WORTH WATCHING
Mystery Road
Soho, 8:30pm Thursday
All you need to know is that it’s set in the outback. There’s only ever really one vibe for movies and TV shows set in the Outback, and Mystery Road absolutely nails it. A spinoff of the 2013 film of the same name (and its 2016 sequel Goldstone), the TV series is a gritty but beautifully-shot crime drama in which two farm hands have disappeared on a massive cattle station. Townie detective Jay Swan (Aaron Pedersen) has his work cut out in the tight-knit and complex rural community. The station owner is also the top cop’s brother, that sort of thing.
All or Nothing: Manchester City Amazon Prime Video
From New Zealand to Manchester, the next stop for Amazon Prime Video’s All or
Nothing series takes us behind the scenes of one of the world’s most obscenely wealthy football clubs. Pep Guardiola, fairly low-key and subdued by football manager standards, is still infinitely more animated than Steve Hansen, and you’d have to imagine the likes of Sergio Aguero and Kevin De Bruyne are a bit more weird and intense than good old "Ben from Accounts" Smith. The trailer shows the team singing a dismal version of Wonderwall on a private jet — if that doesn’t sell you on the series, nothing will.
MOVIE OF THE WEEK Arrival
Three, 8:30pm Sunday
This would have to be up there as one of the more emotional and contemplative movies ever made about an alien invasion of Earth. Amy Adams stars as a linguist employed by the US army to try to interpret and communicate with aliens, who seem to have something they want to tell us, while at the same time trying to avoid some kind of intergalactic war breaking out. Smart, thought-provoking film, and a great soundtrack from Icelandic composer Johann Johannsson, who died this year.
PODCAST OF THE WEEK Dead Bodies
Have you ever seen a dead body? Probably not a question for a first date, but go around asking enough people and you’re bound to hear some interesting stories. That’s the concept behind this new Australian podcast series, anyway.
Hosted by radio personality Dee Dee Dunleavy, who has never seen a dead body, and crime reporter Sharnelle Vella, who has seen too many to count, Dead Bodies approaches its topic from a variety of angles. There are interviews with people who have unusual, horrifying and sometimes kind-of-funny dead body
experiences to share (the first episode ends with one of the hosts in tears of laughter), macabre stories from the past (was Sweeney Todd a real person?) and some interesting questions posed. For example: what kind of trauma do members of a jury suffer as a result of being exposed to horrific crime scene photos over the course of a trial?
There are the occasional extremely hamfisted sound effects in the mix too, but for the most part this is an interesting and entertaining podcast, worth a listen if you’re in the mood (maybe not a great one to play right before going to sleep). Not true crime, but true crime adjacent.
FROM THE VAULT The O.C.
TVNZ OnDemand
TVNZ OnDemand’s run of glorious millennial nostalgia continues with the arrival of all four seasons of the teen drama to end all teen dramas. Time has only added extra layers of pleasure to shows like this — in addition to the extremely hard-out storylines, now also behold the troubling early-2000s fashion choices, and let California by Phantom Planet bring a tear to your misty eyes.