Way too easy for the partially dyslexic like me to confuse this show with a US pop goddess but I'm glad I tuned in to the first episode, regardless of initial motivations.
As a university student in the mid '90s, the opening of this show sparked immediate nostalgia. Gareth Southgate misses his penalty at Euro 96 on the television of a pub in St Andrew's. The rough regulars roar their raucous approval and the action cuts to a table in the corner where three posh students begin plotting the rest of their evening. A party elsewhere is mentioned then one of the three surreptitiously invites a barmaid to the event; he has to be careful as her violently protective brothers are the other side of the bar.
The quality of this opening scene, it's intensity and vibrancy, it's contemporaneous accuracy and credible cultural setting, immediately hook you. Especially since Podric is one of the brothers.
