A sad Mark Ruffalo, TV’s most dramatic love-triangle and Charlie Sheen being Charlie Sheen. These are the best new shows to stream this weekend.
This might be a stupid question, so bear with me, but are there any happy FBI agents out there? Based on this new HBO series, I’m going to bet the house on nah, not really. And another thing. Do we think Mark Ruffalo is okay? Because again, looking at Task, I think someone should check on him … and maybe make him watch 13 Going on 30 to remind him that his face is capable of smiling. Of course this story of a Very Sad Cop hunting down bad guys is the kind of serious show he can sink his teeth into (good for him). And of course it is very good television, because it’s from the makers of Mere of Easttown (god, that was excellent, wasn’t it?). One of my trusted colleagues summed it up nicely when he described Task as “the best cat-and-mouse thriller in ages”, so dive on in to the murky underworld. But is Task roll-on-the-floor fun? Absolutely not. If you’re looking for that, please keep scrolling until you hit The Summer I Turned Pretty a few hundred words down this page.
Actually, if you want fun you could stop here (please don’t though!). This is the fifth season of the show that, on paper, is an absolutely bonkers proposition: two comedians in their late 70s/early 80s team up with a millennial pop princess for a show about making a podcast about dead people in a New York apartment building. See, bananas. And yet, Martin Short, Steve Martin and Selena Gomez are a magnetic trio in this silly, funny, very clever series. And even better, they love a famous guest star to keep things spicy (think Meryl Streep, Renee Zellweger and Christoph Waltz).
From the sublime to the ridiculous. Charlie Sheen had it all - fame, money and (some would argue) talent. Then, it all went wrong. Here comes the age-old story of drugs, alcohol, women, tiger blood, an HIV diagnosis and a very, very public fall from grace. And when bad things happen, what can you do but wait a decade or so and then make a star-studded documentary about it all. AKA Charlie Sheen is a two-parter, each slice of the pie a little wilder than the one before. Sheen’s brother Emilio Estevez and his dad Martin Sheen declined to be part of the proceedings (No! What? I just don’t understand why...), but mates like Sean Penn and his Two And A Half Men co-star Jon Cryer sure didn’t mind. Neither did his former drug dealer who pops up. That might explain why I had to leave the trailer off for this one... You’ll be watching through gritted teeth at times, so take care.
Aristocrats, you just can’t take them anywhere. And in this thrilling whodunit, it turns out you can’t leave them at home, either. Based on (surprise, surprise) Agatha Christie’ s 1944 novel, this three-part BBC series dives into the investigation of a murder while a love-tangled tennis player holidays at his rich aunt’s seaside home. The cast is stacked - Matthew Rhys (The Americans!), Anjelica Huston (The Witches! The Royal Tenenbaums!) - and the story is good old-fashioned fun. You can’t beat a cosy crime.
The folk of Top End Bub are Aussies we absolutely love. Big call, I know. Top End Wedding was a huge fan favourite on this side of the Tasman. The 2019 film from the makers of The Sapphires (which also rated its socks off here) was set in Australia’s northern most part of the Northern Territory and within a tightknit community. Now all grown up, Bub is a charming follow-up (and series) to Wedding, where the now-married Lauren and Ned become guardians of an 8-year-old and need to leave the city for life back in the Top End. Be prepared to have your heart tugged at, big time.
If the terms “Team Conrad” and “Team Jeremiah” mean nothing to you; if your social media feed hasn’t become a battleground for picking the best brother; if your every waking moment isn’t consumed by the romantic life of a 21-year-old fictional character, then I am jealous of you. Jealous because it means you still have the joy of discovering this book-turned-TV show that has a generation of women utterly gripped. And (sadly?) that generation is people like me, a woman in her 40s, who should know better. Because The Summer I Turned Pretty (terrible name, we can all agree) is like catnip for millennials, who are nostalgic for a simpler time. A time when we would all tune in to watch The O.C. or Dawson’s Creek on a Friday night on a television and willingly sit through the ads. In its third and final season of a (frankly quite concerning) love triangle between two brothers and a girl they grew up with, Prime Video has played us, releasing an episode a week of TSITP, just like the olden times. Now, fans are just days away from the very last episode which means if you hurry, you too can breathlessly debate who is end game (clearly Conrad) at the watercooler next week. Hurry up, you know what to do.