Watch, listen and be inspired by Calum Henderson's definitive list of what's hot right now and from the vault.
Julia (Neon)
Julia Child is, among many other things, an inspiration to all of us who like to entertain the notion we still have time, that our big break could still be just around the corner. The pioneering celebrity chef is almost 50 at the start of the new drama series based on her life, and the career she's best known for hasn't even kicked off yet.
We join the action in the early 1960s, with Julia (Sarah Lancashire, whom you may know from the grim but excellent BBC police drama Happy Valley or as stone-cold 90s icon Raquel from Coronation Street) and her diplomat husband Paul (David Hyde Pierce, Niles from Frasier) living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, after years spent posted overseas. Most recently they've been in Paris, where Julia studied at the famous Cordon Bleu cooking school. She's already published one book about the joys of French cooking, which has been met with moderate interest, so in an attempt to keep that interest alive she accepts an invitation to appear on I've Been Reading, an unimaginably boring public-interest television books show.
On a whim, she stuffs a non-stick pan and a carton of eggs in her bag on the way out the door. At the studio she cadges a hot plate from the office and sets up on a coffee table to the bemusement of the show's host, a stuffy old professor who'd rather be discussing The Grapes of Wrath. She proceeds to teach him how to cook a perfect French omelette live on air and accidentally invents a whole new genre of television.
The rest, as they say, is history, but really that history is just the backdrop to a rich and complex character study of a remarkable woman, and the life behind the famous recipes.
Obi-Wan Kenobi (Disney+)
This year's big new entry to the Disney+ Star Wars canon has arrived. Obi-Wan Kenobi focuses, as you may have guessed from the title, on the character originally played by Alec Guinness and later (but earlier in the chronology of the Star Wars Cinematic Universe) by Ewan McGregor, who reprises the role here, along with a handful of other actors last seen in 2005's Revenge of the Sith. This series is set 10 years after the events of that movie and fills in some of the gaps between the prequels and the start of the original trilogy. Prime Star Wars, in other words.
Kid Sister (TVNZ OnDemand)
We watch all these shows like Fleabag or This Way Up and wonder: why can't we make a show like this here? No pressure on Kid Sister, but that show may have finally arrived. The very funny Simone Nathan stars as Lulu, a young woman on the cusp of turning 30 whose parents badly want her to settle down with a "Nice Jewish Boy" – something that's not so easy to come by in Auckland. And things get trickier when Lulu finds out she's pregnant with her very not-Jewish boyfriend (Paul Williams). More specific and personal than the average New Zealand TV comedy, and all the better for it.
The Responder (TVNZ OnDemand, from Thursday)
To those of us who formed our entire personalities around watching The Office in the early-2000s, Martin Freeman will forever be Tim Canterbury. And when we start watching The Responder it will be impossible not to think: Tim has left the paper business and joined the police. Written by a former officer, the five-episode series follows Freeman's character on a series of incredibly tense and anxiety-inducing night shifts on the streets of Liverpool as the pressures of the job constantly threaten to get too much. Absolutely gripping viewing, sure to be one of the best new British police dramas of the year.
Movie of the Week: The Valet (Disney+)
The 2006 French romantic comedy La Doublure has already been successfully remade in Hindi, Punjabi and Bengali, which suggests the story has what a real estate agent would describe as "good bones" – surely this new English language remake can't go wrong. Eugenio Derbez (CODA) plays the titular valet who gets drawn into a web of deceit when he's unwittingly photographed with a Hollywood actress (Home and Away's Samara Weaving) and the married billionaire (Max Greenfield, Schmidt from New Girl) she's having an affair with. Classic set-up, good bones, Schmidt … looks like we could have a half-decent new rom-com on our hands.
From the Vault: Fear (1996) (Netflix)
A 5 for $10 video store classic, Fear was described by its producer as "Fatal Attraction for teens", which seems like the kind of thing you only could have got away with in the 90s. Mark Wahlberg plays the dangerous stalker whose obsession with teenage Reese Witherspoon leads him to increasingly depraved extremes and some memorably messed-up scenes. It's pure trash, but it's 90s trash – they don't make them like this anymore.
Podcast of the Week: It's … Wagatha Christie
If the title of this podcast looks like absolute gibberish, a quick explainer: in 2019, Coleen Rooney, the wife of former England soccer star Wayne, accused Rebekah Vardy, the wife of Wayne's England team-mate Jamie, of leaking her private Instagram posts to the press. Rooney outlined the amateur detective work that led her to this conclusion in a message posted to Twitter, which she ended by revealing her culprit with the now-iconic line: "It's .. . Rebekah Vardy's account." The whole affair was swiftly dubbed "Wagatha Christie" (WAGs being a dated 2000s acronym for footballers' "wives and girlfriends", and Agatha Christie being … Agatha Christie) and the rest was history.
Or was it? Two and a half years and millions of pounds in legal fees later, Rooney and Vardy are still slugging it out in court, with the latter now accusing the former of defamation. It's … Wagatha Christie is the BBC's podcast companion to the case, which makes a far better alternative to the other, more ghoulish celebrity defamation case happening right now. Across the short and very entertaining episodes, comedian Abi Clarke explains how it came to this, outlines who's accused who of what and fills us in on what's been happening at court.
