The Consultant. Photo / Supplied
The Consultant (Prime Video)
If there’s one character you really don’t want to encounter directly after getting stoned, it’s Christoph Waltz. The Austrian actor has portrayed memorable villains in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds and Django Unchained and the last couple of James Bond movies, carving out a very effective niche for portraying characters with what can only be described as a deeply unsettling aura. And he’s absolutely in his zone in the preposterous yet very moreish thriller series The Consultant.
His entrance interrupts a late-night office bake session shared by Craig and Elaine (Nat Wolff and Brittany O’Grady, who, if you’re wondering where you recognise her from, was the sister’s friend in season one of The White Lotus), workers at a tech company that makes phone games. In fairness to them, it had been a bit of a tough day – the company’s founder has just abruptly exited the business in a shocking opening scene.
His name, he tells them, is “Regus Patoff”, and he’s a consultant employed by their former boss. Why has he disconcertingly shown up at the office in the middle of the night? “It sets a good example to be the first one in the office,” he softly explains, before asking Craig to help him climb the stairs to his new office. “I’m not good with stairs.”
Because it’s Christoph Waltz, this all drips with a particular type of menace, which doesn’t take long to start building as Craig and Elaine do some amateur sleuthing – USB drives, security footage, databases, you name it – into who this character is and what his motives are. Based on a novel by prolific horror writer Bentley Little, who seems to basically be RL Stine for adults, it’s an effective and engaging thriller, elevated by the performance of its endlessly creepy leading man.
The Flatshare (TVNZ+, from Monday)
A man and a woman live in the same flat but never meet – it’s like one of those brainteasers we were all told at school (“I can’t operate on that boy, he’s my son!”). How is this possible? Well, she lives in the flat from 8pm-8am and at weekends, he works night shift and has the flat from 8am-8pm and never the twain shall meet. Not that that stops them from falling in love via a series of cute Post-it notes. That’s right, this is a cost-of-living-crisis rom-com, and the kind of rom-com you’ll love despite – or perhaps because of – how cheesy and implausible it is.
Red Rose (Netflix)
It has become a cliche to describe the latest invasive app or advancement in tech as “like something out of Black Mirror”, but sometimes the comparison just can’t be avoided. The titular app in this BBC teen horror purportedly grants its users wishes, but the price they pay is that it also malwares the crap out of their phones, taking control of their cameras and microphones and text messages and blackmailing them into doing increasingly depraved things until they go completely mad. Expect a real-life Red Rose app to be at the top of the app store charts by the end of the year, then.
Rosie Molloy Gives Up Everything (Neon)
Usually, television writers try to exercise some restraint when it comes to addictions. It’s normal for characters to have one, maybe even two or three at a pinch. But when it came to creating Rosie Molloy, they’ve just thought, you know what, let’s make her addicted to absolutely everything. After one boozy incident ruins her brother’s alcohol-free wedding, the mortified Molloy (Sheridan Smith) decides to go cold turkey on all her vices at once – with decidedly mixed results. It’s probably not the most accurate and nuanced portrayal of addiction ever committed to celluloid, but it is a very likeable and easy-to-watch comedy-drama.
Movie of the Week: The Black Phone (Neon / Prime Video)
There’s a new freaky horror movie mask in town, and this one’s being worn by . . . Ethan Hawke? The Gen X heartthrob plays “The Grabber”, a 1970s child abductor and murderer who kidnaps bullied teen Finney Blake (Mason Thames) and hides him in his basement. That’s where the black phone comes into play – it starts to ring, and the ghosts of The Grabber’s previous victims are on the other end. And they want to help Finney escape. Produced by the Blumhouse horror empire and based on a short story by Joe Hill (Stephen King’s son!), it’s better – and more substantial – than it might sound. But most importantly, it’s scary.
From the Vault: Fatal Attraction (1987) (TVNZ+)
Even if you haven’t seen Fatal Attraction, you probably know the gist – or at least have it confused with 1992′s Basic Instinct, which is more or less the same thing. Michael Douglas has an affair with Glenn Close; he thinks it’s a brief and meaningless fling, she becomes obsessed with trying to ruin his life. But those who’ve never actually seen the film are missing out on a number of very memorable scenes, which helped make it so buzzworthy when it first came out. Through a modern lens (or even a 1987 one) it’s all pretty sexist and misogynistic, but it’s also easy to see what made it such a cultural sensation at the time.
Podcast of the Week: City of the Rails
When you think of a “hobo” you probably imagine some kind of old-timey caricature with a swag bag on a stick and disintegrating trousers held up by a belt of rope, like something off The Simpsons. You might also wonder if it’s even still okay to call them “hobos”, but that’s how the hobos (aka tramps, “dirty kids” and countless other descriptors) on City of the Rails describe themselves, so presumably it’s fine.
This fascinating series about the American railroad and the people who choose to live on it is at once broad – the story of the railroad is basically the story of the modern US – and deeply personal. Journalist Danelle Morton first took an interest in hobo culture when her daughter, on the day of her high school graduation, disappeared without a trace. Morton would discover she had gone straight to the train yard and hopped a literal midnight train going anywhere.
There is a romance to the life of the drifter for sure, but it’s also incredibly dangerous. For a mum, it’s obviously one never-ending worry, but Morton has channelled her energy into attempting to understand why her daughter has chosen this life and what it must be like for her. The result is a remarkable and wholly original podcast, which already seems destined to be one of the best of the year.
The Kiwi actor has been part of the Star Wars universe for more than 20 years.