Watch, listen and be inspired by Calum Henderson's definitive list of what's hot right now and from the vault.
The First Lady (Neon, from Monday)
We've all spent more than enough time watching TV shows and movies set in the West Wing of the White House – now it's the East Wing's time to shine. The East Wing is where the first lady (or first man should such a day ever come) works while the President does presidential things at the other end of the building, and if its walls could talk (or write a screenplay) the results would probably be pretty similar to new historical drama series The First Lady.
The first season follows three very different first ladies from the past century, each groundbreaking in their own unique way. The first we meet is Michelle Obama (Viola Davis) as she's given "one hell of a tour" by predecessor Laura Bush ahead of the big handover at the start of 2009. The clock is then wound back to introduce Betty Ford (Michelle Pfeiffer) at the start of the 70s and Eleanor Roosevelt (Gillian Anderson) 50 years before that.
The series isn't solely concerned with each woman's time in the White House, however – it's constantly jumping around to colour in their backstories and show them as powerful figures in their own right. Skip back a year and a bit to 2017 and Obama has her own high-achieving career to worry about, while almost a century earlier Roosevelt is effectively her husband's uncredited campaign manager for years until being coldly cast aside the moment the presidential peak comes into view.
Like a patchwork American version of The Crown, The First Lady offers a behind-closed-doors version of some of history's big moments. More than once in the first episode we see each future first lady gazing pensively into the middle distance as she considers the coming storm. Different times and different challenges for each, but there are some things that never change.
Grand Crew (Neon, from Tuesday)
Just as Cheers was set in a Boston bar called Cheers, Grand Crew is set in a Los Angeles bar called Grand Crew. It's a modern spin on the age-old sitcom formula of a group of friends getting together to hang out and live, laugh, love in 22-minute instalments. The friend group in Grand Crew are young Black professionals who love a wine and – this is the part so many modern sitcoms seem to forget – make for good company. Nicole Byer, who many will know and most will love as the host of Netflix's hit baking show, Nailed It, headlines a very funny cast.
Outer Range (Prime Video)
If old Sam Cowboy from The Big Lebowski thought The Power of the Dog wasn't authentic enough, he'll probably be sick into his 40-gallon hat if he ever sees Outer Range. The neo-Western plays it straight enough at first, with Josh Brolin as an honest, hard-working, rancher fighting for his family's land in the Wyoming wilderness. But when he uncovers a mystery, a supernatural element creeps in and suddenly what we thought was going to be a traditional Western gets completely turned on its head. Western traditionalists best avoid, but if you like your prestige TV featuring weird mysteries, dive right in.
Aroha Nui: Say I Do (TVNZ 2, 9:25pm Monday)
You've heard of four weddings and a funeral before, but never like this. From the creators The Casketeers (a new season of which arrives on TVNZ 1 on Tuesday night), Aroha Nui: Say I Do is a new documentary series that follows Māori wedding celebrants as they meet couples, help plan their nuptials and get them prepared for their big and hopefully happy day. Less death and grieving than The Casketeers, for sure, but don't bank on that translating into fewer tears – we all know how emotional a good wedding can be.
Movie of the Week: Metal Lords (Netflix)
Whatever you were expecting from a film written by the co-creator of Game of Thrones, it probably wasn't a teen comedy about two modern-day metalheads entering their school battle of the bands. But that's Metal Lords, a timeless tale of two misfits taking on the world with their unpublishably-named band. It's fun and good-natured in a way some diehard metallers might hate, but does feature an undeniably legit Metal 101 soundtrack, and Rage Against The Machine's Tom Morello clearly had a lot of fun writing the band's original tunes.
From the Vault: Sabrina the Teenage Witch (1996) (TVNZ OnDemand)
Not many things will make millennials feel older than revisiting Sabrina the Teenage Witch for the first time since the late 90s. You soon realise, of course, that it was meant to be retro even back then, but maybe TV Hits magazine never went into detail about how it was an adaptation of the Archie Comics series from the 70s. These days, it's less Sabrina and more her witchy aunts who steal the show, which holds up better than you might think. More TV shows these days could do with an animatronic talking cat, that's for sure.
Podcast of the Week: Crypto Island
The last thing the world needs right now is another podcast talking about crypto and NFTs. But whether you believe it's the future of everything or the stupidest Ponzi scheme the world has come up with yet, Crypto Island is one of the few worth listening to.
Former Reply All host P J Vogt is basically like a lot of us when it comes to crypto: confused on every possible level. But after seeing a bizarre promo video recruiting crypto people to chip in and buy a real-life island – his curiosity finally got the better of him.
So with Crypto Island, he's set off on an endless mission to really try to understand where all these blockchain evangelists are coming from. He's going into it as a total beginner, with the kind of open-minded scepticism of a metaverse Louis Theroux, and making it interesting with the kind of storytelling he spent years honing on Reply All.
It certainly won't convince anyone to rush out and buy Bitcoin, but it might make you think twice before writing the whole of "web3" off as an idiotic grift. A lot of it is, no doubt, but nobody wants to be the guy who predicted the internet was a fad that wouldn't last, do they?
