Watch, listen and be inspired by Calum Henderson's definitive list of what's hot right now and from the vault.
The Staircase (Neon/Sky Go from Thursday)
First released in 2004, French-made television documentary The Staircase has long been a kind of holy grail of true crime. You'd finish watching Making a Murderer or listening to Serial only for the wizened murder aficionado in your life to pop up and say: "Psst, if you think that's good, you have to check out The Staircase". In the years since it was first released, it's been expanded as new developments unfolded and repackaged as a hit Netflix series. Now, better late than never, it's finally been given the dramatic treatment.
The mysterious death at the centre of it all seems straightforward: a woman (Kathleen Peterson, played by Toni Collette) is found at the bottom of a set of stairs. It is, in the dramatic version of events at least, a nightmare-inducingly gruesome scene: "How much blood?" one policeman asks. "Like the woman's head exploded," another replies.
The woman's husband (well-known crime writer Michael Peterson, played by Colin Firth) claims he was outside at the time and came in and found her like that. But the police don't think her injuries are consistent with a simple trip and a fall – they reckon there's blunt-force trauma involved, and Firth's the one who did it.
This all sounds like it could be from a lesser Agatha Christie novel from the 1930s. How did the case become a modern true crime classic? As is so often the case in the genre, the big intrigue is in the small details.
The first episode jumps around to begin colour in events both before and years after the death (Collette's role is thankfully a little more than just Dead Body #1). The main focus here, as in the original documentary, is in the extensive and complex court trial(s) and the various theories they explored – and the effects of such an intense case on the families involved.
We Own This City (Neon/Sky Go from Tuesday)
In great news for that one person in your life who will not stop talking about how great The Wire is, here's a new series developed by David Simon and set in the Baltimore police department. We Own This City is adapted from the book by Baltimore Sun reporter Justin Fenton, about the rise and fall of the police's controversial and corruption-plagued Gun Trace Task Force. It's tough, it's bleak, it's gritty, it's the closest thing we're probably ever going to get to another season of The Wire – so if that remains your ideal TV drama, savour these six episodes.
The Offer (TVNZ OnDemand)
Tired: remaking a classic movie. Wired: dramatising the making of a classic movie. Hollywood's innovative new way of repackaging its existing IP brings us a whole series about the making of 1972's The Godfather, which is either one of the greatest movies ever made or one of the greatest movies you've never got around to watching because the three-hour duration puts you off. It's also, according to the series tagline, "the greatest movie almost never made". The Offer chronicles all the behind-the-scenes drama that made it such a film-making ordeal through the lens of producer Albert S Ruddy (Miles Teller).
1883 (Prime Video)
For a generation of children who grew up with The Oregon Trail as the only game on the classroom computer, the dangers of the journey in 1883 will be clear. The Yellowstone prequel tells the story of the Dutton family's perilous journey west from Tennessee to settle their ranch in Montana, taking care to avoid both dysentery and dangerous river crossings along the way. Husband and wife country music titans turned actors Tim McGraw and Faith Hill play James and Margaret Dutton, the great-great-grandparents of Yellowstone's John Dutton, with cowboy purist Sam Elliott as their expedition leader.
Movie of the Week: The Eyes of Tammy Faye (Neon)
Jessica Chastain won the Academy Award for best actress (and an armful of other awards) for her portrayal of televangelist Tammy Faye Bakker, and few who'd seen it would have had any arguments. Based on a 2000 documentary, the film follows Bakker's rise from humble beginnings to such great televangelical heights that in the 1980s she and husband Jim (Andrew Garfield) opened a Christian theme park. With the rise also comes an inevitable fall, and Chastain goes extremely hard through it all.
From the Vault: The Hotel (2011) (Tubi)
Free streaming service Tubi is the place you end up once you've scrolled through every other streaming service you subscribe to and failed to find a single thing you want to watch. It's home to a lot of absolute how-did-this-get-made rubbish, a handful of hidden gems … and The Hotel. Its main selling point is that it's about as close as a documentary series has ever come to actually being The Office – skip straight to season two to meet the show's real-life David Brent in Mark Jenkins, the manager of The Grosvenor in Torquay, and the staff whose lives he unwittingly makes a living nightmare.
Podcast of the Week: Liar Liar
Most podcasts you get either the story of a con artist or a missing person case. New Australian series Liar Liar is a rare example of both at once – this is the story of a con artist who disappeared.
The extremely podcast-friendly case of Melissa Caddick has captivated Australia since the financial adviser vanished from her Sydney home hours after it was raided by authorities in November 2020. She was under investigation for running a major Ponzi scheme that saw her accused of stealing more than $23 million from investors – many of whom were her own friends and family.
Veteran journalists Kate McClymont (an investigative reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald) and Tom Steinfort (a reporter from 60 Minutes) have been on the case since the story broke, and together they probably know the story better than anyone. Teaming up to host Liar Liar, the pair seem to be enjoying the opportunity to loosen their metaphorical reporting ties and tell the story as the yarn it truly is, drawing on their own experiences investigating Caddick's unusual case and the many theories that remain in play as to what actually happened to her.
