WHAT TO WATCH
More Mindy
The Mindy Project (Season 5) Lightbox, available now There are two truly great sitcoms on the world’s streaming services right now: Unbreakable Kimmy
Schmidt and Master of None. MoN has had only one series of 10 episodes and UKS has had two of 13 episodes each. The makers of The Mindy
Project have churned out between 21 and 26 episodes every year for five years. It’s sometimes brilliant, sometimes a bit raggedy, but that’s a lot of quality comedy output.
Taking down the Crown
The Windsors TVNZ 1, Thursday, 8.30pm There’s something deeply satisfying about acts of imagination that take as their basis this odd collection of people who have been thrust into their positions of extreme prominence and evergrowing irrelevance by accidents of genetics and marriage. Their ripeness for satire is unparalleled, and no longer likely to be punished by death. In
The Windsors, they are portrayed by an array of comedic actors, such as Harry Enfield as Prince Charles.
Free Will Upstart Crow
TVNZ 1 Thursday, 9pm Somebody in TVNZ scheduling is proud of themselves right now, and rightly so: two new comedies about notable figures in British history, back to back. That’s a gift for somebody in TVNZ marketing. Upstart Crow, the creation of
Blackadder creator Ben Elton, focuses on the life of William “Will” Shakespeare and will show him — according to TVNZ publicity — “as you’ve never seen him before!” There’s a lot wrong with that claim, chiefly that we’ve never seen him before. Let’s hope for laughs.
The Free Cuba story
The Cuba Libre Story (Season 1) Netflix, available Thursday In an incredible piece of timing, this epic, multi-part documentary series about Cuba, which has no doubt taken years to make, is being released the week after the death of the man most synonymous with the country’s recent history. The series starts long before Castro, though, and “recounts the tumultuous history of Cuba, a nation of foreign conquest, freedom fighters and Cold War political machinations.”
Greg Bruce