PICKOFPAYTV AND MOVIES

NETFLIX NEW!

LOST IN SPACE (Season 3) ★★★★ The children were on their own when we left Netflix’s slick sci-fi show, and are forced to grow up fast in these final episodes. This show has always looked impressive, but season three has some next-level special effects. From Wednesday.

NEW! MONEY HEIST (Part 5, Volume 2) ★★★ The Professor has made a huge mistake in the final batch of this popular Spanish heist drama. From Friday.

MOVIE THE POWER OF THE DOG

(2021) 12 ◆ ★★★★ Benedict Cumberbatch is on powerful form as a charismatic but mean rancher in Netflix’s strongest Oscar contender.

Jane Campion’s western follows the rift between

Phil (Cumberbatch, right) and his weak brother in

1920s Montana, and makes for a brutal, brilliant viewing experience.

From Wednesday.

MOVIE SINGLE ALL THE WAY

(2021)

12 ◆ ★★★ Peter and Nick are best friends who are surely destined to be together in a festive US romcom with a neat cast. Look out for The White Lotus’s Jennifer Coolidge, in particular, as Aunt Sandy. From Thursday.

AMAZON PRIME NEW!

THE WHEEL OF TIME (Episodes 1-5) ★★★ The body count is steadily mounting in Amazon’s grand fantasy series about the search for a saviour. Filming on the second season is already under way and the showrunner, Rafe Judkins, imagines it could run to six more. Imagine the body count by theendofthat. Weekly, on Fridays.

NEW! HARLEM (Season 1) ★★★ Four women try to take control in love and work for this US comedy, which is set in the New York City neighbourhood of the title and has a snappy sense of humour. From Friday.

DRAMA LITTLE FIRES

EVERYWHERE (All eight parts) ★★★★ Reese Witherspoon and Kerry Washington star in this moreish adaptation of Celeste Ng’s novel about secrets and motherhood in 1990s suburbia.

MOVIE THE TOMORROW WAR

(2021) 12 ◆ ★★★ Aliens ravage the Earth of the future, and the humans who face them draft the people of the past to help. Chris Pratt plays a draftee in a sci-fi blockbuster that was originally destined for cinemas, and clocks in at two hours and 20 minutes. It doesn’t drag, though, and packs a decent emotional punch.

DISNEY+

NEW! THE BIG LEAP (Episode 1) ★★★★ This US drama about second chances is a nice balance of warm heart and dry wit, and will leave you with a smile. It follows a TV contest, the winners of which will stage a live TV production of Swan Lake.

Scott Foley plays an amusingly cynical producer, with Mallory

Jansen as his Simon Cowell.

Weekly, from Wednesday.

MOVIE DIARY OF A WIMPY

KID (2021) PG ● ★★★ The first of Jeff Kinney’s smart, funny children’s books becomes an animation. From Friday.

SKY / NOW NEW! THE GIRL IN THE WOODS

(Season 1) ★★★ Nightmares lurk behind a woodland door in this US chiller, and the super-strong girl who guards against them has run away. The spooky series follows Carrie as she makes new teen friends in the human world. From Tuesday.

SAVED BY THE BELL/PUNKY BREWSTER (Season 1) ★★★ The21stcentury revivals for these two US children’s comedies – about a sunny California school and a free-spirited foster girl, respectively. The first one has edge, the second warmth.

COMEDY BEST OF THE REST NEW!

QUEENS OF MYSTERY (Acorn TV) ★★★★ Sarah Hadland plays PR Rowena (below), one of the murder suspects in a mystery at a spa, as this fun Midsomer Murders-style show returns. Weekly, from Monday.

NEW! ALEX RIDER (IMDB TV) ★★★ The slick teen spy drama returns for a new series, and for free, although it does come with adverts. At the start, Alex seems unusually uncertain – his old ‘friends’, such as Mrs Jones (Vicky Mcclure), are nowhere to be seen – but

that doesn’t last for long. From Friday.

PAY MOVIES

JUNE AGAIN (2020) 12 ◆ (Sky Store, Virgin) ★★★★ Heartfelt and fundamentally feel-good Australian drama about a woman with dementia who suddenly hits a lucid spell. June breaks out of her nursing home to see her family, but only has so long to fix the damage she finds.

REMINISCENCE (2021) 12 ◆ (BT Film Store, Sky Store, Virgin) ★★★ Noirish sci-fi set in a sweltering future Miami, with Hugh Jackman as a ‘private investigator of the mind’ who becomes lost in memory when a sultry client vanishes. Both from Monday.