Animated fun for adults and an American cult
Pacific Heat, Season 1 Available from Friday
ADULT-ORIENTATED animated capers have been all the rage for a number of years now and Netflix has got into the game with Bojack Horseman and Rick and Morty. Now the streaming service is bringing us this series, which has been described as the Australian Archer (another highlight of the genre).
The story centres around an undercover special unit on the sun-drenched Gold Coast which has been assigned to handle everything from petty crime to global drug cartels. Santo Cilauro, Rob Sitch, Tom Gleisner, Rebecca Massey and Lucia Mastrantone lend their voices to the project which apparently started life as a radio play. There have been some murmurs in America that the whole thing should be subtitled but for us, weaned on Australian soaps as we were, the nasal twang should be no problem.
Rob Sitch, who stars as Special Agent Todd Sommerville, recently said they basically made an homage to as many cop shows as they could, adding that the tone is like “The A-Team, Hawaii Five-0, and Charlie’s Angels, crossed with South Park and Family Guy”. (He forgot Archer, but that’s in there too.)
Fauda, Season 1 Available from Friday
ONE of the strengths of Netflix in recent times has been harvesting the best of television from unlikely parts of the world. This series, for instance, caused a sensation all across the Middle East after it first aired in Israel, but few here will have heard of it. It follows an Israeli militia unit called mista’arvim, which is trained to perfectly imitate the manners and dress of Palestinians. What made the show so ground-breaking was that even with Israeli writers and stars it still gave its Arab characters equal screen time and equally complex backstories as its Jewish characters (and was rewarded with a huge audience in the Arab world).
The terrorists, in this show, are as much fathers and brothers as they are combatants, and are drawn with equal complexity as the Jewish soldiers. Neither side, the show insists, is innocent. The series is very well acted and written, and justifiably cleaned up at the Israeli equivalent of the Emmys.
Stephen Fry in America Available now, six episodes
THE thinking woman’s crumpet or a stupid person’s idea of a clever person? We can never make up our minds about Stephen Fry, but like Joanna Lumley he is a one-person green light for any travelogue you could imagine.
This one dates back to 2008, when he was truly ubiquitous, but it works because it sets his self-consciously English, almost donnish curiosity against the colourful backdrop of small town America.
Fry was almost born in America — his father was supposed to take up a post in Princeton — and he approaches this with some enthusiasm, visiting all 50 states over the six episodes. It’s a warm gentle bubble bath of a travelogue and Fry doesn’t ask many searching questions of the people he encounters, but this is still worthwhile viewing, especially now that America of eight years ago seems like aeons removed from the present.
Holy Hell Available now
YOU know where this story of a Texan cult (not the David Koresh one) is going right from the happy hand holding and group swimming at the beginning, but the long, slow descent into madness is still undeniably riveting.
The guru at the heart of it — Michel (although he changes names several times through the documentary) — is like some weird hybrid of Joan Crawford from Mommie Dearest, Liberace and Rudolf Nureyev.
There are bizarre ballet rituals, woodland initiations, tons of free love (the guru used to be a porn star, after all), and ever-increasing amounts of plastic surgery, mascara and rumour.
Sadly (for the purposes of the drama) there is no Koresh-style biblical showdown at the end, although perhaps if that had happened we wouldn’t have this quirky and engrossing documentary to show for the decades of brainwashing and questionable gym wear.
High camp, high drama and definitely one of the more unsung gems on Netflix.