Here’s how to outsource a break-up
The Breaker Upperers (2018) Available Friday
This film might be both an antidote to the saccharine sentimentality of Valentine’s Day and the biggest antipodean sleeper comedy hit since Summer Heights High.
Jackie van Beek and Madeleine Sami are kind of like the New Zealand version of Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. Here they play Jen and Mel, best friends and romantic cynics who, for a fee, will end their client’s relationships for them — whether that be via a singing telegram, mock pregnancy or even a few faked deaths.
Yet even as business is booming, the cracks are beginning to show, both in Jen and Mel’s relationship and the rather flawed methodology on which their careers are based.
Things are falling apart for them, but in a way that leads to personal epiphanies and witty musical numbers — there are hints of Muriel’s Wedding here too. This premiered last year to very warm reviews at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas, and it’s well worth a look.
Dead Set Five parts, available now
If you’ve run out of road with the brilliant Black Mirror, it’s well worth having a look at the rest of Charlie Brooker’s previous work.
This five-part mini-series which was originally broadcast on Channel 4 in 2008, isn’t quite as macabre and clever as its successful successor, but there are clear signs of what was to come from Brooker in the dystopian darkness of the premise.
The series follows the contestants and producers on a fictional series of a Big Brother-like reality show, who become stranded on set as a zombie outbreak destroys the world outside.
There are appearances from Riz Ahmed and Warren Brown (Idris Elba’s detective sidekick on Luther), as well as a brilliantly ghoulish Davina McCall. There’s even a short zombie cameo from Brooker himself.
As the world outside gets reduced to its most apocalyptic, the survivors inside and out of the Big Brother-style house are reduced to hatchets and improvised spears to fend off any undead stragglers lurking around their workplace. If Black Mirror is the polished studio masterpiece this is like the demo tape, but it’s no less watchable for that.
Planet Earth II Available now
What will the BBC do when David Attenborough is no longer with us? Who else can narrate the dramas of the natural world with a voice that is simultaneously biblical and humane, as deep and lush as a Christmas cake?
Like the other instalments of the Planet Earth series this masterfully establishes emotional narratives around its creatures without ever quite crossing the line into full-on reality show cheesiness.
This means one minute you’re cheering on an iguana like it’s Sonia O’Sullivan on the home straight, the next you’re weeping as a tern returns to her nest to find it robbed by another bird. As the tern composes itself on the broken egg, the narration describes the unfolding tragedy with heartbreaking economy: “She knows something’s not quite right, but her drive to incubate is strong.”
The photography is obviously incredible as always and the whole thing is scored by none other than Hans Zimmer. You couldn’t call it escapism but it is engrossing.
Great News 10 episodes available now
From the New Zealand Tina Fey to the actual Tina Fey. She co-produced this and you can tell: it shares the same hyper caffeinated sensibility that 30 Rock and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt share.
It deals with a news producer named Katie (Briga Heelan) who has her work life disrupted when her boss (Adam Campbell) hires her loving but overbearing mother (Andrea Martin) as an intern at the station.
It manages to satirise journalism and particularly morning television without ever letting things get too real (no layoffs or waning of journalism here for instance).
The strength of the series is the jokes, which come at a mile-a-minute, rather than any overarching thematic ambition and there is a surprisingly strong performance from none other than Nicole Ritchie.
It was cancelled last year by NBC — after two seasons — but don’t let that put you off.