RECOMMENDED
Renegade Nell
Girls can do anything
Louisa Harland (Orla in Derry Girls) stars in this fantasy adventure as Nell Jackson, a woman who returns from war to her family home in 18th-century Tottenham only to be framed for murder and forced to go on the run. But there’s magic afoot: Nell flexes recently discovered supernatural powers in her new life as a notorious highwaywoman, bringing her to the attention of the sinister Earl of Poynton who, it turns out, is hatching a magical plot against the throne. There’s some pedigree in the production here: it’s written and created by Sally Wainwright (Happy Valley) and directed by Ben Taylor (Sex Education).
Streaming: Disney+, Friday March 28
RECOMMENDED
Steve! (Martin)
How it started, how it’s going
Morgan Neville, the Oscar-winning director of 20 Feet From Stardom and Roadrunner: A Film About Anthony Bourdain, takes the helm for this “documentary in two pieces” about the legendary comedian. The pieces are “Then”, which explores Martin’s early life and his rise to fame as a stand-up comedian – until he walked away from that aged only 35 and became even more famous as a film star; and “Now”, which catches up with a 78-year-old Martin, who is happy and beloved. Martin Short, Tina Fey, Jerry Seinfeld, Eric Idle, Finn Wittrock, Diane Keaton and Selena Gomez all make appearances.
Streaming: Apple TV+, Friday March 28
American Rust: Broken Justice
Small-town darkness
The first season of the rustbelt cop show was made for the US Showtime network and aired here on Sky – now the second season, subtitled Broken Justice, has been picked up by Amazon Prime. After a season finale shootout that left the small town of Buell in shock, police chief Del Harris (Jeff Daniels) returned to the Pittsburgh PD – but now he’s back in Buell where a series of murders is beginning to point to a deadly conspiracy. Maura Tierney returns as the woman he loves and a flock of new cast members arrives, including Luna Lauren Velez (Dexter) as Del’s new police partner Detective Angela Burgos.
Streaming: Prime Video, Friday March 28
RECOMMENDED
Mr. Bates vs. The Post Office
Stamping its mark
The drama about the British Post Office scandal – in which the Crown-owned Post Office Limited wrongly prosecuted, bankrupted, and devastated the lives of hundreds of “subpostmaster” franchisees while denying its Horizon IT system was to blame for large cash discrepancies – might have come after many official and journalistic investigations.
But the public reaction after the ITV series screened “achieved the remarkable feat of jolting the UK government into action over the scandal,” said the Financial Times. Some 9.2 million viewers watched the series, which distils into a riveting four hours of television events that lasted for 16 years. The story – essentially about glitches in accounting software and multiple criminal and civil trials – is framed around the efforts of ex-subpostmaster Alan Bates, played by Toby Jones, who was forced out of his Post Office franchise in a small Welsh town after refusing to sign off on his branch’s discrepancies. He takes up the fight of others who have been prosecuted for embezzlement and forced to pay tens of thousands of pounds they never stole. The understated Jones is perfectly cast, as is Julie Hesmondhalgh as his wife, hoping for a quiet life but ever supportive of her husband’s crusade, which fills her sewing room with cartons of documents.
Also impressive and shedding the most tears in her role is Monica Dolan as a subpostmaster wrongly convicted for fraudulent accounting and ordered to pay nearly $80,000 to the PO, supposedly the shortfall from her small Hampshire village branch attached to her cafe.
Some of the people the series is based on feature in documentary Mr Bates vs The Post Office: The Real Story, screening the following Sunday.
Screening: TVNZ 1, Easter Sunday, and Monday, 8.35pm and 8.30pm
Streaming: TVNZ+
Charles III: The Coronation Year
A little kindness for the King
The degree of access afforded to the producers of this documentary effectively ensured that nothing much of alarm would be in it – although, given the febrile state of the headlines, viewers may welcome that. In this account of the King’s first year on the throne, there are no awkward conversations about Prince Andrew, and Harry might as well not exist. It screened in Britain on Boxing Day to mostly positive reviews. The BBC’s own reviewer deemed it “a warm and sympathetic account of the new reign” and The Times called it “the greatest plug a royal could ask for,” adding that, “No one could say the King hasn’t earned it.” Some begged to differ: the BBC reported that the 900-odd complaints it received about the documentary were largely from “viewers who felt the tone of the programme was overly positive”. Royal historian Robert Hardman does the writing and The Crown star Helena Bonham Carter narrates.
Screening: TVNZ 1, Easter Sunday, 7pm
Streaming: TVNZ+
RECOMMENDED
Spinal Destination
The long way to walking again
Show creator Paula Whetu-Jones drew on her own experience of spending time in Burwood Spinal Unit to write this comic drama and she doesn’t stint on the dark humour. Bree Peters stars as Tessa Rivers, a busy, confident working mum who is suddenly paralysed by a mysterious illness. She’s determined to walk again but her old self-image hangs around in the form of a taunting, talkative alter-ego and it isn’t helping. The cast and writing team also include John Landreth, making a return to acting after a freak accident in 2018 left him tetraplegic. You can read more about the series here.
Screening: Sky Open, 8.30pm, Wednesdays from March 27
Streaming: SkyGo, Neon
The Couple Next Door
Getting sexy with the neighbours
A British thriller series spiced up with a solid helping of erotic kink. Evie (Eleanor Tomlinson, Poldark) and Pete (Alfred Enoch, How to Get Away with Murder) are a very settled couple who have been together since their university days. But when they move to a nice new suburb and meet their adventurous neighbours Danny (Sam Heughan, Outlander) and his fitness influencer wife Becka (Jessica De Gouw, The Secrets She Keeps), their relationship moves into new and risky territory. Danny is a policeman as well as a sexy devil, and a criminal plot begins to take shape. “It’s a stylised show, but it’s very sexy, very dark,” said Heughan in an interview about the show. “And I think people will be disgusted or excited.”
Streaming: TVNZ+, Thursday March 27
RECOMMENDED
3 Body Problem
Astronomical effort
The second product of Netflix’s $US200 million deal with Game of Thrones makers D.B. Weiss and David Benioff – after the modest single-season Ivy league comedy The Chair – is this epic sci-fi saga based on Chinese writer Liu Cixin’s Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy, and its first book The Three-Body Problem. That’s a physics, not a murder mystery reference, and it has to do with why Earth faces an existential threat from another world. Though there’s a detective story among the show’s many plots which start with Chinese astrophysicist Ye Wenjie, who having witnessed her father’s execution while growing up in The Cultural Revolution, has the first contact with extraterrestrial life and gives them directions to come colonise the place. The series, which was made mostly in the UK and is centred on “the Oxford Five”— a quintet of brilliant scientists who are key to saving the world — features some Thrones actors like Liam Cunningham, Jonathon Pryce, and John Bradley. But sadly, no dragons. For more about the show go here.
Streaming: Full series, Netflix, from Friday March 22
RECOMMENDED
Escaping Utopia
Gloriavale’s past revisited
It’s not just another documentary about Gloriavale, but a three-part series looking at the history of the religious community, the stories of those who have left, and where the much-troubled community finds itself today, after multiple sexual abuse court cases and investigations into tis labour practices. “It’s been covered but not in a way that feels like it’s ever satisfied us,” says Justin Pemberton who co-directed Escaping Utopia with Natalie Malcon whose previous documentary was the award-winning Heaven and Hell – The Centrepoint Story. For more about the series go here.
Streaming: TVNZ+, from March 24.
Davey & Jonesie’s Locker
Bill & Ted, but with girls
The multiverse trope meets high school comedy. Davey and Jonesie are eccentric girl pals who are excluded by the cool kids – until they discover a trans-dimensional portal in a school locker and figure it might lead them to a more interesting life. It does, but that means them landing in a succession of weird parallel universes in each of which their high school is a very strange place. They decide to just go with it. No one involved has any great pedigree, but if it’s as funny and lively as the trailer, it’ll be worth a watch.
Streaming: Prime Video, from Thursday March 21
Palm Royale
Grifting in the 60s, stylishly
Kristen Wiig (Bridesmaids) plays Maxine Simmons, a woman prepared to do what it takes to break into Palm Beach high society in 1969. She’s surrounded by a tasty ensemble cast including Laura Dern, Allison Janney, and Ricky Martin, plus guest-star turns from Carol Burnett and Bruce Dern. The trailer for the 10-part comedy-drama indicates that it’s art-directed to the hilt, which might be as good a reason as any to watch.
Streaming: Apple TV+, from Wednesday March 20
Obituary
The job you’d kill to keep
A black comedy in which Siobhán Cullen (The Long Call) plays a woman in a small Irish town who gets a gig writing obituaries for the local newspaper – a perfect match, it seems, for her obsession with death. But when her editor forces her to go freelance and be paid per obit, her income dries up. She decides her only solution is to start drumming up business by killing people. The Irish Times praised Cullen’s performance but lamented that there weren’t more laughs, concluding that, “While it doesn’t always succeed, [it] at least looks beyond the traditional clichés of home-grown drama. And given the Irish obsession with death and small-town gossip, you can only applaud the killer premise.”
Streaming: TVNZ+, from Sunday March 17
RECOMMENDED
Manhunt
In pursuit of Lincoln’s assassin
The hunt for the killer of Abraham Lincoln gets another dramatization in yet another show called Manhunt. This horse-powered conspiracy thriller is based on Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase for Lincoln’s Killer, the first of four books James L Swanson has written about the first US presidential assassination. Mainly, the seven episodes follow the pursuit of John Wilkes Booth, a popular actor whose pro-slavery and pro-South views led him into a plot that involved not only the murder of Lincoln, but also targeted Secretary of State William H Seward and Vice President Andrew Johnson. The show is produced and written by Monica Beletsky (whose credits include the third season of Fargo) and it’s directed by film-maker-turned-prestige-TV-helmer Carl Franklin. The cast includes Tobias Menzies (Outlander, The Crown) as Lincoln’s Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, who here leads the hunt against Booth, played by Irish actor Anthony Boyle (Masters of the Air).
Streaming: Apple TV+ from Friday, March 15
Chorus Girls
Rally the troupe
A darkly comedic ensemble drama about a group of women working as dancers for Denmark’s biggest revue, Cirkusrevyen, in the early seventies. Together, they encounter the sexism baked into the Danish revue tradition, while the world changes around them. Co-creators Ditte Hansen & Louise Mieritz have told media, “We are not taking the moral high ground here, nor are we pointing fingers at the past, but we do hope that the series can contribute to putting the theme of community and change into perspective.” So, no, it’s not just doing it for kicks.
Streaming: TVNZ+, from Sunday March 10
RECOMMENDED
The Gentlemen
Hard as nails and a bit posh
Has Guy Ritchie’s time in the sun returned? This Netflix series, spun off Ritchie’s 2019 film of the same name, is Ritchie all over: wide-boy toffs, expensive tipples, and blood-spattered bodies everywhere. The set-up is similar – Eddie Horniman (Theo James) unexpectedly inherits his father’s sizeable country estate, only to discover it’s part of a cannabis empire run by career criminal Bobby Glass (a very-much-in-his-element Ray Winstone). But the series introduces new characters and new stories. “The world of The Gentlemen is a little bit of me,” Ritchie admitted.
Streaming: Netflix, from Thursday March 7
RECOMMENDED
James Must-A-Pic His Mum a Man
Matchmaking with mother
This year’s winner of Celebrity Treasure Island heads home to Dunedin for a show in which he attempts to find his single mother, Janet, who works as a psychologist, a nice bloke. Janet has featured in the comedian’s early home-made videos and has occasionally been dragged up on stage during his stand-up shows. Now she has her only son building a show around her and her love life. What a very good sport Janet must be. More on the show here.
Streaming: TVNZ+ from March 7
RECOMMENDED
Dark City: The Cleaner
His first stab at telly
The six-part adaptation of Christchurch crime writer Paul Cleave’s first book starring Cohen Holloway as a police station janitor and serial killer Joe, and Chelsie Preston Crayford, who possibly gets the better of him by being more of a psycho than he is. To read more about the show, go here.
Screening: SoHo, 8.30pm, Mondays from March 4
Streaming: Neon from March 4
RECOMMENDED
The Regime
Premier comedy
This political satire HBO miniseries revolves around Kate Winslet as Elena Vernham, the chancellor of an unnamed formerly Communist Central European state, where her father was dictator. She’s navigating the path between domestic popularity and international relations with the likes of the United States and her possibly unconventional marriage. The cast also includes Andrea Riseborough as Vernham’s palace dogsbody, Belgian star Matthias Schoenaerts as an ordinary solider who becomes her minder, and Hugh Grant as the Leader of the Opposition. It’s written by Will Tracy (The Menu, Succession) and directed by Stephen Frears and our own Jessica Hobbs in her first gig since her Emmy-winning turn on The Crown.
Screening: SoHo, Tuesdays 8.30pm, from March 5
Streaming: Neon
RECOMMENDED
The Completely Made-Up Adventures of Dick Turpin
What if he was a vegan with great hair?
The real story of Dick Turpin was never really as colourful and romantic as the stories it has spawned since, and this six-part action comedy
series gleefully takes further liberties. Noel Fielding, who stars as the infamous 18th-century highwayman, told journalists recently that the real Turpin “was quite a nasty, murdering criminal. So, we’ve reimagined him as an inclusive pacifist. He’s a vegan, so he’s more about creativity than violence.” Hugh Bonneville (Downton Abbey) plays Turpin’s corrupt nemesis Jonathan Wilde, and the reliably funny Tamsin Greig is Lady Helen Gwinear, the brutal and uncompromising boss of an organised crime union. But it’s Fielding’s show at heart and it looks like a laugh.
Streaming: Apple TV+ from March 1
See our guide to other recent new shows in the February viewing guide.
Our recommended tags are based on shows the Listener team has had a chance to see.
