Netflix
Beef
TV, US, 2023 – out 6 April
Creator Lee Sung Jin’s intensely gripping 10-episode drama uses a road-rage incident between a struggling independent contractor, Danny (Steven Yeun), and a rich entrepreneur, Amy (Ali Wong), to springboard a rapidly escalating series of events. That fiery incident, which opens the show, prompts a spectacular tit-for-tat rivalry that spans the show’s entire length. Sometimes you want to grab the characters and yell: “Was it worth it?!”
Beef feels like it’s about to peak quite early on, but the writers find new ways to up the stakes and pack on twists. Among other things, it contains a nuanced depiction of mental illness across class divides, and plays with the devilish idea that, through their war against each other, Danny and Amy have found a reason to live. Yeun and Wong deliver terrific performances, full of spite but also layered and humane.
Better Watch Out
Film, US/Australia, 2016 – out 1 April
Sadistically entertaining Christmas movies are a good way to wash out that mushy, eggnog-scented sentiment. Chris Peckover’s film about two boys turning against their teenage babysitter is a wily horror-thriller – like Home Alone gone very, very bad. Olivia DeJonge plays 17-year-old Ashley, tasked with looking after 12-year-old Luke (Levi Miller), who has unreciprocated feelings for her. She must also put up with his best friend, Garrett (Ed Oxenbould).
Peckover plays with the home invasion format but opts for something different. I won’t say more about the plot, suffice to say things take a terrible turn for Ashley when a very unnerving villain emerges.
Honourable mentions: Hunger (film, 8 April), Operation: Nation (film, 12 April), The Last Kingdom: Seven Kings Must Die (film, 14 April), Longest Third Date (film, 18 April), The Diplomat (TV, 20 April), Sweet Tooth season 2 (TV, 27 April).
Stan
Totally Completely Fine
TV, Australia, 2023 – out 20 April
The New Zealand actor Thomasin McKenzie delivered a striking performance, haunted but headstrong, in Edgar Wright’s trippy time-melting thriller Last Night in Soho. She provides another compelling lead, this time with a more volatile energy, in Stan’s new original series as Vivien, an unhinged twentysomething who inherits from her grandfather a coastal-set property. Sweet score, but there’s a catch: the house is situated on the edge of a cliff – a common place where people attempt suicide. Gramps saved many lives … will Vivien rise to the challenge?
The Portable Door
Film, Australia, 2023 – out 7 April
This Australian fantasy film directed by Jeffrey Walker (Lambs of God, Dance Academy, Ali’s Wedding) is very much geared for international consumption. The cast includes Christoph Waltz and Sam Neill and it’s set in a mysterious London firm. Paul Carpenter (Patrick Gibson) lands a job there as an intern, soon discovering his work involves locating a special, magical door somewhere in the building that provides access to wherever a person wants to go. It’s a fun premise, originating from Tim Holt’s novel of the same name.
Honourable mentions: Line of Duty season six (TV, 1 April), Kill List (film, 4 April), Language Lessons (film, 6 April), Willy’s Wonderland (film, 9 April), The Taking of Pelham 123 (film, 10 April), Belushi (film, 19 April), She Dies Tomorrow (film, 29 April).
ABC iview
Aunty Donna’s Coffee Cafe
TV, Australia, 2023 – out 12 April
This very funny comedy troupe’s previous production, Netflix’s Aunty Donna’s Big Ol’ House of Fun, used a sharehouse as a way to accommodate an assortment of random scenarios, from interviewing potential housemates to answering knocks on the door from God-knows-who. Now on Aunty ABC, Aunty Donna’s new series uses a location even more conducive to unpredictable events: a pretentious Melbourne cafe, whose owners – enlarged versions of the comedy trio – are looking for a novelty to set their business apart from the competition. Expect plenty of reality-shifting mayhem.
Honourable mentions: Melbourne International Comedy Festival – Allstars Supershow (TV, 5 April), Bluey – new episodes (TV, 9 April), Black Mirror season four (TV, 12 April), The Durrells season one (TV, 22 April).
SBS on Demand
Asking For It
TV, Australia, 2023 – out 20 April
Following on from her powerful 2021 series See What You Made Me Do, which examines domestic violence in Australia, the journalist Jess Hill returns to screens to investigate sexual violence and consent. She speaks to victims, analyses case studies and opens up space for difficult conversations. Among the show’s many interesting (and at times confronting) insights is that the issue of consent affects all ages, in different ways: to cite just one example, it enters a complicated space involving elderly people in nursing homes with dementia.
Pickpocket
Film, France, 1959 – out 21 April
Robert Bresson’s 1959 masterpiece about a petty thief (Martin LaSalle) addicted to pickpocketing isn’t some dusty, stiff-limbed relic from another era. It comes alive with a speed and vitality faster and more engaging than the vast majority of crime films made today. With a pressure-packed 75-minute runtime, Pickpocket reveals the insane flabbiness of so many far less disciplined contemporary productions. (Did John Wick 4 really need to be nearly three hours?!)
Honourable mentions: Anthony Bourdain: A Cook’s Tour (TV, 1 April), Rogue Heroes (TV, 5 April), Michael Palin: Into Iraq (TV, 5 April), The Dark Heart (TV, 13 April), Breaker Morant (film, 14 April), Empires of New York (TV, 15 April), Conviction: The Case of Stephen Lawrence (TV, 20 April), Of Human Bondage (film, 21 April), The Trial of Joan of Arc (film, 21 April).
Amazon Prime Video
Three Thousand Years of Longing
Film, US/Australia, 2022 – out 30 April
Made between Mad Max: Fury Road and its upcoming Furiosa prequel, the charmingly old-fashioned Three Thousand Years of Longing is a minor work in George Miller’s oeuvre, following two characters who don’t get out much. One is Tilda Swinton’s Alithea, a narratologist who knows how to speak “the Greek of Homer”. The other is a genie or Djinn (Idris Elba) stuck in a ceramic bottle. The majority of the film is one great big conversation, the Djinn recounting his epic life story – a sad tale spanning numerous dynasties and several millennia. The obvious question beckons: what will Alithea wish for?
Jury Duty
TV, US, 2023 – out 7 April
I love this show’s premise, calling to mind both The Truman Show and The Rehearsal, with a smidge of Judge Judy. Jury Duty follows a trial from the perspective of one particular juror, Ronald Gladden, who doesn’t know the case is fake: everybody around him is an actor, and they’re following a carefully developed storyline. According to the executive producer, Todd Schulman, the show originated from the following question: “Was it possible to make a sitcom like The Office about a trial, populate it with brilliant comedic performers, and put a real person at the centre of the show who doesn’t realise he’s surrounded by actors?”
Dead Ringers
TV, US, 2023 – out 21 April
David Cronenberg’s creepy 1988 film Dead Ringers memorably starred Jeremy Irons in two roles, playing identical twins, both physicians working for a Toronto fertility clinic. They share everything in their lives, including women, who are unaware that they are sleeping with different men. Prime Video’s remake gender-flips the lead roles, with Rachel Weisz playing the immoral physicians, Elliot and Beverly Mantle. The series was created by Alice Birch, a writer for Succession and Normal People.
Honourable mentions: Gangs of Lagos (film, 7 April), Judy Blume Forever (film, 21 April), Citadel (TV, 28 April).
Disney+
Peter Pan & Wendy
Film, US, 2023 – out 28 April
JM Barrie’s beloved story about an impish youngster who never grows up and can whiz around in the air like Superman will never stop being reinvented. But we should certainly pay attention to its next adaptation, because its director, David Lowery, has helmed some very fine films – including the brilliant A Ghost Story and the 2016 remake of Pete’s Dragon. The latter is a family movie with the mood of a tone poem, told without a trace of self-consciousness or cynicism. The trailer for Peter Pan & Wendy suggests we can expect more of the same.
Honourable mentions: The Crossover (TV, 5 April), Tiny Beautiful Things (TV, 7 April), Matildas: The World at Our Feet (TV, 26 April).
Binge
Mrs Davis
TV, US, 2023 – out 21 April
If humankind’s best solution to taking on oppressive AI is to deploy religious representatives, we are surely doomed. That appears to be the (rather odd) premise of this sci-fi drama about a nun, Betty Gilpin’s Simone, who is tasked with finding the holy grail (that old chestnut!) and battling an oppressive AI known as “Mrs Davis”. She is – of course – “the only person on the planet who can fulfil this quest”.
Love Me, season two
TV, Australia, 2023 – out 6 April
The debut season of Love Me, Binge’s first original series, introduced us to a Melbourne family consisting of siblings Clara (Bojana Novakovic) and Aaron (William Lodder) and their parents Glen (Hugo Weaving) and Christine (Sarah Peirse) – the latter being chronically sick and not long for this world. Her death marks the beginning of a new chapter in the characters’ lives. Far from dour, however, the season had a lightness of touch, with splashes of humour. The second season returns to the family’s romances and relationships nine months after the first finished.
Honourable mentions: Dreamland (TV, 6 April), Frances Ha (film, 11 April), The Diplomat (TV, 14 April), The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water (film, 15 April), Pleasantville (film, 18 April), The War: Australia’s Bikie Killings (film, 26 April), Love & Death (TV, 27 April).
Apple TV+
Boom! Boom! The World vs Boris Becker
TV, UK/US, 2023 – out 7 April
“Nobody told me to win Wimbledon at 17, I just did it,” says the very humble Boris Becker in a new documentary series about him, directed by veteran Alex Gibney. The disgraced tennis superstar, last year found guilty of four charges related to his 2017 bankruptcy, is certainly “good talent”, as they say in documentary land. And Gibney is a reliable director, though his productions can sometimes feel too strait-laced – the equivalent of filmed Wikipedia pages. Separated into two parts, the Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw liked the second one more than the first.
Honourable mentions: The Last Thing He Told Me (TV, 14 April), Drops of God (TV, 21 April), Ghosted (film, 21 April).
Paramount+
Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies
TV, US, 2023 – out 7 April
I’m guessing this belated Grease prequel won’t contain the same volume of sleazy, innuendo-dripping songs and dialogue as the original. The trailer does make it clear, however, that there’ll be some playful salacity in our return to Rydell High, this story taking place four years before the events in the 1978 classic. The perennially cool Pink Ladies, here, become “four fed-up outcasts” who “dare to have fun on their own terms”, according to the press materials: a tale of trailblazing rebels challenging the status quo.
Honourable mentions: Yonder (TV, 11 April), Corazonada (film, 18 April), Unhuman (film, 26 April), Torn Hearts (film, 26 April).
• In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14, the national family violence counselling service is on 1800 737 732 and information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732)
