Hot Takes: This chilly new show will give you night terrors

A scene from The Terror, which screens here on Amazon Prime Video.

It was a dark and stormy night, so it's about time you tuned into this chilling new show, reports Chris Schulz.

STREAM: Hit pause on The Handmaid's Tale. Take a break from Westworld. Mute Dancing With the Stars. Why? Because I might have just found this year's most terrifying new show. It's all the way over on Amazon Prime Video, where, for just US$2.99 a month (that's NZ$4.23, cheapskate) you can tune into The Terror. Executive produced by Ridley Scott, the show follows 1840s explorers who get two ships stuck in ice while searching for the Northern Passage. Grimness follows: days turn into months turn into years, boats get mangled in the ice, and unexplained bodies start showing up. Then a mysterious presence begins hunting them. But this isn't just entertainment: not a day has gone by that I haven't googled some nerdy aspect of this show, which is based on a true story. You could say I was caught hook, line and sinker.

LISTEN: I've tried to get into some recent high-profile rap releases, and I'm struggling to understand them. J. Cole has been breaking streaming records with his recent album, KOD, but to my ears it sounds dour and pointless. Likewise, Post Malone has released a whopper of a second album in Beerbongs & Bentleys that is also breaking records. Mostly, he sings while his guests rap far better than he can. And at 18 tracks, it just never ends. Thankfully, Janelle Monae is here to save the day with Dirty Computer, an album full of Prince-influenced alt-pop that I've been playing again and again.

LISTEN: I'm a big fan of a deep dive, and that's exactly what Cole Cuchna has done on his podcast, Dissect. For the first season, he delved into Kendrick Lamar's album To Pimp A Butterfly, dedicating an entire episode to every single song. On the second, he's doing the same thing, this time with Kanye West's masterpiece My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. It's pretty geeky: Cuchna not only explains where each sample is from, but how fast or slow it's pitched, and why it ties in with West's personal life and career. Like I said, Cuchna's an obsessive.

DELETE: Speaking of Kanye, at first, I was all about his Twitter comeback. I loved the constant updates about forthcoming albums from him and his Good Music label mates (Pusha T, May 25!). I enjoyed the hilarious posts revealing his celebrity text exchanges (John Legend got owned!). And I smirked at his self-help psychological babble ("We're dying to be ourselves!"). I even loved his "new" song, Lift Yourself, a total troll with amazing lyrics ("Poopity scoop/Scoop di-di whoop!"). But I draw the line at Kanye's support of Donald Trump. So I made like Drake and Rihanna and unfollowed him. What a load of poopity scoop.