Must-see TV
Even in 2019, December is a time of festive televisual fluff, holiday specials and movies you’ve seen a million times before. But while the expected repeats are likely to surface once again, there are still some new things worth watching this coming month.
TVNZ has a special celebrity edition of The Great New
Zealand Bake Off in the works, while the Cliff Curtis-backed Class Act (TVNZ1, December 7) sees communities coming together to put on a show.
Elsewhere, Netflix has another instalment of Rose Mciver’s royal rom-com A Christmas Prince (December 5), and Guy Pearce and Andy Serkis head an all-star adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, which will debut on Sky TV’S Neon on Boxing Day.
There’s also good news for fans of The Expanse (Amazon Prime Video, December 13), Lost in Space (Netflix, December 24), You (Netflix, December 26), Vikings (Lightbox, December 5) and Running Wild with Bear Grylls (National Geographic, December 1), as new instalments will drop next month.
However, after looking through the schedules, Stuff has picked out seven titles well worth checking out before the new year hits. that made this particular viewer stop and say ‘whoa’ every few seconds,’’ wrote The Guardian’s Rebecca Nicholson.
Suits and Mad Men’s Abigail Spencer stars in this drama about ‘‘a relentless femme fatale who, after being left for dead, leads a vengeful campaign against a bombastic gang of gearheads’’. The cast also includes Aladdin’s Mena Massoud and Home and Away’s Rhys Wakefield.
director Michael Bay brings his unique brand of mayhem to the global streaming service with this action movie about a group of individuals who form a vigilante squad after faking their deaths to take down notorious criminals.
Ryan Reynolds leads the charge, ably supported by the likes of Melanie Laurent and Dave Franco.
Based on Kathleen Barber’s novel Are You Sleeping, this crime drama follows the fortunes of true crime podcaster Poppy Parnell (Octavia Spencer) after she is called in to investigate the case of a convicted serial killer who she incriminated after he murdered the father of identical twins. Aaron Paul, Lizzy Caplan, Elizabeth Perkins, and Mekhi Phifer round out the main cast.