Point: Matthew Goode + Matthew Rhys + wine = perfection. ITV released a trailer today for The Wine Show, which is literally Matthew Rhys (The Americans) and Matthew Goode (Downton Abbey and The Good Wife, most recently, though I still remember him from Chasing Liberty) frolicking about Italian villas trying different kinds of wines. Because the television gods heard your prayers. “I’m not sure if this is genius, or just bizarre,” a wine expert says in the trailer—and that kind of applies to this 13-episode show, coming to us this spring.
Rhys and Goode have long been friends, and starred together as Darcy and Wickham, respectively, in Death Comes to Pemberley in 2013. The two were probably the best part of that decidedly mediocre miniseries, and they’ve got enough charm between them to sustain a show about watching paint dry. -Elaine Teng
Counterpoint: The Wine Show is The Trip to Italy for idiots, or maybe Top Gear for richer, more obnoxious morons. There was already a much better version of this show! It was called The Trip to Italy and it starred the world’s greatest living comic actor, Steve Coogan, and Britain’s 13th best Gore Vidal impersonator, Rob Brydon. And it was basically a show making fun of The Wine Show, despite coming out years before it! The Trip to Italy is self-aware and funny and really, really dark in a way that this smug show about two pretty boys can never be. The best thing I can say about The Wine Show is that it might be Britain’s Sideways, and Sideways is the worst movie I’ve ever seen. -Alex Shephard