Netflix
Adam Sweeting
Netflix can’t get enough of Ryan Murphy, whose list of productions with the super-streamer includes Halston, Ratched and recent hit Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. Now here he is again with The Watcher, a teasing little mystery based on a true story about a couple moving into their dream home in New Jersey only to be confronted with anonymous threats and hair-raising goings-on.Murphy’s seven-episode version is a mix of haunted-house chiller, Polanski-style horror and domestic drama, as well as (strangely) a kind of essay on obsessive, nimby-ish property ownership. Dean and Nora Brannock ( Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Andrew Dominik’s Blonde is an atrocity – a ghoulish biopic of Marilyn Monroe that luxuriates in her maltreatment and misery, culminating in protracted images of the star’s lonely death from barbiturate pills distractedly swallowed like candies and washed down with Scotch in her Los Angeles bungalow.Ana de Armas’s expressions too often make Monroe a rabbit in the headlights, but that’s writer-director Dominik's fault. Whether the movie’s Monroe is on or off camera, De Armas speaks with that breathy undulating voice of incredulity Monroe impersonators use, but her real voice was softer and more Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It was the end of an era, as Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould’s bittersweet epic of the brilliantly devious Saul Goodman wound to a close. Hints of redemption were in the air, signalled by Saul reverting at last to his real name, James McGill. A closing shot of Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) and his estranged soulmate Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) gazing at each other wordlessly through the wire of ADX Montrose prison (aka “The Alcatraz of the Rockies”) might even have brought a tear to a blackmailer’s eye.Still, it wasn’t enough to lead you to conclude that Saul was really a good guy at heart. These final Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Rowan Atkinson’s strange little comedy (written by Will Davies) is the story of Trevor Bingley, a rather pitiable late-middle-aged man who finds a new job as a house-sitter for a disdainful and ridiculously wealthy couple, Nina and Christian Kolstad-Bergenbatten (Jing Lusi and Julian Rhind-Tutt, pictured below). They live in a high-tech superhome in countless acres of lush green countryside.Little bits of back story filter into the narrative as the show ambles through its nine cartoon-like, slapsticky, 10-minute episodes. We learn that Trevor is a doting father to his daughter Maddy (India Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
Has there ever been a smarter television series than DR’s Borgen? It’s regularly compared to The West Wing for its twisty interrogation of government shenanigans – and certainly it pays to get to grips with the coalition-driven political scene at the Castle, seat of the Danish government, just as it did with Aaron Sorkin’s take on the Hill. But what The West Wing didn’t have was a character as beguiling as Birgitte Nyborg, played by Sidse Babett Knudsen, to guide its audience. The truly clever thing about Borgen is how palatable its politics are, even when they seem mind-numbing on the Read more ...
Veronica Lee
Irony can be a trump card for a provocative comic such as Ricky Gervais, and he plays it right at the top of his SuperNature, an updated version of a show he started touring in 2019, which was rudely interrupted by the pandemic and is now his latest Netflix special. “Irony, where I say things I don’t mean. There’s going to be a lot of that throughout the show,” he says, launching into a clever skit purportedly saying women aren’t funny, but which then moves on to, for some, the most pressing issue of the day, self-ID.“I love the new women, Gervais says. “They’re great, aren’t they? The Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
British political life in the Boris Johnson era routinely seems stranger than fiction, and this adaptation of Sarah Vaughan’s novel about a Flashman-style Tory MP should delight all those who view Westminster as a sewer of privilege, corruption and back-slapping old-boy networks. Refreshingly, it doesn’t dabble in actual politics at all, but the action speeds along with an easy fluency which comfortably carries the viewer over its multiple absurdities.Rupert Friend plays James Whitehouse, a Conservative minister under the Prime Ministership of Tom Southern (Geoffrey Streatfeild). A smooth and Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The first series of Bridgerton (Netflix) became a ratings-blasting sensation because of the way it thrust a boldly multiracial cast into the midst of a Regency costume drama, and because of the camera-hogging presence of Regé-Jean Page as the swashbuckling Duke of Hastings. Above all, it had countless astonishingly graphic sex scenes.In season two, there’s no Duke of Hastings and shockingly little sex, so many original viewers may find themselves feeling that they’re getting noticeably less bang (if you will) for their buck. This time around, the action centres on Viscount Anthony Bridgerton Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Two years ago, the fourth season of The Last Kingdom (Netflix) found the Saxon saga not quite hitting peak form, possibly reeling from the fallout of the haunting death of King Alfred (David Dawson). Happily, any doubts are blown away with the arrival of 5, in which the show’s trademarks of knotty dynastic rivalry, anguished romantic entanglements and horrifying eruptions of bloodthirstiness are all roaring ahead at full blast. Sadly, they say this series will be the last, though a feature film may be in the works.Some things have changed (we are now without Ian Hart’s stalwart Beocca, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Netflix’s fly-on-the-pitwall series has rapidly established itself as a vital ingredient in the tapestry of Formula One coverage, and is credited with giving the sport a huge boost in visibility and popularity, not least in the USA. This fourth outing (now featuring even more undeleted expletives than ever) takes a look back at 2021’s dramatic racing season, which ended in uproar and controversy in Abu Dhabi last December.The headline event of the year was the increasingly bitter struggle between Mercedes and Red Bull, as they battled to win the driver’s and constructors’ titles. Max Read more ...
David Nice
They’re back, the Lord and Lady Macbeth of the Ozark District, otherwise sleek-seeming middle class Chicagoans Marty and Wendy Byrde. And thanks to the super-subtle performances of Jason Bateman and Laura Linney, we hate them more than ever – except when they’re up against worse.It's clear where our sympathies should really lie, however complicated: with the young people caught up in the network of money-laundering, murder and general amorality. Ozark shares the concerns of Dickens over betrayed and abused children and adolescents. The Byrdes believe in family values, but are fucking up their Read more ...
Veronica Lee
In 2019, Russell Howard was all set to celebrate his 20th year in comedy by going on a world tour. Covid put paid to that, so it was with some genuine celebration that he was able to return to the stage with Lubricant, his second Netflix special, recorded at the Eventim Apollo in late 2021.He was able to use some of the material of that anniversary show, Respite – about finding the pleasure rather than the pain in life and describing a world spinning out of control. Little did he know. In Lubricant he has skilfully updated Respite – written “when Corona was a beer and Harry was a prince” – Read more ...