The Dig
Netflix
At the time of writing this, The Dig was at number one in the UK charts on Netflix, toppling the implausibly silly Bridgerton. Which goes to show that there is still, perhaps surprisingly, an appetite for finely acted, well-written dramas with lashings of landscape, nice drawing rooms and (mostly) good manners. The Dig is set in 1939, so the viewer already knows where the wider world is heading; but in Sutton Hoo house in Suffolk, all thoughts are on a longer stretch of human history. There’s a (very) tiny bit of sex (of which more later) but this does not involve the main protagonists: Edith Pretty, the middle-aged owner of Sutton Hoo, and local archaeologist Basil Brown, who share only a burning passion for excavation and historical discovery. The Dig is very much about intimacy, but despite the camera occasionally lingering meaningfully on Mr Brown and Mrs Pretty in their respective single beds, it is absolutely not the kind generally found on Netflix.