Delve into Calum Henderson's definitive list of what's hot right now and from the vault.
Heaven and Hell: The Centrepoint Story (TVNZ 1, 8:30pm Sunday; TVNZ OnDemand)
Weird to think it wasn't that long ago that Albany was a quiet rural town, the type of place where everybody knew everybody and people left their doors unlocked at night. Weirder yet to think it wasn't that long ago that Albany was home to a radical sex commune.
Feature-length documentary Heaven and Hell: The Centrepoint Story paints a fairly depraved picture of what it was like there in the 1970s and 80s under the leadership of self-styled god Bert Potter. Like in Wild Wild Country and all the other spiritual-guru-gone-wrong documentaries, things start out with the best of intentions, then get a bit weird and eventually very criminal.
Potter founded the community in 1977 after years spent lurking around the emerging therapeutic encounter scene in California and India. One guy interviewed for the documentary crossed paths with him on the trail, and remembers how he never used to participate, only observe. "He struck me as quite a f***wit, really."
At the start, Centrepoint was all about the hippie dream – doing things in the nude, free love and intense screaming sessions. One former resident remembers giving birth in the corner of the living area with the rest of the commune watching. In a scene from a common recurring nightmare, none of the toilets had doors. Anything to break down the barriers.
This may have been fine between consenting adults, but there were children at Centrepoint too. That's what initially got the police involved, though it wasn't until the commune started pumping out drugs that they really stepped in. With limited archive footage to work with, this police investigation and some other moments are fleshed out with dramatisations.
It might not quite reach the sensational heights of the Netflix documentaries we've become accustomed to, but Heaven and Hell is no less shocking. Maybe because it happened here – right across the road from the Mitre 10 Mega.
Duncanville (Neon, from Tuesday)
If Big Mouth is too rude and BoJack Horseman too full of existential dread, if you think The Simpsons peaked more than 20 years ago and no longer get the pop culture references in Family Guy, if you've watched every episode of Bob's Burgers already … maybe Duncanville is the animated series you've been waiting for. Created by Amy Poehler (who voices the main character) along with former Simpsons writers Mike Scully and Julie Thacker Scully, it's about a decidedly average 15-year-old boy getting into decidedly ill-advised teenage scrapes. There are heaps of other recognisable comedy voices in the credits, too.
Panic (Amazon Prime Video)
Like an opt-in version of The Hunger Games, every year a group of high school seniors take part in a dangerous game called Panic for a chance to make it out of their dead-end town. That was the irresistible hook of Lauren Oliver's 2014 young adult page-turner, which she has now adapted into a 10-part TV series. The game involves a series of hair-raising, death-defying challenges which force competitors to face their biggest fears – and a tiger – while confronting some classic YA Big Questions. Everybody's got a story, everybody's got a secret, and nobody knows who's behind the whole thing or why.
Big Brother Australia (TVNZ OnDemand)
Some surprising news: Big Brother Australia is not only still going, it's also really good. The first episode features one of the most full-on opening sequences of any reality series, before introducing 12 housemates, who all seem like complete misfits, even by Australian TV standards. Early favourites include the farmer who refuses to take off her wide-brimmed hat, the provincial cricketer who refuses to put on a shirt and a bloke who tells everyone he's the "king of the jungle" so many times that Big Brother gives him a mission to spend 48 hours in a hidden bunker.
Movie of the Week: Cruella (Disney Plus)
What happened to Cruella de Vil that made her such a nasty piece of work? That's the question Disney's new 101 Dalmatians prequel sets out to answer. Emma Stone stars as aspiring young fashion designer Estela de Vil in a film that's for some reason been set in the 1970s British punk scene, with Emma Thompson as her boss, a haute couture icon and head of a prestigious fashion house. Where does it all go wrong, how does Estela become Cruella and what happens to make her become so mean to dogs? All will hopefully be revealed.
From the Vault: The Dish (2000) (Netflix)
In 1969, millions around the world watched Neil Armstrong take the first steps on the moon, thanks in part to a satellite dish in the middle of the Australian countryside. From the team behind The Castle (sadly not among the recent glut of good Australian content added to the Netflix library), The Dish is the funny, classically Australian story of how they almost ballsed it up completely. New Zealand winemaker Sam Neill stars as "The Dishmaster" Cliff Buxton.
Podcast of the Week: Alan Cumming's Shelves
Who among us hasn't attempted to come up with a podcast idea, drawn a total blank, then looked around the room and shrugged "could just talk about what's on my shelves, I suppose?"
Presumably, that's what Alan Cumming has done here, and he's got away with it on account of being famous, charismatic, and having shelves full of things with funny or interesting stories – often involving his celebrity friends – attached to them.
This makes Alan Cumming's Shelves a particularly charming addition to the booming podcast genre of famous people interviewing other famous people. Each week he picks an item off his home's extensive shelving system and calls up the friend it reminds him of. There's a great episode with Sir Ian McKellen, where the pair reminisce about the time they visited a nudist beach in Vancouver together, and one with Geri Halliwell (whom he first met when they filmed Spice World together) in which Cumming reveals his shelves to be teeming with a large collection of Spice Girls memorabilia.
What else does he have lying about? Those white leather gloves? He wore those in a Broadway production he did with Cyndi Lauper – get her on the blower.
