Watch, listen and be inspired by Calum Henderson's definitive list of what's hot right now and from the vault.
Shining Vale (Neon)
Horror movies and depression have gone hand in hand since forever. New series Shining Vale drops any hint of subtext and just lays it out right from the start: women are roughly twice as likely as men to be diagnosed with depression, the opening card explains, and also twice as likely to be possessed by a demon. The symptoms are more or less the same.
This brings us to Pat (Courteney Cox), the woman we see in the passenger seat of the station wagon navigating some classic horror-movie roads (ominous, winding). Is she properly haunted? Or simply depressed? Can a person not be both? Strong evidence in support of all possible theories piles up in the first episode, which is fun if not quite as funny or scary as the shoe's ill-fitting "comedy horror" tag might suggest.
Pat, her husband Terry (Greg Kinnear), their two disinterested teenage kids and weird-looking small dog are moving from a cramped Brooklyn apartment to a beautiful but clearly haunted mansion in Connecticut. Creaky iron gates, overgrown garden, dusty windows, an incredible amount of old tat left behind by the previous occupants – it really is the full package. "I don't remember it being this creepy when we first saw it," Pat tells Terry, who engineered the whole move in a last-ditch attempt to save their failing marriage.
Once-famous novelist Pat is struggling to write her next book, she hears voices whispering her name as she sits staring at a blank Word doc in the attic and sees people nobody else seems to see out in public. Creators Jeff Astrof and Sharon Horgan (This Way Up, Catastrophe) clearly aren't afraid to use a horror cliche or 12 as Pat begins to explore the house's dark history. Is it a parody? An homage? Like depression and demonic possession, it can be hard to tell the difference.
Beyond the Veil (TVNZ OnDemand)
There's a bit of everything in this new local horror anthology series – vloggers getting the creeps in an abandoned Samoan church, a young man on a road trip to return a body to its ancestral home, a Filipino witch, a poltergeist flatmate ... The one unifying theme of the series is that each episode draws on elements of Māori, Pasifika or Asian cultures, highlighting the work of a lot of young actors and film-makers from those cultures in the process. Some episodes are very much at the comedy end of the horror spectrum, others not so much – something for every spooky appetite.
Bust Down (TVNZ OnDemand)
If Seinfeld was the original "show about nothing" back in the 90s then Bust Down might be its modern 2020s equivalent. The series was created by comedians and actors Sam Jay, Chris Redd, Langston Kerman and Jak Knight, who play a group of friends working at a casino in Gary, Indiana, as they attempt to escape the mundanity of their dead-end jobs via a series of bad decisions and aimless adventures. No real deeper meaning or character development or overarching narratives or anything like that – just an irreverent, absurdist comedy designed to make people laugh.
One of Us Is Lying (Netflix)
It's The Breakfast Club for the post-Gossip Girl generation – five high school students walk into detention, but only four walk out alive. The co-founder of the school's online gossip group is the one who doesn't make it, dying in very suspicious circumstances after suffering an allergic reaction. Each of the four remaining students have had a pretty strong motive for wanting rid of him, and these motives are all interrogated in a motion a classic whodunnit with a modern, Riverdaleish teen-drama twist. Based on the bestselling 2017 YA book by Karen A McManus.
Movie of the Week: Turning Red (Disney+)
What if the Incredible Hulk was a pre-teen girl? And what if instead of the Hulk she turned into a giant red panda? And it was secretly a metaphor for puberty and getting your period? The new Pixar movie Turning Red answers all these questions and more. The feature debut from director Domee Shi (who previously worked with Pixar on the animated short film Bao) is an early-2000s set story about a Chinese-Canadian Mei growing up with a foot in two cultures, then discovering that to complicate matters further she also turns into a red panda when she gets angry. Bright, funny, cute, emotional – everything we've come to expect from a Pixar movie.
From the Vault: Kath & Kim (2002) (Netflix)
Once you've watched enough flippers and wrong 'uns to confirm Shane Warne was absolutely as good as you remember, it might be time for a rewatch of Kath & Kim. The great Victorian's iconic guest appearance isn't until the final episode but might as well start at the beginning. Like Warney's cricketing highlights, Kath & Kim somehow just gets better with age.
Podcast of the Week: Let's Make a Sci-Fi
How hard could it really be, you might have idly thought after watching the new Dune or a Star Wars, to write a science fiction movie? Can't be that hard, most of us probably assume without ever attempting to take the thought any further. In the new podcast series, Let's Make a Sci-Fi, three comedians are finding out how difficult it really is.
Ryan Beil, Maddy Kelly, and Mark Chavez have given themselves the mission of coming up with a proper, serious sci-fi series from scratch, and they're documenting the whole process from initial brainstorming sessions to, hopefully, a table read of their completed pilot script. Along the way they're getting advice from people who actually know what they're doing – a Star Wars producer listens to their series ideas in the first episode, District 9 director Neill Blomkamp offers generous advice on how to build a convincing sci-fi world in the next one. In between there are entertaining discussions about how long the spaceship should be, for example – is 10km too long? What is the perfect spaceship length, anyway?
They're surprisingly fun conversations to listen in on, and the trio's enthusiasm for the project is infectious. If they can move past the setting of their multigenerational space epic and think of a plot, they could be on to something.
