Monarch. Photo / Supplied
Watch, listen and be inspired by Calum Henderson's definitive list of what's hot right now and gems from the vault.
There are few greater feelings than the relief of opening a new novel to find it's got nice short chapters. That's not a thing that's really translated over to TV, even as prestige dramas have become more and more novelistic – every series seems to be the equivalent of a 10-chapter 700-word tome. But that could be about to change if The Patient on Disney+ is any indication.
The first episode of the new psychological thriller from the creators of The Americans is 21 minutes long – wonderfully tight and extremely doable, so much so that you'll almost definitely also watch the next one, which combined brings you to roughly the same length as a "normal" episode of TV drama.
This isn't the only thing the series has going for it. There's also Steve Carrell, who continues to move into serious acting territory with his portrayal of a therapist who gets kidnapped and held hostage by one of his clients. He wakes up in what pre-housing crisis we used to call a "rumpus room" with a chain padlocked to his ankle – an instantly compelling predicament.
Flashbacks colour in the edges of his pre-captivity life, including his first sessions with an edgy young man (Domhnall Gleeson, looking like he's auditioning for an Elliott Smith biopic in a black wig, aviators and a trucker hat), who struggles to open up.
"I'm sorry, I know this sucks," that same man apologises when he finally shows his face in the rumpus room. But there are some things that are hard to talk about in your allotted 50 minutes: "I have a compulsion to kill people," he explains calmly. And he wants Carrell's character to help him.
A psychological thriller in a very literal sense, it carefully begins to build out the worlds of its two protagonists. And the 21-minute episodes mean we're never left waiting too long for another twist.
A "present-day reimagining" of the 1980 Richard Gere film classic (which is currently available to stream on TVNZ+, American Gigolo the series takes place 15 years after the events of the film and follows Julian Kaye (here played by Jon Bernthal) as he gets out of prison for the crime he famously didn't commit. Can he track down his former lover Michelle? What about his old gigolo mates who framed him for murder? This is a man with a lot of complicated relationships and a lot of unfinished business – will there even be any time for steamy bedroom scenes?
If you want to like Succession but just can't bring yourself to give a hoot about "the media industry" and would prefer something instead set in the world of country music (understandable), this could just be your new show. Monarch follows the intergenerational dramas of the Roman family, led by country legends Dottie and Albie (Susan Sarandon and real-life country star Trace Adkins), as they hand over the reins of the family dynasty to their daughter Nicky (Anna Friel, who's actually English). Mid-2000s indie ravers will be excited to see that Beth Ditto, lead singer of The Gossip, is also a member of the family.
Weird to imagine but the America's Cup did in fact exist for a long time before New Zealand got involved, and Black Magic's famous win in 1995 might not even be the most exciting edition. That honour probably goes to 1983's best-of-seven series between Dennis Conner's Liberty and the challenger Australia II. After all, it's billed as the "race of the century" in the latest edition of Netflix's sports documentary series Untold – basically its in-house version of ESPN's 30 For 30 series. Think of it as a prequel to the Team New Zealand saga, the origin story of the ultimate yachting villain Dennis Conner.
Jennifer Affleck nee Lopez is back with Ben and back in the rom-com game with Marry Me. She probably didn't have to dig too deep to play the character of Kat Valdez, a pop star who in an act of romantic retribution decides to marry the man underneath the next "Marry Me" sign she spots in the crowd. That man is a maths teacher played by Owen Wilson, and you almost don't even need to watch the movie now, you already know exactly what it will be like, but that's also a huge part of the appeal.
Who knew Tina Fey and Paul Rudd were once a rom-com couple? She's the uptight admissions officer for an Ivy League university, he's the chilled-out head of an alternative education high school… not ringing any bells? Actually, this is a pretty solid mid-shelf rom com, with plenty for connoisseurs to appreciate – Michael Sheen and Lily Tomlin in supporting roles, not to mention everybody's favourite teacher-actor, Wallace Shawn. You could certainly do a lot worse.
You've probably never heard of Bev Standing before, but if you've been even remotely online in the past couple of years you will have heard her voice. She's the owner of the detached, robotic voice that used to read out the captions on TikTok – something she never agreed to do or got paid for by TikTok.
Standing's story features in a recent episode of Twenty Thousand Hertz. Described by host Dallas Taylor as "a podcast revealing the stories behind the world's most interesting and recognisable sounds", it's been going for a while and revealed plenty of well-crafted stories about things you've probably never even thought to ask about before. Things like how Simlish (the made-up language of the characters in the game The Sims) was invented. Or how the Netflix "ta-dum" intro sound was made. (There's also a two-episode special about the evolution of the Windows start-up sound, but that's getting quite niche.)
The episode about how Bev Standing unwittingly became the voice of the world's biggest social media platform, and what she did about it, is one of the best. And it probably goes without saying, the production and sound design is top shelf too.