Prosper
Sleek megachurch drama
Streaming: TVNZ+ from Wednesday July 31
Cal Quinn (Richard Roxburgh) and his wife Abi (Rebecca Gibney) run U Star, one of Australia’s most powerful evangelical megachurches. The productions are big and the money is rolling in – but is Cal about to ruin everything with an impulsive decision to open a branch of their church in Los Angeles? And do some of U Star’s powerbrokers actually want him to fail? The thriller-style series appears to be inspired by the scandal-ridden story of Hillsong church, at least to the extent that New Zealand’s own megachurch drama Testify was modelled on Destiny Church. But Gibney said recently that Prosper doesn’t try to demonise the church leaders. “We are not showing these people as being evil. We’re just showing that they are corruptible … but everyone is tempted.”
Women in Blue
The forgotten story of Mexico’s first policewomen
Streaming: Apple TV+ from Wednesday July 31
An “inspired by true events”, eight-part Spanish-language drama about women who join Mexico’s first female police force in 1970, and soon discover that their new squad is not much more than a publicity stunt to distract the media and the public from a brutal serial killer. Their uniforms are distinctly baby blue, but they’re not leaving it at that. The women secretly embark on their own investigation to bring the killer to justice. Bárbara Mori, who plays Maria, the leader of the team, said in a recent interview that even the Mexican public knew little of the original true story of “Las Azules” and their struggle with the patriarchs on their own team. But she adds, “It’s more relevant than ever now, in 2024. We still have a lot of things to reflect on, and to change.”
Travel Man
Mild country
Screening: TVNZ 1, 8.05pm, Monday August 5
Streaming: TVNZ+
The 12th season of Travel Man, and the third with Joe Lycett in charge, opens with a 48-hour trip to Trieste in Italy with Alan Davies on board. Their mild adventures include a venture across the border into Slovenia, where they visit a stud farm and unleash a volley of fart jokes and horse puns. In subsequent episodes, Lycett and US comic Desiree Burch visit Lapland and have a go at ice-fishing, podcaster Adam Buxton tags along to Prague, and The Guilty Feminist co-host Jessica Fostekew is Lycett’s companion on a trip to the more congenial climate of Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. It’s all as likeable as ever.
Taskmaster NZ
Comedians with jobs
Screening: TVNZ 2, 7.30pm, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, from August 6
Jeremy Wells and his always amenable assistant Paul Williams return with 10 episodes and a new group of comedic contenders. This season features Bake Off host Hayley Sproull, comic veteran and alternative sports commentator Ben Hurley, 2023 Billy T winner Abby Howells, Laughing Samoan Tofiga Fepulea’i, and everywhere-man Thomas Sainsbury. This season’s tasks include celebrating a football goal and taking an order from a mannequin. It’s the fifth season for the local variant of the Taskmaster format and Wells recently declared that, “both Frankie Valli and the Gregorian Calendar only have four seasons, so it feels good to get to five.”
Jamie Cooks The Mediterranean
Local favourites
Screening: TVNZ 1, 8.30pm, Wednesday, August 7
Streaming: TVNZ+
Chaps, here’s an idea: how about we send Jamie Oliver to the Mediterranean to meet the locals and have a proper good time cooking their food? Yes, it’s familiar territory, in both a thematic and geographical sense, but the four-part show does break Oliver out of the food-on-a-budget run of recent years. They start in Thessaloniki, the culinary capital of Greece, and from there it’s crispy prawn parcels with harissa in Tunisia, pork and peppers in Spain and a French-style courgette, goats’ cheese and tapenade tart. There’s lots of lovely scenery in the background.
Lagerfield: Ambitions
The path of an icon
Screening: Rialto, 8.30pm, from Wednesday August 7
Streaming: SkyGo
Clearly, just enough time has elapsed since Karl Lagerfeld’s death in Paris in 2019 for 2024 to be the fashion titan’s year. Coming on the heels of The Hunt for Karl Lagerfeld’s Millions (Prime Video) and the biographical drama Becoming Karl Lagerfeld (Disney+), this four-part documentary was produced in France for Canal Plus. The first episode looks at Lagerfeld’s childhood in Nazi Germany, where his mother kindles his passion for fashion by taking him to a catwalk show and sets him on the path to his arrival in Paris in 1952, at the age of 19 (or, if the man himself is to be believed, which he isn’t, 14). There, he meets and befriends another teenager on the road to glory, Yves Saint Laurent.
The Umbrella Academy
The end of the world as we know it, again
Streaming: Netflix, from Thursday August 8
It’s the fourth and final season, the timeline has been reset since the dramatic conclusion of season three, and the Hargreeves have apparently spent some time learning to live without their powers. But they regain their powers (we can tell you this because it’s in the trailer) and must convene one last time to prevent the end of the world, again. To complicate matters, their father, Reginald, turns out to be not only alive, but also in charge of a nefarious business empire – and there’s a new organisation called The Keepers to contend with. There’s a lot to do and they don’t have much time – there are but six episodes in the season to wrap everything up.
The Mallorca Files
Island life
Streaming: Prime Video, from Thursday August 8
It’s been three years since season two, and the show is now produced for Prime Video, not the BBC, but Miranda Blake (Elen Rhys, Consent) and her German policing partner Max Winter (Julian Looman, The Ibiza Affair) are back like chalk and cheese. According to advance publicity, they’ll be tasked with cracking “an array of high-stakes adventures, treasure hunts, arson, kidnappings and murders”. They’ll be joined by guest stars including Enrique Arce (Money Heist), Philippe Brenninkmeyer (Mad Men), Charlie Higson (The Fast Show), Michael Jibson (Bodies), David Mora (Memento Mori), and Elena Saurel (Buffering).
Douglas is Cancelled
The modern fall from grace
Screening: Three, 8.40pm, Sunday August 11
Streaming: ThreeNow
Douglas Bellowes (Hugh Bonneville) is a respected news presenter, part of a media power couple with his newspaper editor wife Sheila (Alex Kingston) – until the day he tells a sexist joke at a wedding and it all starts to unravel. As in tune with the headlines as the set-up might seem, writer Steven Moffat swears it ain’t so, pointing out in a recent Guardian interview that faces on the telly have been falling from grace for decades, “but we didn’t have the word ‘cancelled’ for it”. Moffat isn’t the only Doctor Who alumnus involved – Karen Gillan (previously seen as the doctor’s companion Amy Pond) plays Bellowes’ charming-but-lethal co-presenter. Reviews have been mixed, but critics generally agree that Moffat’s script fairly fizzes across the four episodes.
Elvira
Dark Danish comedy about an accidental detective
Screening: Rialto, 8.30pm, Tuesdays from August 13
Streaming: SkyGo
Sit down, vintage horror comic fans, this isn’t the Elvira you’re looking for. Sara Klein plays 35-year-old Dane Elvira Gregersen, whose loser life spins out dramatically when she goes from minding the reception desk at a Copenhagen brothel to solving crimes. The black comedy is adapted from Anne-Sophie Lunding-Sørensen’s novel Happy Ending and the author says the story grew out of her desire to “create a true anti-heroine who isn’t sassy and sexy, but rather is everything we are not allowed to be: fat, wicked and on welfare”.
Industry
Monstrous times in the money game
Screening: SoHo, 8.30pm, Tuesdays from August 13
Streaming: Neon
The amped-up London finance industry drama reaches its third season and its bright young people are still being absolutely terrible to each other. The trailer offers some clues to where it’s headed – notably when Harper, no longer with Pierpont, pitches her former employer to some new friends as “the short of the century”. Meanwhile, Pierpont takes a punt on ethical investing, and an embezzlement scandal is threatening to get out of control. Game of Thrones star Kit Harington joins the cast as CEO of a green tech energy company.
Bad Monkey
Only in Florida
Streaming: Apple TV+ from Wednesday August 14
Andrew Yancy (Vince Vaughn, Curb Your Enthusiasm, True Detective) is a former Miami cop now reduced to working as a health inspector. But things look up when he stumbles across a case involving a human arm fished up by some tourists and figures finding who it was attached this might get him his old job back. The 10-part series is executive-produced by Bill Lawrence (Ted Lasso, Shrinking) and based on the 2013 novel of the same name by Florida comedic crime writer Carl Hiaasen, whose back catalogue has few screen adaptations. It’s shaping up like the TV comedy version of the internet’s “Florida Man” meme.
Emily in Paris
Life is complicated
Streaming: Netflix, from Thursday August 15
It’s the fourth season for the fluffy comedy, which has done Olympic-like things for tourism in the French capital. It features Emily (Lily Collins), an American communications and social media whiz kid who gets a job in a Parisian marketing firm and a glamorous, if sometimes romantically rocky, life to go with it. Things haven’t really calmed down for her after all hell broke loose at the wedding in the season three finale. Is it Alfie she really loves, or Gabriel? It’s tricky, given the two chaps are now in business with each other. But perhaps she should forge a new direction. Meanwhile, Sylvie has a work drama to deal with and Mindy and the band get ready for Eurovision. If you’re counting down, the first half of the season hits the wires at 7pm.
Coming up later in the month
Pachinko – season two on Apple TV+ from August 22.
Only Murders in the Building – season four on Disney+ from August 27
The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power – season two on Prime Video from August 29.
Kaos – fantasy series based on Greek mythology’s gods living in the modern age, starring Geoff Goldblum as Zeus and Cliff Curtis as Poseidon, among others, on Netflix from August 29
See our guide to other recent new shows in the July, June, May, and April and viewing guides.
