Is this big-money challenge cruel? Yes. But it’s mainly just tedious to watch these immature players and their teenage machinations as they battle for cash

The first season of Beast Games – the big-money reality challenge masterminded and hosted by internet personality Jimmy Donaldson, better known as MrBeast – prompted a lawsuit. Five anonymous contestants sued both the production companies behind the series and Donaldson himself, claiming that they had been kept “underfed and overtired”, and alleging an unsafe environment on the set of the Gladiators-ish, Squid Game-esque series (claims, of course, firmly denied by all parties). While the participants claimed they had been “shamelessly exploited” in the name of entertainment, this did little to impede the success of Beast Games, which went on to become Amazon’s most-watched unscripted series ever, garnering 50 million viewers in the month after its release.

You may well come to Beast Games with a sense that this is a slightly murky, mercenary endeavour, the $5m grand prize (“generational wealth!!!!” says Donaldson) distracting from potential ethical issues just below the surface. Weirdly, though, moral issues will probably be the least of viewers’ concerns. More than ever, in its second series Beast Games also happens to be mindless, vibeless television, flecked with Squiddy sadism but also borrowing heavily from the Love Island playbook. As they stay up into the wee hours building improbably high towers from foam blocks or playing convoluted games of dodgeball, the contestants couple up, crash out and even seek to avenge fallen players. Take Luisitin, playing to defend the honour of his wife from series one, by badmouthing her former nemesis, Karim, to anyone who will listen (“he and his brother gaslit my wife on television!”) People say things like “be careful who you trust!” and “he’s backpack boy … his girlfriend is carrying him over the finish line”. You don’t get this sort of feuding on Ninja Warrior, that’s for sure.

It may only be January, but you already know this banking drama is going to be one of the year’s best shows – a daring, debauched and jaw-dropping treat

Many dramas – especially good ones – don’t become major hits overnight. Think of the likes of Game of Thrones or Succession, which needed time to warm up, and some jaw-dropper episodes (namely the Red Wedding and Kendall bumping off a waiter, respectively) to really get going. Industry is one such show – the slow-burn HBO/BBC series that firmly hit its stride in season three. Good news: season four is even better, truly top-tier television that’s surely destined for end-of-year lists, a serious feat when we’re barely a week into January.

Industry is, of course, the one about young investment bankers, the drama that initially drew comparisons with This Life, and the show where our fresh-faced grads were as likely to be hooking up with one another as they were to be stabbing each other in the back. Fast forward to season four and it’s feeling decidedly more dark and debauched, while still held together with pitch-perfect dialogue. Kiernan Shipka – here, vastly closer to Don Draper than to his daughter, Sally, whom she played in Mad Men – Max Minghella, Kal Penn and Charlie Heaton are among the big names who have joined the cast this time around. They meld seamlessly with our existing leads – the mononymous Myha’la, Marisa Abela, Kit Harington – to make something more twisted and sophisticated than viewers may be expecting. Props, too, for Toheeb Jimoh of Ted Lasso for integrating flawlessly; his jaunt over the Atlantic with Miriam Petche as Sweetpea is a treat in particular.