Jodie (Bodyguard's Nina Toussaint-White), the titular third witness to a crime she just happened to glimpse for a second as she opened up her salon one morning. Photo / Supplied
Jodie (Bodyguard's Nina Toussaint-White), the titular third witness to a crime she just happened to glimpse for a second as she opened up her salon one morning. Photo / Supplied
Witness Number 3 (TVNZ+)
In Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, the director famously evoked a sense of terror by showing a flock of crows gradually growing larger on a children's playground. In new British thriller Witness Number 3 this device is deployed to almost as foreboding effect by swapping out thecrows for menacing lads wearing hoodies and puffer jackets.
It's all part of a campaign of intimidation and harassment being launched against local hairdresser Jodie (Bodyguard's Nina Toussaint-White), the titular third witness to a crime she just happened to glimpse for a second as she opened up her salon one morning. "Thanks for coming forward," says the police officer taking her statement. "Honestly, it's not a problem," she replies, a sign flashing "Dramatic Irony Alert" practically flashing above her head.
It is, of course, a very big problem, because the crime she glimpsed – bloke in a black hoodie manhandling a bloke in a grey hoodie in a way that seemed a bit off – was committed by a particularly nasty element that even one of the cops advises she'd be better off not messing with. But it's a bit late for that – in a moment of remarkable generosity/implausible naivety, she's already lent one of them her phone to "call his brother" after he was "locked out" of his flat, so now they've quite literally got her number.
It starts with just a handful of lads in hoodies standing outside the salon and the odd mystery call that she shrugs off, but things escalate quickly, and by the end of the first episode Jodie's life has pretty much flipped upside down. It's not the most subtle or nuanced drama you'll ever see, but Toussaint-White's convincing performance lifts Witness Number 3 to the position of mid-shelf, very watchable TV thriller.
British comedy duo Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins take to the small screen as bumbling assassins on Hitmen. Photo / Supplied
Hitmen (Neon, from Tuesday)
British comedy duo Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins are best known for mastering the art of slipping saucy puns into wholesome family entertainment on The Great British Bake Off, so it may come as a surprise to learn that in their new series they play … a pair of contract killers. Not quite proper deadly assassins, though, more like inept, bumbling, comedy assassins who spend most of their time nattering in the van and having long discussions about how they're going to dispose of the bodies. Dressing up as Simon and Garfunkel in order to abduct a DJ – that sort of thing.
Hunted Australia dumps a vanload of aspiring fugitives in the middle of Melbourne's Fed Square and sets a crack team of CCTV-monitoring, phone-tracing professional "hunters" on them. Photo / Supplied
Hunted Australia (TVNZ+, TVNZ 2, 8:30pm Tuesday)
Never mind Married at First Sight – the best, weirdest and funniest reality TV experiment to come out of Australia is this hardcore grown-up game of hide and seek. The Australian version of a British series that inexplicably failed to capture the public imagination when it aired here a couple of years ago, Hunted dumps a vanload of aspiring fugitive duos in the middle of Melbourne's Fed Square and sets a crack team of CCTV-monitoring, phone-tracing professional "hunters" on them. Whoever can survive three weeks on the run and make it to the helicopter waiting at the end wins some money, hopefully enough to cover the three weeks off work.
Rosa Salazar and Gavin Drea in Wedding Season. Photo / Supplied
Wedding Season (Disney+)
The challenge: fit as many disparate genres as you can into a single TV series. The result: action comedy romantic thriller Wedding Season. Brand New Cherry Flavor star Rosa Salazar is a bride whose wedding goes so awry that she ends up breaking out of police custody the man she's been seeing behind her fiance's back (Gavin Drea) after he's arrested under suspicion of poisoning her parents at the reception. Talk about an action-packed first episode, and the rest of the season carries on with the same exhausting energy, held together by the chemistry of the two leads and the big central mystery: what exactly is going on?
Movie of the Week: Lou (Netflix)
Allison Janney has played all sorts of characters during a long and successful career but there's always room to branch out. In Lou she shows she can do a good "mysterious loner" as the title character who helps her neighbour (Jurnee Smollett) search for her young daughter after she's been kidnapped during a storm. From JJ Abrams' production company, Bad Robot, this is timeless under-the-pump thriller material – a battle against, in no particular order, the clock, the elements, the past (secrets thereof) and of course the kidnappers.
A gent called "Will McKenzie" is running for Auckland Council at the moment, and the fact that none of his billboards have been vandalised with a certain baggage-themed insult really goes to show how far The Inbetweeners has slipped from the public consciousness. Will McKenzie is of course the main character in The Inbetweeners (2008-2010), the juvenile British comedy series that introduced classic phrases such as "briefcase wanker" and "ooh, football friend" to the comedy reference lexicon. It might be basically ancient and obsolete now, but it's still good.
Lauren Ober has always been a chatterbox, so it may come as no surprise that she has carved out a successful career as a podcast host. You've probably heard her if you listen to This American Life, 99% Invisible, Criminal or any number of NPR podcasts. "Chatterbox" is maybe a bit of an understatement – as a child her need to talk was more like a compulsion, and it got her into a lot of trouble at school. This was just one of a whole bunch of little things that made her life feel not as easy as it should be, so during Covid she decided to seek expert help to get to the bottom of it. And what she learned came as a surprise, though in retrospect maybe it shouldn't have: at the age of 42, Ober was diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum.
The Loudest Girl in the World is her new podcast about getting that diagnosis and the subsequent journey of figuring out what it all means for her. That might sound like heavy work, but Ober makes it very fun to listen to – like a charming, bittersweet, gently enlightening audio memoir.
