June has arrived, bringing with it that peculiar British certainty of unpredictable weather, the lingering smell of barbecue ash, and the yearly realisation that we\u2019ve once again forgotten to book a summer holiday. Thankfully, the streaming platforms have decided to do the heavy lifting for us. This month\u2019s slate is a curious, compelling mix of high-stakes psychological drama, nostalgic filler, and at least one documentary about a man who ate nothing but Pot Noodles for a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But leading the charge, and the one everyone will be talking about at the water cooler, is Channel 4<\/a>\u2019s nervy new thriller, The Invite<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let\u2019s get the big one out of the way first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Invite (Channel 4, begins 12th June)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n If you\u2019ve ever found yourself stuck at a suburban dinner party, silently begging the cr\u00e8me br\u00fbl\u00e9e to arrive so you can make your excuses and go, then The Invite<\/em> will feel less like entertainment and more like a PTSD trigger. The premise is deceptively simple, which is the hallmark of all great British paranoia thrillers. Rachel (played with a marvellously frayed edge by Line of Duty<\/em>\u2019s Anna Maxwell Martin) and her husband Paul (Rory Kinnear, doing his trademark thing of being quietly terrifying beneath a cardigan) are a solidly middle-class couple from Bristol. They are, by their own admission, boring. And they like it that way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, an invitation arrives. Not an email, not a WhatsApp message, but a thick, cream-coloured card through the letterbox. It\u2019s for a \u201cGarden Party & Supper\u201d at the new neighbours\u2019 house \u2013 a vast, glass-and-steel monstrosity that has loomed over the end of their cul-de-sac for six months without a single light ever turning on. The new neighbours are a charismatic, impossibly handsome couple in their forties: Malik and Serena (played by Paapa Essiedu and a stunningly icy Jodie Turner-Smith). They are vegans who run a tech start-up, have perfect teeth, and use words like \u201cintersectionality\u201d without irony. In other words, they are Rachel\u2019s worst nightmare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What unfolds over four episodes is a masterclass in middle-class dread. The first episode is entirely about the anxiety of the RSVP. Do they go? What do they bring? Is a twenty-quid Malbec insulting? By episode two, they are at the party, and it is deeply, profoundly weird. The starter is a foam. The main course is an artichoke that takes forty minutes to eat. And the other guests are a rogue\u2019s gallery of familiar types: the competitive mother, the washed-up radio DJ, the conspiracy theorist accountant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But The Invite<\/em> isn\u2019t just satire, though it is scathing. It slowly reveals itself to be a thriller about data, consent, and the terrifying void behind the influencer aesthetic. Malik and Serena are not just odd; they are collecting something. Every conversation is recorded. Every off-colour joke is logged. The party games aren\u2019t just cringey; they are psychological stress tests. By the end of episode three, you\u2019ll be side-eyeing your own neighbours and checking your phone for hidden microphones. Anna Maxwell Martin is, as ever, the engine of the piece, her Rachel is a woman who knows something is wrong but has been conditioned by a lifetime of politeness not to make a fuss. It is that very British trait, the refusal to cause a scene, that the show weaponises. Essential viewing, but perhaps not on an empty stomach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Lazarus Protocol (Apple TV<\/a>+, 16th June)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Switching gears entirely, Apple TV+ delivers what might be the sci-fi event of the summer. The Lazarus Protocol<\/em> is a six-part series from the writer of Devs<\/em>, Alex Garland, and it feels like a philosophical migraine in the best possible way. The plot follows a team of \u201cbiological archivists\u201d in a near-future London where climate collapse has been (mostly) solved, but only by uploading 80% of the population\u2019s consciousness into a green-energy server farm known as The Haven. The remaining 20%, the \u201cAnchors\u201d, live in a husk of a city, tending to the physical bodies of the uploaded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The twist arrives when a glitch in The Haven starts deleting people. Not just their digital avatars, but their physical bodies, which begin to dissolve into a grey, scentless powder. Florence Pugh, who I\u2019m convinced has signed a Faustian pact to be in every interesting project at once, plays Kaela, a cynical Anchor who is hired by the corporation running The Haven to find the \u201csource code\u201d of the deletion. The show is visually stunning, a kind of brutalist, wet London where it is always raining a strange bioluminescent drizzle. The first two episodes are heavy on exposition, but by episode three, when Kaela enters The Haven for the first time and discovers a digital afterlife that has turned into a recursive nightmare of bad weather and worse call centre hold music, the show finds its terrifying groove. It asks a deeply uncomfortable question: if you could live forever inside a perfect simulation, why would you choose to program misery? And if someone is deleting that misery, are they the hero or the villain? Bring a notepad. You\u2019ll need it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Murder, They Hope: Brighton (Gold, 1st June)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n For those who find the above a bit too heavy, Gold\u2019s annual Murder, They Hope<\/em> special arrives on the first of the month, and it is a warm hug in the shape of a crime caper. Johnny Vegas and Sian Gibson return as the bumbling, accident-prone coaches of the \u201cKnight to Remember\u201d tour company. This time, they\u2019ve been hired to run a true-crime tour of Brighton, only to accidentally stumble upon an actual murder during the \u201cRe-enactment of the Death of the Pinstripe Poisoner\u201d on the West Pier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It is, predictably, silly. The jokes are dad-jokes. The plot is a clothesline on which to hang misunderstandings, mistaken identities, and at least one scene involving a mobility scooter chase along the seafront. But there is a genuine affection between Vegas and Gibson that lifts the material. This isn\u2019t cynical television; it\u2019s the telly equivalent of a packet of cheese and onion crisps and a half-shandy on a sunny afternoon. Guest stars this year include a wonderfully game Joanna Lumley as a retired drag artist who \u201csaw everything from the ladies\u2019 loo,\u201d and a cameo from the ghost of Max Miller, which is either a clever hologram or Vegas having a heatstroke. It\u2019s nonsense, but it\u2019s our nonsense.<\/p>\n\n\n\n