Screen Queen TV: Playing Gracie Darling, Fit For TV, Outlander: Blood Of My Blood, Sausage Party: Foodtopia

Playing Gracie Darling

Thursday, streaming on Paramount Plus

Remember scaring yourself stupid at sleepovers as a kid?

It was a rite of passage. We started in primary school, telling ghost stories over torchlight under doonas, and things progressed as we got older. By the time we hit high school it was all escaped lunatics from asylums, calls coming FROM INSIDE THE HOUSE — and was there one about a man hiding under some poor kid’s bed at night licking her hands? She thought it was her dog. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t.

By the time the Nineties rolled around, my friends and I had graduated to doing seances, summoning spirits with ouija boards and cups — “Does Matty P like me? Y-E-S!” — and lifting each other up by our fingertips.

What a time to be alive!

It all came back to me while watching scenes from the first episode of this great locally produced six-part mystery. White Lotus star Morgana O’Reilly plays Joni. When she was 14, her best friend Gracie Darling disappeared during a seance. Fast forward two decades and the local kids in the town she grew up in are “Playing Gracie Darling” when another teen girl goes missing in eerily similar circumstances.

The story that unravels is dark, moody and instantly gripping, and says some interesting things about memory, trauma and secrets long-buried. It criss-crosses between the present day — Joni, now a child psychologist, has returned to her home town to lend a hand as news breaks of the latest disappearance — and the Nineties, focusing on her and her friends as kids.

This has a stacked cast, including Celia Pacquola, Annie Maynard, Rudi Dharmalingam and Dame Harriet Walter, who plays Joni’s mum.

For those of us who lived through the sleepover years (both literally and metaphorically), there’s much fun to be had in revisiting this time . . . from the comfort of our couch.

Fit For TV: The Reality Of The Biggest Loser

Friday, streaming on Netflix

What a long way we’ve come since The Biggest Loser. These days weight loss can be as simple as a little jabby-jab — forget slogging it out on national television! This three-part documentary explores the true story behind the hit weight-loss reality series, The Biggest Loser, which first began in 2004 in the States before making its way to our shores. The American version ran for 18 seasons until 2016, when audiences appear to have twigged to the unique toxicity of watching a bunch of people starve themselves in the quest to win some cash. This series talks to previous participants, trainers, producers and health professionals, looking at “the good, the bad and the complicated” of it all — you know I’ll be tuning in.

Outlander: Blood Of My Blood

Saturday, streaming on Stan

Love yourself a bit of kilted rumpy-pumpy in the Scottish Highlands? Of course you do. So you’ll be tuning in to peep the Outlander prequel series, which takes a squiz at the origin stories of Jamie and Claire’s parents. See you on the misty moors!

The Voice

Sunday, 7pm, Seven

The Voice is back, and there’s a heap of new mentors along for the ride. Returning judge Kate Miller-Heidke is joined this time around by Sporty Spice Melanie C, dad crooner Richard Marx and all-round nice guy Ronan Keating. Family-friendly singalong, anyone?

Sausage Party: Foodtopia

Wednesday, streaming on Prime Video

This eight-part series spin-off takes its origins from the movie that came out a few years ago. It looks super crude and utterly ridiculous. Suffice to say: I am entirely there for it.