Watch, listen and be inspired by Calum Henderson's definitive list of what's hot right now and from the vault.
How to Change Your Mind (Netflix)
How to Build a Sex Room (Netflix)
What would you like to do today: take some psychedelic drugs, or build a sex room? These are the options presented when logging into Netflix this week – a real Sophie's Choice of streaming.
In How to Change Your Mind, New York Times writer Michael Pollan expounds on the thesis of his book of the same name, which is that when used properly, psychedelic drugs are actually good. For decades governments have been trying and failing to scare people off taking these sorts of drugs, but it turns out the most effective anti-drug PSA is actually having to watch guys like Michael Pollan talking about their trips.
Conversely, How to Build a Sex Room is better than it sounds. That's mostly thanks to its host – Melanie Rose is a 60-something English interior designer who stumbled into the sex room niche about 10 years ago and couldn't have been better suited to the job. The sex-positive force of nature sweeps into American couples' homes and gives them the room makeover of their erotic dreams, while managing to sneak in a surprising amount of Kink 101 education while she's at it. Basically it's Changing Rooms with handcuffs and butt plugs.
The first episode is a tale of two couples at opposite ends of the shagadelic spectrum. Taylor and Ayjay say they're into "pushing the limits" sexually and want Melanie to design them a "rock 'n' roll sex dungeon" in their basement. Raj and Ryan, meanwhile, say their sparse, liminal bedroom is a metaphor for their sex life: they've never quite got around to doing anything about it.
Rose, whose cheerfully forthright demeanour and English accent compels every American she meets to describe her as "the Mary Poppins of sex", is a model of good communication, listening to each person's needs and desires and delivering them a room that allows them to take their sex lives up a level, whatever the level they're on. For Taylor and Ayjay that means a red leather upholstered spanking bench and a vast toolkit of flogging devices; for Raj and Ryan it's a proper bed that's not just a mattress on the floor together with a non-threatening platter of sex toys. When it comes to building a sex room, it's very much a case of different strokes for different folks.
The Resort (TVNZ+, from Thursday)
The new series from Mr Robot mastermind Sam Esmail is officially being marketed as "A multi-generational, coming-of-age love story disguised as a fast-paced mystery about the disappointment of time." In short, it's The White Lotus (Only Murders in the Building remix). Made For Love's Cristin Milioti and The Good Place's William Jackson Harper star as a couple going through the motions of their 10th wedding anniversary at a luxury resort, where things get interesting when one of them stumbles upon a clue in a missing persons mystery that unfolded there 15 years earlier. Knowing how Mr Robot went, it's very possible this could all get a bit Lost on us.
Alma's Not Normal (TVNZ+)
Two quite regionally-specific British comedies have landed on TVNZ+ in the past couple of weeks: Hullraisers, about a young mum and her friends kicking about in (take a guess) Hull, and Alma's Not Normal, about a 30-something aspiring actress and her oddball friends and family kicking about in Bolton. Creator and star Sophie Willan started writing the series back in 2014, inspired by her own experiences of the welfare system and social services growing up. The resulting series has a very specific and weird humour, a cast of brilliantly drawn characters and a surprising emotional weight – in a perfect world it'd be a Fleabag-style cult hit.
Movie of the Week: The Gray Man (Netflix)
The most expensive movie Netflix has ever made (and ever will make, if things keep going the way they're going), The Gray Man is a big, loud, balls-to-the-wall action extravaganza from Anthony and Joe Russo, the directors of Marvel's most over-the-top blockbusters (Avengers Infinity War and Endgame). Here, Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans are two big-time CIA black ops agents locked in a kind of intense global game of cat and mouse, both trying to assassinate the other for reasons that probably aren't that important to your enjoyment of the movie. If spectacular, multi-million dollar stunts are your thing… well, you've probably watched this already.
From the Vault: Boy Meets World (1993) (Disney+)
The success of Office Ladies, the podcast where the actors who played Pam and Angela in the American version of The Office recap every single episode of the beloved sitcom, has a lot to answer for. Among the many copycat podcasts it has inspired: Pod Meets World, a podcast where Topanga, the big brother and the best friend recap every episode of Boy Meets World (as is customary for these weird podcasts, the show's star, Ben Savage, declined to take part). If you want to watch along as you listen every episode of the teen sitcom is available on Disney+ in all its heavily dated 90s glory.
Podcast of the Week: I Was Never There
On the face of it, this could be just another missing person podcast. The brief synopsis: in 1988, West Virginia bar owner Marsha "Mudd" Ferber went out to run an errand and was never seen again. Now, more than three decades later, her close friend Karen Zelermyer and daughter Jamie are searching for answers. But that doesn't capture anywhere near the full scope of I Was Never There.
If you listen to this expecting a by-the-book true crime podcast, you might end up frustrated at how much its hosts seem to meander on unimportant details. Because really they're not just trying to find out what happened to their friend, what they're searching for is a whole scene that seemed to vanish like a mirage.
The series is set amid the American counterculture movement of the 1970s and 80s, as the hippie dream of the 60s morphed into something more hard-edged. One theory is that Ferber got in over her head with local drug dealers, another is that she finally made good on her dream to disappear without a trace and started a new life in Florida. Plenty of mystery and intrigue, but it's almost secondary to the portrait of a specific time and place being built with each episode.
