We Are Lady Parts (Neon)
People join a band for all sorts of reasons. Amina's reason is that she wanted to find and potentially marry the handsome young man who handed her a "Guitarist Wanted" flyer as she passed him on the street. What she found instead was his sister's intimidating-looking all-woman Muslim punk band, Lady Parts.
On lead vocals and guitar, they have the intense Saira, who writes lyrics while she chops meat at the Halal butchery. On bass is Bisma, a mum and cartoonist, who self-publishes a series "set in an alternate dystopian present about a group of young women who all become homicidal maniacs when they're on their period". And on drums, there's Ayesha, who drives for Uber in a VW Golf and punishes her passengers by listening to harsh noise bands.
Amina – "26, Capricorn, finishing a PhD in microbiology" – is in contrast mild-mannered and chronically dorky. She is also a secret guitar virtuoso, albeit one who worships at the altar of unhip guitar gods like Don McLean and Janis Ian. Her musical mantra is "I don't play, I just teach" – not for any cultural or religious reason but simply because she gets so nervous she immediately vomits any time she sets foot on a stage.
We Are Lady Parts is about what happens when, as Amina puts it, "unstoppable force meets unlovable object". The six-episode British series is written and directed by Nida Manzoor, who also wrote the band's original songs with her brother and sister – anthems like 'Voldemort's Alive and He's Under My Headscarf' and 'Bashir With the Good Beard' are now available on Spotify due to popular demand. It's a sweet, subversive, refreshing and very funny show – one of the best new comedy series in ages.
The Mysterious Benedict Society (Disney Plus)
With its charming mid-century aesthetic and Wes Anderson-lite sense of whimsy, Disney's The Mysterious Benedict Society will appeal to a lot of parents – if the kids end up liking it too, consider that a bonus. The first episode of the series (based on the YA novels by Trenton Lee Stewart) has hints of Harry Potter and Willy Wonka as a group of kids are put through a series of logic puzzles and tests in order to win a scholarship at a prestigious academy run by the curious Mr Benedict (Tony Hale), who is in fact recruiting them for a top-secret undercover mission.
Sophie: A Murder in West Cork (Netflix)
Hot on the heels of the sensationally good podcast series West Cork comes the Netflix documentary series about the 1996 murder of a French TV producer outside her house in a remote village on the Irish coast. It's a crime that's captivated people in both Ireland and France ever since, for reasons that feel a little too much like spoilers to get into here. If you enjoy a true-crime documentary but can't be bothered with podcasts, this one is better than most. For fans of the podcast series, while this does present some new information, it's a bit like watching the movie adaptation of a great book – never quite as good.
American Woman (TVNZ OnDemand, from Thursday)
Inspired by the early years of the life of Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star Kyle Richards, which raises the exciting possibility someone might one day make a series called Parnell Woman about Anne from Real Housewives of Auckland becoming The Champagne Lady. Back to American Woman, though, it's a glamorous 1970s LA-set comedy perhaps most notable for starring two massive where-are-they-now stars of the 90s: Clueless' Alicia Silverstone and American Beauty's Mena Suvari. Silverstone leads the cast as Bonnie, an "unconventional mother", who strikes on her own as an independent second-wave feminist after leaving her husband.
Movie of the Week: Fear Street Trilogy (Netflix)
For a generation who grew up on Goosebumps books before graduating to fun, gory slasher movies like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer, the new Netflix adaptation of R L Stine's Fear Street series should feel like home. The trilogy about a mysterious and intergenerational evil plaguing the town of Shadyside, Ohio, is being released weekly on Friday nights – the first set in 1994, the second in 1978 and the third, coming this week, in 1666.
From the Vault: The Frighteners (1996) (Neon)
The last movie Peter Jackson made before he levelled up to become Lord of the Rings guy, The Frighteners stands as a reminder of the originality and talent that got him to that level in the first place. Michael J Fox plays a widowed architect hanging out in an unfinished reno with a trio of ghosts – a 1970s gangster, a 1950s poindexter and a Wild West gunslinger – who he joins forces with to do spooky scams on people. Weta Digital's first major effects job stands up pretty well, too.
Podcast of the Week: Blind Guy Travels
As a kid, did you ever do that thing where you close your eyes for a couple of seconds while walking in a straight line on an empty footpath and imagine this is what it must be like being blind? A mind-blowing thought experiment for sure, but maybe not that accurate.
New Radiotopia podcast Blind Guy Travels is about the things most sighted people have never even considered before – body language, for example. It turns out you don't learn body language if you can't see it, so the whole concept was basically a mystery to series host Matthew Shifrin until he was practising for a TED talk and delivered his whole speech standing dead still with his arms at his side. The first episode follows him as he learns body language from scratch, from a woman who normally works teaching "business choreography" to awkward entrepreneurs.
The subject of this TED talk is the topic of the second episode, about how Shifrin and a family friend created a website where they translated Lego instructions for Blind users, and eventually ended up working with the company to make Lego more accessible. It's a fascinating and moving story, the best of a consistently great set of episodes so far.
