of the whole conversation was Ian McKellen talking about coming out at 49 and speaking against Section 28. I think for me just the bravery, the sheer bravery at that time when the political environment was so toxic.”

Hayley says she loved this, “this is so great. When I saw the title of this, I thought I could watch hours of this. Like Scott says, I wish it was longer”.

"This kind of show is a treasure. It is exactly what you think it's going to be from the title, but you watch it and even so you end up in tears."

She values the topics discussed and believes “it's so much bigger than just tea and a chat.”

“They're talking about life and art and history. They go into Section 28. They go into their own histories, but also the history of everything."

Hayley wanted more from the programme and thinks “they should release the eight-hour cut”.

Tea with Judi Dench featuring Sir Ian McKellen is available to watch on Sky Arts and NOW.

Adults is an American comedy series following a group of twenty-somethings navigating friendship, work, relationships and adulthood while living in a house together. It comes from two writers from The Tonight Show, Ben Kronengold and Rebecca Shaw and it’s returned for a second series.

Both Scott and Hayley think this is not a Must Watch.

Hayley says, “it’s watchable if you're in the mood for silly nonsense, but I don't think it's essential.”

She praises the structure of the sitcom, saying it's “like an old fashioned American sitcom. It has got short episodes, it is situational rather than plot based, so you can really start whenever".

Hayley liked the actors portrayal of their characters as “they bring a lot of their own identity into their characters, which makes them feel bigger and realer than just cardboard cutout sitcom characters”.

Scott loved the characters as they “they feel very fleshed out. They don't feel like one dimensional setups for laughs, including the queer character, which sometimes they are just there as a sort of ‘gay best friend’”.

“Their lives are explored equally as everybody else's.”

He feels the storyline is “relatable” to younger viewers, it also explores sexuality in a casual way amongst “the difficulties of being in the modern workplace, if you're a young person having to really work solidly just to get seen, I think it taps into that”.

Scott thinks the show is “fresh” and “an updated version of Friends to some extent".

He says “there weren't that many moments that made me actually laugh out loud or laugh as much as I would”.

“I think it's got many good elements for it, but nothing that makes me go, oh wow, this is unmissable."

"I had a good time. Not a great time, but I had a good time.”

All episodes of both seasons of Adults are available to watch on Disney+ now.

A feature-length documentary by the filmmaker Brian Knappenberger which looks at how 50% of Americans living today are too young to remember 9/11 – you would need to be 28 to remember the events of that day, but they are the generation processing the consequences of it. The film also looks at the consequences of American foreign policy from the start of the War on Terror onwards.

Hayley think this is a Must watch, Scott does not.

Scott says “if it was a bit more focused on maybe two or three of those aspects, I think it would have been a more informative documentary.”

“At some points it felt like it is ticking through a list.”

“[It was] 40 minutes in after a devastating retelling that it started to look into the consequences. I found those explanations really rather light."

Scott appreciated the perspectives provided and thought they were “all very thoughtful but it's like writing a political essay, but you don't really know what to have in it or what not to have in it".

Hayley says “initially I thought no, and then I changed my mind."

“It basically shows how this event has changed the lives of people who either barely lived through it, they were babies when it happened, or they were related to victims and it traces the ripples through their lives to now."

She like the fact “there is more in this than you think there is going to be”.

“There's more than I thought there was going to be because I started it going, ‘I know all of this’ and it turns out I didn't.”

Hayley says “it got into other more recent stuff and they put it into the context of all the dominoes that fell after 9-11.”

Overall, she loved the discourse around online politics “because 9-11 happened in the early days of the internet, it was kind of a breeding ground for conspiracy theorists.”

“There is a direct through line between that and how online politics works today.”

Generation 9/11 is available to watch on Netflix.

Listen to the full reviews of all three programmes on BBC Sounds.

But before all that, why not contact Must Watch with the shows you’ve been loving, loathing or both on mustwatch@bbc.co.uk.

We used AI to transcribe and summarise our Must Watch feature. This article was then written and reviewed by a BBC journalist. More on how the BBC uses AI.