Queer Aotearoa: We’ve Always Been Here
LGBT 101
Streaming: TVNZ+, From February 1
Screening: TVNZ1, Saturdays, 10.25pm
New Zealand’s queer history is not undocumented but it’s not always easy to find, especially for younger members of the LGBTQI+ community. This six-part documentary series might be seen as an effort to remedy that – a sort of Queer NZ 101 – and it probably helps that its writer and director Harry Wynn is younger than almost everyone he puts on screen. The interviews, from the Topp Twins to radio host Mike Puru and former Labour MP Chris Carter, are simply and directly shot and carried by the storytelling ability (and good humour) of their subjects. The liberally employed archive footage offers a sometimes-confronting look at what kind of country we used to be. Presenter Eli Matthewson could perhaps have been given more to do, or at least allowed to be less earnest occasionally, but overall, Wynn has crafted a crisp and compelling set of stories. Make time for this.
Dorset: Country And Coast
Watch and be soothed
Screening: BBC UKTV, 7.30pm, Sundays from February 2
Alan Titchmarsh has been making outdoors television for nearly 50 years, mostly as a gardening guru, but also, as here, he branches out. He narrates this travelogue through coastal landscapes, taking in the Jacobean manor Mapperton House and the dramatic Jurassic Coast. The Daily Telegraph called it “televisual balm for the soul” and “a soothing look at tight-knit communities amid handsome scenery”.
The Crow Girl
Ski-town serial-killer story
Streaming: TVNZ+, from Tuesday February 4
An adaptation of Erik Axl Sund’s bestselling novel of the same name, produced for Paramount+, The Crow Girl follows police officer DCI Jeanette Kilburn (Eve Myles, Keeping Faith) and psychotherapist Sophia Craven (Katherine Kelly, Coronation Street) as they hunt for a serial killer targeting young men. There are sub-plots galore to keep track of, but both The Guardian and The Independent have hailed it as “gripping” fare and the Evening Standard called it “compelling”. Fun fact: Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash, a fan of the book and champion of the project to film it, contributed to the soundtrack and signed on as an executive producer.
The Åre Murders
Scandi crime queen’s second show
Streaming: Netflix, from Thursday February 6
Swedish author Viveca Sten has sold 10 million books worldwide and the first TV series to be based on her work, Sandhamn Murders, ran for nine seasons on Swedish TV. She steps up to the global stage with The Åre Murders, which is adapted from two of her novels, Hidden in Snow and Hidden in the Shadows, both set in the sub-arctic ski resort of Åre. Police officer Hanna Ahlander (Carla Sehn), suspended from her job in Stockholm and dumped by her partner, decamps to Åre to decompress. But when a young woman goes missing, she can’t help but get involved, bringing her into contact with the local cop, who warily accepts her help in the investigation.
Apple Cider Vinegar
The bad influencer
Streaming: Netflix, from Thursday February 6
The first sentence of Wikipedia’s article about Belle Gibson bluntly describes her as “an Australian convicted scammer and pseudoscience advocate”. This limited series, based on the book The Woman Who Fooled the World, tells the story of how she grabbed attention – and money – as a wellness influencer in the early days of Instagram. Gibson claimed to have malignant brain, blood, spleen, uterine, liver and kidney cancers, and to have undergone heart surgery and suffered a stroke. None of it was true and a number of the “natural” remedies she promoted to real cancer sufferers were actively harmful. Kaitlyn Dever (Unbelievable, Dopesick) plays Gibson and Alycia Debnam-Carey (Fear the Walking Dead) is fellow influencer, erstwhile bestie and eventual enemy Milla Blake, who actually did have cancer.
Clean Slate
TV legend’s last foray
Streaming: Prime Video, from Thursday February 6
Norman Lear, who changed television with All in the Family, Sanford and Son and Good Times in the 1970s, died in 2023 at the age of 101 – but not before he got his name on one more production. Lear is credited as executive producer of one episode in this comedy about Harry Slate (played by veteran George Wallace), an old-school Alabama guy who is challenged when the estranged child he thought was a son returns home 23 years on as a proud transwoman, Desiree (Laverne Cox, Orange is the New Black). She’s seeking a connection and, it turns out, a place to live after the gallery where she works closes down. The trailer, in which basically good people face contemporary social challenges with folksy humour, looks like classic Lear
C.B. Strike: The Ink Black Heart
The victim on the internet
Screening: Sky HBO, Mondays 9.35pm, from February 10
Streaming: Now on Neon
This is the sixth season of the series, based on the sixth book in the Cormoran Strike crime series by Robert Galbraith (aka JK Rowling). The 1000-page book was regarded as a slog even by fans when it was published in 2022, but series screenwriter Tom Edge got it down to four hours of television. This time, Cormoran (Tom Burke) and Robin (Holliday Grainger) are on the case of a cult YouTube cartoonist, who has been persecuted and eventually found dead – after her work was criticised for being racist, ableist and transphobic.
Surviving Black Hawk Down
Life during wartime
Streaming: Netflix, from Monday February 10
Ridley Scott’s 2001 film Black Hawk Down was based on the real-life events of the Battle of Mogadishu in 1993 and probably did more to bring the incident to world attention than any contemporary news reports. The director adapted Mark Bowden’s 1999 book Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War for his film, but here, his production company goes back to the original source: the US troops involved in what became a disastrous rescue operation amid a civil war, and the Somalis, both civilians and soldiers, caught up in the events. Three parts.
Travels with Agatha Christie with Sir David Suchet
Agatha’s big OE
Screening: Sky Arts, 8pm, from Thursday February 13
The life of the world’s best-selling author, Agatha Christie, is, in some ways as much of a mystery as any of her plots. She was not, we now know, as shy and reclusive as once supposed. And one of her adventures was the world tour she undertook in 1922, at the age of 31. Sir David Suchet, bonded to the writer by his screen portrayal of her best-known character, Hercule Poirot, traces her itinerary through southern Africa, Australia, Hawai’i, Canada – and New Zealand. When he was here filming last year, Suchet told The Post that her travelogue, written directly after the journey, showed a side of Christie he’d never grasped before. Also, she liked our scenery.
Vince
Mad local comedy
Screening: Three, 8.35pm, from Thursday February 13
Streaming: ThreeNow
Remember getting Covid and having to isolate? Good times. You might have spent a lot of time watching TV – but Jono Pryor started writing some. The result, Vince, follows the roller-coaster fortunes of 40-something TV host Vince Walters (Pryor), who’s a bit of a dick – and then has his exposed on screen, after a bratty child administers a live-on-air down-trou. He faces a battle to restore his reputation and get his job back, but perhaps restoring his relationship with his clever daughter is the first step on that road. The show is co-written and directed by David de Lautour and produced by the makers of Creamerie, Double Parked and Raised by Refugees. The cast includes Chelsie Preston Crayford, Anna Jullienne, Laura Daniel and Natalie Medlock. The six-part series kicks off with a double episode.
Yellowjackets
Third course
Streaming: Neon, from February 14
Season two of Yellowjackets delivered cannibalism and a dead baby, and the third season shows no sign of letting up on the darkness and drama. Notably, death reaches the present, as well as the women’s castaway past – and the trailer hints that the girls might not be done with eating human flesh, or at least thinking about it a lot. “The only way to truly be safe,” declares Shauna (Melanie Lynskey), “is to be the only one left.” The big cast news is the arrival of Hilary Swank, as a yet-to-be-named character.
Invisible Boys
Queer teen drama with a strong pedigree
Streaming: TVNZ+, from February 14
A conservative West Australian town would be a tough enough place for a group of gay teenagers to find themselves, let alone with Australia’s “postal survey” on legalising same-sex marriage in the background. But when one of them is outed on social media after an encounter with a married man, the trauma pulls them together. Adapted by Nicholas Verso for television from Holden Sheppard’s award-winning novel, Invisible Boys has already generated a lot of press attention across the Tasman.
Stanley Tucci: Searching For Italy
This charming man
Screening: Living, 7.30pm Saturdays from February 15
The American actor returns for a second season of exploration of Italy’s regional cuisines. Viewers who felt that the first season focused too much on well-traversed places – or too much on Tucci himself – probably won’t be mollified by this one. He leans into the personal angle even more, if anything. In episode four, he examines the migrant Italian influence on food in his adopted home of London and he’s joined by his parents and extended family for the next episode, on Calabria and its troubled history. Most of us will be willing to just sit back and be charmed.
Lockerbie: A Search For Truth
A father’s quest for justice
Screening: TVNZ1, 8.30pm Sundays from February 16
Streaming: TVNZ+
The first of two dramas due this year about the 1988 Lockerbie disaster stars Colin Firth as Dr Jim Swire, whose daughter was aboard Pan Am Flight 103 when a terrorist bomb exploded, bringing the airliner down over the Scottish town, killing 11 residents. The five episodes follow Swire as he becomes spokesman for the victims’ families before eventually starting a campaign to prove that one of the Libyans convicted of the bombing was innocent.
Doc
The doctor who remembered nothing
Screening: TVNZ 2, 8.30pm Mondays from February 17
Streaming: TVNZ+
Dr Amy Elias (Molly Parker, House of Cards) is a medical star at Minneapolis’s Westside Hospital, where she works as chief of internal and family medicine – until she suffers a brain injury in a car accident and loses her memory of the previous eight years. She recalls nothing of her patients, the medical knowledge she has gained or her personal life. Can she start again as an intern and put it all back together? Based on an original Italian series, which in turn was inspired by the true-life story of an Italian ED doctor.
The White Lotus
Twisters by the pool
Screening: Sky HBO, Mondays 8.30pm, Mondays from February 17
Streaming: Neon
Mike White’s hit luxury class satire about unhappy rich folk heads to a new resort, this time in Thailand. There, as has been the tradition of the past two seasons, it’s apparent not all the guests will be checking out alive. And like previous instalments, this one comes with an impressive international cast, including Walton Goggins, Aimee Lou Wood (Sex Education), Carrie Coon, Jason Isaacs, Parker Posey and our very own Morgana O’Reilly.
Win Or Lose
Wholesome animation
Streaming: Disney+, from February 19
Pixar Animation Studios’ first original animated series (that is, not based on an existing Pixar film) follows the fortunes of a co-ed school softball team through the eyes of a different character in each episode. It’s also a big break for New Zealand’s own Josh Thomson, who voices Frank, a rotund umpire with an unrequited romantic crush on the local barista. The show ran into controversy before even getting to air, when Disney cut what appeared to be a character’s transgender storyline in what it said was recognition that “many parents would prefer to discuss certain subjects with their children on their own terms and timeline”. Otherwise, it looks as fun and inventive as you’d expect.
Reacher
He’s big, bad and back
Streaming: Prime video, from February 20
The third season of Reacher adapts the plot of Lee Child’s novel Persuader. The granite-slab-like Jack Reacher (Alan Ritchson) has to rescue an undercover DEA agent, bringing him up against a villainous drug dealer. There are some notable additions to the cast this season, including 80s heartthrob Anthony Michael Hall, who looks a lot older than he used to. Expect action from the opening minute.
Zero Day
Meet the hackers
Streaming: Netflix from February 21
Robert De Niro makes a rare foray into television in this political conspiracy thriller in which he plays a former US president who takes on the job of heading a commission investigating a devastating global cyberattack who is granted extraordinary powers to bring in the culprits. Jesse Plemons, Dan Stevens, Joan Allen, Lizzy Caplan and Angela Bassett also feature in the cast.
A Thousand Blows
Shoplifters of the world unite
Streaming: Disney+, from February 21
Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight is behind this drama set in 1880s London and based on the lives of historical characters. Young Jamaican Hezekiah Moscow (Malachi Kirby) lands in London and finds himself thrust into the world of bare-knuckle boxing. That brings him to the attention of Mary Carr (Erin Doherty, memorable as Princess Anne in The Crown), queen of the infamous Forty Elephants crew of female thieves, who sees him as a way to further her criminal enterprise. But standing in the way is Sugar Goodson, the menacing main man of boxing, played by a snorting, snarling Stephen Graham. Six episodes, but don’t be surprised if it runs and runs.
The Gone
NZ-Ireland crime thriller series returns
Screening: TVNZ1, 8.30pm, Tuesdays from February 25
Streaming: TVNZ+ from February 25
The disappearance of two Irish tourists at the centre of 2023′s season one of The Gone might have been resolved – albeit with one of the tourists in the morgue and the town’s mayor in custody. But in the second series it soon becomes clear that Mt Affinity (Te Aroha in real life) is still a dangerous place to be Irish. At the end of the first series, Irish journalist Aileen Ryan (Carolyn Bracken) has gone off into the bush to conduct her own inquiries into the town’s historical “Mountain Murders” and, in the season-ending cliffhanger, been confronted by someone she recognises. As season two begins, she hasn’t made her flight home. Which brings back Dublin detective Theo Richter (Richard Flood) to reteam with his local counterpart, Detective Diana Huia (Acushla-Tara Kupe).
Best Interests
Highly praised drama about disability and the right to life
Screening: Rialto, 8.30pm, Tuesdays from February 25
This four-part BBC drama takes on a wrenching, divisive theme without anointing heroes or villains. Nicci (Sharon Horgan) and Andrew (Michael Sheen) face an awful decision when doctors say their 13-year-old daughter Marnie, who has lived since she was a baby with a rare form of muscular dystrophy, should be allowed to die as her condition deteriorates. Reviewers universally praised the performances of the leads (17-year-old Irish actor Niamh Moriarty, playing Marnie, got a BAFTA nomination) and the sensitivity of the script by Ian Thorne (His Dark Materials). “Thorne doesn’t force his audience to empathise with just one perspective,” said iNews. “Instead, he eloquently and plainly sets out his question without agenda or judgment: what would you do?”
Running Point
Dynastic basketball comedy
Streaming: Netflix, from February 27
Running Point is loosely based on the career of Jeanie Buss, who became president of the LA Lakers team after the death of its owner, her father Jerry, in 2013. She is now regarded as one of the most powerful women in American sport. But it’s evidently more about the comedy than any inside-sport grit. Kate Hudson stars as Isla Gordon, who takes over the family business – the Los Angeles Waves basketball team – after her brother has to resign due to a scandal. Most people, her siblings included, don’t think she’s up to it, so she has a lot to prove. Created by Mindy Kaling and her Mindy Project teammates Ike Barinholtz and David Stassen with Buss on board as an executive producer.
