Too Much

Star-studded trans-Atlantic romcom

Streaming: Netflix, from Thursday July 10

Lena Dunham created this romantic comedy with her British husband, Luis Felber, and acknowledged recently at the Tribeca Film Festival that the “germ” of the story was their own real-life romance. Megan Stalter (Hacks,pictured above) stars as Jessica, a 30-something New York workaholic who flees a failed relationship for a new life in London. There, she meets Felix (Will Sharpe, The White Lotus) and discovers that life, love and London are not quite how they’re portrayed in the romcoms she devours. The line-up of guest stars is prodigious, including Jessica Alba, Rita Ora, Stephen Fry, Richard E Grant, Rita Wilson, Rhea Perlman, Naomi Watts, Andrew Scott, and Jennifer Saunders. Said the Guardian: “Too Much presents itself as a romcom, at least on the surface – Jess loves Love Actually and Notting Hill, and each of the episodes gets a romcom pun as its title – but in the end, it is an abrasive, complicated, grownup version of romance, rather than any picture-perfect illusion.”

Murder by Mushroom

Death cap recap

Streaming: ThreeNow, from Thursday July 10

Screening: Three, Monday July 14, 8.30pm

Fresh out of the oven, a look at the 11 week jury trial and triple murder conviction of Erin Patterson, the 50-year-old Australian woman who was found guilty in the Mushroom Murder case which grabbed international headlines. Police alleged that Patterson caused the death of three of her in-laws and attempted to murder a fourth who survived after being poisoned by Death Cap mushrooms in a Beef Wellington she had served them. As well as trial footage which features previously unseen accounts from the proceedings, it has an analysis of Patterson by an FBI-trained criminal profiler and former homicide detective. Murder by Mushroom also features the only television journalist to speak at length with Patterson, Sam Cucchiara.

Jaws @ 50: The Definitive Inside Story

When Spielberg cut his teeth

Streaming: Disney +, from Friday July 11

In case you’ve missed it, National Geographic’s annual binge of shark programming is now on Disney+, while Netflix is also getting in on the carcharodon act with new shows Shark Whisperer, by the director of My Octopus Teacher, and All the Sharks, a series in which shark experts compete to photograph the most sharks. However, Nat Geo’s biggest title this year is this look back at the Steven Spielberg thriller that invented the summer blockbuster in 1975. The film’s legendarily troubled production has been well covered over the years. But Spielberg sits down again for more reminiscences about a film which went 100 days behind schedule and starred an animatronic shark, named Bruce, which didn’t work 80% of the time. To freshen things up, there’s also a line of other directors including James Cameron, Steven Soderbergh, Guillermo del Toro, George Lucas, and others chipping in. And if you’ve always wondered what Emily Blunt thought of Jaws, here’s your show.

Foundation

Enter The Mule

Streaming: Apple TV+, from Friday July 11

By all accounts, the action kicks up a notch for the third season of the TV space opera based (loosely) on the sci-fi books of Isaac Asimov. That’s certainly how it looks in the trailer, where spaceships and explosions abound. One hundred and fifty years on from the events of season two, The Mule, a mutant telepath with designs on ruling the galaxy, turns up – and it may be that only Gaal can stop him from taking over.

Wild Ones

Dangerous nature

Streaming: Apple TV+, from Friday July 11

Former Royal Marine Aldo Kane has spent much of his post-service screen career off camera, as the hazardous environment specialist keeping expensive movie stars safe on shoots, then as founder of Vertical Planet, a company that manages risks and logistics for nature documentary crews. But he got out in front of the camera for last year’s OceanXplorers – and now in this show, along with two other crew types turned presenters, camera trap expert Declan Burley and cinematographer Vianet Djenguet. The subject matter might be the classic stuff of natural history productions – whales, leopards, gorillas – and there’s a theme of conservation, but the style is not exactly Attenborough, and it aims to thrill.

Polk: Unanswered Questions

The aftermath

Screening: Three, 8.30pm, Tuesday July 15

Streaming: ThreeNow

The three-part Polk: The Trial of Philip Polkinghorne appeared in April. Now there’s a one-episode sequel from the same producers apparently pondering the cause of Pauline Hanna’s death ahead of a coroner’s inquest, which is likely to be held in August next year. It’s not clear from the broadcaster’s limited publicity whether this show contains anything new.

Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Still a boldly going concern

Streaming: TVNZ+, from Thursday July 17

The most congenial of the contemporary Star Trek spin-offs – in part because it doesn’t take itself too seriously – returns for a third season after what seems a long time away. Season two’s finale, Hegemony, left Pike and his crew’s standoff with the Gorn on a cliffhanger – one that seems set to be resolved in the first episode of the new season, Hegemony, Part II. The season trailer is mostly space battles, but studio publicity promises a Cluedo-themed retro story and a romcom episode. Paramount+ has announced the franchise will conclude with season five.

Guy Montgomery’s Guy Mont-Spelling Bee Australia

Export-quality quiz

Screening: Three, 7.30pm

Steaming: ThreeNow

The Australian version of the panel show the New Zealand comedian started hosting at home during the pandemic lockdowns. It’s now in its second series on the ABC, but here’s a chance to see last year’s season one hosted by Montgomery and Aaron Chen, where the guest list includes a who’s who (which for NZ viewers can be a “who’s that?”) of Aussie comedy. There’s funding for a third NZ season but it’s not likely to screen until next year.

Untamed

Murder mystery in the wilderness

Streaming: Netflix

Eric Bana stars as Kyle Turner, “a special agent in an elite branch of the National Parks Service”. Er, what? Look, just go with it: it’s America and the parks are dangerous. When a woman dies in the expanses of Yosemite National Park, Turner is drawn into the darkness, with homicide-cop-turned-rookie-park-ranger Naya Vasquez (Lily Santiago) at his side. Our own Sam Neill plays the senior role as Yosemite’s veteran chief park ranger, Paul Souter. The series was created and co-written by Mark L Smith (American Primeval, The Revenant) and Elle Smith (The Marsh King’s Daughter).

Tribe With Bruce Parry

It’s a jungle out there

Streaming: TVNZ+, from Saturday July 19

Former Royal Marine Bruce Parry made a name for himself as a sort of have-a-go TV anthropologist 20 years ago on Tribe, a series in which he stayed with indigenous people in remote parts of the world, adapting to the local lifestyle and trying many of the local intoxicants. The original series ran for three seasons, visiting fifteen different tribal communities, many of which would soon be hosting more documentary crews. After Tribe, Parry made Amazon, spending a year travelling along the river. It’s in the rainforest in the Colombian Amazon where his new season of Tribe begins. There, he embeds himself with the Waimaha people, who live on a remote tributary of the river. The second episode has him in southern Angola living with Mucubal in the Namib Desert, which is getting hotter for the cattle herding, semi-nomadic tribe. And the third and final in the series has Parry on the southern Indonesian island of Sumba, forgoing the tourist resorts and surf beaches for an ancient hilltop village where the homes sit among megalithic stone tombs.

The Hunting Wives

Texas big shots

Screening: TVNZ2, 9.40pm Tuesdays from July 22

Streaming: TVNZ+

Yet another drama about rich American women behaving badly. This one is an adaptation of May Cobb’s 2012 melodrama about a clique of small-town wealthy East Texan housewives who are the members of a women-only shooting club, and whose après-skeet activities are morally questionable. Former Chicago-ite Sophie O’Neil (Brittany Snow), newly settled into the rural community with her husband, joins up after falling under the spell of glamorous socialite Margo (Malin Åkerman). However, things spiral out of control with the murder of a teenager. Fans of Liane Moriarty’s potboilers may enjoy the steam coming off this one.

Washington Black

Mr Washington goes to Canada

Streaming: Disney+, from Wednesday July 23

This adaptation of Esi Edugyan’s 2018 Booker Prize-nominated novel dramatises the Dickens-meets-Twain-meets-Verne 19th-century odyssey of George Washington Black. Born a slave on a Barbados sugar plantation, Washington’s gift for science assists his escape to the outside world and a transcontinental adventure that takes him to Canada, the Arctic, Britain, and Africa. The show’s eight episodes star Brits Ernest Kingsley Jr (The Sandman) as Washington Black, Rupert Graves as scientist Mr Goff, and Iola Evans as Tanna Goff, his daughter by a Solomon Islands mother in the leading roles. The supporting cast includes Tom Ellis (Lucifer), Sterling K Brown (Paradise), former Hobbit Billy Boyd, and Charles Dance (a fixture in every series requiring a stern English father figure). The trailer suggests that although the show deals with the evils of slavery and the underground railroad that took slaves to freedom in Canada, it might remind of the old Disney movies of Jules Verne stories.

Outrageous

Nancy & the Nazis

Streaming: Neon from Tuesday July 29

Screening: BBC First, 8.30pm, Tuesdays from July 29.

There’s been television shows made of author Nancy Mitford’s books such as The Pursuit of Love and Love in a Cold Climate during the years. Now she and her famous sisters are getting the drama treatment in a six-episode first season which covers their lives through much of the 1930s. Apart from Nancy, who is played by Bessie Carter (Bridgerton), the sisters – Pamela, Diana, Jessica, Unity, and Deborah – are played by unknowns, with James Purefoy and Anna Chancellor as their parents Lord and Lady Lord Redesdale. The show’s creator Sarah Williams (Being Jane) hopes the first season will be the first of a series which takes the sisters through WWII, during which Diana was imprisoned having married British fascist leader Oswald Mosley, her younger sister Unity also having befriend Hitler.

The Burning Girls

A lot at stake

Streaming: TVNZ+

The fourth of English writer CJ Tudor’s spooky bestsellers is the first to make it to screen in a series starring Samantha Morton. She’s the new vicar, who arrives with her daughter in the sleepy village of Chapel Croft, where her predecessor took his own life. There’s some bad juju in the place, which may have something to do with the disappearance of two girls 30 years earlier and villagers burnt at the stake for heresy in the 1600s. So no, The Vicar of Dibley: Halloween Edition it ain’t.

Elsbeth

Return of the quirky attorney

Screening: TVNZ 1, 8.30pm, Tuesdays

Streaming: TVNZ+

Carrie Preston returns for a second season of The Good Wife comedy spin-off and mystery-of-the-week series. Idiosyncratic Chicago lawyer Elsbeth Tascioni still has a job as a consultant with the NYPD, which makes her a precinct’s resident Columbo. The new series lines up a long list of guest stars including Nathan Lane, who appears in episode one as an opera lover accused of stabbing a fellow patron over his cellphone use. Also appearing are Vanessa Williams, Matthew Broderick, Tracey Ullman, Mary-Louise Parker and Brits Jack Davenport and Ioan Gruffudd.

This City Is Ours

A Scouse Sopranos?

Streaming: ThreeNow (all episodes)

This BBC drama about a Liverpool crime family stars Sean Bean as ruthless Ronnie Phelan, the head of a cocaine-importing operation who wants to spend more time in his luxury villa on the Costa del Crime. So, he is doing a bit of succession planning. His two options are his loyal offsider Michael Kavanagh (James Nelson-Joyce) or his volatile son Jamie (Jack McMullen), who has the backing of his mum Elaine (Julie Graham). Kavanagh is torn between his organised crime career ambitions and his relationship with non-criminal restaurant manager Diana (Hannah Onslow). The eight-episode first season – it’s been renewed for a second – has had good UK reviews. Fans of the Irish gangland saga Kin should investigate.

The Sandman

Recurring nightmare

Streaming: Netflix, from July 3

This is the second and final series of the grandly gothic fantasy adapting Neil Gaiman’s 1990s DC graphic novel series. Reportedly, it was always the plan to wrap up the otherworldly adventures of Dream (Tom Sturridge) after two seasons and it’s not the result of the sexual assault allegations against the author, which have seen other Gaiman adaptations quickly wrapped up or canned. The first season won acclaim for being true to the graphic novel and for the top-notch British cast. One standalone episode in the new season involves Dream’s encounter with Shakespeare, which in Gaiman’s version inspires the Bard’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream and which stars Jack Gleeson (Joffrey from Game of Thrones) as Puck.

Ballard

Lady cop doesn’t quit, ever

Streaming: Prime Video from Wednesday July 9

Action star Maggie Q plays Detective Renée Ballard, who, for reasons that will presumably become clear, has been demoted from the Los Angeles Police Department’s robbery-homicide team to the basement-dwelling cold cases office. She takes on her inglorious role with zeal – so much so that she begins to uncover a conspiracy within the LAPD itself. The show is a spin-off from Bosch and, like the long-running original, is adapted from the crime novels of Michael Connelly – but the original inspiration for the Ballard character was real-life LA cop Mitzi Roberts.

To what see else is new to view, see our June viewing guide.