Get ready for some serious couch time this weekend with a number of shows that are nothing if not tempting.
Nine Perfect Strangers has been compared in every single review to HBO's White Lotus. Both are very different in tone and substance, but both are high budget character dramas set at a resort with some big names on screen. A year from now White Lotus will be the one people remember. It streams on Hulu in the US, but elsewhere you can stream it by way of Amazon Prime Video.
A title that had escaped me entirely was Netflix acquisition The Defeated. It debuted in some international territories throughout Europe as 'Shadowplay'. With Taylor Kitsch and Michael C Hall as series leads, it should draw some attention.
The absolute pick of the week is the Australian series The Newsreader. I gave it a positive review on the Screen Watching podcast last week. It stumbles a little with blending impactful real-world news stories into the fiction of the series (the real stories bring with them too much baggage and importance for viewers to care as much about the scripted TV show), but the rest is so winning that it is easy enough to look past that.
returning:
Truth Be Told (s02), Diary of a Future President (s02), Casualty (s36)
new:
Nine Perfect Strangers - Hulu | Amazon Prime Video
Stars: Nicole Kidman, Melissa McCarthy, Michael Shannon
Nine stressed city dwellers visit a boutique health-and-wellness resort that promises healing and transformation. The resort's director is a woman on a mission to reinvigorate their tired minds and bodies.
Heels - Starz | Stan
Stars: Stephen Amell, Alexander Ludwig, Alison Luff
Two brothers and rivals - one a villain, or "heel," in the ring; the other a hero, or "face," war over their late father's wrestling promotion, vying for national attention in small-town Georgia.
The Chair - Netflix
Stars: Sandra Oh, Bob Balaban, Jay Duplass
At a major university, the first woman of color to become chair tries to meet the dizzying demands and high expectations of a failing English department.
The Defeated - Netflix
Stars: Taylor Kitsch, Michael C. Hall, Logan Marshall-Green
Max McLaughlin is an American cop who arrives in Berlin in the summer of 1946 to help create a police force in the chaotic aftermath of the war.
The Newsreader - ABC iView
Stars: Anna Torv, Sam Reid, Chai Hansen
The Newsreader provides an insight into the smoky Australian newsrooms of the 1980s and the people who brought us our nightly news.
That's it for this week - let's be careful out there.
