DISNEY+, SKY, AMAZON, BRITBOX & NETFLIX
We dig out the hidden gems so you don’t have to...
BUG OUT
IMDb DOCUMENTARY
Think heists and you’re probably thinking cash, bullion, jewels, bearer bonds…
This pacy four-part whodunnit docuseries recounts the ‘biggest live insect heist in history’. And while it’s hard to imagine there’s much competition, this tale of the bizarre theft of $50,000 worth of living bugs from the Philadelphia Insectarium is certainly one of the more compelling, stranger-than-fiction true-crime docs out there, and has been described as ‘Tiger King meets Ace Ventura’. From Friday
JOE VS CAROLE PEACOCK/NOW DRAMA
Tiger King captured the public’s imagination like few documentaries before it when it burst on to Netflix during the first lockdown. Now Peacock is getting in on the action with this dramatisation of events. John Cameron Mitchell (right) plays Joe Exotic, and Kate McKinnon is Carole Baskin, while Kyle MacLachlan is particularly inspired casting as Howard Baskin. This is a tale that rivals Twin Peaks in the sheer bizarreness stakes.
From Friday
LUCY AND DESI AMAZON DOCUMENTARY
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz (right) were one of the original Hollywood power couples, founding
Desilu Productions to market their sitcom I Love Lucy to TV networks – basically inventing the concept of broadcast syndication in the process. Bette Midler is among the talking heads in this biopic, directed by Parks And Recreation star Amy Poehler as a love letter to the pioneers who changed the shape of sitcoms for ever.
From Friday
IN THE EARTH SKY STORE FILM
If you go down to the woods today you’re sure of a big surprise… Made over the course of 15 days during the pandemic, Ben Wheatley’s British horror bears some signs of its schedule but is an effective chiller. Scientific researcher Martin (Joel Fry) and his guide Alma (Ellora Torchia) venture into some woods to find a scientist conducting experiments on the terrain’s unusual fertility. From Sunday
PIECES OF HER NETFLIX DRAMA
Andrea (Bella Heathcote) is having lunch at a restaurant on her 30th birthday with her therapist mum Laura (Toni Collette) when a crazed shooter attacks the customers. Despite being injured, Laura violently dispatches him and a video goes viral, setting off events revealing part of Laura’s past that her daughter never suspected. From Friday
WEST SIDE STORY DISNEY+ FILM
You might think a remake of one of the greatest ever musicals by one of our greatest living directors would be a box-office smash, but Spielberg’s West Side Story (below) bombed despite ecstatic reviews. Analysts think it was because the target audience was reluctant to return to the cinema. But this looks and sounds great and will bring a tear to your eye. From Wednesday
MURDER IN PROVENCE BRITBOX DRAMA
This crime drama opens with shots of a sun-drenched vineyard, lush lavender, a honey-stone village… we get it – we’re in Provence. In the first of three episodes there’s been a murder in the university. Judge Antoine (Roger Allam) and life partner Marine (Nancy Carroll, both right) look into it. From Tuesday
STAR TREK: PICARD AMAZON SCI-FI
Patrick Stewart returns to boldly go, even (spoiler alert) after his character’s demise at the end of the last series. Granted a new synthetic body, he ventures forth aboard the La Sirena. Whoopi Goldberg delights fans by returning as Guinan. From Friday
DRAMA THE DROPOUT DISNEY+ DRAMA
The trial of Elizabeth Holmes and her company Theranos has been big news and has divided opinion across the US. For the uninitiated, Holmes proposed a new way of taking blood samples, imagining a device that provided accurate results using only a small amount of blood – a pinprick rather than a syringe. The plan was popular and attracted huge sums from investors – however, the science was not sound. This seven-part dramatised account is based on a factual podcast of the same name and stars Amanda Seyfried (left) as Holmes, with Naveen Andrews as her former partner (business and romantic) Sunny Balwani, and Stephen Fry as British biochemist and Theranos chief scientist Ian Gibbons. From Thursday
UNCLE
BRITBOX COMEDY BOXSET
Comic Nick Helm stars in this underrated sitcom as a frustrated, suicidal, out-of-work musician who finds renewed purpose when he’s forced to look after his nephew. Years ahead of Ricky Gervais’s After Life, it’s a poignant, dark but always outrageously funny comedy. Daisy Haggard and young Elliot Speller-Gillott co-star. From Thursday
SURVIVING PARADISE:
A FAMILY TALE
NETFLIX NATURE DOCUMENTARY
Regé-Jean Page got viewers hot under the collar in his breakout role in Bridgerton. Now he is set to send temperatures soaring in a different way as narrator of this documentary charting life for the lions, elephants and other animals that call the Okavango Delta – a vast oasis amid the Kalahari Desert – home. From Thursday
PARIS, 13TH DISTRICT CURZON HOME CINEMA FILM
A very adult sex drama of the sort that only the French seem to make these days. This is about the non-traditional relationships between four young people – three women and a man – in a beautifully filmed black-and-white Paris. Noémie Merlant (Portrait Of A Lady On Fire) is the big draw. From Friday