What are you up to this weekend? Just a quiet one on the sofa? Then you’ll probably be looking for something to watch on one of the many streaming services that compete for your hard-earned cash each month – and that’s where we come in.
We’ve scoured the libraries of Netflix, Disney+, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+ et al to find a selection of recently added movies and TV shows that will give both your home cinema system and your grey matter a workout this weekend.
All of our picks below are available in 4K Ultra HD, while some also have Dolby Atmos soundtracks to tickle your ears, so you can be sure they will make the very most of your tech.
Now, if you’re sitting comfortably, we’ll begin.
- Our expert pick of the best TVs you can buy
- And the market's best Dolby Atmos soundbars, all tried and tested
Fallout – Amazon Prime Video
Adapting a computer game for the screen is a risky business. For every The Last of Us there are a dozen Prince of Persias, but fortunately, Amazon Prime’s Fallout can be grouped with the former.
While Bethesda’s beloved series of post-apocalyptic games give the player the freedom to pretty much write their own story, TV needs a more structured narrative, so this eight-part adaptation follows the fortunes of Lucy MacLean. Lucy has never experienced life outside the nuclear bunker she calls home, but when her father is kidnapped by outsiders, Lucy disobeys orders and braves an unforgiving world of hungry cannibals, giant cockroaches, deadly radiation, and organ-harvesting robots (voiced brilliantly by Toast of London’s Matt Berry) to rescue him.
What’s always been so appealing about the Fallout games is the juxtaposition of Atomic Age outlooks and aesthetics with barren, end-of-the-world landscapes and the survive-at-all-costs people and outposts that inhabit them. Throw in an effective dose of humour and vibrant 4K HDR images, and you’ve got one of the year’s must-watch TV shows.
Oppenheimer – Sky Cinema
Fancy following Fallout with some less cheery atomic entertainment? Christopher Nolan’s Oscar-winning biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer – ‘the father of the atomic bomb’ – finally hits Sky Cinema this weekend (which means it’s also available via Now TV, but for the full 4K HDR experience you’ll need to watch it via Sky Q, Sky Glass or Sky Stream).
Based on the exhaustive biography American Prometheus by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, Nolan’s film focuses on the physicist’s work to weaponise nuclear fission during the Second World War, but as you’d expect of a movie with such heavy subject matter and a director known for his penchant for playing with time, its story is expertly told through multiple strands of non-linear narrative.
Cillian Murphy is brilliant as the titular scientist who wrestled hugely with what he’d created, and while the Trinity tests in the New Mexico desert won’t challenge your sound system in the way you’d expect, Ludwig Göransson’s urgent score certainly will.
Sugar – Apple TV+
Colin Farrell’s appearance in the second series of True Detective might not have been particularly well received, but it’s not hard to see what convinced him to play private investigator John Sugar in this eight-part Apple TV+ series. And we’re not just talking about his canine co-star.
Set among the mansions of Hollywood, the smartly attired sleuth drives his 1965 Chevrolet Corvette to the home of Jonathan Siegel (played by James “That’ll do, Pig” Cromwell) whose unruly granddaughter Olivia has gone missing. Sugar specialises in finding people who have gone AWOL, but this particular assignment means even more to him due to the fact that Siegel is the producer behind some of Sugar’s favourite flicks.
Farrell is no stranger to playing characters battling with personal demons, but Sugar is more stylish than most tortured detective fare, with the sumptuous LA scenery giving your 4K screen something to really show off what it can do.
Ripley – Netflix
No, this isn’t a spin-off of Alien in which Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley smokes and sulks her way around Italy, but a new eight-part adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel The Talented Mr Ripley.
Most people will probably be familiar with Anthony Minghella’s 1999 movie starring Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jude Law, but this Hitchcockian version goes in a very different direction. Shot entirely in black and white, it features Andrew Scott (he of Fleabag fame) as the charismatic con man who is tasked by Herbert Greenleaf to convince his son Dickie to return home to New York, but who soon has other ideas.
Lensed by Robert Elswit, who won an Oscar for his work on There Will Be Blood, the monochrome cinematography will be an excellent test of how your TV handles contrast and its ability to find detail in the shadows.
STEVE! (martin) a documentary in 2 pieces – Apple TV+
Steve Martin is undoubtedly a bigger star across the pond than he is in Blighty, but with the brilliant Only Murders in the Building on Disney+ introducing the 78-year-old to a whole new audience, this two-part documentary is as perfectly timed as one of the subject’s gags.
It’s not just split into two halves to make it easier to digest either. The first part, told from Martin’s point of view with the man himself providing the voiceover, covers his journey from a tough Californian childhood to becoming one of the most successful stand-up comedians in America, while the second shifts to a series of interviews and focuses on Martin’s switch to the big screen, which saw him star in films such as The Jerk, The Man With Two Brains, and Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
Documentaries aren’t the obvious showcase for 4K and Dolby Atmos, particularly those that rely significantly on archive material, but you won’t get many other opportunities to find out what a banjo sounds like in Atmos.
Scoop – Netflix
A 50-minute interview might not seem like the obvious subject for a 100-minute movie, but Frost/Nixon and The Insider prove you can do a lot with two people talking if the story that surrounds it is compelling enough.
That’s one way you could describe Prince Andrew’s 2019 interview with Emily Maitlis, in which he received a grilling about his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Astonishing, unbelievable, and toe-curling would be three others, particularly when the conversation turns to Woking’s branch of Pizza Express and Prince Andrew's claimed inability to sweat due to being shot at during the Falklands War.
It’s the visual clues from facial expressions and body language that make an interview more watchable, and that’s what you get here as Gillian Anderson’s Maitlis locks horns with the Prince (played by a prosthetically transformed Rufus Sewell). It’s all the more effective in 4K, with those extra pixels allowing you to see the disgraced royal really squirm under the spotlight.
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