In the neo-Dickensian London of Lockwood & Co, ghosts are ruining everything. Strict curfews prevent people from leaving the house after dark, which is when the ghosts come out and start killing people, and for those unlucky enough to have a ghost in their house, there’s only two options: either move out for good or employ a team of teenagers in to try to get rid of it.
Most ghost hunting operations are supervised by adults, despite them being practically useless at ghost hunting because the psychic abilities required for the job begin to fade once you hit your 20s. Lockwood & Co is the exception – a teen owned-and-operated ghost hunting service which the authorities absolutely hate.
The disruptive start-up has just three staff members: Anthony Lockwood is the mysterious teen prodigy whose name is on the door, while his awkward right-hand man George is a character seemingly written for Richard Ayoade until they realised he was in his 40s. But most of the first episode follows the origin story of Lucy Carlyle, who survived a rough as guts ghost hunting school up north before absconding to find work in London. She’s a listener, which means she can hear the ghosts, as opposed to Lockwood, who’s blessed with the sight. Both are proficient in the tools of the trade: mostly swords, big metal chains and miniature handheld explosives.
The eight episodes are adapted from the first two books in Jonathan Stroud’s popular series of Young Adult novels (The Screaming Staircase and The Whispering Skull) with a winning mix of humour, horror and Sherlockian detective work. Lockwood & Co is pretty much to ghost hunting what Harry Potter is to witchcraft and wizardry and the Hunger Games is to hardcore survivalism – and this TV adaptation ought to appeal to an equally wide audience.
Like all the best British psychological thrillers, The Ex-Wife begins with the woman who has it all. Tasha has a nice house, a handsome husband and a lovely well-mannered child – but so did Doctor Foster, and we all remember how that worked out for her. If there’s one potential problem it would seem to be her husband’s ex-wife, Jen, who appears hell bent on remaining part of his life. But once things start unravelling in a storm of twists and flashbacks, it becomes clear that Jen might not be the villain we thought she was after all.
For a long time it felt like an authentic and funny comedy series about young people, like the ones they make in the UK or even Australia, could never happen in New Zealand. But Not Even might just prove that wrong. Set in Wellington, it follows a group of early-20s characters who, in a massive rarity for local TV, all seem like they could actually exist in real life. The first episode almost entirely revolves around them getting ready in their big derelict flat to go to a dress-up party at another smaller but equally derelict flat, and if you think that doesn’t sound like particularly engaging TV, prepare to be pleasantly surprised.
Extraordinary (Disney+)
Extraordinary. Photo / Disney+
It was only ever a matter of time before the biggest brains in television started wondering what would happen if you made Fleabag into a superhero show. The big shock here is that it’s actually pretty good. In the Extraordinary Cinematic Universe, everyone gets a superpower when they turn 18 – though to be fair a lot of them seem a bit crap (one bloke has a 3D printing bum etc.). Everybody except for 25-year-old main character Jen, that is – the series follows her attempts to find out what her power is supposed to be, on top of dealing with the usual 25-year-old things (bad job, bad love life).
Movie of the Week: You People (Netflix)
Romantic comedies rarely come as cringeworthy as You People. Jonah Hill (who co-wrote the script with director Kenya Barris) plays a Jewish investment banker who against all odds – considering their meet cute involves him mistaking her for his Uber driver – starts dating a Black costume designer (Lauren London). The real cringe comes when it’s time to meet the respective parents in what is essentially a millennial update of Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. Julia Louis-Dreyfus and David Duchovny as his mum and dad and Eddie Murphy as her dad make this a very tempting proposition, even if you do have to watch them through your fingers.
From the Vault: Flight of the Navigator / Short Circuit (1986) (TVNZ+)
Fire up the time machine, we’re heading back to 1986. And you couldn’t get a much more 1986 double-header than Flight of the Navigator, the cult classic sci-fi time travel adventure featuring a young Sarah Jessica Parker, and Short Circuit, a cautionary tale of artificial intelligence gone wrong that we failed to take seriously and now look at us. The TVNZ+ classic movie section comes through yet again.
Podcast of the Week: Buried
Surprisingly few true crime podcasts begin with an actual deathbed confession. The confession that kick starts the BBC podcast Buried is delivered in such a heavy Northern Irish accent that it’s practically indecipherable, but still. The man on the tape is a trucker who dedicated the last painful years of his life to blowing the whistle on the illegal dumping of an unimaginable amount of toxic waste – asbestos and all the rest – on the outskirts of Derry, alarmingly close to the city’s water supply.
Journalists Dan Ashby and Lucy Taylor, a husband-and-wife reporting team whose beat is the niche but important area of environment crime, are able to decipher the tip-off and start doing some digging. They soon discover that the massive dump at Mabuoy is just one of countless illegal dumping sites in the UK, and that waste disposal is becoming an increasingly lucrative and sophisticated racket for organised crime syndicates. Their investigation takes them all the way to Napoli, where the Italian mafia has been running similar operations for years.
With each of its 10 episodes clocking in at a lean 15 minutes, there’s barely a wasted second in the series, which manages to turn a topic nobody wants to think about into a hugely compelling listen.
