The Underground Railroad — Amazon Prime Video
Barry Jenkins’ epic, evocative and exquisitely realised adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel imagines an alternative vision of slave-era America that’s sometimes more hopeful and often more brutal than the reality. South African Thuso Mbedu stars as the heroine Cora, a young woman raised in the plantations of the South who escapes from bondage on a literal underground railroad only to find that the broader world is as racist and unforgiving as the one she’s left behind. This challenging, engaging and beautiful drama asks the still difficult and necessary questions that remain unresolved in US society.
The White Lotus — Showmax
Mike White’s sly satire of the 1% is set during one week at a luxurious Hawaii resort. Featuring a memorable cast of truly dislikable characters, it’s a blackly comedic dissection of wealth, privilege and the desperation for economic success that plagues late-era capitalist life. Excellently acted and tightly controlled to ratchet the cringe factor to unbearable levels, it’s a hilarious but moving examination of empty people living equally empty lives.
Mare of Easttown — Showmax
Kate Winslet throws off her red-carpet designer dresses and dons muddy jeans, a trusty parka and practical boots for her dedicated performance as a small-town detective caught in a web of increasingly nasty secrets in this mystery drama. With standout supporting turns from Evan Peters and Jean Smart, the solid police procedural is elevated by the careful realisation of its setting and the ever-shifting motivations of its relatable characters.
Succession Season 3 — Showmax
The Roys made their spectacular return in creator Jesse Armstrong’s Shakespearean black comedy-drama about power, ambition and the Machiavellian machinations of the superrich. Things got darker, meaner and far more gut-wrenching in the most ambitious season yet, which had many contenders for “the greatest episode in television in a decade” and ended with a left-of-field twist that knocked the breath out of fans and will leave them hotly debating what’s next for the Roys until season four arrives in the not too distant future.
High on the Hog — Netflix
Food writer Stephen Satterfield hosts this docuseries inspired by Jessica B Harris’ groundbreaking history of the roots, influences and legacy of African American cuisine. A sometimes over-earnest but always keenly empathetic and interested guide, Satterfield takes viewers from West Africa via the Atlantic slave trade routes to the US South and beyond. It becomes a poignant and inspiring celebration of how food builds communities and offers a means of carving identities even under the most terrible of circumstances.
Squid Game — Netflix
The runaway viral sensation of the year, creator Hwang Dong-hyuk’s distinctively South Korean anticapitalist nightmare is a gruesomely violent vision of a life-or-death contest among desperate debtors. He presented it against the true-to-life backdrop of the difficulties faced by many South Koreans trapped in the endless cycle of debt and inequality that’s become the norm in a country once celebrated for its economic miracle. Caustically black-humoured and often brutally callous, this rollercoaster ride is memorably visualised, empathetically acted and leaves you with plenty to ponder once the bodies and the blood have been cleaned up.
Maid — Netflix
Real-life mother and daughter Andie MacDowell and Margaret Qualley star in this often difficult-to-watch but necessarily social-issue drama, which sheds a harsh light on the reality faced by many women at the bottom of the economic pile of present-day US society. Qualley plays a single mother who escapes a brutally abusive relationship and takes her young daughter off into a world of low-paid menial jobs and constant economic insecurity that she hopes will offer her a better alternative but which often ends up being almost as terrible.
Scenes from a Marriage — Showmax
A sometimes deeply uncomfortable, voyeuristic examination of the depressing, emotionally devastating breakdown of a middle-class marriage. Based on Swedish director Ingmar Bergman’s 1973 television series, it rests all its ambitions and draining emotional demands on the capable shoulders of Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain, who deliver two of the most complex and compassionate performances in recent television history. It will keep you squirming as you watch the psychologically traumatic but subtly affecting car wreck of their relationship being dissected down to its smallest details.
Normal People — Showmax
Sally Rooney’s acclaimed novel came to the small screen in a tenderly realised adaptation of the story of the ebbs, flows, meetings and diversions of two young Irish lovers as they make their way from the end of their school days to their uncertain ventures into early adult life. Anchored by two exceptionally mature performances from young leads Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal, their touching and emotionally engaging journey is refreshingly free of sentimentality but still manages to pull at the heartstrings.
Des — BritBox
David Tennant gives a terrifyingly chilling performance in this three-part drama about notorious British serial killer Dennis Nilsen. It follows the series of events from Nilsen’s arrest in 1983 and his subsequent interrogation and revelations of his long career of murdering young, unemployed men on the margins of Thatcher-era Britain. This compelling procedural and terrifying examination of evil psychopathy leaves you shook up and depressed at the depths of depravity to which human beings can sink.
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