Globetrotting dramas abound
Fairfax’s picks out the best on the box for the week ahead.
James Croot The drama of death
The Murder Detectives is a threepart, 2015 British series which recreates real-life murder investigations as a drama, from the perspective of the police and victim and suspect’s families. ‘‘It had no sexy pathologists or troubled backstories, but was absolutely fascinating,’’ wrote The Guardian’s Sam Wollaston.
Tonight, 8.30pm, Prime Different beat for Rodrigo
As the third season of the New York Symphony-inspired dramedy Mozart in the Jungle gets under way, Rodrigo (Gael Garcia Bernal) arrives in Venice, Italy, to conduct the grand return concert of a famous, reclusive opera diva. Meanwhile, Hailey (Lola Kirke) takes a European adventure of her own, touring with the Andrew Walsh Ensemble and finds it’s not what she had hoped.
Begins streaming on Lightbox on Saturday.
Wood bags new role
The Lord of the Rings’ Elijah Wood’s latest project, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, finds him in the real world, but its weirdness could rival Middle-earth. He plays Todd Brotzman, a hotel bellhop thrust into a sci-fi flavoured mystery with some bizarre characters, including Dirk Gently (Samuel Barnett), an eccentric sleuth who believes in the ‘‘fundamental interconnectedness of all things’’ and sees Brotzman as the Watson to his Sherlock.
Begins streaming on Sunday on Netflix.
Familiar faces return
From Vienna to Paris to the southern Peloponnese. Yes, 2013’s third nine-year dip, Before Midnight, into the lives of ‘‘strangers on a train’’ Jesse (Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy) this time finds the pair coming to the end of a six-week vacation on the Greek peninsula with their twin daughters. While remaining true to the contemporary, realistic dialogue, weighty themes and meditative mood that marked out the original Before Sunrise as one of the most memorable small movies of the 1990s, writer-director Richard Linklater and his two co-writing stars have also ensured its concerns have grown up along with its original Generation X audience. In some ways, it’s the flip side to Judd Apatow’s far more comedic This is 40.
Sunday, 8.30pm, Maori TV Neill’s Egyptian adventure
In the new drama series Tutankhamun, down-on-his-heels archaeologist Howard Carter (Max Irons) stumbles on evidence of an undiscovered tomb of one of Egypt’s forgotten Pharaohs, the Boy King Tutankhamun, at the heart of the Valley of the Kings. Other archaeologists dismiss Carter’s theories as impossible, a romantic dream: the valley, they say, has been dug out. Only one man believes in Carter’s dream, and put up the money he needs: Lord Carnarvon (Sam Neill), a born gambler and thrill-seeker. Together they overcome all odds – corrupt officials and rival digs, World War, revolution – in pursuit of this impossible dream. It seems nothing can come between them, until Carter falls in love with Carnarvon’s daughter, Evelyn.
Tuesday, 8.30pm, Prime