Watch, listen and be inspired by Calum Henderson's definitive list of what's hot right now and gems from the vault.
A League of Their Own (Prime Video)
This might not be the first TV adaptation of the classic 1992 baseball movie – that honour goes to the short lived 1993 spinoff sitcom which was cancelled after five episodes (the synopsis of episode three, directed by Tom Hanks: "The team gets a chimpanzee as a mascot") – but we can safely say it is the best. Abbi Jacobson (Broad City) and Will Graham (Mozart in the Jungle) stay true to the spirit of the original with their reboot while expanding the scope to focus more on the lives of the women away from the baseball diamond.
Jacobson stars as Carson Shaw, a quintessential small town girl who, just like the protagonist in the Journey song, is living in a lonely world on account of it being 1943 and she's just pottering around while her husband is away at war. Like the rest of the characters, her sense that there must be something more to life leads her to take a train (not at midnight, and with a very specific destination in mind) to Chicago to try out for a new all women's baseball league.
A League of Their Own on Prime Video. Photo / Supplied
Walking through the tunnel on to a baseball field is like discovering a new utopia, one with women hurling fastballs and hitting dingers and taking spectacular diving catches as far as the eye can see. This 30 seconds or so is the only actual baseball action in the whole first episode, but it has the desired impact.
The majority of the episode is spent introducing the rest of the team – chalk and cheese New York duo Greta and Jo (D'Arcy Carden and Melanie Field), effortlessly cool pitcher Lupe (Roberta Colindrez), walking ball of stress Shirley (the peerless Kate Berlant) – and their motives. But the biggest star is the one who's not allowed on the team: Max Chapman's (Chanté Adams) storyline, of a black woman facing endless frustrating hurdles to play professional baseball, for now, runs parallel to that of the Rockford Peaches.
House of the Dragon (Neon, from Monday)
House of the Dragon on Neon, from Monday. Photo / Supplied
"Can you hear that sound?" It's rugby pundit Jeff Wilson being forced to take part in Sky's activation for House of the Dragon during halftime of the All Blacks test in Wellington last month. If that weird spectacle didn't get you excited for the new Game of Thrones prequel, how about the fact that it starts … tomorrow. House of the Dragon is set 200 years before the events of the main series, during the reign of King Viserys I Targaryen (Paddy Considine) and leading up to a civil war known as the "Dance of the Dragons". So while there's an all new set of characters, it's very much the same vibe as before.
Magpie Murders (TVNZ+)
Don't get your hopes up: this isn't about a magpie that goes around doing murders, though that series surely can't be far off. This particular Magpie Murders is an adaptation of the 2016 Anthony Horowitz mystery novel about an editor (Lesley Manville) with a dead author's unfinished murder mystery manuscript on her hands. But when she goes in search of the missing final chapters, she discovers his book may not have been so fictional after all. Horowitz came up with the idea, intended as "a treatise on the whole murder mystery genre", while he was writing the first season of Midsomer Murders.
Echoes (Netflix)
You've heard of Sister Wives, but identical twin sisters who trade places their whole lives to the point they end up each leading a secret double life sharing two houses, two husbands and even a child? This is another level entirely. The new thriller Echoes is about what happens when one of those twins disappears in mysterious circumstances, making the whole elaborate ruse a logistical nightmare for the other twin, but also setting in motion a chain of very intense, very outlandish twists and turns. Michelle Monaghan (True Detective, The Path) stars as both of the twins.
Famously, hilariously NOT the Toy Story prequel anybody might have actually wanted, but rather an old school sci-fi homage about the character the Buzz Lightyear toy was based on in the world of the original Toy Story movies. Everybody's confused, nobody's happy – least of all Tim Allen, the voice of the original (toy) Buzz Lightyear – but who knows, maybe one day we'll be able to come to terms with it and see this movie for what it is rather than what it isn't. This has got "misunderstood cult classic" written all over it, see it before Pixar hipsters start claiming it's actually better than Wall-E.
From the Vault: The Saint (1997) (TVNZ+)
There's no specific category on any streaming platform for "Movies you haven't thought about since the 90s but now really want to watch", but there should be. At or near the top of that category on TVNZ+ right now would be 1997's The Saint. Val Kilmer – remember him? – stars as the title character, a master of disguise who dates back as far as a series of books in the 1920s but is probably best known for the 1960s British TV series starring Roger Moore. This version features no fewer than 12 different disguises, a techy plot about stealing a microchip from Russian baddies and perhaps most notably a cutting-edge soundtrack featuring 1997's best electronica artists.
Podcast of the Week: Fed Up
"Drama" is pretty much an inbuilt feature of the influencer economy – if you aren't getting cancelled, called out or accused of fraud at least once a month you're probably just not shilling hard enough. Influencer drama in and of itself is not enough to make a six-episode podcast, though heaven knows plenty have probably tried, but in rare cases, it can break through into something much bigger. That's what we've got on our plate with Fed Up.
The latest series from podcast powerhouse Wondery is the story of two New York influencers – one, the founder of a trendy fad diet that seems to involve eating your body weight in fibre every day, and the other, who took it on herself to spread the word about how dangerous said diet was when heaps and heaps of followers revealed it left them with chronically bad stomachs. This saga took on a life of its own, ending up with lawyers involved and national media attention.
Host Casey Wilson leads us through the two wildly conflicting versions of events in a way that's both entertainingly gossipy and irreverent, yet still manages to ask the big questions about the wellness industry and those who profit from it.
