This week's picks include a groundbreaking new local documentary and a compelling true crime series with a former Napier city councillor at the centre. Photo / The Spinoff
This week's picks include a groundbreaking new local documentary and a compelling true crime series with a former Napier city councillor at the centre. Photo / The Spinoff
We round up everything coming to streaming services this week, including Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Apple TV+, ThreeNow, Neon and TVNZ+.
If you like thought-provoking local stories: Trans & Pregnant (TVNZ+, November 11)
Trans & Pregnant follows Frankie and his partner Rāwā on their journey to parenthood. Photo / The Spinoff
In the groundbreaking new TVNZ documentary Trans & Pregnant, we follow Frankie, a trans man and his partner Rāwā, on their journey to parenthood. Determined to start a family with Frankie carrying the baby, the pair navigate the lack of knowledge and understanding from healthcare professionals in Aotearoa whilst also battling societal stigma, misgendering, and gender dysphoria. Ultimately a story about one loving couple and their right to have children together, Trans & Pregnant will be an illuminating must-watch.
If you enjoy compelling true-crime: In Cold Water: The Shelter Bay Mystery (Prime Video, November 12, Sky Open, November 18)
In 2010, Laura Letts-Beckett tragically drowned during a fishing trip in Canada and Peter Beckett, her husband and former Napier city councillor, would be jailed for her murder. But in 2021, Beckett was acquitted. What happened? Beckett becomes a key interviewee in In Cold Water: The Shelter Bay Mystery, a hair-raising mini-series examining the case’s many bewildering facts and falsehoods. As someone says in the trailer: “His story doesn’t make a lot of sense as the truth, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense as a lie either.”
If you love top-notch action-thrillers: The Day of The Jackal (TVNZ+, November 15)
In The Day of The Jackal, “one of the best TV shows of the year”, Academy Award-winning chameleon Eddie Redmayne transforms into an icy globe-trotting gun-for-hire. His first foray in the action-thriller genre is a far cry from Les Miserables or The Theory of Everything. But critics seem to agree that Redmayne is “astonishing.” After killing a Muskian tech-bro billionaire, he finds himself in the sights of MI6 agent Bianca Pullman (Lashana Lynch). She’ll stop at nothing to track down and kill the Jackal before he leaves another trail of bodies in his wake. A “gripping cat-and-mouse yarn” if you’re in need of a killer thriller.
If you enjoy intriguing dystopian dramas: Silo S2 (Apple TV+, November 15)
We’ve been awaiting season two of Silo with bated breath ever since that humdinger of a final episode. What’s next for Jules (Rebecca Ferguson) and the inhabitants of the titular brutalist Silo? Graham Yost, the brilliant mind behind the show, is said to “instantly turn the temperature up on this pressure cooker of a dystopia” as more murky secrets arise and rebellion brews. “What if everything you know to be true was one big lie?” one character asks. If the jaw-dropping twists of season one are anything to go by, season two of Silo might cement the show as one of the best television sci-fi outings since Lost.
If you like taut local(ish) drama: Joika (Neon, November 17)
On the face of it, Joika doesn’t appear to be a film connected with Aotearoa. Joy (Talia Ryder) is obsessed with becoming a prima ballerina at the Bolshoi Company – the first American to do so. But, behind the camera is Tāmaki Makaurau native James William Napier Robertson, director of The Dark Horse, co-director of Whina and the “Hottest Vegetarian of 2014″, according to animal rights group Safe. One local critic described Joika as an “astonishingly beautiful, harrowing dance biopic”. With shades of Black Swan and a brutal mentor (Diane Kruger), not unlike J.K. Simmons in Whiplash, prepare for a nerve-shredding cinematic assemblé that will have you on the edge of your seat.
