Walking with Dinosaurs
Period dramas
Screening: TVNZ 1, 7pm, Mondays from June 2
Streaming: TVNZ+. New episodes weekly
A long-awaited second series of the 1999 juggernaut BBC natural history series about prehistoric animals, which did for television what Jurassic Park did for the movies. Read our feature on the show.
Diary of a Junior Doctor
Talking the pulse of the profession’s rookies
Screening: TVNZ1, Tuesdays from June 3, 7.30pm
Streaming: TVNZ+, new episodes weekly
A five-episode series following the professional and private lives of five trainee physicians at various stages of qualifying for their specialities while working at Middlemore Hospital. Read our feature on the show.
The Survivors
You’re not in Deadloch now
Streaming: Netflix, from June 6
Having had two of her Aaron Falk detective stories made into movies, The Dry and Force of Nature: The Dry 2, Australian writer Jane Harper gets a third screen adaptation with this six-episode Netflix series based on her 2020 standalone novel The Survivors.
Robyn Malcolm stars in the crime drama as the emotionally distant mother of Kieran Elliott (Charlie Vickers, who plays Sauron in The Rings of Power). He has returned to his Tasmanian hometown with his partner and child 15 years after the drownings of two people he knew and the disappearance of a young girl. The town is rocked again when the body of a young woman is found on the beach and the investigation of her death is linked to the earlier ones.
Says showrunner Tony Ayres: “I often describe the show as a Trojan horse. It’s a family melodrama disguised as a murder mystery. Because the things that are really at its heart are things like a son wanting his mother’s love and the mother who just cannot afford to give it because her whole world might fall apart.” The series was filmed on location in Eaglehawk Neck, east of Hobart.
St Denis Medical
Nurse, the screens
Streaming: TVNZ+, double episodes from June 6
Just as TVNZ brings us a fly-on-the-wall series about junior doctors at Middlemore, they’ve added this American mockumentary set in an underfunded hospital in Oregon. Its first season has had a warm critical reception since it began screening on NBC – “consistently amusing, sometimes funny, basically sweet, a little sentimental”, said the Los Angeles Times. And if it looks like The Office with more drip-stands, one of its two creators, Justin Spitzer, did a long stint as a writer on the American version of the David Brent mockumentary. Playing an overworked supervising nurse, Allison Tolman (from season one of Fargo) leads a cast that also includes sitcom veterans David Alan Grier and Wendi McLendon-Covey.
Mind Menders
Trip advisors
Screening: Sky Open, Sundays, June 8 & 15, 8.30pm
Streaming: Neon
Fronted by Sonia Gray and associate-produced by Listener columnist Russell Brown, this two-part series looks at the New Zealand research efforts in the growing field of psychedelic-assisted therapy. That involves Gray herself taking part in LSD microdosing trials as a treatment for depression at the University of Auckland School of Pharmacy. Mind Menders also looks at the use of psilocybin, and the “magic” mushrooms that contain it in other trials, and the work being done with ketamine. Read Russell Brown’s account of the making of the show here.
Fear
Trouble with the neighbour
Screening: TVNZ 1, 8.30pm, Sunday June 8, continues Monday and Tuesday
Streaming: TVNZ+
Architect Martyn (Martin Compston, Line of Duty) and his scientist wife Rebecca (Anjli Mohindra, The Lazarus Project) decide to make a fresh start, moving away from London and into a beautiful house in Glasgow with their two young children. It’s all perfect – until their creepy neighbour (Solly McLeod, Tom Jones) begins a campaign of stalking and harassment they find themselves powerless to stop.
Adapted by actor-turned-screenwriter Mick Ford from the book by German magazine editor Dirk Kurbjuweit, it was based on Kurbjuweit’s real-life family experience with an obsessive neighbour. The Guardian called it “stylish, intelligent” and “horribly realistic” in a four-star review.
Strife
Moving slower, still breaking things
Streaming: ThreeNow, from June 8
Australian star Asher Keddie returns in the second season of Strife, the acclaimed dramedy loosely inspired by Mamamia media company founder Mia Freedman’s memoir about going from young magazine editor to digital media entrepreneur. It’s set in the early 2010s – there’s much excitement at the “Eve Life” offices about podcasts – and the series begins with Keddie’s Evelyn Jones fighting to keep the fledgling women’s website financially afloat.
Not helping is that her former deputy has defected to Eve’s old magazine, which is starting a digital platform targeting the same audience. Meanwhile, she’s being harassed by an online troll commenting on her every move, a former employee has written a book entitled “Toxic Boss”, and, having separated, she and her husband (Matt Day) are trying to co-parent their two children in the family home by taking turns staying there. Among new additions to the cast are Mary Coustas as Eve’s new therapist and Tim Minchin as a philosophy lecturer whose classes she attends.
Ocean with David Attenborough
The old man and the sea
Streaming: Disney+, from June 8
He turned 99 in early May, and you get the feeling with Ocean that Sir David Attenborough wouldn’t be standing in front of the camera on windswept coastlines presenting yet another natural history show unless he felt the need.
On Ocean, a 95-minute documentary for National Geographic, Attenborough is delivering an ode to the blue bits of the planet he’s lived on for nearly a century. It’s both a warning about bottom-trawling the seabed into oblivion and a message of hope about the possibility of turning 30% of the ocean into no-fishing areas.
The streaming release of the show coincides with the United Nations’ World Oceans Day and a campaign to increase exploitation-exclusion zones 10-fold from the current 3%. The underwater footage is predictably spectacular and although its presenter doesn’t leave dry land much, he still sounds like a man marvelling at the world around him and also raging against the storm that may destroy it.
The Casketeers: Life and Death Around the Globe
How the other half dies
Screening: TVNZ 1, 7.30pm, Wednesdays from June 11
Streaming: TVNZ+
Francis and Kaiora Tipene and their company Tipene Funerals have endured some unhappy headlines in the past two years – and seen a former employee imprisoned for theft and mishandling human remains – but those are left well behind here. The new Casketeers sees the Tipenes forge out to explore funeral traditions elsewhere in the world, from Vanuatu to Canada and the banks of the Ganges.
Fubar
Big dumb fun
Streaming: Netflix, from June 12
Well, he did say he’d be back – even if it has been two and a half years since season one. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s spy caper leans even further into movie culture for its second season, with the arrival of Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix), camping it up with a ridiculous German accent as Luke Brunner’s dangerous old flame. Meanwhile, Brunner, his fellow CIA agent daughter Emma (Monica Barbaro) and the rest of their team are in witness protection after their identities were revealed to the world. There will be explosions. Many explosions.
Here We Go
Sleeper family sitcom
Streaming: TVNZ+, from Saturday June 14
This family sitcom written by Tom Basden (previously best known for Plebs) has been a sleeper BBC hit and its joy in the awkwardness of family life feels classically British. The Jessops, headed by mum Rachel (Katherine Parkinson, The IT Crowd) and dad Paul (Jim Howick, Sex Education) are depicted through the camera of teenage son Sam as the family navigates the trials of life, and everything from a hip replacement to a family holiday goes a bit wrong.
Basden plays the loser middle brother, Robin. “The surprise triumph of the show lies in its unassuming nature, by turns charming and infuriating, caustic and sentimental, funny and depressing,” wrote The Independent. Two seasons are available to view.
The Brokenwood Mysteries
Screening: TVNZ1, 8.30pm, from Sunday June 15
Streaming: TVNZ+
It’s the eleventh season of the exported cosy crime series and it appears, the likelihood of dying a dying in a bizarre homicide in the quiet, quirky town somewhere north of Auckland is as high as ever. Among the victims in the new episodes are a groupie of an 80s rock has-been playing in town, the MC at a high school fund-raising quiz dying in chemical explosion, and a teacher at the school founding hanging from a flying fox. Even Santa isn’t safe, as the season finale shows. Read about a special guest star in the season opener here.
We Were Liars
Private island life
Streaming: Prime Video, from Wednesday June 18
Based on the acclaimed young-adult novel by E Lockhart, We Were Liars follows Cadence (Emily Alyn Lind, Gossip Girl), the teenage granddaughter of the wealthy Sinclair family, over successive summers on their private island in New England. Her life is upended by a serious head injury, and the island and the friends and family she knew no longer seem the same. Developed for TV by Julie Plec (The Vampire Diaries) and Carina Adly Mackenzie (Roswell, New Mexico) with a solid supporting cast.
The Buccaneers
The Americans settle in
Streaming: Apple TV+, from Wednesday, June 18
The month’s first Gilded Age drama extends into a second season, where five feisty young American women continue to disrupt the tightly corseted world of 1870s London – but now they’re part of the power structure. Nan is the Duchess of Tintagel, the most influential woman in the country; Conchita is Lady Brightlingsea, heroine to a wave of young American heiresses, and Jinny is in all the papers, for all the wrong reasons. Expect it all to be underpinned with another soundtrack of songs by women in contemporary pop.
The Waterfront
Yellowstone, but with fish?
Streaming: Netflix, from Thursday June 19.
The Buckley family has ruled the coastal town of Havenport, North Carolina for decades, dominating everything from the local fishing industry to the town’s restaurant scene. But after family patriarch Harlan suffers two heart attacks, the empire starts to wobble. He steps back in to try and restore order, but the risks pile up and the family dynamic is strained.
The eight-part limited series, apparently based on true events, was developed by Kevin Williamson, the man behind Dawson’s Creek, The Vampire Diaries and the Scream franchise. But this one looks personal: Williamson himself was born in a North Carolina fishing town, and his father was a fisherman.
Small Town, Big Story
Small-town Ireland gets very strange
Streaming: TVNZ+, from June 21
Big-shot American television producer Wendy Patterson (Christina Hendricks also to be seen in The Buccaneers) returns to her small rural Irish hometown to lead a big-budget Hollywood production – and reunites with her childhood sweetheart, local doctor Seamus Proctor (Paddy Considine, House of the Dragon). But that’s not the weird part. The weird part is the visiting space aliens. This six-part comedy, the creation of laconic Irish comic Chris O’Dowd, has had some mixed reviews – and even its fans agree that it’s a wild mix of elements – but it seems worth a look.
The Marlow Murder Club
Triple mysteries for the trio
Screening: TVNZ 1, 8.30pm, from June 21
Streaming: TVNZ+
We all knew that Judith, Suzie and Becks weren’t going to stop at cracking just the one rash of mysterious murders, right? Just as it seems that Marlow is returning to its former identity as a tranquil small town, three more people turn up dead. This time, according to Samantha Bond, who plays club convenor and retired archaeologist Judith Potts, each death comes with its own story.
Season two, written as three two-part episodes, has a slew of guest stars, including Samantha Womack (EastEnders), Nina Sosanya (W1A), Andrew Knott (Ackley Bridge), Hugh Quarshie (Holby City) and Patrick Robinson (Shetland).
Wolf Hall: The Mirror And The Light
When all about you are losing their heads
Screening: BBC First, 8.30pm, from Monday June 23
Streaming: Neon, from June 24. Season one also available.
The adaptation of Hilary Mantel’s third Thomas Cromwell novel reunites Mark Rylance’s Cromwell with Damian Lewis’s Henry VIII a decade after they starred in the acclaimed Wolf Hall series that brought the first two books to the screen. This begins where the earlier season finished, with the execution of Anne Boleyn, and Cromwell’s rise to the position of Lord Privy Seal and the king’s right-hand man.
What It Feels Like For A Girl
Transgressive television
Streaming: TVNZ+, from June 24
An eight-part series based on the memoir of Paris Lees, the groundbreaking trans journalist who has been a columnist for Vogue and a presenter on BBC Radio 1 and Channel 4. It was adapted for TV by Lees herself. Her autobiographical lead character, Byron, is a rebellious queer teen energetically pursuing both sex and drugs in a regional town at the turn of the millennium. It’s not for the faint of heart, but The Guardian’s reviewer called it “a memorably complex psychological portrait”, and GQ hailed it as “a welcome shot of raucous, rebellious optimism”.
The Gilded Age
New York in the eighties
Streaming: Neon, from June 24
Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes racks up a third series of his 1880s New York period drama centred on the status anxiety of two rival upper class families – one old money, the other nouveau riche – living across the street from each other in Manhattan. Both families also have internal dramas to contend too at the beginning of the season. At the Russells, Bertha (Carrie Coon) is setting her sights on getting her family even further up the high society pecking order while her railway baron husband George (Morgan Spector) is taking a punt on a scheme that might revolutionise his business or possibly derail it.
Meanwhile, over at the van Rhijn-Brook mansion, the show’s answer to the Downton’s Dowager Countess, Agnes van Rhijn, (Christine Baranski) is finding it hard to accept she may no longer be the lady of the house. As always, the production values remain high, but unlike Fellowes’ other period drama, it’s hard to see it lasting six seasons and three spin-off movies.
Ironheart
Girls can do anything
Streaming: Disney+, from June 25
More from the Marvel universe. Both a spin-off from the Invincible Iron Man comic series and a sequel to Wakanda Forever, Ironheart centres on the character of Riri Williams (Dominique Thorne, backing up her Wakanda Forever role), a teenage genius who builds herself an iron suit to rival that of Iron Man himself. She gets some magical help from The Hood (Anthony Ramos). Notably, the series has been created by Chinaka Hodge, who is better known as a poet and arts advocate than as a film-maker.
The Bear
The real meaning of a restaurant
Streaming: Disney+, from June 26
The crisis – well, one of them – for season four of The Bear is set up right at the beginning of the trailer: “My clock is telling you how much money we have left,” says Uncle Jimmy to Carmy and his team. “When that shows zero, this restaurant needs to cease operations.” Seems like stress is still on the menu. There’s also a wedding, another visit from Jamie Lee Curtis as Carmy’s mum – and a lot of philosophising about the real meaning of a restaurant.
Squid Game
Towards an end
Streaming: Netflix, from June 27
The third and final season of the hit Korean show that captured the imagination – and anxiety – of the television-viewing world when it was first released in 2021. Originally, the show was to end after two seasons but the second was split into two after creator Hwang Dong-hyuk found his story required too many instalments.
In the final six episodes, Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) forges on with his mission to destroy the game for good, even after his attempted coup ended in disaster and left many of his allies dead. On the way to a grand finale (written and directed by series creator Hwang Dong-hyuk himself) he comes face to face with his nemesis, the mysterious Front Man. Can the bleakest TV show ever contrive a happy ending?
For a guide to other recent new shows go to the May viewing guide.
