For someone so enamoured of TV, I have done precious little telly-watching this summer. America is cautious when it comes to dropping quality entertainment on the small screen in the warmer months, which are seemingly only good for game shows and repeats.

But hark! In the distance there is the sound of the cineplex with its churning popcorn machines, the stench mixing with the aftershave of the teenage employees. Bless the cinema, and praise the Lord for the sweet flow of air conditioning, necessary in a city where the summers feel like punishment.

I saw my second superhero movie of the summer a couple of weeks back – Spider-Man: Homecoming. After five Spider-Man films in 15 years, I felt I had moved on from Peter Parker and his radioactive spider bite – but that was before British actor Tom Holland stepped into the blue and red spandex suit. As the teen superhero, Holland is effervescence in human form – almost breathless with youthful brio, that perfectly earnest face carrying the charm of an entire boy band.

I loved all the young performers, actually: Zendaya and Laura Harrier and Jacob Batalon. Best were all the young people with no lines who made up the school body at Parker’s fictitious New York high school: it looked like an actual Queens school. Latinx kids, Jewish kids, Asian kids, black kids! And – I say this with no offence intended – they were all so regular-looking. Forget the big second-act surprise, this was the stuff that thrilled me the most.

Imagine a world in which onscreen teenagers were allowed to look like their acne-prone, ill-dressed, chronically normal, real-world counterparts. It’s easy if you try.