Pick of the week
Becoming Karl Lagerfeld
It’s Paris in 1972, a world of bell-bottoms and disco. Karl Lagerfeld (Daniel Brühl) is a discontented fashion designer watching contemporaries such as Yves Saint Laurent overtake him. He’s talented but he’s also 38 years old, still living with his mother and slightly stuck. This lavish drama, based on Raphaelle Bacque’s book Kaiser Karl, maps the German designer’s ascent. After meeting Théodore Pellerin’s enigmatic and confident young writer Jacques De Bascher, Lagerfeld takes over as artistic director of fashion house Chloé and makes his move. Like the man himself, the series takes a while to get going, but it is rich in period detail and waspish one-liners.
Disney+, from Friday 7 June
***
Hierarchy
“There’s always trouble when there’s a scholarship kid.” Based on the country’s recent TV and film output, South Korea clearly has plenty of barely submerged issues with class. This new drama is set in an ultra-prestigious high school, Jooshin, which starts to wobble on its foundations when Kang-ha, a smart kid from the wrong side of the tracks, arrives. He’s the first such student in the school’s history and he provokes a series of strong reactions, both negative and positive. Lee Chae-min plays Kang with a pleasingly icy detachment.
Netflix, from Friday 7 June
***
Hitler and the Nazis: Evil on Trial
There is no shortage of films documenting Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. Joe Berlinger’s series is distinguished by the use of the eyewitness testimony of US journalist William L Shirer, who wrote a book, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, on the subject. This six-parter’s mixture of re-enactments, talking heads and a narrative that stretches from the end of the first world war to the Nuremberg trials often feels familiar. But this is a potent moment for a retelling of the story as, once again, totalitarianism seems to be rearing its head across the world, not least in the US.
Netflix, from Wednesday 5 June
***
Wayne Rooney 2004: World at His Feet
It is time to get in the mood for Euro 2024 by revisiting a few of our footballing yesterdays. This one, like most England tournament stories, is all the more resonant for containing a hefty component of glorious failure. Might England have won Euro 2004 had their then 18-year-old prodigy Wayne Rooney not got injured against Portugal? Given that an unremarkable Greece went on to win the tournament, it seems possible – this documentary tells the tale of the arrival on the world stage of a freakishly confident young player who seemed to have everything.
BBC iPlayer, out now
***
Confessions of a Teenage Fraudster
Elliot Castro has had an amazing life. At the age of 16, he embarked upon a spree of credit card fraud during which he stole millions of pounds and travelled around the world. He was briefly jailed in Canada: upon his release, he stole the credit card belonging to the Canadian immigration office in order to book a flight back to Scotland. With Castro having gone straight (he now works as a fraud prevention consultant), this gripping three-part documentary tells his story and also reflects on the rise of credit card fraud in the 21st century.
BBC iPlayer, from Tuesday 4 June
***
Marlon Wayans: Good Grief
Comic Marlon Wayans endured an almost apocalyptic start to the 2020s: he suffered a wave of bereavements which, he reckons, ran to more than 50 of the people closest to him and culminated in the deaths of both of his parents. Needless to say, he has turned that trauma into what he regards as a therapeutic standup special where he attempts to come to terms with his loss. It has brought a new vulnerability to his stage persona along with a realisation: “The funniest person in the Wayans family,” he says here, “is my mama.”
Netflix, from Tuesday 4 June
***
My Son Jeffrey: The Dahmer Family Tapes
Along with serial murder, Jeffrey Dahmer’s crimes involved necrophilia and cannibalism. So it’s no wonder that his family felt the need to try to make sense of what their son had done. To that end, Dahmer’s father Lionel took to recording the conversations he had with his son when he visited him in prison. This documentary series is an inevitably disturbing record of their relationship – what really hits home is the vast gulf between their studiedly amicable, even banal chats and the almost unimaginable gravity and horror of what Jeffrey did.
Paramount+, from Friday 7 June
