Netflix
Veronica Lee
Chris Rock knows how to tease. It’s a safe bet that many watching this show are here for one thing – to hear his version of events that took place at last year’s Oscars, when actor and erstwhile rapper Will Smith came on stage and slapped the comic. First, though, he sets it up. Not by talking about the Oscars kerfuffle per se – although he tells us “Anyone who says words hurt has never been punched in the face” – but by cheeky asides that let us know Rock is leading us there. He references Snoop Dog and Jay-Z; he’s not dissing them, he’s at pains to make clear, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
For fans of conspiracy theories, this three-part examination of the disappearance of Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 is irresistible, though the continuing anguish of friends and relatives of the 239 people aboard the flight makes for some painful viewing. The bare facts are that the aircraft, a Boeing 777, took off on 8 March 2014 on an overnight flight from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to Beijing, but it hadn’t been airborne for an hour before it suddenly vanished from air traffic control radar screens. Military radar data subsequently showed that it had made an inexplicable turn from Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
The backstage revelations about the politics and personalities that fuel Formula One have made Drive to Survive one of Netflix’s most reliable bestsellers, but on this fifth outing there’s a lurking sense that the novelty is wearing off.Viewers were gripped by earlier series because they were granted an inside view of an elite, cosmically expensive sport which had hitherto kept itself neurotically fenced off from the general public. This time around, there’s a sneaking feeling that there isn’t quite enough fascinating content to fill the 10 new episodes, though it’s amusing to be reminded of Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Bald, barrel-shaped and pugnacious, Doron Kavillio (Lior Raz) could have been conceived as the anti-Bond or the un-Ethan Hunt. But as action heroes go, Doron can mix it with the finest as he tracks down terrorists with his comrades in Israel’s Mista’arvim Special Forces team.Raz is the star – or one of them – of Fauda, as well as its co-creator (along with Avi Issacharoff). As a real-life veteran of an Israeli counter-terrorism unit operating in the Palestinian territories, he’s been able to bring a raw edge of verisimilitude to the show, even if the action has obviously been shaped for a Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
A sprawling French-made drama set in the early days of the First World War in 1914, Women at War tells the stories of a quartet of female protagonists as they struggle to make sense of the mayhem which suddenly engulfs them. The series – its French title is Les Combattantes – was filmed in the photogenic Vosges region of eastern France and is set around the town of Saint-Paulin (also the name of a semi-soft French cheese, as it happens), which finds itself perilously close to the front line as the Germans invade.Fans of top French cop show Spiral will be delighted to see the flame-haired Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
There’s no stopping Harry and Meghan. Logic, reason and facts can’t stand in the way of their “war on oppression and injustice” and determination to become “advocates of healing”. Even though their notorious interview with Oprah Winfrey was littered with demonstrable untruths, it seems their target audience buys into the notion of them telling “their” truth, surely the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card. The absurdity of preaching eco-awareness while travelling everywhere by private jet and motorcade never seems to prick their perma-bubble of blissful self-regard.Finally their Netflix Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese won delirious acclaim for their previous Netflix series Dark, a labyrinthine and fantastical account of children vanishing from a small German town. Anyone familiar with its baffling events and leaps across different timelines will probably feel at home with 1899, the duo’s similarly mind-bending follow-up.The story this time pivots around the disappearance of an ocean liner, the Prometheus, which has been missing at sea for four months. When a strange, constantly-repeating telegraph message is received, apparently coming from the vanished vessel, it prompts Read more ...
Helen Hawkins
“It was like Woodstock on steroids,” opines an expert in Netflix’s new release about the doomed marriage of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn (yes, another one).Not sure you remember anything of that description from your history lessons? That would be the Field of the Cloth of Gold, the lavish spectacle staged near Calais in 1520 for a summit between Henry and François I of France. This remark should tell you the key thing you need to know about Blood, Sex & Royalty. It’s probably not for you, unless you are vetting it on behalf of teenage offspring. Its mesh of costumed soap with Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Now into its fifth season, Netflix’s royal pageant is entering that danger zone where once-majestic TV series suddenly find they’re running out of steam. Perhaps Harry and Meghan’s publicity-hogging shenanigans and the real-life loss of the Queen and Prince Philip have somewhat overshadowed Netflix’s quasi-fictional drama. Perhaps everybody has become sick to death of rehashed versions of the life of Princess Diana.Whatever the reasons, The Crown now feels slightly jaded, re-running familiar themes and recycling whiffs of various historic scandals with yet another different cast. As ever, Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
Netflix can’t get enough of Ryan Murphy, whose list of productions with the super-streamer includes Halston, Ratched and recent hit Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. Now here he is again with The Watcher, a teasing little mystery based on a true story about a couple moving into their dream home in New Jersey only to be confronted with anonymous threats and hair-raising goings-on.Murphy’s seven-episode version is a mix of haunted-house chiller, Polanski-style horror and domestic drama, as well as (strangely) a kind of essay on obsessive, nimby-ish property ownership. Dean and Nora Brannock ( Read more ...
Graham Fuller
Andrew Dominik’s Blonde is an atrocity – a ghoulish biopic of Marilyn Monroe that luxuriates in her maltreatment and misery, culminating in protracted images of the star’s lonely death from barbiturate pills distractedly swallowed like candies and washed down with Scotch in her Los Angeles bungalow.Ana de Armas’s expressions too often make Monroe a rabbit in the headlights, but that’s writer-director Dominik's fault. Whether the movie’s Monroe is on or off camera, De Armas speaks with that breathy undulating voice of incredulity Monroe impersonators use, but her real voice was softer and more Read more ...
Adam Sweeting
It was the end of an era, as Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould’s bittersweet epic of the brilliantly devious Saul Goodman wound to a close. Hints of redemption were in the air, signalled by Saul reverting at last to his real name, James McGill. A closing shot of Jimmy (Bob Odenkirk) and his estranged soulmate Kim Wexler (Rhea Seehorn) gazing at each other wordlessly through the wire of ADX Montrose prison (aka “The Alcatraz of the Rockies”) might even have brought a tear to a blackmailer’s eye.Still, it wasn’t enough to lead you to conclude that Saul was really a good guy at heart. These final Read more ...