What to stream this week: Miranda Tapsell’s rom-com and five more

5 days ago 11

Top End Bub ★★★½ (Amazon Prime Video)

Forget unrelenting grimness so complete you can describe it with a gruff German word. The trickiest tone on television is a light touch that actually resonates. Thankfully, that’s what this Australian series, a sequel to the hit 2019 film Top End Wedding, brings to the screen. Galvanised by grief and focused on adapting to demanding personal circumstances, Top End Bub nonetheless prospers with warm laughs, a good measure of silliness, and some culture clash chaos. This show gives off a nurturing glow.

Lauren Ford (Miranda Tapsell) juggles grief with having to care for her nine-year-old niece in the warm-hearted Top End Bub.

The set-up is purposeful and – deliberately – a touch jarring. The romantic-comedy couple from the movie, Lauren (Miranda Tapsell) and Ned (Gwilym Lee), are prospering in Adelaide as, respectively, a divorce lawyer and cafe proprietor. But when Lauren’s sister, health worker Ronelle (Shari Sebbens), is lost in a car crash, the two are in Darwin, grieving for Ronelle and dealing with their inherited responsibility. They’re next up to raise Ronelle’s eight-year-old daughter, Taya (Gladys-May Kelly). Parenting suddenly goes from the theoretical to the practical.

In the movie Ned, and occasionally even Lauren, were educated in the ways of Darwin and the Tiwi Islands to the north. His British pluck and her Indigenous moxie easily made for comic friction. The series, which spans eight half-hour episodes, has to fashion a sharper edge. Ned is confused by what has happened, Lauren scared of letting down Taya, who everyone calls “Bub”. Neither was ready to let go of their own priorities to accommodate a heartbroken child. There has to at least be a suggestion they’ll crack under pressure.

What gets them, and the audience, through is the best of intentions and sweetly disastrous executions. Will Taya’s ninth birthday party succumb to chaos because Lauren and Ned try too hard? Yes. Will it end on a happy note of togetherness? Absolutely. The returning writers, Tapsell and Joshua Tyler, create a welcoming atmosphere of Darwin sunshine and inclusive extended family. Lauren’s parents, Daffy (Ursula Yovich) and Trevor (Huw Higginson), are prominent, while Elaine Crombie adds a madcap spark to every family function as Dana.

Trevor Ford (Huw Higginson), Ned Pelton (Gwilym Lee) and Taya “Bub” (Gladys-May Kelly) in Top End Bub.

As a child character Taya is written particularly well – her moods can rightly swing dramatically, and there are times she’s truculent and demanding. Without ever redefining the genre, Top End Bub has several other welcome tweaks and grace notes even as it shows how family can be an unending source of demands. The chemistry between Tapsell and Lee remains goofy and genuine. There’s something to be said for a romantic pairing with a height discrepancy. They have an everyday authenticity. That’s just one of the reasons this big-hearted comedy clicks.

Revealed: Death Cap Murders ★★★ (**Stan*)**

The spectrum of how much coverage people desire of the now infamous mushroom murders case is wide: at one end is, “I’m done with this”, at the other lies, “Inject more coverage straight into my eyeballs”. I’m in between, which makes the release of the first episode in a three-part series (part two and three are due before year’s end) about convicted triple murderer Erin Patterson worth considering. Thankfully, Death Cap Murders has some additive merit.

Deftly directed by Gil Marsden and not quite an hour long, the episode covers roughly the first three months of the case, with an emphasis on background detail. The narrative is guided by reporters, notably The Age’s John Silvester and Marta Pascual Juanola. The details of the case that true-crime junkies have previously pored over are referenced, but they’re not yet central to the narrative. This is a foundation episode, about people and places.

As well as the escalating crisis in August 2023, as Patterson’s lunch guests were hospitalised, you learn more about her past, whether as an air traffic controller who was fired or her romantic pursuit of husband Simon Patterson. You get a sense of the small Gippsland town of Korumburra, and – crucially – who Patterson’s victims were. The loss of Gail Patterson, Don Patterson, and Heather Wilkinson is recognised and felt. That’s a good start.

Steve Coogan and Harriet Walter in Brian and Maggie.

Brian and Maggie ★★★ HBO Max

In two compact episodes, this British historic drama aims high and doesn’t quite reach the heights in depicting the professional and personal bond between Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (Harriet Walter) and Labour MP turned political interviewer Brian Walden (Steve Coogan), which was severed after a tumultuous 1989 television interview between the pair. The leads are first-rate, but the script from Paul Graham (Sherwood) can sometimes feel like a creaky primer for the era and the art of the long-form political interview. Also, the show has a sharper perception of Walden than Thatcher.

Unknown Number: The High School Catfish ★★★½ (Netflix)

Credit to director Skye Borgman, who has taken a horrifying American story with sensational twists and told it cleanly and with a degree of contemplation rare in the true-crime genre. The setting is a tiny Michigan town, where for two years a young high-school student couple were tormented with thousands of abusive messages that appeared to be coming from someone who knew them. While it lacks wider, illuminating detail about the insular community, the feature-length documentary’s participants are given not only a voice, but also the chance to consider what they were truly part of.

Eileen ★★★ Paramount+

A psychological thriller fashioned as a bleak coming-of-age story, this adaptation by author Ottessa Moshfegh and her husband, Luke Goebel, of her breakthrough 2015 novel, works hard to capture the mordant detail and interior unease of the text. Set in a stultifying 1964 America, the result can be opaque but vicious, a rare combination made practical by director William Oldroyd (Lady Macbeth) and attuned lead performances from Thomasin McKenzie and Anne Hathaway. The former is a despondent secretary at a correctional facility, the latter the striking new psychologist who becomes a subject of obsession.

77th Primetime Emmy Awards (Binge)

If you want the live Emmys experience, be prepared: the awards show commences at 10am on Monday. Hosted by comic Nate Bargatze, whose droll style should link the giving of gongs but never overwhelm them, the annual television reckoning has several crucial battles for votes. In drama there’s Noah Wyle and The Pitt versus Adam Scott and Severance, while the tussle in comedy pits newcomer The Studio against The Bear and Hacks. Me? I’m hoping Andor and Dying for Sex get some recognition, plus an outrageous acceptance speech or two.

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