The mockumentary This Country. Photo / Supplied
Somewhere Boy (TVNZ+)
It actually doesn’t seem like the worst childhood, being brought up by your dad in a big house in the middle of the woods, kept safe from an outside world full of monsters that belong to an elaborate fiction he’s created to try to stop you from ever leaving. Danny, the startled-looking teenager at the centre of singular new British series Somewhere Boy, seems perfectly content with his lot – at least up until the point in the show’s first minute, when his dad walks outside and shoots himself.
Steve, it soon becomes clear, has been mentally quite unwell since Danny’s mum died in a car accident when he was a baby. You don’t want to tell somebody how to grieve, but keeping your child hidden away from the world for years is probably not the healthiest way of going about it. Now, Danny is forced out blinking into a world he doesn’t understand – the suburbs, where he’s been taken in by his well-meaning but ill-equipped aunt and her modern (kids swear at parents) family.
We’ve been here before, or so it probably seems, but Somewhere Boy turns its familiar premise into something remarkably unique. As Danny takes his first steps in the real world and forms an awkward friendship with his cousin Aaron – who watches Pornhub the same way Danny watched Casablanca – flashbacks reveal more about his old life. His dad smeared his face with rabbit blood before coming home to keep up the illusion, telling him, “They can’t get you in here” - genuinely believing he’s doing what’s best for his son out of some misguided sense of love.
And as Danny uncovers the truth about the dad he worshipped, and more context is drip-fed to us through flashbacks, the series’ 10 short episodes start to pack an increasingly emotional punch. It’s come seemingly out of nowhere, but Somewhere Boy looks like one of the shows of the year.
This Country (TVNZ+)
Some of Britain’s best-kept comedy secrets are finally coming to TVNZ+ this month, and This Country might be the best of the lot. The mockumentary following the day-to-day lives of young people in a Cotswolds village is the creation of brother and sister Charlie and Daisy May Cooper, who play idle, unemployable cousins Kurtan and Kerry Mucklowe. They might be the best and funniest British comedy pairing since Mark and Jez on Peep Show, but as they say, it takes a village – and it’s all the equally brilliant supporting characters (special mention to Paul Chahidi as the vicar) who make This Country such a treasure.
The Bastard Son & The Devil Himself (Netflix)
Sally Green’s Half Bad trilogy of graphic novels holds the obscure but impressive Guinness World Record for “most translated book by a debut author, pre-publication” – 45 different languages. Now, it’s also been translated into a Netflix series by Joe Barton, the creator of the underrated BBC crime drama Giri/Haji. What neither title gives away is that it’s actually about witches – there are blood witches (baddies) and fair-born witches (goodies). And then there’s Nathan, the 16-year-old son of the worst blood witch in the world, who faces a Luke Skywalker-style fight against his blood witch destiny.
High School (Prime Video)
Be honest with yourself – how much does your enjoyment of any given TV show depend on whether or not it has an absolutely lethal 90s alt-rock soundtrack? Usually, pleasant surprise plays a part in it too – there’s nothing like unexpectedly hearing The Breeders in the first five minutes of a new series to get the endorphins flowing – but with High School, it’s worth advertising that this show is 90s alt-rock soundtrack heaven. If you remember Tegan and Sara, the ‘00s pop-punk duo and twin queer icons upon whose memoir this series is based, even better.
Movie of the Week: My Policeman (Prime Video)
Harry Styles is this generation’s David Bowie – he’s not bad at acting, but there’s also no way he’d be getting all these roles if he wasn’t also one of the biggest pop stars in the world. As acting efforts go, My Policeman is probably better than his other film at the moment, Don’t Worry Darling, though it will no doubt receive a fraction of the attention. Set in Brighton in the 1950s, Styles stars as a gay policeman who marries a young woman while continuing his secret relationship with a museum curator. A fairly good, little-bit-steamy but ultimately unmemorable romance – to non-Harrymaniacs, at least.
From the Vault: You, Me & The Apocalypse (2015) (TVNZ+)
TVNZ+ has secured two very valuable evergreen comfort viewing series this month in The Office and Parks and Recreation. But if you feel like something new, there’s also the one-season hidden gem You, Me & The Apocalypse, featuring stars of both. The British-American co-production is set variously in Slough in Buckinghamshire, New Mexico, Washington DC and the Vatican, bringing together the likes of Jenna Fischer (Pam from The Office), Megan Mullally (Tammy from Parks and Rec) and Pauline Quirke (Sharon from Birds of a Feather). It probably would have got a second season were it not for the fact that the first one was about the end of the world.
Podcast of the Week: Case 63
When it comes to fiction podcasts, everybody seems to agree that less is more. If you want a sprawling saga featuring a large ensemble cast and a plot that crisscrosses several different timelines, there are TV shows for that. If you want a taut thriller that’s basically just two people talking on the phone or in some kind of psychiatric therapy session the whole time – this is the podcast medium’s time to shine.
Gimlet’s Case 63 builds on everything they’ve learnt about what works and what doesn’t in fiction podcasting, making it one of their best – if most cliched – offerings yet. The two-hander stars Oscar Isaac as Case 63, a man found naked in an airport bathroom who claims to be a time traveller from the year 2062, and Julianne Moore as the psychiatrist assigned to figure out what on earth he’s on about. Over the course of 10 short (8-10 minutes seems to be the agreed upon ideal length now) chapters, he builds a convincingly bleak and vivid picture of the next 40 years of humanity and how the world ends (slowly, painfully, it’s already started happening), before pulling the rug in a thrilling final couple of episodes.
The Kiwi actor has been part of the Star Wars universe for more than 20 years.