Dark humour in last chance for baby
Elite Ten episodes, available Friday
If you have been missing a Gossip Girlstyle teen drama about the lives of the super-wealthy and gorgeous, then this might be the series for you.
Three working-class students are sent to attend Las Encinas, one of the most prestigious and exclusive schools in Spain, where they’re thrown headfirst into the dramatic lives of the country’s most privileged teens.
What begins as high-school class tension ends in a murder mystery.
This begins at a party that is cooler than any party any of us will ever attend, where the teens of Elite blow smoke from e-cigs, gyrate sexily against one another, and give each other meaningful Kirsten Dunst-inspired looks that could either say “let’s make out in the servants’ quarters” or “I will definitely be implicated in your murder later in the season”.
Though it’s not explicitly shown, the end of the trailer shows someone dead in a pool, swimming in dramatic, possibly bisexual lighting and their own entrails.
You get the idea.
Dancing Queen Eight episodes, available Friday
Ever wonder what would happen if you combined Ru Paul’s Drag Race with Queer Eye and any number of reality dance shows? Well, here’s your answer. This is an eight-part docu-series filmed in Mesquite, Texas, the hometown of Justin Johnson, aka drag superstar and former Drag Race contestant Alyssa Edwards.
Described as a “hilarious and heartfelt” journey, the brand new series will see Justin attempt to juggle his careers as a dance coach and a world-famous drag queen, as well as finding time for his family and his own love life.
The series will most likely feature a few guest appearances from the Drag Race itself, as RuPaul Charles is an executive producer, but it’s pretty much Edwards’s show from start to finish, with strong overtones of America’s reality TV classic Dance Moms.
Private Life (2018) Available Friday
Let’s be fair, as much as we are all addicted to Netflix, there is a shedload of dross released every week. Which makes something like this all the more delectable viewing.
It’s the first film by writer-director Tamara Jenkins since she scored an Oscar nomination for The Savages a decade ago, and like that acclaimed drama, it’s at its best when getting into the nitty-gritty of a tough ordeal.
Kathryn Hahn and Paul Giamatti, both incredible, star as Rachel and Richard, married New York artists who have been trying to have a baby for as long as their relatives can remember, and whose increasingly desperate attempts have dragged them through one extended, exhausting process after another.
A new hope comes in the form of their step-niece Sadie (Kayli Carter), who comes to stay with the struggling couple after dropping out of college, and who might have something Rachel doesn’t: viable eggs.
But what will the rest of the family think of this unconventional solution?
This blackly comic film has autobiographical overtones (Jenkins struggled to have a child herself ) and it’s a powerful piece which rightly excited critics at Sundance earlier this year.
Big Mouth, Season 2 Ten episodes, available Friday
This clever animated caper picks up right where the first season left off. The kids are still learning about puberty, and dealing with all the strange urges and changes that come with the interminable development period.
Also, the hormone monsters have returned and are even cruder and more insistent. Series co-creator Nick Kroll and The Happy Time Murders’ Maya Rudolph are back voicing the Hormone Monster and Hormone Monstress — among other characters — and these creatures that stoke all your adolescent feelings are still running amok.
Continuing the hilarity that comes with all the emotional baggage of changing bodies and growing up, Season 2 will see Rodriguez voicing Gina, the first girl in school to develop breasts, which causes a shift in social dynamics. David Thewlis, a Harry Potter alumnus, will take the role of the Shame Wizard, mortal enemy of the Hormone Monster who inflames kids’ deepest shame.