In Flight

Tea, coffee, or heroin?

Streaming: TVNZ+, from Monday September 1

Katherine Kelly (Coronation Street, Mr Bates vs the Post Office) plays a flight attendant who is offered a terrible deal she can’t refuse: agree to smuggle drugs for a criminal cartel and have her son protected in the Bulgarian jail where he has been wrongly banged up – or refuse and her son will be killed. Reviews of the six-part crime thriller are scattered with words like “tense” and “claustrophobic” and The Guardian’s Lucy Mangan concluded: “It’s brisk, it’s well made, it’s entirely harrowing. I wish you your strange, strange joy of it.” Double episodes weekly.

The Paper

More mockumentary from The Office US creators

Screening: TVNZ 2, 6.30pm, Fridays from September 5

Streaming: TVNZ+

This isn’t so much a spin-off of the American iteration of The Office as a re-run of its mockumentary premise. The fictional documentary crew that captured the profound awkwardness of life at Dunder Mifflin has a new project – a historic Midwestern newspaper where publisher Ned Sampson (Domhnall Gleeson, Ex Machina) is taking desperate measures to arrest its decline. He gathers a group of volunteer reporters who know very little about news gathering. Greg Daniels, who adapted The Office for American television, is behind this one, too, but the trailer feels more like a conventional sitcom than the original did. A big ensemble cast also includes British comedian Tim Key (The Ballad of Wallis Island) Sabrina Impacciatore (The White Lotus), Chelsea Frei (Poker Face) and Oscar Nunez, backing up his role as Oscar Martinez from The Office. Note that in celebration of the new show, TVNZ+ has all nine seasons of The Office re-available for streaming.

The Emerald Isles

Engaging docuseries about Ireland’s other islands

Screening: BBC UKTV, 7.35pm, Sundays from September 7

Actor and comedian Ardal O’Hanlon (Death in Paradise) explores the islands off the coast of Ireland from north to south and, as he puts it, “from mighty windswept cliffs, to lush, subtropical Edens”. The first of three episodes begins on Rathlin Island, population: around 150, the only home of the golden hare and the site of a 2006 archaeological discovery that upended assumptions about Ireland’s pre-Celtic history. “As a child, I was taught we were descended from the Celts,” O’Hanlon marvels. “Before them, it was just birds and fish and magical beings.” He’s a boisterous and engaging presenter and this is enjoyable television.

Task

Pennsylvania crime saga

Streaming: Neon, from Monday September 8

Mark Ruffalo stars as a grizzled Philadelphia FBI agent tasked with ending a string of violent robberies. But when he identifies the unassuming family man who seems to be behind the crime wave, the moral complexity begins. The HBO series was created and written by Brad Ingelsby, the man behind the acclaimed Kate Winslet detective story Mare of Easttown (which was also set in Pennsylvania) and also stars Tom Pelphrey (Ozark), among a cast which includes quite a few British and Irish up-and-comers.

Only Murders In The Building

Taking care of the caretaker

Streaming: Disney+, three-episode debut then weekly, from Tuesday September 9

The fifth season of the hit cosy comic crime caper has Charles, Oliver and Mabel (Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez) investigating the supposedly accidental death of Lester, their Manhattan apartment building’s beloved doorman after his body is found in the building’s fountain. That leads to a web of secrets involving nouveau riche billionaires and old-school mobsters. The podcasting trio are joined by regulars Meryl Streep and Nathan Lane, while the guest-star list includes Renée Zellweger, Christoph Waltz, Téa Leoni, Keegan-Michael Key, Beanie Feldstein and Dianne Wiest.

The Girlfriend

Suspicious mum

Streaming: Prime Video, from Thursday September 11

When Laura (Robin Wright, House of Cards) meets her son Daniel’s new girlfriend Cherry (Olivia Cooke, House of the Dragon, Slow Horses), it’s meant to be a happy event. After all, Cherry really seems like “the one”. But Laura soon becomes suspicious of Cherry and her motives. Is she a manipulative chancer who wants in on Daniel’s life of wealth and privilege – or is Laura just being paranoid and possessive? Let the plot twists begin. Based on the novel of the same name by Michelle Frances and shot on location in the UK and Spain.

Aka Charlie Sheen

The bad boy explains himself

Streaming: Netflix, from Thursday September 11

After his spectacular flame-out, this documentary may or may not be Charlie Sheen’s redemption. It certainly shapes up as a revelation. In what might be the most compelling trailer of the year, Charlie Sheen, who has been sober for seven years, looks at the camera and promises, “The stuff that I plan on sharing, I had made a sacred vow to only reveal to a therapist.” Regrets, he has a few. Along with him for the ride are his friend Sean Penn, his Two and a Half Men co-star Jon Cryer, his ex-wife Brooke Mueller, his long-suffering producer Chuck Lorre – and, naturally, his drug dealer. “When Charlie said he was smoking seven-gram rocks,” the dealer shares, “He was smoking seven-gram rocks.”

Hoff Roading

The Hasselhoff experiment

Screening: Three, 7.30pm, from Thursday September 11

Streaming: ThreeNow

This celebrity road trip, in which Rhys Darby introduces David Hasselhoff to the glories of New Zealand while the two men bond, has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons since it was originally in shot in 2023. There was a collapsed production company and millions of dollars of debt. But factual TV powerhouse Perpetual Entertainment picked up the show from the wreckage and completed it. The locations are predictable – from the Sky Tower to Milford Sound – but teaming a comedian with a star who has always been aware of his own comedic persona seems like a good idea.

Top End Bub

An evolution up Darwin way

Streaming: Prime Video, from Friday September 12

American streamer Prime Video continues its big play for Australian audiences with this eight-part feelgood family drama that acts as a sequel to both the charming Northern Territory-set 2019 romcom Top End Wedding. Miranda Tapsell returns to write and star as Adelaide indigenous lawyer Lauren. Having married Ned (Gwilym Lee), she has to return to her home in the Tiwi Islands north of Darwin when the pair unexpectedly become guardians for her sister’s pre-teen daughter, Taya. “I was single when I wrote Top End Wedding,” Darwin-born Tapsell told ABC News. “And then I became pregnant while I was writing this show. So, I feel like becoming a screenwriter really has made me manifest what I wanted in my life.”

The Heist at Hatton Garden

True crime drama about a big burglary

Streaming: ThreeNow, from Monday September 15

The 2015 burglary of a safe deposit facility in the London neighbourhood of Hatton Garden virtually wrote its own screenplay: nearly £15 million in cash, jewels and other valuables taken from what should have been an impregnable underground vault. The job was so audacious that the Daily Mirror speculated about a “Mr Big” directing “elite thieves from eastern Europe and Israel”, but it turned out to be six elderly crims looking for a final payday. Their ingenuity was greater than their discipline: according to writer Jeff Pope, “what killed it for them was they were not united and all pulling in the same direction. They were fighting each other. They were squabbling. That made them sitting targets.” At the core of it, says Pope, was a power struggle between the two ringleaders, Brian Reader (played by Kenneth Cranham) and Terry Perkins (Timothy Spall). The four-part drama screened in the UK back in 2019 to good reviews, especially for its comedic touches.

The Morning Show

Finding out what’s true

Streaming: Apple TV+, from Wednesday September 17

Part of The Morning Show’s staying power has been each season’s ability to tackle the themes and stories of the day – from #MeToo to the riot at the Capitol. Advance billing suggests that the war on truth – from deepfakes to conspiracy theories – is front and centre in season four. Then there’s the star power: John Hamm is still lurking about as tech baron Paul Marks and Jeremy Irons and William Jackson Harper (The Good Place) are among the latest arrivals to the ensemble cast. Meanwhile, Alex Levy (Jennifer Aniston) has to come to grips with the new

Slow Horses

MI5 misfits on a mission

Streaming: Apple TV+, from Wednesday September 17

Adapted from London Rules, the fifth in Mick Herron’s Jackson Lamb series, the fifth season of the British spy series about a group of MI5 misfits sequestered into the Slough House branch office due to performance issues returns. Its story, initially anyway, is centred on Roddy Ho, the office’s resident IT whiz kid. The irritating Roddy has got himself a girlfriend suspiciously out of his league in a story involving a mass shooting and London mayoral race where Ted Lasso’s Nick Mohammed stars as the incumbent caught in the political and actual crossfire.

House of Guinness

Beer baronets

Streaming: Netflix, from September 25

Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight takes on the Dublin brewing dynasty in the 1860s as the family firm and fortune passes from one generation to another. Sir Benjamin Lee Guiness has left two of his four adult children out of his will, which has the desired effect on sibling harmony as the beer empire expands to America. The trailer, complete with a song by The National, makes it look like quite the ambitious epic. So does a cast which includes Anthony Boyle (Masters of the Air) and Louis Partridge (Pistol, Enola Holmes) as heirs Arthur and Edward Guinness, who, as politicians came up against the Irish Home Rule movement. James Norton (King & Conqueror) plays a character that might be the equivalent of Peaky Blinders’ Tommy Shelby.

For pointers to other recent new shows, go to the August Viewing Guide.