2 weeks Ago By Debi Enker
The predicted drought appears not to have eventuated. Last year’s strike by the American writers’ and actors’ unions was expected to have a noticeable impact on what has been a virtual deluge of content since the start of the streaming revolution. But for viewers that steady flow has continued and, for those with access to several services, new series still arrive, abundantly and regularly.
So it’s easy to miss some of the good stuff. For devotees of crime series – a globally popular genre in the streaming world – it’s worth noting that many appear without promotional fanfare, or can easily be overlooked in the flood. Here are some good ones you might’ve missed.
Leila Farzad as detective Lou Slack in Better , in which she is closely entwined with a local crime boss. Credit: ABC Better (ABC iview) Lou Slack (Leila Farzad) is a cluey and capable police detective, and her skill at her job is convincingly established early on. As is her corruption.
For years, she’s been in the service of local crime boss Col McHugh (Andrew Buchan), and both have benefited from the arrangement: her career has thrived and her family’s finances have improved, while his activities have been protected by her information and ability to manipulate events in his favour. But a health crisis involving Lou’s teenage son causes her to re-evaluate her life and priorities. Still, the cop and the crim are closely entwined and Col, played with quietly chilling menace by Buchan ( Industry ), has a reptilian alertness for any flicker of shifting loyalties.
Created and written by Jonathan Brackley ( Humans , Spooks ) and with four of its five episodes directed by Jonathan Brough ( Rosehaven ), this taut BBC thriller is loaded with twists and maintains the tension through to the audacious and fitting finale. Under the Bridge (Disney+) Set in Victoria, the capital of the Canadian province of British Columbia, this gruelling eight-part series dramatises a real case from 1997 involving the disappearance of a teenager. Based on a book by Rebecca Godfrey and also “inspired by” Manjit Virk’s memoir Reena: A Father’s Story , it evokes a cruel world filled with broken families, anger and pain.
Written for TV by Quinn Shephard, it stars Riley Keough ( Daisy Jones & The Six ) as the psychologically scarred Godfrey. She returns to her hometown to write a book and finds herself caught up in the case involving Reena (Vritika Gupta), the daughter of American-Indian parents who craves acceptance from a group of schoolgirls led by the volatile and vengeful Josephine Bell (Chloe Guidry). Moving back and forth in time, the drama charts the circumstances surrounding Reena’s fate after she joins the group at a party.
It develops into a harrowing tale, aching with sadness and regret, in which issues of race, religion and class are woven through a powerful account of adolescent angst and alienation. The uniformly captivating cast also features Lily Gladstone ( Killers of the Flower Moon ) as a local cop and Archie Panjabi ( The Good Wife ) as Reena’s mother. Elisabeth Moss plays a spy in The Veil.
Credit: FX / Disney+ The Veil (Disney+) In this slick espionage thriller, Elisabeth Moss ( Mad Men, The Handmaid’s Tale ) stars as a consummate spy assigned to extract a woman (Yumna Marwan) suspected of being an ISIS leader from a Turkish refugee camp. Her mission is to deliver her charge safely to her MI6 bosses while also confirming that she’s one of the most dangerous people on the planet. The ticking-bomb urgency is ratcheted higher as intelligence agencies in France, Britain and the US, who don’t quite trust each other, rush to thwart a potentially catastrophic terrorist attack that they learn is imminent.
Deftly matched for screen power and allure, Moss and Marwan play out an intriguing game of cat-and-mouse while evading all manner of threats. On the journey, they discuss duty, men and motherhood while each displays a mastery of spycraft. Shot by Australian Bonnie Elliott ( Stateless ) with three episodes directed by Emmy-winning Australian Daina Reid ( The Handmaid’s Tale ), the gripping, fast-paced six-part series, made for America’s FX, benefits from a generous globetrotting budget from the remote, snowbound refugee camp to Istanbul, Paris, London and the English countryside.
Natalie Portman plays a housewife turned crime reporter in Lady in the Lake. Credit: Apple TV+ Lady in the Lake (Apple TV+) Set in Baltimore in 1969, this evocative tale of two very different women is based on a book by Laura Lippman inspired by two real cases. Initially, it hinges on the disappearance of a young Jewish girl, but soon also takes in the events related to the fate of the woman of the title.
Maddie Schwartz (Natalie Portman) is the affluent wife of a pious pillar of the Jewish community. She has a chic Jackie Kennedy look and appears to be the perfect wife, but chafes under the restrictions and expectations imposed on her. Cleo Johnson (Moses Ingram) comes from the other side of town and lives in the heart of the black community.
She works for a gangster who owns a nightclub and runs a numbers racket, and struggles to make ends meet. Both women are trapped by their situations and resolve to break free of their respective constraints. Rich in period detail, the handsome and intriguing seven-part series, in which Cleo is an occasional narrator, is created and directed by Alma Har’el.
Jenna Coleman plays detective Ember Manning alongside police partner Hitch (Archie Renaux) in The Jetty. Credit: Ben Blackall / BBC Studios / Firebird Pictures The Jetty (Britbox) Past and present collide in this brooding four-part murder mystery set in a Lancashire lake town. Police detective Ember Manning (Jenna Coleman, The Cry , Victoria ), a widow and the mother of a teenage daughter, is called to investigate a fire.
Meanwhile, a cold case involving the disappearance of a teenager is being probed by a persistent podcaster (Weruche Opia) who specialises in spotlighting crimes against women and girls. The women agree to help each other in their investigations, although each has a maverick quality. Created and written by Cat Jones, the series was made for the BBC and shot in winter.
The bleak weather helps to feed a grim atmosphere that becomes increasingly menacing and oppressive, despite a setting that, in different conditions, might seem picturesque. As murky secrets and shady activities are unearthed, portraits of the town’s troubled women emerge. Annabel Scholey and Colin Morgan in Dead and Buried.
Credit: Stan Dead and Buried (Stan) An uncompromising study of the addictive thrill and potential danger of pursuing revenge lies at the heart of this discomforting four-part Irish series. Written by Colin Bateman and based on his play, it has schoolteacher, wife and mother Cathy McDaid (Annabel Scholey, The Spilt ) discovering that the man she believes was responsible for her brother’s death 20 years earlier (Colin Morgan) now lives nearby. Driven by grief and fury, she resolves to disrupt what she sees as his comfortable life.
Events spiral, sympathies shift and the damage caused by Cathy’s unrelenting quest spreads. Colin Farrell stars as private detective John Sugar in Sugar . Credit: Apple TV Sugar (Apple TV+) All the series mentioned above have female protagonists.
But for something equally engaging, there’s this sleek private-eye mystery starring the reliably terrific Colin Farrell, who’s also an executive producer. He plays John Sugar, one of those hard-boiled PIs who thinks he’s a master of his game. Sugar cruises around Los Angeles in a vintage Corvette convertible, taking jobs assigned by the coolly canny Ruby (Kirby Howell-Baptiste).
In the eight-part series, he agrees to track down the granddaughter of a Hollywood producer (James Cromwell). Created by Mark Protosevich, it’s a knowing tale that drinks in the seductive sheen of Hollywood and its seedy, avaricious underbelly. The strong cast also features Amy Ryan, Dennis Boutsikaris, Anna Gunn and Nate Corddry.
Happily, there’s more Sugar to come as a second season has recently been announced. Stan and this masthead are owned by Nine. Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees.
Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday ..
