Five things to watch this weekend

THE LAST THING HE WANTED — NETFLIX

Based on Joan Didion’s 1980s Iran-Contra scandal novel, Dee Rees’s film is sometimes a little overly complicated for its own good but still provides plenty of wheeler-dealing political intrigue. Starring Anne Hathaway, Willem Dafoe and Ben Affleck, it’s the story of what happens when a veteran journalist under pressure from her cunning back-room-dealing father agrees to do a favour that turns her into the focus of attention of an embarrassing and unwanted scandal for US diplomatic relations in troubled Cold War-era Central America.

QUEEN SONO — NETFLIX

Netflix’s first original African series stars Pearl Thusi as a buttkicking secret agent working to bring down the corrupt and greedy in Africa. Part action thriller, or political drama, Kagiso Lediga’s series provides a refreshingly entertaining look at Africa and its complexities from a wholly African perspective. It’s a new take on an old trope but with plenty of beautifully filmed pan-African locations and pleasantly familiar faces in its cast, it’s also good and solid entertainment.

BABIES — NETFLIX

Over six episodes this docuseries examines everything we love and coo about when it comes to the little people we can’t stop making, loving and being perplexed and intrigued by. If this doesn’t make you broody and awed by infants and the surprisingly complicated ways they learn to deal with the world, then nothing will.

THE FORGIVEN — SHOWMAX

With comments by FW de Klerk and apartheid at the recent national conversation, director Roland Joffé’s claustrophobic but searching two-hander seems timely enough to forgive the prosthetics used to turn Forest Whitaker into Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Set at the beginning of the Truth Commission, it’ sa fictional story of a meeting between Tutu and an apartheidera murderer played by Eric Bana looking for redemption in exchange for full disclosure.

NYMPHOMANIAC — SHOWMAX

Not for the youngsters or the fainthearted, Lars von Trier’s double bill exploring the much darker side of sex is a difficult to watch but intellectually rewarding dissection of desire, humiliation and attraction. Starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, it’ sa nominal two-film tale of one young woman’s sexual life from adolescence to adulthood that leaves you feeling exhilarated, disgusted and uncomfortable in equal measure.