BOY SWALLOWS UNIVERSE — NETFLIX
Based on the novel by Trent Dalton, this energetic Australian series swings between heartbreak and happiness in its retelling of the story of 13-year-old Eli, whose life on the margins of lower-class Brisbane is full of eccentric, dangerous characters and obstacles that he must navigate to keep his family afloat. Darkly humoured and true to the vignette style of its source material, it’s a sometimes uneven but is often smartly realised comedy drama with a strong sense of the time and place in which its set, which offers plenty of memorable moments and strong performances and a refreshing lack of judgment on its seedy characters and their morally dubious actions.
SALTBURN — PRIME VIDEO
Emerald Fennell’s follow-up to Promising Young Woman offers a dissection of British class in a film that has strong echoes of Brideshead Revisited in its story of the corruption of a working-class Oxford student (Barry Keoghan) by the charms of a handsome upper-class fellow student (Jacob Elordi) and his eccentric wealthy family. When he’s invited to spend the summer at the family’s sprawling country estate, Saltburn, things take a dark and twisted turn, and though it might all end up a little predictably Agatha Christie-ish, the acerbic stabs that Fennell inflicts on the absurdities and shallowness of the English upper-set along the way, together with Keogh’s dark, brooding central performance, more than make up for it.
BLUE LIGHTS — SHOWMAX
A solid, quietly smart police procedural series set in the post-Troubles streets of Belfast, this is the kind of low-budget, low-on-cliffhangers, high-on-character and personal drama cop show that we unfortunately see far too little of these days. Following the trials and struggles of three recruits as they battle against their personal traumas, the attitudes of their community and the lingering shadows and scars of the brutal history of Northern Ireland, it doesn’t hit you on the head with its politics while offering a no-frills, no-fuss examination of the realities and everyday challenges of the job.
MEDICINE FOR MELANCHOLY — MUBI.COM
Oscar-winning Moonlight director Barry Jenkins’ debut film from 2008 is an intelligent romance drama that never shies away from addressing big issues around race, social injustice and class divisions in modern America. Wyatt Cenac and Tracey Higgins star as the odd couple at the film’s centre — he a dedicated social activist, she an affluent professional who meet at a party and have a one-night stand. As the sun rises on the morning after, the two very different lovers realise that they may be catching feelings but as their conversations about politics, race and social differences reveal, the divide between them may be too great to straddle, even with the power of love.
CRIMINAL RECORD — APPLE TV +
Cush Jumbo and Peter Capaldi star in this police thriller as two very differently motivated but equally sharp detectives drawn together after a desperate anonymous phone call to emergency services reopens an old murder case that one is determined to uncover the truth about and the other will do whatever it takes to keep closed. As they battle to outwit each other, the fight takes an increasing toll on their personal lives and the lives of those who have been wrongly accused, and keeps us guessing as to whether the truth will finally be revealed.
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