One clunky workaround is in Variables tab to undock the Watches tab separately, then dock it on top of Variables tab and make it active. Or better yet, hide the Variables window. Then every time you need to inspect something add it to watches, then delete or inspect from interactive console. This is clunky but better than nothing. The old pydevd_xml.py workaround doesn’t seem to work anymore.
Another workaround is to switch to VSCode