Watch, listen and be inspired by Calum Henderson's definitive list of what's hot right now and from the vault.
Katla (Netflix)
To Iceland now, where a naked woman has just walked out of an active volcano covered from head to toe in soot.
That's the striking image that greets us at the start of Katla, a new Netflix mystery series set in the small southern Icelandic village of Vik. Katla is the name of the nearby subglacial volcano, which in the show has been erupting non-stop for a year. With the town blanketed in ash and looking positively post-apocalyptic, most residents have already gapped it – the few who remain in the eerie ghost town are mostly just there to keep the lights on, keep out dark tourists and assist the scientists who are monitoring the eruption.
As grim, moody small townsfolk go, these guys look like they could give Mare and her Easttown crew a run for their money. The local cop is first seen dragging a dead sheep along a beach, the old lady who runs the Shining-esque Hotel Vik is always playing with tarot cards, another guy buries a dead raven with his bare hands.
Then there's Grima, who's sticking around town waiting for any news of her sister Asa, who's been missing since the eruption. Could she be the woman who just wandered out of the glacier caked in ash? No – it's weirder than that.
The mystery of the glacier lady's identity is resolved within the first episode, but it's fair to say it asks a lot more questions than it answers. For fans of The Returned or Australian series Glitch, those questions might feel familiar – but imagine them with a distinctly Nordic twist, not to mention the high standard of scenery and knitwear we've come to expect from the region's television, and you should understand the very strong appeal of Katla.
Eden (Neon)
As the title implies, there's plenty of trouble in paradise in this Australian thriller. At the heart of the series is the disappearance of a young woman after a night's hard partying on the beach in a seemingly idyllic coastal town. Each of the eight episodes unfolds from a different character's perspective – the first is Scout, who returns home to visit her mum's wellness retreat, with its deeply cult-like vibe, and falls back in with her old arty friends. If you put Home and Away and the new Lorde video in a creative blender, the results would probably look quite a lot like this.
Russell Howard Stands Up The World (TVNZ OnDemand)
One of the most exciting things that can happen to us as New Zealanders is when an overseas travel show films an episode here and we get a tantalising glimpse of how couch potatoes overseas might see us. It's happened again with British funnyman Russell Howard, who managed to nab a bed in MIQ to tour here in January. On his days off he filmed himself doing classic New Zealand things for his travel show, like shearing sheep, doing bombs off the wharf, drinking wine with Sam Neill and going fishing with Clarke Gayford.
This Is Pop (Netflix)
There are some really good podcasts dedicated to unpacking and deep-diving into pop music nowadays, and where podcasts go Netflix documentary series are sure to follow. Song Exploder already made the transition, and now This is Pop picks up the ball with a series of mid-length (45-minute) episodes on everything from autotune to Britpop. While the production is cheap and cheerful, they haven't skimped on interviews, and it's more interesting the less you already know about the topic. Real Britpop heads won't get much new info from that episode's Blur v Oasis overview, but you might come away with a whole new appreciation for T-Pain's use of autotune.
Movie of the Week: Baby Done (Neon)
Weird Harry Potter spinoff in which Neville Longbottom graduates Hogwarts, moves to New Zealand, changes his name, gets a job as an arborist, goes out with Rose Matafeo (also an arborist) … doesn't do a single bit of magic the whole time. The real magic here, of course, is the magic of childbirth – they're having a baby and they're freaking out about it big time. If you're in the market for a lovely, heartwarming comedy, Baby Done won't disappoint.
From the Vault: Bridget Jones's Baby (2016) (Neon, from Tuesday)
It's a never-ending struggle keeping track of where the Bridget Jones movies are in case of emergency. Diary and Edge of Reason are already on Netflix, but from Tuesday things will be a lot easier: all three Bridget Jones's will be available on Neon. The final in the trilogy, Bridget Jones's Baby takes place more than a decade after Edge of Reason, and there's no Hugh Grant – he's been replaced by Patrick "McDreamy" Dempsey – but it still does the job. Marathon away.
Podcast of the Week: World's Greatest Con
Your podcast trend report for 2021: unsolved murders are officially out; scams and cons are in. And not many people are better placed to make a podcast about scams and cons than a professional magician.
That's Brian Brushwood, the enthusiastic host of the new series World's Greatest Con. And in his expert opinion, the world's greatest con took place during World War II, when the tactical specialists in the Twenty Committee dreamed up and executed an impossibly elaborate plan in order to help the Allies get one over Adolf Hitler. Operation Mincemeat, as it was called, is probably fairly well known among war buffs, and will be even better known once the movie about it, starring Colin Firth, comes out. But if you don't know the story yet, the way Brushwood tells it is about as entertaining as it gets.
It's filled with plenty of detours along the way, including interesting historical titbits (how exactly does James Bond tie into all this?) and anecdotes from Brushwood's own life and career used to illustrate the psychology behind a good con, and what made this one great. As he says: "Cons don't fool us because we're stupid, they fool us because we're human."
