Normal text sizeLarger text sizeVery large text size
This week’s picks include The Beast in Me, Australian black comedy He Had It Coming, Kiwi musical Happiness (with bonus Rebecca Gibney) and dad action comedy Playdate.
The Beast in Me ★★★★½ (Netflix)
For many decades, scientists have tried and failed to generate cold fusion, the hypothetical process of achieving nuclear fusion at or near room temperature. For those seeking assistance, I would suggest watching this gripping limited-series, a psychological thriller about culpability and anger, because the scenes shared by the two leads, Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys, deliver an almighty charge. At every level, from emotional to atomic, the pair forge a phenomenal connection.
Claire Danes and Matthew Rhys in The Beast in Me.
Stars of Homeland and The Americans respectively, Danes and Rhys play Aggie Wiggs, an acclaimed memoirist still furiously grieving the loss of a child, and Nile Jarvis, the scion of a New York property development family who was the prime suspect in the unsolved disappearance of his first wife, Madison. When Nile and his new wife, Nina (Brittany Snow), become Aggie’s neighbours in a tiny Long Island hamlet, the antenna of the writer and the real estate mogul are raised.
Created by author and screenwriter Gabe Rotter (The X-Files), The Beast in Me is deeply satisfying on multiple, complementary, levels. Once Aggie and Nile get acquainted, and he arrogantly dares her to write about him, to which she hungrily agrees, the show intertwines a rich psychological insight, a twisty plot that bears down while opening up supporting players, and uncomfortable realisations.
Claire Danes as Aggie Wiggs and Brittany Snow as Nina in The Beast in Me.
There’s a primal jolt to their conversations, whether on or off the record. “It’s complicated,” Aggie tells Nile, trying to explain how her life has run aground. “Is it?” Nile replies, challenging the life raft narrative Aggie has fashioned for herself. The two see something in each other – it’s not sexual – that they’re drawn to, a truth they want to draw out. If you see me as a monster, Nile subtly suggests, it’s because you’re one, too.
Loading
There’s a bitter melancholy here, about the compromises we make and how they never go away. But the thoughtfulness never negates the muscular storytelling. There’s a juicy take on hardball New York politics, plus near-misses and high tension stemming from suspicion and deception. Niles is, in turn, menacing and seductive, so how do you make his father, Martin, matter? Cast Breaking Bad enforcer Jonathan Banks in the role.
The ending is a touch abrupt, but it stays true to the idea of people admitting who they are. And The Beast in Me never stops showcasing what it has with Danes and Rhys. You could say the two are individually revisiting familiar ground, particularly Danes and her fractured psyche, but putting them together is a master class. What a scary, sublime union.
Lydia West (left) and Natasha Liu Bordizzo in He Had It Coming.
He Had It Coming ★★★ (Stan*)
Few institutions are better primed for satire than the contemporary university, a space where heated activism, youth culture trends, stuffy academic tradition and institutional might are constantly butting heads. This Australian limited series, which uses a murder mystery to position the black comedy, takes plenty of bites at the subject, but it doesn’t draw enough blood. Farcically pleasant but rarely chaotic or combative, He Had It Coming never truly escapes the gravity of convention.
Loading
The central relationship is a mismatched buddy cops update: misfit English scholarship student Elise (Lydia West) and sleek influencer Barbara (Natasha Liu Bordizzo) move in entirely different campus circles, until a few drinks and shared annoyance at the patriarchy lead them to vandalise a statue. The next morning, they wake to discover someone has added the murdered body of a big shot male student and the slogan “Kill all men” to their paint work.
For self-preservation, the pair have to find the real killer, a process for which they are not prepared. Along the way there are broad depictions of student feminists, men’s rights activists, international students and pervy professors, but the generic world-building – it’s an Australian university with American traditions, such as sports stars and secret societies – robs the storytelling of a defining earthiness. Amazon Prime Video’s unstoppable Deadloch is the benchmark for this kind of absurdist broadside, and for now, it remains unchallenged.
Rebecca Gibney and Harry McNaughton in Happiness.
Happiness ★★★ (HBO Max)
Somewhere between a grown-up Glee and Christopher Guest’s classic mockumentary Waiting for Guffman, this solid New Zealand musical comedy happily traffics in feel-good mishaps and sweet solidarity. When young Broadway director Charlie (Harry McNaughton) is sent home due to visa issues, his mother, Gaye (Rebecca Gibney), persuades him to take over her amateur musical theatre group’s latest project, a swords, sandals and show tunes epic. The production’s winning songs punctuate the backstage shenanigans, and Happiness manages to keep the necessary cliches in check with brevity and the satisfaction of underdog achievement.
Kevin James (left) and Alan Ritchson in Playdate.
Playdate ★★★½ (Amazon Prime Video)
It’s a small miracle. The action-comedy about an elite spy or soldier trying to covertly navigate suburban family life is a lifeless, formulaic genre, but this take – with Reacher star Alan Ritchson and The King of Queens’s Kevin James as very different dads thrown together – wins out with supercharged stupidity. Ritchson is game for anything, including sending up his own beefy persona, and writer Neil Goldman (Scrubs) and director Luke Greenfield (Let’s Be Cops) go for cartoonish fight scenes and loopy bonding. The final act loses steam, but there’s comic lunacy here worthy of MacGruber.
Lynsey Addario on assignment in Iridimi Refugee Camp, Wadi Fira, Chad.Credit: National Geographic/Caitlin Kelly
Love + War ★★★ (Disney+)
When this documentary is following its subject, the Pulitzer Prize-winning American photojournalist Lynsey Addario, in the conflict zones where she has shot some of her most telling work, it is a compelling piece that explores with nuance the ethical and emotional limits of capturing horrendous suffering with a globe-spanning lens.
When it visits Addario and her family at home in London, it is undemanding and merely rewarding. Ultimately, the good outweighs the makeweight, especially as Addario is a striking personality with a history intertwined through too many of this century’s wars.
Laura Linney in The Big C.
The Big C ★★★(Netflix)
With all four seasons streaming on Netflix for the first time, it’s worth reconsidering this emotionally twisty dramedy from 2010, which divided audiences (and critics) with its depiction of an American high school teacher, Cathy Jamison (Laura Linney), who hides her stage-four cancer diagnosis from her family and friends. Linney is superb, showing us a woman who refuses to be defined by the vastness of a terminal diagnosis; it is a series about transformation as much as mortality. And, yes, that’s The Night Agent star Gabriel Basso as Cathy’s teenage son, Adam.
*Stan is owned by Nine, the publisher of this masthead.
Find out the next TV, streaming series and movies to add to your must-sees. Get The Watchlist delivered every Thursday.