The Bear
More heat in the kitchen
Streaming: Disney +, from Thursday June 27
Season two of hit culinary drama The Bear concluded with the restaurant getting through its opening night and Carmy (Jeremy Allen White) trapped in a fridge, having a meltdown and trashing his relationship with Claire. Good news: he got out of the fridge and The Bear is a working restaurant. On the other hand, he’s still quite highly strung and the status of the relationship is to be confirmed. White told Variety that with the restaurant up and running, the new season returns to the drama of “that functioning kitchen atmosphere that we had in the first”.
Elsbeth
Another Good Wife spin-off joins NYPD
Screening: TVNZ 1, 8.25pm, from Tuesday June 25
Streaming: TVNZ+
It’s 14 years since the 20th episode of The Good Wife introduced the recurring character of unconventional trial lawyer Elsbeth Tascioni, played by Carrie Preston. In this spin-off, Elsbeth leaves Chicago for a career in law enforcement. She’s as mercurial in her new investigative role with the NYPD as she was in the courtroom. The series bucks the modern trend in American procedurals by forgoing gore and focusing on its protagonist’s personality – more than one critic has evoked Columbo. Which sounds quite nice, really. The show is written by The Good Wife creators Robert and Michelle King and this first season has quite the array of guest stars among the suspects – they include Stephen Moyer (True Blood), Jane Krakowski (30 Rock), Jesse Tyler Ferguson (Modern Family), Blair Underwood (LA Law) and Keegan-Michael Key (Schmigadoon!).
My Lady Jane
If she hadn’t lost her head
Streaming: Prime Video from Thursday, June 27
Irreverent YA period drama My Lady Jane is also based on the first in the “Janies” series of jointly authored by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows. In this telling, Lady Jane Grey (Emily Bader) is, in keeping with history, married off by her scheming mother Lady Frances Grey (Anna Chancellor) to Lord Guildford Dudley (Edward Bluemel) in a complicated plot to generate a Protestant heir to the throne after the impending death of Edward VI, who is fading away with what was likely tuberculosis. She becomes, queen, briefly. But in My Lady Jane, Jane is not beheaded shortly after taking the throne and Edward might not be quite as dead as supposed, either.
Mary & George
A different sort of Jacobean comedy
Streaming: TVNZ+, from Wednesday, June 26
Mary & George is the story of George Villiers, the first Duke of Buckingham and lover of King James VI, and his brutally ambitious mother Mary (Julianne Moore), who, finding herself widowed and financially bereft, sets about to engineer her very beautiful son (Nicholas Galitzine) into the King’s favours. The clothes are spectacular but it’s the script – adapted by DC Moore (Killing Eve) from Benjamin Woolley’s non-fiction book The King’s Assassin – that really shows off. “If you miss this chance, you will fail us all,” Mary warns her reluctant son in the opening episode. “And live, like your father, smeared in the unwashable excrement of eternal shame.”
Land of Woman
The pain in Spain
Streaming: Apple TV+, from Wednesday June 26
Eva Longoria stars as Gala Scott, a well-heeled New Yorker whose life is upended when her husband can’t pay the loan sharks to whom he owes a ton of money, then disappears. She quickly has to escape the city and hole up with her mother and daughter in a town in northern Spain – the same town her mother left 50 years earlier, vowing never to return. Things don’t go smoothly. The show – more comedy than drama – is based on the novel by Sandra Barneda and veteran Spanish actress Carmen Maura (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown) reportedly steals the show as mum.
Federer: Twelve Final Days
The last rally
Streaming: Prime Video, from Thursday June 20
On September 15, 2022, Roger Federer announced that the following week’s Laver Cup – in which he was playing alongside rivals Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic as part of Team Europe – would be his last professional tennis tournament. This feature covers the last 12 days of his career. Federer has never shared his personal life (this began as a home movie for his family), but he allows cameras into his home and hotel room. His wife, Mirka, is interviewed for the first time in a decade. Djokovic, Nadal, Andy Murray and Björn Borg are among players paying tribute.
I Am: Celine Dion
The beloved singer confronts a personal crisis
Streaming: Prime Video, from June 26
“I’ve been diagnosed with a very rare neurological disorder and I wasn’t ready to say anything before … but I’m ready now.” Moments after a montage of exuberant moments on concert stages, Celine Dion looks tired and serious as she stares into the camera in the trailer for this feature-length documentary about her life and work. It’s clear that a main focus of I Am: Celine Dion is the Canadian singer’s diagnosis with stiff person syndrome – publicly revealed after she had to cancel a string of European shows in 2022. Oscar-nominated director Irene Taylor is a serious documentarian, and the film shapes up as a letter for fans from a performer who is gradually losing the ability to perform but fighting that loss all the way.
Diane Von Furstenberg: Woman in Charge
Her life in one wrap
Streaming: Disney +, from June 25
Unlike its subject, this documentary about the iconic 20th-century fashionista does not, by all accounts, break any new stylistic ground. But the story it tells – the child of Holocaust survivors who married into European royalty before making a life among the stars in New York as the sexually free fashion mogul who “reinvented the dress” – is remarkable enough to bear a conventional telling. Von Furstenberg relates her own life and guest talking heads include Oprah Winfrey, Marc Jacobs, Hillary Rodham Clinton and, blunt and pithy as ever, Fran Lebowitz.
Bill Bailey’s Wild West Australia
Wild Bill heads west
Screening: TVNZ 1, 8.30pm, from Wednesday June 19
Streaming: TVNZ+, Wednesday June 19
The most we usually see of Western Australia from this distance is the pitch at the WACA cricket grounds, but Bill Bailey ventures much further in this four-part travelogue, taking in parts of the vast state that even Australians aren’t likely to have visited, and meeting the people who live there. Highlights include the pink lakes of Esperance, the Ningaloo Reef, Wave Rock, and the strikingly isolated settlements of WA’s northwest coast. He does allow himself some time enjoying Perth’s restaurant scene, too.
The Brokenwood Mysteries
A decade of detecting
Screening: TVNZ 1, 8.30pm, Sunday June 16
Streaming: TVNZ+
Can it really be 10 years of weird murders in a pleasant country town? It appears so. The first two-hour episode of six starts with the discovery of dinosaur fossils near the town, which brings hope it might make Brokenwood a tourist attraction. Only those plans go out the window when a body related to the dino-dig is found with a rock-pick in its forehead. There are a fair few familiar guest stars across the series, including David de Lautour, Anna Jullienne, Rima Te Wiata, Cathy Downes, Angela Bloomfield and Shane Cortese. From more about the show’s milestone of a decade, head here.
RECOMMENDED
After The Flood
Not quite your average procedural
Streaming: ThreeNow, from Monday June 17
When an unidentified man is found dead in an underground car park after a devastating flood, everyone assumes he was trapped and drowned. Everyone, that is, but PC Joanna Marshall (Sophie Rundle, Peaky Blinders), who is convinced the man was murdered and sets out to prove it. It sounds like a humdrum ITV police procedural, but – perhaps because Nicola Shindler OBE, producer of Happy Valley, It’s A Sin and many more, is in charge – UK critics have been generally impressed (the Guardian called it “much, much better than it needs to be”). Stick with it for a climate change message.
The House of the Dragon
Feeling the burn
Screening: SoHo, from Monday, June 17, 8.30pm
Streaming: Neon, Monday, June 17, 1pm
It’s the second season for HBO’s big-budget Game of Thrones prequel about the complicated, violently dysfunctional family history of the dragon-riding House Targaryen and the familial infighting that led to the civil war that was their downfall. The first series brought us to the brink of a civil war between Rhaenyra, the dead king’s daughter and named heir, and Alicent, his young widow and Rhaenyra’s former bestie, who has claimed the Iron Throne for their son. Thus begins the conflict which GoT author George R.R. Martin has called “the Dance of the Dragons.” For more about the new season, head here.
RECOMMENDED
Kid Sister
Streaming: TVNZ+, from Monday June 17
The second season of writer-actor Simone Nathan’s acclaimed comedy series about Lulu, a young Jewish Kiwi woman dealing with her family’s cultural expectations, has already debuted on streaming platforms in Britain, Canada and Israel. Despite being the show’s originating broadcaster, TVNZ has delayed showing the $1.3 million NZ On Air-funded second series for six months because of the Israeli invasion of the Gaza strip. “TVNZ and the Kid Sister production team jointly decided that in light of the current conflict in Gaza, the launching of the second season should be postponed,” the broadcaster told Israeli newspaper Haaretz in a profile on Nathan earlier this year. Inspired by growing up in one of Auckland’s most prominent Jewish families, Nathan’s character Lulu spent her first season working out what to do after falling pregnant to gentile boyfriend Ollie (comedian Paul Williams who Nathan married last year). The second season does some art-imitating-life things with Ollie converting to Judaism – as Williams did himself – while they plan a wedding.
Sweet Tooth
It’s grim up north
Streaming: Netflix, from Thursday June 6
A lot happened towards the end of Sweet Tooth’s second season – that big battle, the deaths of Aimee and Johnny Abbott (the latter freeing Marlon Williams to return to his musical career), the possible death of General Abbott (he’ll be back), Singh and Rani going their separate ways and, ultimately, Gus’s friends resolving to join him on his journey to Alaska in search of his mother. Our own Toa Fraser directed the season finale and is back at the helm for the opening of the third and final season, which, according to Christian Convery who plays Gus, will have a darker tone: “Gus is growing alongside the series, starting to mature as the themes get darker. There’s a lot he has to deal with, and its peak Sweet Tooth intensity.” The promised “satisfying conclusion” to the story will be bittersweet for the New Zealand crews who worked on the show here and were full of praise for the production.
The Tower: Death Message
London cold case
Screening: TVNZ 1, 9.15pm, from Saturday June 8
Streaming: TVNZ+ from June 8
Another UK cop drama’s sophomore season. The name is a legacy one – there’s no London tower block in the story this time – but DS Sarah Collins (Gemma Whelan) is back and as grumpy and gay as ever. In this four-part adaptation of the second book in Kate London’s original novel series, Collins has been transferred to Homicide Command and on her first day she’s assigned a cold case – the disappearance of a teenage girl on the day of Princess Diana’s funeral in 1997. She starts by asking the questions that should have been asked at the time. Meanwhile, PC Lizzie Adama (Tahirah Sharif) can’t stay out of trouble: when her investigation of a domestic violence case turns up a psychopathic killer, she plunges in on her own. London, a former Metropolitan Police officer, told ITV that the link between the two cases is thematic rather than narrative: “The series explores the nature of violence against women, and the reality of how hard it is to investigate these cases, and even harder to convict.”
RECOMENDED
Lockerbie
The echoes of an atrocity
Screening: Sky Open, 8.30pm, from Sunday June 9
Streaming: Neon
It’s hard to over-emphasise the shock created by the 1988 terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 as it flew over Scotland. The attack killed all 259 passengers on the plane and another 11 on the ground in the quiet town of Lockerbie. This Bafta-winning four-part documentary moves from the events of the day to the investigation – and the questions that linger for some of those left behind, most notably British doctor Jim Swire, now 87, whose 23-year-old daughter was a passenger. It’s not the first Lockerbie documentary (and in the way of these things, two new drama series are also in production), but the Guardian’s reviewer called it “a masterly example of a true-crime documentary put together with great care and compassion”.
Red Eye
A bad time in the air
Screening: Three, 8pm, from Wednesday June 12
Streaming: ThreeNow, from Wednesday June 12
When Dr Matthew Nolan (Richard Armitage) arrives home to Heathrow after attending a medical conference in Beijing, he’s arrested on a charge of murdering a Chinese woman. He protests his innocence to no avail and the job of escorting him on the flight back to face charges in China falls to British police officer DC Hana Li (Jing Lusi). But events on the flight make it clear that there is something else going on and she finds herself in the middle of a deadly conspiracy.
RECOMENDED
Presumed Innocent
Reboot of a classic
Streaming: Apple TV, from Wednesday June 12
Jake Gyllenhaal executive produces and plays the lead role as Rusty Sabich, a prosecutor who finds himself the prime suspect in the murder of one of his colleagues. This eight-part series is adapted by TV titan David E Kelley (Big Little Lies) from the novel of the same name by Scott Turow. (The 1990 film based on the book had Harrison Ford in the lead.) The first two episodes this week, then new episodes weekly.
RECOMENDED
Sort Of
Soulful, winning queer comedy
Screening: Whakaata Māori 9pm, Thursday June 13
Streaming: Māori+
Sabi Mehboob (played by series creator Bilal Baig) is a first-generation Pakistani-Canadian trying to navigate family, culture and life with a non-binary gender identity. In a contemporary media world where the idea of gender comes with a lot of awful culture war baggage attached, Sort Of is soulful, witty, compassionate and, above all, about people. It has also, despite collecting multiple Canadian Screen Awards, taken a long time to be picked up here – its third and final season aired in Canada last year. We should be glad that it’s finally available to watch here.
The Boys
The stories that splatter
Streaming: Prime Video, from Thursday June 13
Things aren’t too good in the world of The Boys, the superhero satire providing ongoing employment to our own Antony Starr and Karl Urban now in its fourth season. In fact, they’re pretty grim: America is falling apart, Butcher is dying and everyone’s sick of him, Victoria Neuman is edging closer to the Oval Office and Homelander’s (Starr) plans for supe domination are nearing their nasty conclusion. Can the brave little team of vigilantes settle their differences and pull things out of the fire? All we know is that many heads will be exploded on the way.
RECOMENDED
Jim Henson: Idea Man
The beloved entertainer
Streaming: Disney+, from May 31
Ron Howard takes the helm for this film about the life and work of the creator of Sesame Street and The Muppets. The format – interviews with Henson’s friends, colleagues, and fans – is familiar enough, but Howard says being granted access to Henson’s archive by the family was a revelation. “There are a lot of things I hadn’t seen, these hilarious, crazy, irreverent commercials … which are what first got him noticed in the mainstream and allowed him to be this sort of experimental artist in the early years of his life,” Howard said at a TV industry forum last month. “But I also got to see that the creativity for him never stopped. It existed in his home movies. It existed in all of his drawings. It existed in his notebooks, that weren’t sketches for design, necessarily. They were just him keeping track of things. And even those were reflections of this creative energy. And it just dazzled me. I wanted to get to the bottom of what made him tick.” Happily, the archive is opened to the viewers and the film promises plenty of previously unseen material. It seems a good chance to rejoice in a talent that remains untarnished and was with us for all too short a time.
RECOMMENDED
Eric
Psychodrama on the streets of New York
Streaming: Netflix, from May 30
“When I pitched the idea of a New York puppeteer on a quest to find his missing son, with a 7-foot-tall blue monster in tow, it’s to Netflix’s eternal credit that they jumped on board,” screenwriter Abi Morgan told the streamer’s in-house mag Tudum recently. Morgan, best known for writing the feature films Shame, Brick Lane, Suffragette and The Iron Lady, goes somewhere new here. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Vincent, a children’s puppeteer in 1980s New York, who falls into a desperate spiral after his 9-year-old son disappears one day while walking to school, alienating friends and family with his obsession with finding his son. Morgan frames the six-part drama as “a deep dive into the 80s Big Apple, grappling with rising crime rates, internal corruption, endemic racism, a forgotten underclass and the Aids epidemic”.
RECOMMENDED
The Responder
Liverpool’s grim blue Line
Streaming: TVNZ+ from June 2
Blue Lights
New trouble in old Belfast
Streaming: ThreeNow, from June 2
The second seasons of big UK cop dramas are arriving thick and fast on rival streaming platforms on the same weekend. Martin Freeman returns as compromised frontline Liverpool bobby Chris Carson in The Responder after an acclaimed first series. This season introduces Carson’s father, played by the late Bernard Hill in what was his final role. For more on the show go here.
Also back on the beat is Belfast-set Blue Lights, which proved a surprise hit with British viewers in its first outing. This second season picks up a year on from the events of the first: the McIntyre Republican crime gang might have fallen but the city is drowning in drugs and petty crime. When Lee Thompson, an army veteran, returns to his Protestant neighbourhood and decides to clean it up single-handed, he sets in motion a violent feud with local loyalist godfathers – one that police struggle to understand, let alone control.
The Acolyte
A new Star Wars from the creator of Russian Doll
Streaming: Disney+, from Wednesday June 5
Just when you thought Disney’s flow of Star Wars spin-offs might be drying up, here’s another one, set in a time before the Star Wars films, drawing largely on the Star Wars “Extended Universe” of books, comics and games and – perhaps most interestingly – written and executive-produced by Leslye Headland, the co-creator of the freaky, original time-loop comedy Russian Doll. Headland created a new character, Mae (Amandla Stenberg, The Hunger Games), a prolific assassin who comes up against her former teacher, Jedi Master Sol (Lee Jung-jae, Squid Game). The writer has also reached into the early Star Wars comics for a little-seen Jedi weapon – the light whip. The prospect of a female-centric new Star Wars story created by a woman has, inevitably, triggered a hate campaign from the most odious part of the franchise’s “fandom” – which seems as good a reason to watch as any.
See our guide to other recent new shows in the May, April and March viewing guides
