School reunion
Streaming: TVNZ+, from Saturday November 1
The fourth season of the semi-improvised dysfunctional teacher comedy arrives with Taika Waititi joining his What We Do in the Shadows castmates and Educators regulars Cohen Holloway, Jackie van Beek, Jonathan Brough, Yvette Parsons and Kura Forrester for a one-episode guest turn. He plays Tony, the brother of Holloway’s woodwork teacher Ra, who turns up to ask the kids help him build a coffin, a ghetto-blaster shaped casket for the imminent funeral of a former break-dancer. It’s funnier than that sounds. Other guests to feature in this series include English comedy couple Julian Barratt and Julia Davis – the UK’s answer to Educators’ co-creator couple van Beek and Jesse Griffin. All episodes available.
Vanishing act
Streaming: ThreeNow
Screening: Three from November 9, 9.50pm
Our own Morgana O’Reilly is the lead in this Australian mystery drama playing Joni, a child psychologist in a small town still affected by the disappearance of her best friend Gracie Darling during a seance when they were 14. Almost three decades later the local kids get kicks with the game “Playing Gracie Darling” until another girl disappears and Joni is forced to revisit what might have happened all those years ago. British actors Dame Harriet Walter and Rudi Dharmalingam also star in the series by expatriate Kiwi director Jonathan Brough.
AA INSURANCE LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION NZ
City of Sales
Screening: TVNZ 1 7.30pm
Streaming: TVNZ+
Some big questions loom over the second season of the Kiwi-sponsored content knock-off of the UK property show – does “AA” stand for “always Auckland”? The first series sure spent a lot of time on the North Shore, lovely as it is. Paul Glover, possibly still feeling like a man playing a man presenting a property show, returns with fellow was-once-on-telly real estate agent Jayne Kiely as native guides to folk wanting a nice place in Browns Bay, Birkenhead or possibly Bayswater. It is something of a real estate reality check after six weeks of Phil Spencer wandering about the nation’s grand mansions. And, of course, when the sponsor’s guy turns up to talk insurance in the advertorial spot, it’s still funny that his company uniform makes it look like he’s there to jump-start someone’s car.
More misadventures
Streaming: TVNZ+, from Tuesday November 4
Screening: TVNZ 2, 6.30pm, Thursdays, November 6
The gentle mockumentary about the state of American healthcare and set among the staff of the titular hospital in Oregon returns for season two. New developments include the place getting a new birthing unit, and a run of guest stars, including onetime Flight of the Conchords stalker-fan Kristen Schaal and the possibility that we’ll see some more of the home life of the characters. Though one fundamental mystery remains, who’s shooting that doco and what for?
EARTH OVEN WITH TEMUERA MORRISON
A cook’s tour
Screening: Sky Open, 8.30pm, from Wednesday November 5
Streaming: Neon
The first episode of Morrison’s travels looking at how different cultures use underground cooking techniques is in Jordan and you have to wonder if he demanded, “Cook this man some figs.” See our interview with the man here.
Struck twice
Streaming: Netflix, Thursday November 6
Another streamer takes on another whiskery 19th-century US presidential assassination following Apple TV+’s Manhunt from last year about the search for the killer of Abraham Lincoln. This one follows the strange story of James A Garfield, the Republican 20th US president who was in office for only six months in 1881 before his term was cut short. He initially survived the bullet but died of infection from his medical treatment. Garfield is played by Michael Shannon and Matthew Macfadyen (Succession) plays his killer, Charles Guiteau, a Garfield supporter who thought his work on his election campaign should have been rewarded with a consulship. The title comes from something Garfield wrote before he won the presidency: “Assassination can no more be guarded against than death by lightning.”
Happy accident
Streaming: Apple TV+, from Friday November 7
Vince Gilligan who started his television writing career on The X-Files before creating Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul returns to New Mexico and to sci-fi (possibly). The show is about a woman who is seemingly the only person unaffected by a mysterious global virus that creates the psychological effect of making everybody happy. The trailer features Carol (Rhea Seehorn from Saul) being addressed directly by a White House official through her television set, telling her they will bring “whatever help you need. “Rest assured, Carol. We will figure out what makes you different … so we can fix it. So you can join us.”
Mother’s ruin
Streaming: TVNZ+, from Friday November 7
Irish crime writer Andrea Mara’s best seller about the mother of a missing child gets a television adaptation starring Sarah Snook (Succession). She plays mum Marissa Irvine whose life is turned upside down when she goes to pick up her son Milo from a playdate, finds the woman who answers the door doesn’t have Milo and has never heard of him. As well as Aussie Snook, the series, which was shot in Melbourne, also stars Americans Jake Lacy, Dakota Fanning, and Michael Peña and it’s made by the producers of The Day of the Jackal and Lockerbie: A Search for Truth. The series debuts with four episodes followed by double episodes weekly.
Losing patients
Screening: TVNZ 1, 8.30pm, from Sunday November 9 through to Thursday
Streaming: TVNZ+
The 2023 first series of Malpractice starred Niamh Algar (The Iris Affair) as an overworked doctor in a UK hospital, who faced investigation after an overdose patient died in her care – or the care of the junior doctor she assigned to look after her – after making a gunshot victim her priority. It was written by Grace Ofori-Attah, who spent 10 years as a doctor in the NHS before becoming a screenwriter. Her past experience also informed the switched-at-birth series Playing Nice that also starred Algar. In a second series of Malpractice, Ofori-Attah turns towards acute mental health care. James Ford (Tom Hughes, Prince Albert in Victoria), is an on-call psychiatric registrar also juggling two patients – one is a new mother whose GP has contacted him with grave concerns after a postnatal checkup, the other a crack-directed pregnant woman who appears to need sectioning under the Mental Health Act. It’s fair to say one’s patient outcomes brings in the Medical Investigations unit (Helen Behan and Jordan Kouamé from the first show), which again pulls apart the doctor’s personal life to examine his actions. The series screens over five nights.
THE HACK
Screening: TVNZ1, 9.30pm, from Sunday November 9
Streaming: TVNZ+
A seven-part dramatisation of The Guardian and New York Times investigation of Rupert Murdoch’s The News of the World’s work phone hacking brought down the tabloid. It stars David Tennant, Toby Jones and Robert Carlyle.
I, JACK WRIGHT
A lack of good will
Streaming: Three Now, from Tuesday November 11
From Chris Lang, the writer of hit UK detective drama Unforgotten, comes a knotty family mini-series involving the apparent death of a rich patriarch. Two ex-wives and his children are fighting over his estate while a police investigation attempts to determine his cause of death. It’s told with flash-forward interviews bookending each episode. The familiar face of Trevor Eve plays the dearly departed, and his extended family – who are suspects in his possible murder and perplexed by what his will says – includes John Simm and Zoë Tapper (both from Grace), as well as Gemma Jones and Nikki Amuka-Bird.
Life is a beach
Streaming: Apple TV+, from Wednesday November 12
The first season of the 1969-set oddball retro-styled black comedy about Maxine Simmons (Kristen Wiig) and her efforts to social-climb her way into Palm Beach country club membership got a fairly lukewarm critical response, but that hasn’t stopped another season. Wiig is back as the scheming Maxine among the club’s ladies-who-lunch, including executive producer Laura Dern, Allison Janney (The Diplomat), Leslie Bibb (White Lotus) and 92-year-old Carol Burnett as the slowly expiring rich aunt of Maxine, whose jewellery she keeps pilfering.
Donkey’s years
Streaming: Netflix, from Wedensday November 12
A dim view of Eddie Murphy’s career was that he made some very big movies in the 1980s – 48 Hrs, Trading Places, Beverly Hills Cop, Coming to America – then tried to make them all over again in the decades that followed. He was also happy to be in anything requiring a fat suit and buckets of latex (The Nutty Professors, Norbit), while some of his films, like The Adventures of Pluto Nash, are legendary bombs. Still, he remains a beloved figure in American comedy ever since his early days on Saturday Night Live and this feature-length doco looks like it will be leaning on Murphy as a man who broke down some barriers. “My stuff took off because they had never seen a young black person take charge,” he says in the trailer. Expect a sizable Hollywood chorus singing his praises, including Jerry Seinfeld, Arsenio Hall, Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle and Jamie Foxx.
Notorious neighbour
Streaming: Netflix, from Thursday November 13
Claire Danes returns as Aggie, another woman-on-the-verge character in a Hitchcockian cat-and-mouse thriller. It has producer creative ties to her hit series Homeland, as well as The X-Files. Danes plays an acclaimed author whose life and career have been on hold since the death of her young son. But she finds her next book might be about the guy who has shifted next door, weirdly charming real estate mogul Nile Jarvis (Matthew Rhys), a man who had been the main suspect in the unsolved disappearance of his wife. They forget an agreement over some boundary access if he’ll let her write about him for her new book, but things don’t go to plan. Complicating factors include the disappearance of someone connected to Aggie’s son, the pair’s respective spouses and their art world ties, and a development project run by Jarvis and his menacing father (Jonathan Banks) meeting public opposition. All eight episodes are available on debut.
For pointers to other new shows, go to the October Viewing Guide here.