Drinks with violent Prime Video fighters, animated dinos, and more

Your weekly guide to the new and returning streaming shows and movies.

For all the talk of Doug Liman and co bemoaning that Road House should have gotten a cinema release (it is streaming now on Prime Video), when you see the film it is quite obvious that the perfect way to watch the film is in a lounge room with a drink in hand surrounded by a group of pals getting increasingly drunk as the violence in the film escalates.

The draw for Road House is very much Jake Gyllenhaal as a fairly earnest violent dirtbag and UFC fighter Connor McGregor as a psychotic violent dirtbag, but there’s also a strong supporting cast with funny actors like Jessica Williams, Billy Magnussen, and Arturo Castro (you know him by face from Broad City, The Menu, and Mr Corman, but maybe not yet by name - he’s great).

The big show of the week is 3 Body Problem by the Game of Thrones guys. But what I really want to talk about is something that happens rarely these days: interesting shows from the US that seem to have no likely local release here in Australia anytime soon.

Ark: The Animated series had a surprise release during the week on Paramount+ in the US and a few other international territories. It’s apparently based on a video game, but the draw here is its monster cast (I have them all listed below in the listings) and the modern humans riding dinosaurs concept, which fills my child-of-the-late-80s heart with Dino-Riders vibes.

But for those of you who are actual grown-ups, there’s a great-looking show from BET+ called Diarra From Detroit. It’s about a woman who investigates a man who doesn’t turn up for a Tinder date. There are a bunch of Australian streamer programmers who subscribe to this newsletter - to them, I say: BUY IT YOU COWARDS!