Dove Love will return to a new season of Gloriavale.
Dove Love will return to a new season of Gloriavale.
Wondering what to feast your eyeballs on over the next month? Here's a handy guide.
TVNZ OnDemand
Gloriavale: The Return Every time another instalment of the Gloriavale documentary series hits our screens, controversy seems to erupt. This time is unlikely to be different. But there are changes to the format: The Return is a mini-series airing OnDemand over eight episodes, and will follow the social differences between the isolated religious community and the rest of New Zealand. There will also be new faces introduced amongst some familiar ones, including Mercy, Treasure and Blessed. -Streaming from May 15
Oddly Even Ashleigh Reid and Isla MacLeod won TVNZ's New Blood Web Series Competition last year, and here are the results. Oddly Even follows Olivia and her efforts to launch a food truck empire being thwarted by the reappearance of her older sister Frankie. She shows up eight years after going missing following the death of their parents. Sounds bleak, but the pilot was hilarious. This is promising. -Streaming from May 17
Evil Genius: The True Story of America's Most Diabolical Bank Heist Got room for some more true crime? Of course you do. This is from Mark and Jay Duplass, the brothers behind Netflix's recent cult doco hit Wild, Wild Country, and follows the 2003 case of the pizza bomber, a man who walked into an Erie bank with a bomb around his neck. Told in four parts, it begins with the robbery and follows through to the subsequent trial, uncovering bizarre truths along the way. - Streaming from May 11
Ali Wong: Hard Knock Wife Out of all of the stand-up comedy specials I've streamed on Netflix, Baby Cobra is my favourite. Filmed while she was pregnant, comedian Ali Wong mixes searing insight with straight-up filth, and it left me on the floor. I must have seen it four times. So there's good news! Wong's back with a new stand-up special called Hard Knock Wife. She's pregnant again, and she'll be analysing her abilities as a first-time mum. Oh, and it's all debuting on Mother's Day. Be brave: watch this one with mum beside you. - Streaming from May 13
13 Reasons Why The first season of this controversial Netflix show dabbed in some tough topics - among them, suicide and anorexia. Season two isn't holding back either, picking things up directly after Hannah's death. Expect the teenagers in your life to be all over this one. -Streaming from May 18
The Rain If you love dark, dystopian dramas from Denmark, then The Rain is for you. It follows a group of survivors emerging from a bunker to find they're among a chosen few left alive. So far, so apocalyptic. But The Rain is getting rave reviews: Digital Spy said it was "satisfyingly full-blooded and handsomely filmic series that justifies the hype and shows that there's so much more to Scandi TV than chilly murder mysteries". - Streaming from May 4
Lightbox
Below the Surface Lightbox also has a grim show from Denmark, this one about terrorists. It follows 15 people taken hostage on board the Copenhagen Metro, and police efforts to free them in the week that follows. Like a typical Scandi-noir drama, it takes in all sides of the story, including political angles, media tangles, police issues and the hostages' families. Sounds like The Wire, with a train, then. -Streaming from May 15
Guerilla This period piece has some big names and even bigger ideas. Starring Idris Elba, Freida Pinto and Rory Kinnear, Guerilla follows the formation of a group of underground radicals targeting a secretive counter-intelligence unit called Black Power Desk and the police on their tail. The Hollywood Reporter called this mini-series "exceptional" and "one of the best things appearing on TV in 2017". -Streaming from May 9
Neon
Hard Sun There are plenty of post-apocalyptic shows on television right now. But pre-apocalyptic ones? They're in short supply. Hard Sun is one: it follows two detectives who, while investigating the death of a hacker, stumble upon information that the planet will be destroyed in five years. Critics have compared it to Luther, Black Mirror and The X-Files. "Batty, grim and ferociously violent," said The Atlantic. -Streaming from May 12
Mosaic When Steven Soderbergh's Smalltown murder mystery first debuted, there were two ways you could watch it: on TV, or through an app which let you watch the storyline unfold through different characters. Through the app is apparently the better experience, but Neon has the TV version, which is still supposed to be very good: Time said the show "thrives on perversity, with its suspects outdoing one another in nastiness". -Streaming from May 17
