Pick of the week
Beef
In a car park, Ali Wong’s Amy angers Danny (Steven Yeun) as she cuts across him. He follows her, she flips him the bird – neither can let their grievance go. After this initial clash, they are wisely kept apart for most of the opening episode. They need to settle. But neither is undeserving of sympathy: Danny is a hot-headed striver with family problems and money worries; Amy is highly strung and painfully self-contained. Both are flirting with despair and soon, as a cycle of revenge begins to escalate, they become ciphers for each other’s problems and their toxic relationship becomes symbiotic. It’s a clever, black-hearted, funny and oddly touching two-hander.
Netflix, from Thursday 6 April
***
Surviving R Kelly: Part III
The final instalment in the harrowing story of disgraced rapper R Kelly focuses on the 2021 trial that saw him found guilty of racketeering and sex trafficking. Appropriately, this season is very much focused on the courage and indefatigability of the survivors of Kelly’s crimes, offering a frequently uncomfortable but very necessary insight into what it takes to face your abuser (and their expensively assembled legal team) across a courtroom. Expect revelations of the grimmest sort but also, hopefully, a measure of closure as justice is finally done.
Netflix, from Monday 3 April
***
Jury Duty
A bizarre and at times head-spinning documentary-style comedy that uses jury service as the jumping-off point for all manner of meta silliness. The idea is to chronicle a fictional trial through the eyes of one juror, Ronald Gladden. However, Gladden is unaware that the whole trial is fake and everyone involved except for him is an actor. What unfolds is a peculiar and, at times, hysterical exercise in bafflement, misdirection and commitment to concept. James Marsden (who is just the right level of semi-famous to work in this context) stars.
Freevee, from Friday 7 April
***
Boom! Boom! The World vs Boris Becker
While plenty of tennis players struggle with retirement, few have had quite as turbulent a second act to their lives as Boris Becker. But then, as this two-part documentary shows, from a young age Becker has lived a life of extremes. On the plus side of the ledger, he was Wimbledon champion at 17 and won 49 career titles. But subsequently, there have been personal problems, financial issues and eventually imprisonment for tax offences. Becker himself is interviewed here, along with tennis icons including Björn Borg and John McEnroe.
Apple TV+, from Friday 7 April
***
Tiny Beautiful Things
How well-adjusted is the typical agony aunt? As this comedy-drama (adapted from Cheryl Strayed’s 2012 book) suggests, personal unhappiness isn’t necessarily a bar to dishing out advice to strangers. Clare (Kathryn Hahn) is a middle-aged heroin addict turned writer with a failing marriage, a disappointed daughter and a despairing sense of existential drift. When the opportunity arises to take over an advice column, Dear Sugar, she initially scoffs. But could pondering other people’s problems have a cathartic effect on her? Hahn is excellent as a woman just about holding it together.
Disney+, from Friday 7 April
***
Transatlantic
An intriguing new drama from the Deutschland 83 creator Anna Winger, and like her earlier series, it takes real-life events and gives them a fictional spin. It tells the story of Varian Fry (Cory Michael Smith), a US journalist who found himself in occupied France during the second world war. Horrified, he helped found the Emergency Rescue Committee, an organisation that ferried Jews, artists and dissidents to safety. Among thousands of others, Fry helped rescue artists Marcel Duchamp and Marc Chagall and writer Hannah Arendt. A remarkable and undertold story.
Netflix, from Friday 7 April
***
Grease: Rise of the Pink Ladies
Tell me more? Tell me more? Very well: this nicely realised origin story fleshes out the incipient high-school melodrama of the Grease universe, imagining events that took place four years before the film. It’s 1954 and Rydell high school isn’t a happy place: among the school’s pupils are a disaffected posse of girls who can’t find a niche. Cue the Pink Ladies, a rose-jacketed gang whose style and strut soon become infectious and influential. Marisa Davila, Cheyenne Isabel Wells, Ari Notartomaso and Tricia Fukuhara star.
Paramount+, from Friday 7 April
