New to View
Masters of the Air
It must have cost a bomb
With a budget estimated to be as big as a sky-high $US300, Masters of the Air may well be an early contender for most expensive one-off show of the year. Though it is connected to other shows, as it effectively completes the WWII trilogy of the shows Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks produced in the wake of Saving Private Ryan – 2001′s Band of Brothers and 2010′s The Pacific. This one, about UK-based USAAF air crews is based on the weighty Donald L. Miller 2007 book Masters of the Air: America’s Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany. It’s been backed by Apple TV+ after HBO, the maker of those previous WWII epics, passed, reportedly due to the high cost.
Most of the nine episodes focus on the 100th Bomb Group, which during its Flying Fortress B-17 bombing campaigns over Occupied Europe and Nazi Germany between 1942 and 1945 suffered – like all Allied bomber squadrons – massive losses, until the development of long-range fighter escorts and the eventual decline of Hitler’s Luftwaffe.
The biggest American star in the Brit-heavy cast is Elvis himself, Austin Butler, as Major Gale “Bucky” Cleven whose odd-buddy friendship and with Turner’s Major John “Buck” Egan looks to become the drama’s pivotal relationship.
For Hanks, who played Presley’s manager “Colonel” Tom Parker in Elvis, this air force excursion effectively completes a WWII set. He’s already saluted the US Army in Saving Private Ryan and Brothers, the US Marine Corps in The Pacific and the US Navy in the 2020 US Navy vs U-Boat movie Greyhound (also on Apple TV +).
Streaming: Apple TV+ (two-episode debut on January 26, then weekly)
Expats
Going bonkers in Honkers
Nicole Kidman stars in and executive produces this six-part mini-series developed by Chinese-American film-maker Lulu Wang (The Farewell) from Janice YK Lee’s 2016 novel The Expatriates. Kidman plays one of three American women living in Hong Kong in 2014 against the backdrop of the territory’s “umbrella movement” protests. Their concerns are less around the demonstrations and more about the personal politics and dramas of the cloistered expat community. Wang, who was persuaded to join the production by Kidman, came up with a script that focuses heavily on the Filipino domestic “helpers” who make life work for the foreigners. “It was about bringing dignity to them,” she told Vogue recently. “I wanted to show the story through their eyes and really understand who they are as people – not just in relationship to the expats.”
Streaming: Prime Video
In The Know
Public media puppets
A new stop-motion animation series created by Mike Judge (Beavis and Butt-Head) and Zach Woods and Brandon Gardner (Silicon Valley). Woods voices Lauren Caspian, a middling, self-absorbed American public radio host who interviews real-world celebrities – including Mike Tyson, Hugh Laurie, Ken Burns, Norah Jones and Queer Eye star Jonathan Van Ness – and interacts erratically with his team. “We love public radio. It’s so engaging and comforting,” say Woods and Gardner, “but public radio also reflects aspects of ourselves that we’re embarrassed by.” How well insider jokes about NPR culture travel with a TV audience remains to be seen, but the trailer looks fun.
Streaming: TVNZ+
Black Coast Vanishings
The missing of Piha
A four-part true-crime mystery series that focuses on six missing-person cases since 1992 in and around the West Auckland beach village of Piha. All of them – most notably that of Iraena Asher in 2004 – have remained unsolved. Produced by Augusto with CanalPlus for an international audience, the series explores the stories of each of the vanished and looks at the impact on the town. Read more about the series here.
Screening: Three, 8.05pm, Sunday Jan 28-31
Streaming: ThreeNow, from January 28
The Great Kiwi Bake Off
A fresh batch
After taking last year off, the local Bake Off returns to Parihoa Farm, with presenters Hayley Sproull and Pax Assadi putting a new crop of 10 aspirants through their paces in front of judges Peter Gordon and Jordan “The Caker” Rondell. This year’s line-up brings new diversity: 28-year-old teacher Anna Wainright lives with ADHD, 56-year-old Lillian Wrigglesworth is an amputee, and 39-year-old Danielle Windfuhr is coeliac and will be baking gluten-rich treats she is unable to eat.
Screening: Thursdays, TVNZ 1, 7.30pm
Streaming: TVNZ+
A Real Bug’s Life
Meet the beetles
In a neat bit of cross-marketing, National Geographic takes inspiration from the 1998 Pixar film to go into the micro world of real bugs. To add to the fun, the series is narrated in her trademark witty style by comedian and actor Awkwafina. New developments in filming technology are touted as the series explores nine different microworlds, where drama plays out every day on a minute scale. The series starts in New York, where a jumping spider bungee jumps around the streets looking fora home. Other habitats include the jungle and a farm. There will be anthropomorphism, but it looks spectacular nonetheless.
Streaming: Disney+
Avoidance
An embarrassing dad adrift
British comedian Romesh Ranganathan taps some of his stand-up persona to play a passive, somewhat useless dad who is left adrift when his wife tells him their marriage is over. He finds himself living with his exasperated sister and gamely trying to maintain a relationship with their son. The Guardian’s Lucy Mangan praised it as “delicate, funny and truthful” and a comedy that “has you reaching for the word ‘bittersweet’ but realising that in fact you need something stronger to encompass all the sorrow swelling beneath the laughs.”
Screening: TVNZ 1, 7.30pm Wednesdays
Streaming: TVNZ+
Griselda
The Godmother of coke
Notorious 1980s cocaine smuggler Griselda Blanco was murdered in 2012, but she has lived on as a figure in pop culture since. She has been a supporting character in shows about the coke trade, has been namechecked by hip-hop stars Nicki Minaj and Rick Ross and even turned up in Marlon James’ Booker Prize-winning 2014 novel A Brief History of Seven Killings. Now her own story is told in a six-part series from the same team that made Narcos and Narcos: Mexico. Griselda is played by Colombian-American actress Sofía Vergara (Modern Family), who is considerably more glamorous than the real Blanco.
Streaming: Netflix
From earlier in the month
LOL: Last One Laughing Ireland
It’s hard to keep a straight face
What do you get when you lock 10 comedians in a room and challenge them to make each other laugh without cracking up themselves? This, basically. Ireland’s take on a show Prime Video has already made local versions of in multiple countries (it became the most-watched show ever on Prime Video in Italy, France, and Germany) is presumably reaching us now because it’s fronted by Graham Norton, who seems a perfect fit for the format. The battling comics include Aisling Bea and David McSavage.
Streaming: Prime Video
Murder in Boston: Roots, Rampage and Reckoning
Beantown’s black backlash
This three-part documentary tells how a 1989 murder in Boston spiralled into a storm that unleashed the latent racism in the city. One night in October, Charles “Chuck” Stuart called 911 to report that he and his pregnant wife had been shot – he was wounded, and she was dying. In an exchange played in the opening minutes of the documentary, a police officer asked Stuart if he saw the perpetrator: “A black man,” he replied. “Black male. “Under political pressure, Boston police targeted the black and Latino communities with aggressive raids and eventually coerced a teenager into implicating an innocent man. The real killer was almost certainly Stuart himself. Director Jason Hehir (best-known for the Michael Jordan film The Last Dance) talks to those caught up in the panic and sets the story in the context of Boston’s troubled history of race relations. The Wall Street Journal hailed it” a captivating crime story, a socio-political treatise and even evidence that life can get better.”
Screening: SoHo, 8.30pm from Saturday January 20
Streaming: Neon
The Claremont Murders
The hunt for an Australian serial killer
More true crime, this time a two-part drama set in 1990s suburban Perth, where the disappearance of three young women over 14 months triggered a huge – and increasingly troubled – police investigation. Director Peter Andrikidis and co-writers Justin Monjo and Michaeley O’Brien all worked on various iterations of the Underbelly TV franchise and Erik Thomson (Aftertaste) turns up as the father of the first missing woman. Dark, dramatic and, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, “gruelling” and “tightly focused”.
Screening: TVNZ 1, 8.30pm. Sunday January 21
Streaming: TVNZ+
Vinnie Jones: In The Country
A new sideline
No one has been more surprised than British TV reviewers over this show following former footballer and actor Vinnie Jones as he explores a tranquil new life on 80 hectares of West Sussex countryside. It’s a bit like Clarkson’s Farm with less actual farming. “We don’t grow anything, we don’t have any animals,” he told the BBC’s The One Show. There are projects to upgrade the 400-year-old farm and general appreciation of wildlife and nature. In part, it’s about Jones’ life after the death of his wife, Tanya, four years ago. “I think mental health is such a massive thing now and [I’ve been] going through it myself, obviously, over the last three or four years.”
Streaming: ThreeNow, from Sunday January 21
True Detective: Night Country
Frosty Foster
Past seasons of this often grim but cinematic crime anthology have bordered on horror and this latest one is no different. But it looks like there’s some science- fiction in the mix too. It’s set in Alaska, 150 miles north of the Arctic Circle where eight scientists at a research base studying climate change have left the place resembling the Mary Celeste, with no clear clue as to what’s happened – other than a human tongue found on the floor of the lab.
It’s happened as the place has had its last sunset for the year and there are portents of doom in the air. So too is the fact that some of the missing scientists are paleobiologists and that their lab has a stockpile of permafrost core samples. Investigating the case is Jodie Foster’s local police chief whose ex-husband and son are also cops in Ennis, a mining town where, otherwise they are mostly dealing with alcohol-related domestic violence and the occasional polar bear in the main street. There’s another thread to the story following boxer-turned-actor Kali Reis’s state trooper who used to work in Foster’s police department. She’s an indigenous Inupiaq who’s haunted by an old unsolved murder case, which, of course, may be connected to the scientists’ disappearances. Yes, if you’ve seen Fortitude, the British psychological thriller set in a Norwegian Arctic mining town, you might be feeling a sense of déjà vu right now. Like that show, this one was filmed in Iceland.
Streaming: Neon
Screening: SoHo, Mondays, 9.30pm
No Escape
Worse things happen at sea
British besties Lana (Abigail Lawrie, Tin Star) and Kitty (Rhianne Barreto, The Outlaws) have had reason to flee an incident at home and believe they’ve found sanctuary on The Blue, a vessel being sailed through Southeast Asia by an interesting, enigmatic group of people. It seems like paradise, “but soon enough, lots of secrets start to come to the surface – and lots of people aren’t who they say they are,” Lawrie told the Radio Times. “It gets very dark.” New Zealander Jay Ryan (Creamerie) also stars as the captain of the mystery yacht. Based on Lucy Clarke’s bestselling novel, The Blue.
Streaming; ThreeNow
Monsieur Spade
A famous detective’s work is never done
A sequel to one of the most famous films in cinema, The Maltese Falcon, with Clive Owen (Children of Men) stepping into Bogart’s shoes to play Detective Sam Spade 20 years on. The war is long over, he should be enjoying his retirement in the South of France – but when six local nuns are murdered, he’s back on the beat, even if the town police chief would rather he wasn’t. Created over six parts by Tom Fontana (Borgia) and Scott Frank, who is coming off his breakthrough success with The Queen’s Gambit. Shot on location in France and notably stylish with it.
Screening: Rialto Channel, Tuesdays 8.30pm
Criminal Record
Old cop, young cop
Peter Capaldi (Doctor Who) plays Detective Chief Inspector Daniel Hegarty, a London copper with a legacy to protect. Cush Jumbo (The Good Wife) is Detective Sergeant June Lenker, a bright, ambitious junior officer who stumbles upon possible evidence that may mean the older cop put away the wrong man for murder. But he’s not having it and the fault lines of racial prejudice and institutional failure become apparent. It’s created by Paul Rutman (Vera, Indian Summers), with lots more pedigree behind the camera. Fans of Line of Duty and its ilk are urged to investigate this one too.
Streaming: Apple TV+.
James May: Our Man in India
An Englishman abroad
The third in James May’s Our Man in … series – but the first since he and his longtime screen buddies Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond announced that they would no longer be making Grand Tour with Prime Video. May has stayed with Prime (amid reports of a very lucrative personal deal) to make another season of his travelogue, this time a 5000km journey from the Arabian Sea to the Bay of Bengal. The touchpoints are familiar enough – the Himalayas, the Taj Mahal, Holi festival, a laughter yoga class, a spicy meal – but May does always seem genuinely interested and excited by what he encounters.
Streaming: Prime Video
Killers of the Flower Moon
Oil and blood
The Martin Scorsese film based on David Grann’s book about the 1920s murders of members of the oil-wealthy Osage Nation makes the shift from cinema to streaming platform. There, with judicious use of the pause button, its near three-and-a-half running time might be a little more comfortable. It’s been praised by many US critics as one of the best films of 2023, though our reviewer had his, ah, reservations.
Streaming: Apple TV+
The Brothers Sun
Mob family matters
This “action dramedy” looks a lot of fun. Michelle Yeoh, fresh off an Oscar for Everything Everywhere All at Once, plays the matriarch of a Taiwanese crime family who has raised her younger son Bruce (Sam Song Li) in California. He’s grown up innocent of who and what his family really is, but abruptly discovers the truth when his estranged hitman brother, Charles (Justin Chien) arrives to defend his family from a spiralling gang war. They need to talk about their fractured family relationship, but they also need to avoid getting murdered. It’s created by Brad Falchuk (Glee, American Horror Story) and newcomer Byron Wu.
Streaming: Netflix
The Tourist
Amnesia in Ireland
The story shifts from Australia to Ireland for this second season, but Elliot (Jamie Dornan) still can’t remember much. He and Helen (Danielle Macdonald) are determined to decipher the mysteries of his past and that leads them into an old family feud and more peril. The new location and new allies and adversaries mean a cluster of fresh faces on screen, and writers Harry and Jack Williams can be expected to deliver more surprising – even mystifyingly odd elements.
Streaming: TVNZ+
Breathtaking
The frontlines of the pandemic
Palliative care specialist Dr Rachel Clarke established herself as a formidable writer with her 2020 memoir Dear Life, published just as Covid-19 was about to throw the British health system into crisis. Her follow-up, Breathtaking, focused on that crisis and this is a three-part dramatic adaptation created with Jed Mercurio and former Line of Duty cast member (and ex-doctor) Prasanna Puwanarajah (intriguingly, Puwanarajah actually worked alongside Clarke when she was a medical student). Joanne Froggatt (Downton Abbey, Liar) takes the lead role as acute medicine consultant Dr Abbey Henderson. After filming wrapped earlier this year, Froggatt praised NHS staff and expressed the hope that “telling this story goes a little way towards us understanding their truth, their lived experience and honouring their unbelievable commitment and sacrifice on behalf of us all.”
Streaming: TVNZ+
See our guide to other recent new shows in the December viewing guide.
See what Listener writers thought were the best shows of 2023 were here.
