Five engaging things to watch this weekend
Crystal Moselle adapts her award-winning female skater feature film Skate Kitchen into an HBO series about the lives, challenges and love of skating and the independence and adventures it brings to a colourful and thoughtfully drawn cast of young New York women.
It’s sometimes funny, sometimes touching but always shot through with a deep love for its heroines and the many weird and wonderful aspects of life in the city they interact with in their daily quest to pursue their love of the sport and the freedom it offers.
BORGEN — NETFLIX
The Danish political drama that took over from The West Wing as the best political show of its era when it screened from 2010 to 2013 arrives on Netflix, ready for catch-up binging before the streaming service is set to premier its much-anticipated fourth season.
Set in the world of Denmark’s seemingly liberal socialdemocratic parliament and the newsrooms of its fourth estate, it’s a fascinating examination of myriad layers of the political experience on the national and personal fronts. Sidse Babett Knudsen as Birgitte Nyborg, the Scandinavian country’s fictional female prime minister, delivers a standout performance.
ATHLETE A — NETFLIX
Hot on the heels of Netflix’s docuseries about the horrific litany of alleged abuses by Jeffrey Epstein, this documentary examines the equally shocking but different story of the hundreds of young women who suffered years of sexual abuse at the hands of US Gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar. Told through the recollections of the reporters who broke the story and the testimony of many of Nassar’s victims, it’s a searing indictment of a long-running cover-up by the sport’s administrative bodies to save their reputation.
THE WASP NETWORK — NETFLIX
French director Olivier Assayas assembles a stellar cast that includes Edgar Ramirez, Penelope Cruz, Gael Garcia Bernal and Wagner Moura for this sometimes overly twisty and not always dramatically satisfying true story of a group of Cuban spies in the 1990s working to infiltrate the Miami exile movement. It doesn’t always deliver as much as it should but thanks to a strong cast there’s plenty to keep you intrigued.
DEVILS — SHOWMAX
Patrick “McDreamy” Dempsey sheds his shaggy haired Grey’s Anatomy good guy image for a slicked-back, Wolf of Wall Street role as a treacherous master of the universe in this series about financial intrigue in the era of the Greek economic collapse and the IMF reign of Dominique Strauss-Kahn.
When Massimo Ruggero (Alessandro Borghi), a young hotshot trader at a London bank, takes aim at a coveted position, it places him on the road to a showdown with his shady boss, Dominic Morgan (Dempsey). He’s confronted by a web of malfeasance, nefarious dealings and moral questions that force him to confront his past and decide what sort of man he wants to be.