{"id":3225,"date":"2025-07-17T16:32:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T16:32:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/3225\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T16:32:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T16:32:08","slug":"what-to-watch-this-weekend-solve-a-murder-in-yosemite-or-explore-canadas-peaceful-national-parks-with-these-docs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/3225\/","title":{"rendered":"What to watch this weekend: Solve a murder in Yosemite \u2013 or explore Canada\u2019s peaceful national parks with these docs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Untamed, NetflixOpen this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Eric Bana plays a National Park Service Investigative Services Branch special agent in Untamed.Netflix<\/p>\n

This six-part mystery drama starts with a particularly chilling corpse-reveal cold open, set on the El Capitan vertical rock formation in Yosemite National Park. It\u2019s then up to Eric Bana, playing a taciturn National Park Service Investigative Services Branch special agent \u2013 that\u2019s a new one \u2013 to ride around on his horse and solve the crime; naturally, he\u2019s saddled with deep trauma and a young green sidekick (Lily Santiago), recently relocated from the big city, who has to deal with his gruff attitude but learns a wilderness trick or two along the way. <\/p>\n

Untamed\u2019s tone can sometimes be almost comically dark for the beautiful environs \u2013 hard-boiled park rangers? \u2013 and clich\u00e9s of the contemporary detective genre gallop by without subversion. But, created by Mark L. Smith (The Revenant) and Elle Smith, the show does make thrilling use of its setting \u2013 there\u2019s a few excellent action set pieces \u2013 and the emotional currents are strong in the performances from both Bana and Rosemarie DeWitt, as his character\u2019s ex-wife. <\/p>\n

Canada\u2019s National Parks, TVOOpen this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

A five-park documentary series, titled Canada\u2019s National Parks in out on TVO.TVO\/Supplied<\/p>\n

Back in 2022, none other than Barack Obama narrated a five-part Netflix wildlife documentary series about some of the world\u2019s national parks called Our Great National Parks. Released with less fanfare last summer was TVO\u2019s more humbly titled five-park documentary series, Canada\u2019s National Parks. <\/p>\n

If you finish Untamed with the mistaken belief that working in a national park is all about solving grotesque murders and tracking down criminal operations hiding in the woods, this makes a good palate cleanser. The first episode about Pacific Rim National Park Reserve in British Columbia introduces real Parks Canada heroes such as Todd Windle, who collects scat and photos from remote cameras as par of his mission to protect a resurgent coastal wolf colony; and ecologists Yuri Zharikov and Mike Wall, off to survey the black oystercatcher population. <\/p>\n

Other parks in the series \u2013 which you\u2019ll find on the TVO Today app or streaming on tvo.org<\/a> and YouTube \u2013 are Waterton Lakes, Ivvavik, Saguenay-St. Lawrence Marine Park and Cape Breton Highlands \u2013 which, as a reminder, are all free to visit<\/a> through Sept. 2.<\/p>\n

National Parks Project, TubiOpen this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Rapper Shad, right, plays with the Besnard Lakes in The National Parks Project.Supplied<\/p>\n

Canada was the first country in the world to establish a national park service \u2013 what\u2019s now known as Parks Canada. In the lead-up to its centenary in 2011, teams of filmmakers and indie musicians were sent to 13 of the country\u2019s national parks \u2013 one in each province and territory \u2013 to create this series of musical films that, collectively, add up to a Broken Social Scene of Canadian nature documentaries, or perhaps a kind of Canuck Koyaanisqatsi. <\/p>\n

Kathleen Edwards, Matt Mays and Sam Roberts travelled with Oscar-nominated filmmaker Hubert Davis to Wapusk National Park in northern Manitoba in one section, while Andrew Whiteman, Dean Stone and Tanya Tagaq went to Sirmilak in Nunavut for another segment directed by Zacharias Kunuk (Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner). <\/p>\n

The \u201cexquisitely shot and consistently hypnotic\u201d film, as The Globe and Mail\u2019s Guy Dixon wrote in a review upon its original release<\/a>, is also great to put on in the background at a barbecue if you\u2019re stuck in the city; you\u2019ll find it both broken up into episodes and streaming as one longer doc on the free-with-ads service Tubi.<\/p>\n

My Mom Jayne, CraveOpen this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

In My Mom Jayne, Mariska Hargitay investigates her famous mother Jayne Mansfield, who died when her daughter was three.Crave\/Supplied<\/p>\n

Actress Jayne Mansfield died in a car crash when her daughter, Mariska Hargitay (Law & Order: SVU), was just three years old; Hargitay, in fact, survived in the back seat and was found by rescuers, well after two of her siblings, lodged under the passenger seat. <\/p>\n

In this stunning HBO documentary, Hargitay investigates who her famous mother really was, having no memories of her and having spent much of her life slightly embarrassed by her persona as Hollywood\u2019s \u201csmartest dumb blond,\u201d and reclaims her family history from tabloid retellings. Mansfield is shown to be a victim of the particular sexism of her times, but the 1960s sex symbol\u2019s own tendencies toward self-exploitation are not ignored; the doc ends up a rich portrait of a complex human, full of interviews with intimates who would have been impossible to land if Hargitay hadn\u2019t been involved. <\/p>\n

Eventually, the doc takes an unexpected twist \u2013 at least if you\u2019ve avoided the press coverage. Ever fascinating, these stories we tell about family.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m Still Here, CraveOpen this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m Still Here tells the true story of a Brazilian activist, played by Fernanda Torres, right.Alile Onawale\/The Associated Press<\/p>\n

On July 18, this 2024 Brazilian film, the most recent winner of the best international feature film Academy Award, is being added to Crave\u2019s rich library of films (along with A Real Pain<\/a>, which won Kieran Culkin a best supporting actor Oscar). Directed by Walter Salles, it tells the true story of Brazilian activist Eunice Paiva (Oscar nominee Fernanda Torres) who fought back against Brazil\u2019s military dictatorship after her husband was \u201cdisappeared\u201d in 1971. <\/p>\n

In a Critic\u2019s Pick review<\/a> for The Globe and Mail, reviewer Anne T. Donahue called the film \u201ca devastating albeit understated telling of the necessity of perseverance and hope. \u2026 Its depiction of grief and fear juxtaposed against the small, beautiful moments in everyday life is heart-wrenching in its realism.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Untamed, NetflixOpen this photo in gallery: Eric Bana plays a National Park Service Investigative Services Branch special agent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3226,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[4278,49,48,295,2922,208,66],"class_list":["post-3225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-5towatch","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-environment","tag-noastack","tag-review","tag-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3225"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3225\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}