Arriving this week
Alien: Earth
Terror firma
Streaming: Disney+ from August 13, two-episode debut, episodes weekly
“In space no one can hear you scream” was the great poster one-liner from the first Alien movie in 1979. It’s also the title of one of eight episodes in Alien: Earth, the first TV extension of the franchise. As its name suggests, it’s the first time the nasty creatures, which kept making life difficult for Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley in the early films, have been brought to terra firma. True, 2004’s Alien vs. Predator had a terrestrial monster bash, but that’s best ignored.
According to show creator Noah Hawley, here taking on another film spin-off after five mostly great seasons of Fargo, Alien: Earth starts in 2120. In the franchise timeline, that’s two years before Ripley faced that xenomorph bursting from her crew mate’s chest in the first Ridley Scott film. As well as being Jaws in space, that film introduced the idea of androids and synthetic humans having an advantage in that those larval alien facehuggers preferred organic humans as egg incubators.
By the looks of it, there’s a timely large AI and android factor in the big-budget new series. The Ripley of this is Wendy (Sydney Chandler, who played Chrissie Hynde in Pistol), a super-strong synthetic adult human infused with the human consciousness and memory of a young teenager who was terminally ill. She’s one of a group of adolescent-soul, big-brained hybrids named “Lost Boys” in Hawley’s allusions to Peter Pan, the gang including New Zealand actress Erana James (We Were Dangerous).
They are the products of Prodigy, one of five mega corporations running the world as if they were nation states. Franchise fans will be familiar with the name of another, Weyland-Yutani, the company behind the Ripley’s spaceship, Nostromo.
The mini-series follows how another Weyland-Yutani spacecraft crashes back to Earth into Prodigy territory, unleashing a lethal cargo that the corporation claims for itself. Wendy and co are sent to deal with it. But the show’s not just about those terrible rapacious creatures finding a new hunting ground. It’s also about terrible rapacious humans who run the world in the future. Both may inspire a fair bit of screaming and it will be very audible.
Necaxa
Stars and their football teams
Streaming: Disney+, from Friday August 6, episodes weekly
Eva Longoria produces and appears in this docuseries about the storied, and sometimes troubled, Mexican football club Club Necaxa. That means working with actors Rob Mac and Ryan Reynolds, who spun their purchase of the struggling Welsh football club Wrexham AFC into a docuseries – and are now investors in Necaxa. Longoria herself is a shareholder in the LA women’s team Angels FC. The advance publicity indicates much will be made of language barriers and culture clashes.
Outlander: Blood Of My Blood
More Highland flings
Streaming: Neon, from August 9, episodes weekly
Screening: Vibe, 10.15pm, Thursdays from August 14
Outlander, the time-travelling historic fantasy romance based on the novels of Diana Gabaldon, is heading to its eighth and final season next year. But there are more adventures stretching between 20th-century world wars and 18th-century Highland clans in the prequel spin-off Blood of My Blood. The show features both parents of Outlander lead couple Jamie and Claire Fraser (née Beauchamp). It seems Claire, the World War II military nurse who went back 200 years, isn’t the first-time traveller in her family. Her English parents, played by Hermione Corfield and Jeremy Irvine, who meet during WWI, also head back in time after getting waylaid in Scotland in a very similar fashion to how their daughter will in decades to come. Meanwhile, back in the 1700s, the story also follows how Jamie’s parents, Brian Fraser (Jamie Roy) and Ellen MacKenzie (Harriet Slater), fight to be together in the face of a deadly Fraser-MacKenzie feud, clan politics and a Jacobite revolt.
Reunion
Other languages
Streaming: TVNZ+, from Sunday August 10, full season
Daniel Brennan is an alienated man. He has emerged from spending 10 years in prison for murdering his childhood friend to find himself still shunned by the deaf community that has provided his identity – and yet he is driven to try to explain the background to his terrible crime. Brennan is played by deaf actor Matthew Gurney and the bilingual script (that is, English and British Sign Language) is the work of William Mager, who is also deaf. Critics have heaped praise on both Gurney’s intense performance and the way Reunion takes a somewhat familiar premise and explores it from a wholly original perspective. It’s the creation of Warp Films, the company behind Adolescence, and also stars Rose Ayling-Ellis from Code of Silence, the recent crime thriller about a deaf woman whose lip-reading skills make her a police-surveillance asset.
The Family Next Door
Mysteries of the cul-de-sac
Streaming: ThreeNow, from Monday August 11, full season
A “female forward” suburban mystery drama adapted from the book of the same name by Australian author Sally Hepworth. Teresa Palmer (The Last Anniversary) leads an ensemble cast as the enigmatic Isabelle, who arrives in a seaside Melbourne cul-de-sac and begins to unnerve the neighbours with her obsession about solving a mystery. It turns out the neighbouring families have reasons to be wary of anyone poking through their secrets – but who exactly is Isabelle to be asking?
Truelove
Take me out
Screening: Rialto, from Tuesday August 12
A thriller wrapped in a story addressing death with dignity and assisted dying – that’s this acclaimed six-part British series about a group of old friends in their 70s who make a drunken pact at a wake to help each other shuffle off, should the indignity and illnesses of old age become too much to bear. After all, retired top cop Phil (Lindsay Duncan) and former SAS soldier Ken (Clarke Peters) have the skills to take someone out, then thwart any investigation. But when Tom (Karl Johnson) calls them on it, they find they have a keen young detective on their tail.
From earlier this month
Chief Of War
Once were warriors
Streaming: Apple TV+, from August 1, episodes weekly
Jason Momoa and his screenwriter-producer partner Thomas Pa ‘a Sibbett have put his stardom and their shared Hawaiian ancestry to use in the creation of this historic epic about inter-tribal warfare in the islands and the effect of the arrival of Europeans on the conflicts in the late 18th century. Much of Chief of War was shot in NZ last year. Kiwis are prominent in the cast – Temuera Morrison, Cliff Curtis, and Te Kohe Tuhaka are all warrior royalty based on historic figures. So is Momoa as Kaʻiana, a noble who travelled around the Pacific on European ships. The series is in subtitled native Hawaiian, eventually switching to English dialogue. Morrison starred as Momoa’s father in the Aquaman movies by the looks of the first episode in which Kaʻiana actually jumps upon a large shark, there’s some traces of superhero in his ancient warrior. But the closest comparison this show may be is Shōgun, only without the white guy as the hero.
Dexter: Original Sin
The killer as a young man
Streaming: Neon, from August 1 episodes weekly
Bear with us here, because its complicated. This isn’t Dexter: Resurrection, the show that follows Dexter: New Blood in the Dexter revival – and is already available on Neon. It’s a Dexter prequel that screened in the US last year. Got it? Anyway, it’s 1991 and student Dexter (Patrick Gibson) is developing homicidal urges. Under the guidance of his extremely understanding father (Christian Slater), he resolves that he will only other murderers, while trying not to be caught himself. Of note: the original Dexter, Michael C. Hall, returns as the voice of the young man’s inner monologue – and Buffy star Sarah Michelle Gellar is part of the cast too. Ten hour-long episodes ready to binge.
Twisted Metal
Race for the prize
Streaming: TVNZ+, from August 1 episodes weekly
More anarchy after the apocalypse for the second season of the riotous video game adaptation. Anthony Mackie returns as amnesiac milkman John Doe, who has pieced together a little more about the weird world he finds himself in. The main event is a bizarre demolition derby overseen by the ringmaster Calypso (Anthony Carrigan), who has promised to grant the victor their deepest wish. We apparently have to wait until the second half of the 12-episode season for the derby to begin, but there’s enough in the trailer to show why the show won an Emmy nomination for stunt coordination. Triple premiere episode, followed by double episodes every week.
Platonic
Still trying to be friends
Streaming: Apple TV+, from Wednesday August 6, episodes weekly
Longtime best friends and inadvertent chaos agents Will and Sylvia (Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne) restored and renewed their friendship in season one – but now it’s threatened by Will’s new romantic relationship. Their solution is to lean in and act like normal adults along with their partners. It doesn’t go smoothly. Expect the same snappy writing (from Rogen) and physical comedy that won Platonic so much critical praise first time around. Two episodes first up, then a new episode weekly.
The Assassin
When Mum is a killer
Streaming: ThreeNow, from August 3, full season
Keeley Hawes has played a cop (Line of Duty), a spy (Spooks) and a politician whose life is threatened (Bodyguard) in the course of a stellar career. Here, she has a turn as a retired assassin. “I used to do bad things, for money,” she tells her estranged son Edward (Freddie Highmore, Bates Motel) after unexpectedly having to, you know, kill someone. Their reunion on a Greek island is already awkward. Then events spiral and they’re forced to go on the run, dysfunctional relationship and all. The cast also includes Gina Gershon and New Zealand actor Alan Dale. The Guardian praised the six-part limited series for bringing not only action but wit to a familiar trope.
Here We Go
Still daft, still funny
Streaming: TVNZ+
An enticing list of guest stars is lined up for this third season of comic misadventure with the Jessop family, including Jane Horrocks (Absolutely Fabulous), Robert Glenister (Sherwood) and Jamali Maddix (Hate Thy Neighbour). In the first episode, the clan is persuaded to dress up and take part in a live-action role-play festival, where things, of course, go awry. Full season.
Wednesday
More high-school horrors
Streaming: Netflix, from Wednesday August 6, full season
A second season of the Tim Burton-produced Addams Family spin-off. Deadpan daughter Wednesday Addams (Jenna Ortega) is back prowling the halls of Nevermore Academy – where a new mystery is brewing. But what you really want to know is that Joanna Lumley turns up to guest star as Grandmama Hester Frump, along with Steve Buscemi, Billie Piper, Lady Gaga, Thandiwe Newton and Christopher Lloyd.
Coming up later this month
Bay of Fires
Bedevilled in Tasmania
Streaming: TVNZ+, from August 16. Full season.
Of the increasing number of oddball shows set in Tasmania, surely the blackest comedy of them all has been Bay of Fires. In the first, former corporate bigwig Stella Heikkinen (Marta Dusseldorp, also the show’s co-creator) was sent to a remote spot in a witness protection scheme, only to find she and her kids were stuck in an unwelcoming town where she was up against a drug lord, a doomsday cult and various other dodgy characters. At the start of the second series, it seems Stella has become Mystery Bay’s financial saviour and survived the many threats on her life. The first season starred our own Rachel House and Kerry Fox. Whether they’ve returned for the second is spoiler territory.
Taskmaster NZ
Doing stupid stuff the smartest way, again
Screening: 7.30pm, Mondays and Tuesdays, TVNZ 2, from August 19
Streaming: TVNZ+
As Taskmaster NZ co-host Paul Willams told the Listener last year, appearing on the local incarnation of the show, which is also available to UK fans in Taskmaster’s origin country, has given Kiwi comedians an entrée into the British comedy scene. Though Alice Snedden, one of this sixth season’s contestants, has already knocked on that door via her work on Starstruck, the BBC romcom series starring Rose Matafeo, who is, coincidentally, now hosting Junior Taskmaster in Britain. The other contestants this time are Celebrity Treasure Island host and radio voice Bree Tomasel, The Office Australia creator and film director Jackie van Beek, Great Kiwi Bake-Off presenter and comedian Pax Assadi and relative newcomer Jack Ansett. Our money is on van Beek, given the improvisational skills she’s shown in the likes of Educators and her immunity to personal embarrassment she showed in Nude Tuesday. Jeremy Wells, apparently a current affairs host when he’s not doing this, returns as the Taskmaster.
America’s Team: The Gambler And His Cowboys
How they earnt their spurs
Streaming: Netflix, from August 19, full season
If you’ve seen the earlier Netflix documentary series America’s Sweethearts: Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders and wondered what those dudes in the background are doing, here’s the spin-off show that explains it. Apparently, they are an NFL Team, a separate but parallel event to cheerleading and, in their field, historically quite successful. This covers the period since multibillionaire owner Jerry Jones bought the team in 1989 from someone called – no, we shouldn’t make fun – Bum Bright. But during the years, it was Jones who has had posterior-adjacent personal descriptions thrown his way, even from Cowboys followers themselves, who didn’t much like his attitude towards fan-favourite coaches and players.
Vinnie Jones In The Country
He lives in a house, a very big house in the country
Streaming: ThreeNow, from August 20
Britain has possibly a lot of nice, worthy rural shows, like Our Dream Farm (on TVNZ+). But the ones that get the attention are Clarkson’s Farm (four seasons of faffing about in Oxfordshire but apparently “awareness raising”) and this knock-off with former hardman footballer and occasional hardman actor Vinnie Jones in a reality show, which as The Guardian put it “it couldn’t be more like Clarkson’s Farm if it tried”. Here comes the second season from his West Sussex 2000 acres, where, it seems Jones, has acquired a new girlfriend who was previously his personal assistant. Must be the country air.
Australian Survivor: Australia Vs The World
Ockers against Others
Screening: TVNZ 2, 7.30pm, from Thursday August 21
Streaming: TVNZ+
It hasn’t started screening yet but the 13th season of the Aussie version of the reality show has already been making headlines for the axing of longtime host Jonathan LaPaglia by Channel 10. This season is his last. His replacement, who is already filming the next series, is David Genat, a contestant in this season, as well as being the winner of US$5million in March in the American game show Deal or No Deal Island. In this Samoan-filmed series, Genat is part of a seven-strong Australian team up against players from Finland, Canada, the US, South Africa and New Zealand. Our sole representative is Lisa Holmes, who, having won the final Survivor NZ in 2018, is effectively still the reigning champ. Also on “the world” team is New Jersey cop and two-time American winner Tony Vlachos.
To what see else is new to view, see our July viewing guide.