Patrick Freyne: How much am I like Anya Taylor-Joy? Put us in a casino and watch what happens

It’s hard for me to watch action dramas like Lucky (Apple TV), in which a protagonist is on the run from the Mob and the law, without wondering how I’d fare in the same situation. A lot of shows have a similar premise. There were, in recent times, The Iris Affair and Poker Face. In each example the protagonists show remarkable competence in the face of overwhelming difficulty.They’re all pretty entertaining in their own ways. Lucky is different from the others in that the main character, played by Anya Taylor-Joy, has a dog’s name. Frequently people call it out in this show. “Lucky!” they cry. And it doesn’t take away from the impression that she has a dog’s name.There are some similarities between me and Anya Taylor-Joy. For example, in real life it would be quite difficult for either of us to walk through a busy Las Vegas casino without notice – Anya Taylor-Joy because she is a celebrity with cheek bones you could stack books on and me because I wheeze very loudly and complain to my wife when I have to move a lot (“But I don’t want to!” “Please carry me!”).READ MOREOkay, that’s more or less where the similarities end. For example, if I was to go into a shop’s toilet to dye and cut my own hair in order to evade my pursuers, as Lucky does in this show, I would not emerge mere moments later with a surprisingly chic hairdo that really suits me. It would be all different colours, and there would be bald patches and it would make my face look fat.I also lack Lucky’s athleticism. There’s a bit towards the end of the first episode where Lucky is being chased by a gunman in a truck stop and is challenged to freeze between trucks. Instead of falling to her knees crying, in a way that I would do in such a predicament, and which I sometimes do when my takeaway is delayed, she squeezes under a truck. If I did that I wouldn’t fit, would get stuck and would start to sob. And then the person chasing me would have to help pull me out, and my trousers would get stuck on a sharp bit and get ripped off, and it would all end up being embarrassing for both of us.Lucky then climbs over the trucks, jumping from cab to cab, whereas I would fall wheezingly, and weepingly, to the ground even attempting to get up there, because I have, my doctor tells me, the upper-body strength of a duckling. So I’d hurt my back. And then the gangster and/or FBI person chasing me would have to help carry me to their car, like a baby. Essentially, capturing me in a show like this would only make a hired goon feel sad for me and then bad about themselves.In the second episode there’s a bit where Lucky kills a rattlesnake to save some children. If it were me, I’d definitely be eaten by that rattlesnake. Rattlesnakes don’t eat people, you say? The rattlesnake would definitely have a go on me. I look very succulent. And then it too would feel sad for me and bad about itself.[ Patrick Freyne: House of the Dragon, House of the Shmagon, that’s what I sayOpens in new window ]Oh, what’s Lucky about? You’ve come here for information about the telly? Fascinating. Created by Jonathan Tropper based on a book by Marissa Stapley, it begins with Lucky and her boyfriend, Spot, or possibly Rover, celebrating a successful shenanigan that has led to a suitcase of money. They celebrate by doing shots and gambling and dancing in a sexy manner with one another. Sadly, when Lucky wakes up the next morning she finds Shep or Cuddles or whatever has absconded with the cash and a convoy of police cars are on the way to the hotel.The money was skimmed from her boyfriend’s mother’s organised-crime operation by her jailbird father. (These are played by Annette Bening and silver-haired hunk Timothy Olyphant.) It was her job to get that money out of the country. Now all sorts of people are after her, many of them helpfully explaining the plot along the way. (It’s only a matter of time before characters start breaking the fourth wall to address the audience directly: “Hey, you idiots, look up from your phones. I’m trying to put across some plot points here!”)Anyway, good acting and direction carry the show along despite the fact that not much original is happening. Lucky must survive while trying to find out what happened to her boyfriend, Fido or Rex or something. She does this partly through cunning and partly through being “lucky”, like when she escapes from the boot of a car to cause the deaths of two hoodlums, one of whom she skewers through the head with a screwdriver. (Skewering people through the head with stuff feels like it should be harder than it appears on television.) Again, so you know, in this circumstance I’d just wet myself in the boot. It’s probably for the best that the role is played by Anya Taylor-Joy and not me, on reflection.Evolution: Chris Packham with ostrich eggs on a farm in South Africa. Photograph: Will Edwards/BBC Studios Over on BBC One, Chris Packham shows us how to make eggs. Step one: go back billions of years and wait for eggs to evolve. Wow. There is a lot of preamble in this cookery show. Evolution isn’t really a cookery show. It’s about the history of evolution, and in this episode they’re working up to the ostrich egg. It’s also an excuse for Chris Packham to travel the world clutching frogs and monitor lizards and ostrich chicks in his covetous human mitts. Indeed, if there’s a difference between Packham and David Attenborough it’s that Packham seems to want to give every animal in the world a hug. This is fair. Packham is a nice man and a great broadcaster, and if he wants to embrace every animal in the world I feel the BBC should just let him.The show mixes contemporary nature footage with animated beasties of yore. It’s educational and fun and very well helmed by Packham. It also features plenty of opportunities to turn from a weird toothy beast on-screen to your TV-watching companion and go, “I didn’t know you were on this programme.”Packham talks about the two billion years or so of microbial life where nothing much happened before we got the microbe who invented sex. What a legend.[ Chris Packham: ‘I was a very angry young man, confused because of my undiagnosed autism’Opens in new window ]We go from there from fish with notions to goofy dinosaurs and survivalist birds. Packham also introduces us to the first reptile to develop a penis, after which he goes into a spiel about how the blue whale’s penis averages 2.5 metres while the gorilla has one of the smallest penises “compared to its body size”.This is accompanied by footage of a gorilla looking embarrassed. It feels like Packham’s settling a score, to be honest. The message is clearly: “If I cannot safely cuddle you, animals of the world, I will body-shame you on national television.” Anyway, it’s brilliant public-service television, and though I would last mere minutes in the wild I salute all the microbial, scaly and fluffy ancestors who were tough enough to get me here.