Watch, listen and be inspired by Calum Henderson's definitive list of what's hot right now and from the vault.
Nine Perfect Strangers (Amazon Prime Video)
Will there ever be a TV series where a group of strangers go on a wellness retreat and just have a nice, fun, soul-replenishing time? Maybe one day, but Nine Perfect Strangers isn't it.
David E Kelley's adaptation of Liane Moriarty's 2018 novel is a follow-up of sorts to Big Little Lies, made by the same people who made that as well as The Undoing, Nicole Kidman's previous TV outing with Hugh Grant. Those are both reasonable indicators of what we're in store for here, though perhaps with less of an immediately juicy hook and more of a focus on character.
And there are plenty of characters to get to know. The series takes place at a new agey health and wellness resort called Tranquillum House, run by mysterious spiritual guru Masha (Nicole Kidman with a thick Russian accent). Everything about the place looks unimaginably expensive, which the backgrounds of the nine guests seem to confirm.
Masha allegedly "mixes and matches her guests like a cocktail" to get just the right mix of traumas, and this retreat she's mixed and matched a romance novelist (Melissa McCarthy), a former sports star (Bobby Cannavale), a young couple whose lives are falling to bits after the won Lotto (Melvin Gregg and Samara Weaving), a divorced single mom (Regina Hall), a wellness retreat junkie (Luke Evans) and a family (Michael Shannon, Asher Keddie and Grace Van Patten) grieving the loss of a son and brother.
What Masha's got in store for them over the course of the 10-day retreat is the mystery, but it looks a bit like Outward Bound meets that New Age sweat lodge retreat that ended so badly there was a podcast series about it (Guru: The Dark Side of Enlightenment). Maybe what led these people here isn't the question, it's how they get out of there.
Zomboat! (TVNZ OnDemand)
As a tenth season of The Walking Dead arrives on TVNZ OnDemand this week you could be forgiven for thinking the zombie genre has been done to (excuse the pun) death by now, but British comedy series Zomboat! proves there's still new angles to explore. Taking a leaf from zom-com classic Shaun of the Dead, it follows an unlikely group of zombie apocalypse survivors as they attempt to escape the undead hordes using London's canal system. Zombies can't swim, you see, but nor can canal boats go very fast. Tough one.
Brand New Cherry Flavor (Netflix)
Weird, confusing, unsettling and upsetting horrors tend to be confined to the film format, but here's a whole series worth of it. Set in the early 90s (it literally says "Early 90s" on the opening card – just pick a year!), it's about an aspiring horror filmmaker who comes to LA to try and make her scary feature "Lucy's Eye". But what at first seems like a dream meeting with a noted movie mogul soon turns into a freaky, dark, hallucinatory nightmare. There are kittens involved, curses are places, hit men, zombies ... Hell of a ride if you're into that sort of thing.
Brave New World (TVNZ OnDemand, from Monday)
Based on Aldous Huxley's famous novel, but only loosely, American sci-fi drama Brave New World is set in a future utopia where everything from privacy to money to history itself is prohibited in the name of world peace and everybody goes about with a rank attached to them. An A+ counsellor and his B- patient venture outside the utopic confines of New London to visit the evocatively named Savage Lands, bringing back a guy called John the Savage, which threatens to disrupt the utopia's equilibrium. Kind of just makes you want to read the book instead.
Movie of the Week: CODA (Apple TV+)
CODA is an acronym that stands for Child of Deaf Adults, which is what the standout from this year's Sundance Film Festival is about. Teenager Ruby (Emilia Jones) is the only hearing member of her family and helps out with their fishing business, which she plans to do full time once she graduates from high school. But when she joins the school choir and discovers a passion and talent for singing, she faces the impossible choice between helping her family or pursuing her dream at music school. This one's a big-time tearjerker, if that wasn't already obvious.
From the Vault: Short Circuit (1986) (Disney Plus)
Ever wake up in the middle of the night with your mind racing wondering why there hasn't been a remake of Short Circuit yet? Don't worry, apparently they're making one. In the meantime, you can find Johnny 5 – the military robotics experiment who gained not only consciousness but a cheeky sense of humour after being struck by lightning – on Disney Plus. Wonder what he's up to these days.
Podcast of the Week: Dear Me
You know you're on to a good podcast if you want to listen to every episode even when you don't know who the guest is. Desert Island Discs has been doing that for years – you go in thinking who's this random Nobel Prize-winning scientist and before you know it you're moved to tears by some story from their childhood. Dear Me is a bit like that too.
Granted there are only three episodes – they had to shelve it (hopefully temporarily) for pandemic-related reasons – but still. Each episode features British comedians Katy Wix (who some might remember from Taskmaster) and Adam Drake (who hasn't been on Taskmaster) being taken on a tour of their guest's hometown, kind of like Desert Island Discs 3D. The guests (none of whom you've probably heard of unless you're a big UK panel show watcher) take Katie and Adam to three important places from their youth, chat about what it was like and try to think what advice they'd offer their childhood self.
It's reliably funny and moving, and the fact it's recorded "in the field" adds a warmth and texture you don't usually get from in-studio recording. Please let there be more episodes soon.
