Game Of Thrones is gone, The Good Wife has just wound up and you binge-watched all of Orange Is The New Black in one day a few weekends back, when you were meant to be at lunch with your sister. Bad lady.
Now it’s summer, though, there’s fuck all on telly to fill the void. No exciting new series or seasons are coming back until the autumn. So until then, we’ve had a look at the box sets you can watch for cheap (or free!) to tide you over until everything starts up again. With it being summer and all, none of them are exactly heavy going. We'll save our True Detectives for the winter months please.
The Camomile Lawn
Like a younger, sexier version of Downton Abbey. This 1992 series is based on Mary Wesley’s novel of the same name and follows a family holidaying in Cornwall just before the outbreak of WWII. Then the war hits and everything changes. It’s glorious, shameless and really rather racy. Best watched with a group of girlfriends, and boys will find it a bit silly. The whole thing is on 4OD for free.
Damages
Big in America, this Glenn Close show never really found it’s footing over here. Rose Byrne stars as an up-and-coming hot-shot lawyer who’s hired by the city’s most powerful and devious attorne,y Patti Hewes. Something really terrible happens right at the beginning of the pilot, and the whole of season 1 is spent showing you what happened before the terrible thing happened. Basically it teaches you to TRUST NO ONE. All five seasons are on Netflix.
Fingersmith
Saucy Victorian lesbian drama that first aired on our TVs back in 2005. It’s adapted from Sarah Water’s Man Booker Prize winning novel of the same name. Sally Hawkins plays Sue, a pickpocket hired to help con a young heiress out of her fortune. The only thing is, as well as some major plot twists and turns, the two girls develop feelings for each other and well, a forbidden love ensues. The DVD is £4.50 on Amazon.
White Collar
First thing’s first, this TV show is not the greatest thing you’ve ever seen. However, it is hugely enjoyable. Dreamboat Matt Bomer (he’s got a husband IRL, ladies, sorry) plays a conman who signs up to help out the FBI agent who first caught him. Together the two investigate white collar crimes. Blast from the past, it also stars Stanford from SATC and Kelly Kapowski from* Saved By The Bell*. The first three seasons are on Netflix.
Without A Trace
You’ve no doubt caught some of this spectacular show about the FBI’s fictional missing persons unit at some point in your life, but from July it's going to all be available through Sky On Demand so you can watch it ALL IN ORDER. In case you missed out the first time around, each show revolves around one case and the 'hours missing' keep flashing up on the screen for added tension. Also, there isn't always a happy ending.
Follow Jess on Twitter @jess_commons
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.