New to view this week
Ahsoka
Turning Japanese
There’s long been a Japanese influence on Star Wars – George Lucas cited Akira Kurosawa and his film The Hidden Fortress as an influence on his original film. Those Jedi and their kendo-like lightsabres and their apprentices, as well as lone bounty hunters like Bobba Fett, are essentially space samurai. And in this latest television extension of the franchise, that influence goes further, wider and deeper. The character of would-be Jedi Ahsoka first sprang up in the cartoon series Clone Wars, a show with definite traces of Japanese anime, and her live-action carries that on. The early episodes have at least one creature looking like it’s beamed in from a parallel universe created by animation master Hayao Miyazaki, and there are scenes echoing the likes of manga-based sci-fi franchise Akira.
This combined with the classic Star Wars elements – the series takes place between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens – gives you a series that certainly looks cool while not skimping on the sabre-spinning action or the gravitas. It’s a show in touch with the female side of the Force, too, care of its titular character (played by Rosario Dawson) as well as her offsider, Sabine Wren (Natasha Liu Bordizzo), ally General Hera Syndulla (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) and enemy Shin Hati (Ivanna Sakhno).
It all looks like it might hit a sweet spot between being back in the old Star Wars neighbourhood and finding something new to do while there. And given the protracted US actor and writer strikes targeting streamers like Disney+, it may be the last Stars Wars fix fans get for a while. Here’s an idea – maybe go make the next one in Japan. – Russell Baillie
Streaming: Disney+, two-episode debut from August 23, then weekly episodes
Invasion
A more global War of the Worlds
Say this for Apple TV+, it’s been sticking with the big sci-fi stuff that one suspects not a lot of people are watching, what with Foundation, Silo and a second series of Invasion, which arrives after a slow-burning US$200 million first season in late 2021. That one starred Sam Neill, in the first episode at least, as a retiring Oklahoma sheriff whose last day really was his last day due to a mysterious crater in a local crop field. He was one of many in this character-based War of the Worlds, which juggled storylines from around the globe. That included a communications specialist at mission control for a Japanese space flight; a family on Long Island for whom the invasion hastened an imminent parental separation; a US soldier in Afghanistan who, having survived an attack on his squad, finds himself back on the frontline in the UK; and a London schoolboy whose seizures may be giving him visions from the aliens’ point of view. Series one ended with some respite from the close encounters with the spiky wee space beasties, but it all kicks off again in the 10 episodes of series two. This begins with aa Japanese technician (Mitsuki Yamato, played by Shioli Kutsuna) off to the Amazon to investigate a crashed alien ship. As he did in the first season, David Bowie’s presence looms large in the show, which comes with a soundtrack by Max Richter.
Streaming: Apple TV+ from August 23 (season 1 available now)
Who is Erin Carter?
Killing Eve meets Benidorm
If you wondered what happened to Douglas Henshall, who played DI Jimmy Pérez in Shetland, well, he’s gone somewhere warmer – and faster – for a while, where he gets to wear a tuxedo, according to the trailer. Henshall is part of the cast of this six-episode comedy-thriller about Erin Collantes (Evin Ahmad), a mild-mannered Brit history teacher in Barcelona who seems to have left “hand-to-hand combat expert” off her CV when she applied for the job. A supermarket robbery reveals her skills, but also gets her recognised, meaning she must protect her young daughter and husband with her fighting skills and her way with a knife. Yes, the pain in Spain stays mainly in the vein.
Streaming: Netflix from August 23
Kin
Gaelic gangland
This Irish crime-family drama originally arrived here via then-new streamer AMC+ less than a year ago, but that platform seems to have mostly given up in its foray into the NZ market. TVNZ is releasing the first two seasons of the series from 2021 and earlier this year, respectively. That means 16 episodes to get to know the drug-selling, money-laundering, snake-keeping, casually violent but fiercely loyal Kinsella family as they elevate a Dublin underworld battle against a cartel insisting on being the city’s sole narcotics supplier. It won high praise at home as the best local television drama in years, though reviewers concede it’s the acting that elevates fairly ordinary storylines. Among the cast are former Game of Thrones colleagues Aiden Gillen and Ciarán Hinds as rival gang leaders, Frank Kinsella and Eamon Cunningham, as well as Charlie Cox as Frank’s nephew Michael, who in the first episode is out of prison and seems not exactly happy to be back in the Kinsella fold.
Streaming: TVNZ+, full seasons, from August 24.
Wanted: The Escape of Carlos Ghosn
Getaway car boss
Nissan-Renault CEO Carlos Ghosn’s 2019 flight to Lebanon while he was on bail after his arrest in Japan for underreporting his salary and misappropriation of corporate funds has already been the subject of Netflix doco Fugitive: The Curious Case of Carlos Ghosn. This four-part series, though, interviews Ghosn in Beirut. He gives his side of the story and outlines what he saw as unfair treatment by the Japanese justice system before his escape, which was orchestrated by former Green Beret Mike Taylor (also interviewed) and his son. Both Taylors served prison sentences in Japan after they were extradited from the US. It’s directed by Emmy- and Bafta-winner James Jones and is inspired by the book Boundless, by Wall Street Journal reporters Nick Kostov and Sean McLain, which also traces how the Brazil-born Lebanon/France-educated auto executive went from French tyre company plant manager to head of a conglomerate making 10% of the world’s vehicle fleet – only to end up fleeing Japan in an audio-equipment road case loaded on to a private jet.
Streaming: Apple TV+ from August 25
Coming up next week
Underground Railroad: The Secret History
Finding the hidden roads to freedom
This four-part documentary series picked up a Canadian Screen Award earlier this year. It looks at the social history of the Underground Railroad, the secret network of safe houses and secret routes that helped escaped slaves to freedom in 19th-century America and which inspired the acclaimed 2016 Colson Whitehead novel and Prime Video television series.
The doco series also employs modern technology in search of its lost physical traces. Lost towns, buried forts, forgotten tunnels and even a shipwreck emerge as part of the story. Historian Anthony Cohen, a consultant on the series, told the Live Science website last year that a major challenge in establishing a comprehensive picture of the network and the people who ran it was the simple fact that very little was written down. It’s only in recent years that more texts – from slave narratives to court records – have emerged to guide the search.
Screening: Whakaata Māori, 7.30pm, Sunday August 27
Streaming: Māori+
Boris Becker: The Rise & Fall
From the court to … court
The trajectory of Boris Becker, the 17-year-old Wimbledon winner with the simple game and the very complicated personal life, is one of pro sport’s great cautionary tales.
But this two-part documentary for Britain’s ITV+ didn’t have the court to itself – a rival documentary (Boom! Boom! The World Vs Boris Becker on Apple TV+) sewed up a clutch of other tennis greats, as well as Becker. Becker appears only in archival footage in this story of how he went from sporting greatness to a British prison, after being convicted of trying to hide £2.6 million worth of assets and loans amid a bankruptcy. It’s not all tennis and money: no fewer than four of his exes turn up to dish.
Streaming: TVNZ+ from Monday August 28.
Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones
The oldest folks’ homes
Michael Mosley’s more modest new show Secrets of the Superagers (ThreeNow) has got nothing on author Dan Buettner, who has spent 20 years studying the world’s longest-lived humans, and has now set up Blue Zones Projects across America. This series is based on his book The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest and looks at the five places in the world where a disproportionately high number of people live to be 100: the Greek island of Icaria; Loma Linda in California; Sardinia; Okinawa; and Nicoya, Costa Rica.
Streaming: Netflix from Wednesday August 30
One Piece
Chop socky pirates
Time will tell if this live-action series based on the Japanese manga by Eiichiro Oda satisfies the fans, but it’s no surprise Netflix wanted to develop it. One Piece, which Oda created in 1997, is the best-selling manga in history, and although there have been films, a TV series and video games, this is the first live-action attempt, albeit with added CGI. Iñaki Godoy is the young actor taking on the challenge of portraying Monkey D Luffy, a teen made of rubber who sets out to find the “One Piece” treasure and become king of the pirates. There’s a lot of humour in the show, and Godoy says Luffy is a kind person who “encourages people to follow their dreams”.
Streaming: Netflix from August 31
From earlier this month
Far North
Beached as
It might be billed in the opening credits as “mostly based on an unbelievable true story”, but this drama about what became the biggest drug-smuggling bust in NZ history has the ring of truth about it. Also, writer/director David White hasn’t made it a cop show, instead telling how the meth traffickers went from conspiracy to cock-up through a combination of their own ineptitude and Far North locals twigging that the guys who ran two expensive boats on Ninety Mile Beach might just be up to no good. Temuera Morrison and Robyn Malcolm play a local couple who got innocently roped into helping out the nautically challenged crooks, and they’re a great anchor to a show that reveals what happens when the salt of the earth encounters the scum of the earth at the high-tide mark.
Screening: Three, Mondays August 14, 8.30pm.
Streaming: ThreeNow
Designing dreams
Back to the drawing board
Matthew Ridge returns for a second season as the ordinary bloke who gets New Zealand’s leading architects to open up about their design philosophies. In each episode, the featured architect chooses three homes or buildings that have inspired them, and three examples of their own work. The first episode of the new season seems particularly timely given the year we’re having: Auckland-based Dave Strachan talks about his strong belief in designing homes to reflect the environment in which they are built – and, in particular, to respond to the climate. Among the buildings featured are a Pete Bossley guest house in the Bay of Islands and Strachan’s own family home in Mt Eden, which reimagines its site on a busy road. Read more here.
Screening: Sky Open, Mondays 7.30pm
Streaming: SkyGo (free)
Taskmaster NZ
Tricky, tricky, tricky
Interesting that TVNZ has brought the new season of the usually high-rating show that makes comedians think on their feet in perplexingly silly challenges up against Three’s great prime-time hope The Traitors NZ. And in this series, the contestants include Three fixture Dai Henwood, Paddy Gower Has Issues offsider Karen O’Leary, her distant, perpetually besuited cousin Ray, ubiquitous trans-Tasman panel-show presence Melanie Bracewell and the infectious Sieni Leo’o Olo (aka Bubbah, aka Tina from the Turners ads). Jeremy Wells, who surely would have been the host of The Traitors if TVNZ had grabbed the format, and his sidekick, Paul Williams, return for a fourth season with whatever dignity remains from being referees of the previous three.
Screening: TVNZ 2, 7.30pm, Mondays & Tuesdays from August 14
Streaming: TVNZ+
Men in Kilts: A Roadtrip with Sam & Graham
Away ye go, laddie
The genre of famous Brits playing tourists and dragging a camera crew around New Zealand gets another stamp on its passport with this series featuring Outlander star Sam Heughan and countryman and former cast-mate Graham McTavish. If previous NZ travelogues like this might inspire drinking games for mentions of bungy jumping, adrenalin tourism and scenery, you would be quite tipsy by the end of the first episode. In this season the younger Heughan is determined to challenge what McTavish describes as his “capacity for trouser-staining madness”. They are wearing kilts, though, when a chopper lands them on a glacier somewhere near the Milford Sound in the first episode, in which they also go zip-lining through canyons at Glenorchy and do a shark cage dive off Stewart Island. In further episodes the pair take their whisky-flavoured Steve Coogan-Rob Brydon routine to Rotorua, Dunedin, a Waikato eco-dairy farm, a Hawke’s Bay vineyard, Fleur’s Place at Moeraki and inevitably Wētā Workshop – McTavish played Dwalin the dwarf in the Hobbit films and he’s been mostly living here with his family ever since.
Streaming: Neon/SkyGo from August 14
Annika
Bookish boat bobby weighs anchor again
The ever-world-weary and reliable Nicola Walker lightened up considerably from her past cop roles (including Unforgotten, currently on TVNZ+) with Annika, a series she originally voiced in a BBC radio drama set in Norway. But in the TV version, she’s Scottish-Scandinavian Detective Chief Inspector Annika Strandhed who is the head of the Glasgow Marine Homicide Unit – yes, because worse things do happen at sea. The first season was a winning if bleak comedy-drama with Walker frequently breaking the fourth wall and many of the cases having allusions to great works of literature. In this season look out for ties to books by Robert Louis Stevenson, Walter Scott, and George Orwell, who was English but, as all Listener readers know, wrote 1984 on the Inner Hebrides island of Jura. That’s one of the locations Annika and her MHU team are heading to this season. That’s when she’s not dealing with the challenges of being a single mother of a teenage daughter, Morgan, and her romantic relationship with her offspring’s therapist (Paul McGann).
Screening: Vibe (Sky TV), Tuesdays 8.30pm from August 17
Streaming: Neon/SkyGo
The Traitors NZ
I’m a deceiver
Self-proclaimed broadcasting national treasure Paul Henry comes out of semi-retirement to host the local spin on the murder-mystery reality game show that’s already proved a hit in twenty or so countries. In the UK and US versions, it all plays out in a remote Scottish castle.
Here it’s a luxury lodge near Warkworth where the owners might be regretting having all those Range Rovers ploughing up the driveway chased by camera drones and the marks from Henry’s metal-tipped cane on the floors.
Yes, Henry talks loudly and carries a big stick, lording it over the lesser celebrities among the contestants like a high camp Blackadder with a parlour full of Baldricks. If you’re not watching because of Henry, well there’s a lot of Henry in these early stages. Though given the format, you suspect he will stick to the format’s script and the Broadcasting Standards Authority will remain happily untroubled.
The first show might make you wonder, that apart from an equal chance to grab the $70,000 cash prize — there are no charity shout-outs in this reality show, which is oddly refreshing — are the contenders all on the same wage or appearance fee? Some of these people have agents. The thought occurred when there seemed to be a herd mentality ganging up against one contestant who has a real job involving something other than talking and looking telegenic for a living. Class warfare? Well, the show is based on a game created in 1986 by Russian psychology student Dimitry Davidoff.
The first episode ended with the three traitors, who were earlier shoulder-tapped by Henry, donning those hooded cassocks for a long slow walk in the dark to meet their fellow quislings, in a scene that for all its Gregorian silliness, was probably the scene that will hook many into the rest of the series. The trio have the mission of “murder” the remaining “faithfuls” between parlour games, group interrogation sessions and cocktail hours, while Henry smirks smugly, pauses for dramatic effect, and smirks again.
— Russell Baillie
Streaming: ThreeNow
Screening: Three, Mondays and Tuesdays, 7.30pm
Only Murders in the Building
Return of the odd squad
The hit crime comedy about three neighbours in a New York Upper West Side apartment building finding their shared fixation on true crime has got them solving some themselves returns for a third season. The previous seasons of this whodunnit parody managed to be as good as most actual television whodunnits, mostly care of the inspired silliness of its lead trio: co-creator Steve Martin, his longtime comedy offsider Martin Short, and the infinitely younger Selena Gomez. This time, they are branching out a little from the apartment block to investigate a murder behind the scenes of a Broadway show, which was the cliffhanger ending of season two.
The play Death Rattle was meant to be a career comeback for Short’s has-been stage director Oliver and the Broadway debut for Hollywood action star Ben Glenroy, played by Paul Rudd. Also starring as veteran thespian Loretta Durkin is Meryl Streep in her second streaming show role after the markedly less funny Extrapolations on AppleTV+.
In past seasons, the show had fun with famous guest stars – Sting, Amy Schumer – playing themselves and some amusing character supporting turns from the likes of Shirley MacLaine, Jane Lynch, and Tina Fey. So we can expect Building’s new residents will freshen up the place nicely. The 10-episode season starts with the first two available, then one a week.
Streaming: Disney+
Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty
It’s all about the rivalry
The first season of the Los Angeles Lakers drama copped some criticism from real-life Lakers legends Jerry West and Magic Johnson (Johnson went so far as to produce a docu-series with Apple TV+ to get his version on the record), but it was a big hit for HBO. This second season focuses on the era from the NBA finals in 1980 through to 1984, with the intensifying rivalry between the Lakers and the Boston Celtics – and between their respective stars, Johnson and Larry Bird. Expect the same combination of on-court heat and backroom tensions.
Streaming: Neon/Sky Go and also screening on Sky’s SoHo channel
Strange Planet
Out of this world
Nathan W Pyle’s webcomic – and subsequent books – goes quite some way to answering the question of what aliens would think about human behaviour? His stories are set on a planet inhabited by blue beings who have human-style behaviours but use highly technical terminology: a hug becomes “request mutual limb enclosure”, for example, or a suntan is “star damage”. Now Pyle has teamed up with Rick and Morty’s Dan Harmon to create a TV series that will tell what are described as “profound and heartfelt stories”.
Streaming: Apple TV+
Painkiller
A second run at the Sackler scandal
The second major drama series about the role of Purdue Pharma and its owners, the Sackler family, in a story that shows no sign of ending: the US opioid crisis. Like Dopesick, which grew out of Beth Macy’s work as a local reporter in Virginia, Painkiller is grounded in journalism – in this case, the work of Barry Meier and Patrick Radden Keefe, who both went on to write books based on their Sackler stories for The New York Times and The New Yorker, respectively. But while Dopesick’s big name, Michael Keaton, played a small-town doctor who fell prey to addiction, in Painkiller, Matthew Broderick is in full camp as Richard Sackler, Purdue’s chair and the creator of the cynical marketing campaign behind OxyContin. Uzo Aduba (Orange Is the New Black) plays a lawyer investigating OxyContin for the US Attorney’s Office and Taylor Kitsch (Friday Night Lights and Waco) is a mechanic whose life is upended when he becomes dependent on the drug after a workplace injury. Executive producers include Eric Newman (Narcos) and documentarian Alex Gibney.
Streaming: Netflix from August 10
From
But you can never leave …
An ordinary family on a holiday road trip are diverted through a small town that proves impossible for them – or anyone else – to leave. The surrounding woods are full of monsters that emerge at night, and the creators aren’t shy about developing characters only to send them to gory deaths. Some reviewers have compared this one-mystery-after-another sci-fi horror to Lost, notably for its determination to reveal its secrets slowly, but also because Lost producers Jack Bender and Jeff Pinkner are on board, with Bender directing the first four episodes. The two shows also share a cast member – Harold Perrineau, who played desperate dad Michael Dawson in Lost. From has been universally well received – albeit with a few quibbles about dialogue and structure – by overseas critics.
Streaming: TVNZ+ from August 11
The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart
Aussie anthology
This big female-powered melodrama, adapted from Queensland author Holly Ringland’s debut novel, comes from the producers of Big Little Lies, Nine Perfect Strangers and Anatomy of a Scandal. So, expect pots to go on the boil and stay there. Heading the cast is Sigourney Weaver as June Hart, the tough grandmother to Alice, who goes to live with her at Thornfield flower farm after losing her parents in a fire at age nine. Thornfield is also a kind of women’s refuge for its workers who become an extended family to Alice as she grows up learning both the secrets of native Aussie flora and her family’s dark and violent past. Weaver’s June Hart rocks a black akubra and a rifle to see off unwanted visitors while wrestling with her own demons; Asher Keddie plays a local librarian who gets involved in Alice’s life; Kiwi Frankie Adams plays someone else who arrived at the farm as an orphan; and Alycia Debnam-Carey (The 100, Fear the Walking Dead) plays the adult Alice who, in the book, eventually ventures into the outback and lands a job in a national park where rare flowers bloom in a meteorite crater. We can expect quite a bit of landscape and enough rural Queensland country fire scenes to make you worry that Jimmy Barnes is about to turn up and start bellowing Working Class Man.
Streaming: Amazon Prime Video, first three episodes of seven from August 4, then weekly.
Physical
On its last legwarmers
It’s the third and final season of the dark comedy in which Rose Byrne totally rocks 80s exercise wear. Byrne’s aerobics guru Sheila is now a big star, but success is not easy to maintain, especially with a new fitness rival, played by a southern-accented Zooey Deschanel, to contend with.
Streaming: Apple TV+
Downey’s Dream Cars
Eco-friendly pimp my ride
It seems Robert Downey Jr isn’t just a motormouth, he’s a petrolhead too. That’s something the former Iron Man star feels a little conflicted about, given his environmental activism via the non-profit FootPrint Coalition he founded. So, he’s had some of his classic car collection converted into electric and hybrid vehicles and made a television show about it. Neil Young has been spending his rock-star money doing that to big American tailfin gas guzzlers for decades. Now Downey is doing it with the garage he acquired with his superhero riches. The six episodes follow Downey engaging teams of car restorers and engineers to carry out conversions of his fleet to electric or biodiesel fuel, while some get new upholstery made from sustainable mushroom leather. The jalopies include a pickup truck, his mother’s 1969 Mercedes, a 1965 Corvette and a VW Kombi. Just a pity the former Iron Man has yet to add a classic Hillman Avenger to his collection.
Streaming: ThreeNow, full season.
Last Call
True crime done differently
Director Anthony Caronna told Vulture magazine that he initially declined an approach to work on this four-part HBO documentary series about a serial killer who targeted gay men in early 1990s New York, because he was “nervous about revictimising the queer community”. He reconsidered after producer Howard Gertler came back with a pitch that centred not only on the victims, but also on their community and the activists who fought for the gruesome murders to be taken seriously. The New Yorker praised Caronna for telling “a larger and far more dynamic story, about love, queerness, community, and jubilation in the face of constant danger. Rarely does a true-crime documentary concerning senseless deaths feel so essential, and so full of life.”
Screening: SoHo, 9.30pm Saturdays.
Streaming: Neon from August 4
Six Four
Clydeside cold case
Six Four might be an adaptation of the bestselling novel of Japanese crime writer Hideo Yokoyama but the story has shifted to Scotland. Its tale of kidnapping, corruption and betrayal is mainly located in Glasgow and set against a backdrop of Scottish politics. Kevin McKidd (Grey’s Anatomy) and Vinette Robinson (Sherlock) are the police detective and ex-cop parents of a missing teenage daughter whose disappearance may be related to other missing girls, including that of a Scottish National Party justice minister. There are accusations of a cover-up, which may just be a conspiracy theory by the parent (James Cosmo) of a girl who went missing 16 years earlier in a case that police appeared to have botched. The four-part ITV series has had decent reviews in the UK and is made by the producers and directors of last year’s terrific political and crime thriller Sherwood.
Streaming: ThreeNow, full season
Mrs Davis
Counter artificial intelligence
Producer Damon Lindelof’s career has not lacked clever television shows, what with him being behind Lost, Watchmen and The Leftovers. It may have lacked laughs, but that’s something Mrs Davis, a collaboration with The Big Bang Theory and Young Sheldon writer Tara Hernandez, looks like it is out to fix. Mrs Davis? That’s the world’s most powerful artificial intelligence, a Siri-like entity whispering into the earbuds of a world of users while tapping them for information and having them do her bidding. Who’s going to stand up to this all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing being? Sister Simone, a Nevada desert nun who thinks the algorithm killed her father. Sister Simone is played by Betty Gilpin (GLOW, Nurse Jackie), with support from her tolerant Mother Superior (Margo Martindale) and former boyfriend Wiley (Jake McDorman). It seems Mrs Davis will power herself down only if Simone completes a mission – find the Holy Grail, the actual one. All that in a puzzle box of a show that also ponders faith, belief, and AI. It could be just the bonkers show about algorithm paranoia we need right now.
Streaming: Neon/Sky Go from August 2
