TV tonight: our highlights for Wednesday, July 16, including The Summer I Turned Pretty

Sean Kaufman, Gavin Casalegno and Lola Tung in The Summer I Turned Pretty

(Image credit: Erika Doss/Prime)

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The Summer I Turned Pretty
Bookish
The Doctor Blake Mysteries

Here's our TV tonight picks for Wednesday, July 16 (for more information about what's on TV, see our TV Guide)...

The Summer I Turned Pretty, Prime Video

Netflix may have Ginny & Georgia (its third season became the most-watched show on the platform in the first week in June), but Prime Video can counter with its own heavy-hitter coming-of-age drama, based on Jenny Han’s trilogy of books The Summer I Turned Pretty. Seasons 1 and 2, which followed the love triangle between Isabel "Belly" Conklin (Lola Tung) and two brothers, Jeremiah (Gavin Casalegno) and Conrad (Christopher Briney), were a huge hit.

And today, the 11-part third and final season launches, with another summer beginning at Cousins Beach and Belly finding herself at a crossroads. The first two episodes are available now, with the rest being added weekly.

Bookish, U&Alibi, 8 pm (also available as box set)

Mark Gatiss as Gabriel Book in Bookish. He's wearing a 1940s-style suit with a pair of tortoiseshell glasses and an auburn wig. He's standing on the set of Book's Books, in front of chaotically arranged bookshelves filled with tomes of all shapes and sizes. In front of him is a desk containing notecards, a quill, some notebooks, rubber stamps and so on. — (Image credit: U&Alibi)

London in the 1940s is a mire of scandals in this winning detective drama from Mark Gatiss. He plays Gabriel Book, an unassuming bookseller who carries a mysterious letter from Churchill that gives him permission to assist the police on their most complex cases – and this two-part opener involves a bomb site full of skeletons and a chemist who succumbed to poison. Bridgerton’s Polly Walker is also fabulous as Trottie, Book’s childhood friend, and they’re in a marriage of convenience to hide his homosexuality, illegal at the time.

Bookish is stylish, smart, poignant and perplexing, and you’ll be eager to devour every chapter.

The Doctor Blake Mysteries, U&Drama, 3 pm

Neighbours favourite Craig McLachlan stars in this murder-mystery series, set in 1950s Australia (first shown on BBC1). He plays unconventional GP Lucien Blake, who doubles as a police surgeon and returns to his home town, only to shake up the locals with forensic science after a girl’s body is found in a lake. Continues until Friday. Series one to five are available on U.