Watch, listen and be inspired by Calum Henderson's definitive list of what's hot right now and from the vault.
Slow Horses (Apple TV+)
If you thought The Office was No 1 on the list of bleak British offices, Slow Horses has news for you. The new Apple TV+ dark comedy spy thriller, based on Mick Herron's Slough House series of books, makes Wernham Hogg look like the Google office by comparison.
Slough House (which isn't actually in Slough, just a bit of ironic London geography humour) is where the MI5 sends its disgraced or merely incompetent spies to see out the rest of their days shuffling papers and performing other meaningless soul-destroying tasks. The David Brent of this particular office is the chain-smoking, booze-soaked and aggressively flatulent boss from hell Jackson Lamb (Gary Oldman), who doesn't hover over your shoulder with a pre-rehearsed one-liner but rather thumps on the floor to tell you to come up to his office and then hurls insults at you when you are there.
When hotshot agent River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) badly bungles a field exercise by apprehending the wrong suspected terrorist at an airport, he becomes Lamb's latest problem and is promptly assigned the task of sifting through the contents of a right wing extremist's bin bags. What's he looking for, exactly? "You don't get to ask questions," Lamb tells him. "That's for spies who haven't shat the bed."
But unlike most of his colleagues, who are so defeated they can't even muster the enthusiasm for a weekly pub quiz, Cartwright still harbours some hope of working his way out of purgatory and back to Regent's Park. So, much to the horror and dismay of his new boss, he starts working late and running his own unauthorised parallel investigation with Sid (Olivia Cooke), the Dawn to his Tim.
It's the kind of instantly appealing adaptation that'll make you wish you'd read the books. The good news is these six episodes cover only book one – there's plenty more where this came from.
The Cleaning Lady (Neon and Sky Go, from Wednesday)
Cambodian-Filipino doctor Thony (Elodie Yung) gets by as a cleaning lady in Las Vegas after immigrating to the US to seek treatment for her sick son. In the first quarter of an hour of new thriller The Cleaning Lady, she gets to put her medical know-how to good use twice, first performing an emergency tracheotomy on a wedding guest before helping a crime syndicate dispose of a dead body. This impressive knowledge of blood removal techniques earns her a risky new job as the gang's personal cleaning lady. Promising in parts, abominable in others, it feels like a weird mix of prestige drama and daytime TV which could ultimately go either way.
Killing It (TVNZ OnDemand, from Thursday)
"What if the Whacking Day episode of The Simpsons was real life" seems to have been the original pitch for Killing It, the new comedy series starring Craig Robinson (Darryl from The Office) as a bank security guard who dreams of becoming an entrepreneur. His pursuit of the American Dream leads him to participate in a state-sponsored python hunt, which he's introduced to by a rogue Uber driver played by Australian comedian Claudia O'Doherty (whose New Zealand-born dad is Reg Mombassa, the artist behind popular 90s clothing brand Mambo – remember the farting dog?).
Jamestown (TVNZ OnDemand, from Tuesday)
While the writer of Downton Abbey took the show's winning formula across the Atlantic with The Gilded Age, so too did the producers – Jamestown is just a few centuries earlier. The series follows three women – Alice, Verity and Jocelyn – who are among a shipload of others en route to the settler colony in the state of Virginia, betrothed to marry the men who've paid their way. The arrival of the spirited trio, along with new governor Sir George Yeardley and his wife, certainly shakes things up a bit in a community already full of all the drama, backstabbing and power struggles you could ask for.
Movie of the Week: Nightmare Alley (Neon, from today)
If you're still working your way through the Oscars' Best Picture nominees from the comfort of your own couch, here's another one to tick off the list. Guillermo Del Toro's Nightmare Alley is a star-studded affair, led by Bradley Cooper as a charismatic 1940s carnival worker turned psychic grifter who forms an uneasy alliance with a psychologist (Cate Blanchett) in an attempt to scam the city's elite. Toni Collette and Willem Dafoe also star in a pulpy thriller that's up there with Del Toro's best.
From the Vault: Old Enough (2013) (Netflix)
If you've watched, loved and cried your way through Old People's Home For 4-Year-Olds and The Secret Life of 5 Year Olds, your next cute kids reality TV fix comes via Japan. Each episode of Old Enough, which has been running in Japan for more than 30 years, follows a kid as they run an errand for the very first time, proving to themselves and the world that they are indeed old enough. And they start running errands young in Japan – the first episode of the ones available on Netflix features a not-quite 3-year-old boy sent by his mum to pick up groceries. He does remarkably good shopping, all things considered.
Podcast of the Week: Dig – The Ring-In
It's described as "the most Australian story ever told", but of course, the bloke at the centre of it all is actually a New Zealander. The first season of new Australian history podcast Dig tells the true story of the 1984 Fine Cotton fiasco, in which a cast of old-fashioned Aussie larrikins conspired to replace a slow horse with a much faster horse in a Brisbane race. The only problem was the new horse was a completely different colour – and the litres of hair dye these criminal masterminds used to try and cover up that fact was far from convincing.
The Kiwi at the centre of it was Hayden Haitana, an only slightly dodgy but extremely suggestible horse trainer who had an offer he couldn't refuse from a career conman and literal used car salesman down the pub. Over eight episodes (which at first sounds like too many but turns out to be barely enough), the series takes us step-by-step through the farce and its wide-reaching aftermath via a mix of interviews and scripted re-enactments, which are incorporated so seamlessly you can hardly distinguish which is which.
Stitched together by host Veronica Milsom, it's a lively and hugely entertaining listen. Possibly the stupidest true crime caper – fictional or otherwise – you'll ever hear.
