Five things for you to watch this weekend
DONKERBOS — SHOWMAX There’s more than a shade of the first season of True Detective to this crime thriller series from creator Nico Scheepers but also lots of uniquely dark atmosphere and slow-boiling intrigue. In a small community in the forests of Limpopo, the discovery of the bodies of six children leads detective Stephanie “Fanie” van Wyk down a treacherous path that will force her to confront the darkest aspects of human nature, her own shortcomings and the secrets that some would rather keep hidden.
HACKS SEASON 2 — SHOWMAX
Jean Smart and Hannah Einbinder return as television’s dysfunctional comic duo in this second season, in which Smart’s acerbic veteran comedian Deborah Vance drags Einbinder’s socially sensitive young writer Ava on tour. There are vicious put-downs, sly digs at the absurdities of backwater America and refreshingly few life lesson moments on a journey that continues to prove that this is still one of the smartest comedies about.
SR — NETFLIX
Robert Downey Sr may be most famous to many people as the man who gave his name to his Iron Man-starring son but in the anarchic heyday of the late 1960s and 1970s, he was one of the foremost pioneers of hardhitting counterculture satirical films such as Putney Swope and Greaser’s Palace. shortly before his death in 2021, the elder Downey participates in a suitably unconventional documentary in which his more famous son sits down to talk to him about his unconventional life. What emerges is a tribute to a true cinematic maverick and a genuinely touching portrait of the relationship between father and son in the days before Sr’s fatal Parkinson’s diagnosis.
SLOW HORSES SEASON 2 — APPLE TV+
Gary Oldman returns as Jackson Lamb, the uberdysfunctional leader of a group of establishment-reject MI5 agents in this second series of the hugely enjoyable adaptation of the novels of Mick Herron. When a retired MI5 agent and former colleague of Lamb’s is discovered dead — ostensibly as the result of a heart attack — the chainsmoking, serial-farting and always unorthodox Lamb is convinced that more is going on than meets the eye.
LADY CHATTERLEY’S LOVER — NETFLIX
French director Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre breathes emotionally aching life into this adaptation of DH Lawrence’s legendary naughty novel about the smouldering, passionate romance between an unhappily married aristocratic woman and her husband’s gamekeeper. Starring Emma Corrin and Jack O’Connell, it pays fitting tribute to the forbidden love and heartbreak of its source material.