The best new TV shows to stream in September

1 week ago 4

There’s plenty to watch this month, including a new series from the creator of Mare of Easttown starring Mark Ruffalo and a British true-crime drama featuring David Tennant that examines the infamous News of the World phone-hacking scandal. Also, keep an eye out for Miranda Tapsell in Top End Bub, her follow-up series to the hit Aussie romcom Top End Wedding.

Netflix

Jason Bateman and Jude Law in Black Rabbit.

My top Netflix recommendation is Black Rabbit (September 18).

Now this is a promising pairing. Black Rabbit is a helter-skelter drama starring Jude Law (The Order) and Jason Bateman (Ozark) as estranged brothers Jake and Vince Friedken. The former is a successful New York club owner, a husband and a father, while the latter is, well, trouble. When Vince comes to Jake with debt collectors from the underworld on his tail, the pair are forcibly reunited and presented with an untenable bill. Shot on location in New York, it’s a riches-to-rags thriller that gives Bateman the kind of role he excels at: amoral and manipulative. The directors include Bateman, his Ozark co-star Laura Linney, and Australian filmmaker Justin Kurzel (Snowtown).

Also on Netflix: It’s another American scandal marked by huge profits and under-regulation. Youth care facilities are a multibillion-dollar industry that promise parents they can “cure” troubled adolescents. Some of these programs, according to survivors, favour forced medication, physical punishments and mental abuse couched as therapy. Wayward (September 25) dramatises the industry’s malignant presence. Creator Mae Martin (Feel Good) plays a small-town police officer who begins to suspect something is very wrong at a nearby centre. One troubling clue is the serenely creepy smile of Toni Collette (Hereditary), who runs the facility, and possibly the town. All kinds of horror reside in this show.

What percentage of Charlie Sheen’s chaotic life would he have to honestly discuss for it to be compelling celebrity viewing? Seventy per cent? Fifty per cent? Even 30? We’ll find out with the release of AKA Charlie Sheen (September 10), a two-part documentary in which the headline-making Hollywood star, who turned 60 this week and has been sober for seven years, talks through everything from his Los Angeles childhood and sudden 1980s stardom to his addiction spirals and ruptured marriages. Those interviewed alongside Sheen include friends, colleagues, ex-wives, and his former crack dealer.

August highlights: Political thriller Hostage started with the husband of Britain’s prime minister being kidnapped, and it only got wilder from there, while Helen Mirren and Pierce Brosnan went sleuthing with The Thursday Murder Club.

Disney+

Ethan Hawke as Lee Raybon in The Lowdown.

My top Disney+ recommendation is The Lowdown (September 24).

I have Disney+’s Reservation Dogs on my top 10 list of the best new series from this decade, so take it as a given that a new show from its co-creator, Native American writer/director Sterlin Harjo, is a big deal. Ethan Hawke, who guest-starred in one of the best episodes from the third and final season of Reservation Dogs, plays Lee Raybon, a citizen journalist and conspiracy theorist who lights a dangerous fuse in his home town of Tulsa, Oklahoma, when he starts investigating a local mogul’s death. This is an eccentric crime comedy, all crazy encounters and dry retorts – think Robert Altman’s The Long Goodbye and the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski.

Also on Disney+: Glen Powell is well on his way to Hollywood movie stardom – see Anyone but You and Netflix’s Hit Man for confirmation – but he’s also made the time to co-create and star in the second-chance sports comedy Chad Powers (September 30). Powell plays Russ Holliday, a once-promising American football quarterback who torpedoed his promising career in a moment of arrogance. Eight years later, Holliday decides to relaunch his career under prosthetics and the titular false name by enrolling for college and infiltrating the football program. Expect a mash-up of absurdity and redemption, with the ever-reliable Steve Zahn (Silo) leading the supporting cast.

August highlights: Sci-fi prequel Alien: Earth proved there’s still plenty of life in old nightmares, animated favourite King of the Hill got a terrific update, and Necaxa tried to recreate the Welcome to Wrexham magic.

HBO Max

Mark Ruffalo (left) stars as an ageing agent in Task.

My top HBO Max recommendation is Task (September 8).

It’s taken four years, but Mare of Easttown creator Brad Ingelsby returns with a gripping crime drama that elevates the genre in unexpected ways. At the centre of the story are two damaged men – an ageing FBI agent and a grieving thief played by Mark Ruffalo (The Avengers) and Tom Pelphrey (Ozark) – who are inexorably drawn together when the former is assigned to hunt the latter following a bloody crime. There are plenty of familiar elements to this limited series, including a taskforce of diverse law enforcement officers and a murderous bikie gang, but it’s also a story about the tender bonds between family members and the persistence of love and forgiveness in a harsh world.

Also on HBO Max: With its echoes of Frost/Nixon, Brian and Maggie (September 1) is a historical drama about one of the most momentous interviews in British political history. In 1989, as doubts about her rule grew, long-standing British prime minister Margaret Thatcher sat down for a television interview with Brian Walden, a formidable broadcaster with whom she nonetheless shared a friendship. By the time it was over, Thatcher’s hold on power was doomed and the pair would never speak again. With Stephen Frears (The Queen) directing, the headlining cast couldn’t be better: Harriet Walter (Succession) plays Thatcher, while Steve Coogan (Alan Partridge) channels Walden.

August highlights: The Yogurt Shop Murders was an unrelenting and deeply moving true-crime documentary series, while the twenty-something comic thriller Dead Hot offered bonkers fun.

Apple TV+

My top Apple TV+ recommendation is The Savant (September 26).

Inspired by a real-life story, this timely thriller stars Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty) as an anonymous online investigator who infiltrates online American hate groups to identify members and cells who are preparing to undertake acts of terror. Created by Melissa James Gibson (House of Cards, The Americans), the limited series mixes a digital procedural and obsessive drama, as Chastain’s Jodi Goodwin gets drawn so far into her secret work that it threatens her family. In an era when so many of the threats to a civil society stem from the backwash of the internet, this has the potential to strike a chord.

Also on Apple TV+: The pairing of Spike Lee as director and Denzel Washington as leading man is one of the cinema’s great ongoing collaborations. Their first feature film together was 1990’s Mo’ Better Blues, the finest is 1992’s Malcolm X, and the latest is Highest 2 Lowest (September 5). Loosely inspired by Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 classic High and Low, this crime thriller stars Washington as David King, a music mogul who has built an empire in New York that he’s struggling to hold together. When David’s son is kidnapped, his goals and beliefs are challenged, putting him into a difficult dialogue with his wife Pam (Ilfenesh Hadera) and best friend Paul (Jeffrey Wright).

August highlights: Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen continued to be hilarious comic foils in a second season of Platonic, while Chief of War was a vast Hawaiian period epic starring Jason Momoa.

Stan*

David Tennant and Toby Jones in The Hack.

My top Stan recommendation is The Hack (September TBC).

British screenwriter Jack Thorne has already enjoyed one landmark release this year with Netflix’s remarkable Adolescence, and now he returns with this true-crime drama about one of Britain’s most shocking public scandals – the widespread hacking of mobile phones by employees of News Corp’s now defunct News of the World. Spanning a decade, the story follows the revelatory work of investigative journalist Nick Davies (David Tennant) and his editor at The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger (Toby Jones), as well as the British police officer unravelling the botched murder investigation of a private detective connected to the phone-hacking process. The limited series should have much to say about the halls of power, media ethics and official corruption.

Also on Stan: It was the Australian murder trial obsessively followed around the globe, and now with the conviction of Erin Patterson for the murders by poisoning of three of her lunch guests in July 2023, the complete story can be explored at length. The first of an eventual three documentary episodes, Revealed – Death Cap Murders (September 14) delves behind the headlines to offer new details and expert perspectives. Directed by Gil Marsden (United States of Scandal with Jake Tapper), the narrative uses two journalists from The Age, crime reporter Marta Pascual Juanola and veteran crime writer John Silvester, as guides to unpack not only the complex case, but the grieving small town in which it occurred.

August highlights: Romantic drama devotees got the spin-off they craved with Outlander: Blood of My Blood, plus a new version of the John Grisham legal thriller The Rainmaker.

Amazon Prime Video

My top Amazon Prime recommendation is Top End Bub (September 12).

It is – no kidding – six years since the Australian romantic comedy Top End Wedding charmed audiences and collected at the box office via the marital misadventures of Indigenous lawyer Lauren (Miranda Tapsell) and her British boyfriend Ned (Gwilym Lee). Now the film’s writers, Tapsell and Joshua Tyler, return to the characters with this eight-part series, which brings the couple back to Darwin and the Tiwi Islands when Lauren’s sister Ronelle suddenly dies. There’s not only grieving, but also responsibility – career-savvy Lauren and Ned are suddenly raising Ronelle’s young daughter, Taya (Gladys-May Kelly). This one is going to have all the emotions, and done right it should be a charming crowd-pleaser.

Also on Amazon Prime: I’m not sure how subtle this psychological thriller about maternal possessiveness will be, but then again the genre is more fun when it willingly goes all in. In The Girlfriend (September 10), Cherry (Olivia Cooke), falls in love with the privileged Daniel (Laurie Davidson). But when he introduces her to his formidable mother, Laura (Robin Wright), the two women do not bond. Cherry thinks Laura wants Daniel for herself; Laura thinks Cherry is a gold-digger. A cat-and-mouse game takes shape, as their skirmishes quickly escalate and past truths are unearthed.

August highlights: The Hollywood action thriller got a South Korean makeover with Butterfly, while Taylor Kitsch took centre stage for action thriller The Terminal List: Dark Wolf.

ABC iview

My top iview recommendation is Mystery Road: Origin (September 21).

Indigenous police detective Jay Swan is one of the great Australian screen characters, an unrelenting seeker of the truth who is torn between the demands of his career and his community. There have been outstanding movies and strong subsequent spin-off series with Jay played by Aaron Pedersen, and now there’s a second season of the successful Origin prequel, in which Mark Coles Smith (Apple Cider Vinegar) plays a younger Jay alongside Tuuli Narkle (NCIS: Sydney) as his wife Mary. In the new season, set in 2000, the pair try to build a life together in a small town before a series of crimes set them on a tumultuous path.

August highlights: The Family Next Door was an acutely observed Australian thriller, and there were satisfying twists in the British family secrets mystery I, Jack Wright.

SBS On Demand

Rose Ayling-Ellis stars in Code of Silence.

My top SBS On Demand recommendation is Code of Silence (September 10).

In this taut British crime thriller, a team of police detectives in Kent trying to crack a criminal gang planning a major robbery discover a major asset in their building’s canteen. Alison Woods (Rose Ayling-Ellis) is a deaf kitchen hand who, when put undercover near the suspects, can read their lips as they plot together. It is a whole new world for Alison, who has lived an insular life, and one that proves dangerous, especially when she grows emotionally attached to one of her targets, Liam Barlow (Kieron Moore). Created by Catherine Moulton (The Stolen Girl), the series puts a new spin on a familiar genre while delivering genuine representation – Ayling-Ellis has been deaf since birth.

Also on SBS On Demand: The People vs Robodebt (September 24) is a three-part documentary about one of the most shameful events in the history of Australian governance: the automated debt-assessment scheme run under successive Coalition governments in the 2010s that incorrectly issued debt notices to welfare recipients without any lawful basis. Hundreds of thousands of Australians, many deeply vulnerable, were put at risk. Some robo-debt victims took their own lives before a public outcry and legal challenges resulted in the program’s evisceration. Those who wrongfully received notices, family members of the departed, activists, whistleblowers and lawyers contribute to what is hopefully a comprehensive account of a stain on our history.

August highlights: Rotterdam’s busy docks were the atmospheric backdrop for the blackly comic European crime thriller Safe Harbor.

Other streamers

Domhnall Gleeson is Ned, the optimistic editor-in-chief of the Toledo Truth Teller in The Paper.

My top recommendation for the other streaming services is Binge’s The Paper (September 4)

Let’s break this down. This American comedy is a spin-off from the much-loved sitcom The Office, not a direct sequel. The connection is that the documentary crew whose fly-on-the-wall shooting and deadpan interviews made The Office and its chaotic paper company into a mockumentary now have a new subject, a struggling local newspaper in Ohio whose new editor, Ned Sampson (Domhnall Gleeson), is trying to get by with volunteer journalists. The two shows share a creator (Greg Daniels) and one character – accountant Oscar Martinez (Oscar Nunez) – makes the crossover as the two workplaces share some corporate DNA. The show’s existential challenge is to find its own dynamic – a retread of Steve Carell’s Michael Scott won’t cut it.

Also: There are so many weekly British murder mysteries, in which the idiosyncratic detective and their offsider solve a homicide with clues and charm inside the hour, that they now have their own genre: cosy crime. What makes BritBox’s Death Valley (September 2) stand out? For a start, it has two idiosyncratic personalities. Welsh police detective Janie Mallowan (Gwyneth Keyworth) and retired actor John Chapel (Timothy Spall) form an unofficial partnership after she’s assigned to the suspicious death of his neighbour. The banter between the unlikely duo has real wit, especially since John spent years playing a celebrated sleuth on a television show forever in reruns. These murders come with some meta-comedy.

August highlights: Past and present crimes got a supernatural edge in Paramount+’s Australian mystery Playing Gracie Darling.

* Nine owns Stan and this masthead.

Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.

Read Entire Article