New to Acorn TV in March

Total Control, an Australian thriller about a heroic aboriginal woman who resists becoming the Prime Minister’s political pawn, will stream on Acorn TV from March 22.

The NZ exclusive stars Deborah Mailman (Offspring) as the survivor of an encounter with an active shooter who’s recruited by the embattled PM (Rachel Griffiths) to be a senator so she can capitalise on her popularity.

But her new Canebrra conscript has an agenda of her own …

“Total Control’s controversial original title, Black Bitch, suggested an explosive in-your-face production – which this series is not,” The Guardian said.

It is, however, competently directed by Rachel Perkins (also a co-writer of the script, with Stuart Page), who wraps the story together in a generally engaging style. The series does feel particularly modest, however, compared with her excellent recent work helming the feature film Jasper Jones and the Mystery Road TV spin-off.

“The series amounts to far more than a catalogue of injustices,” the Wall Street Journal said.

It’s an enterprise mightily enlarged by its merciless focus on political combat, its depiction of longtime trusted alliances—they can die overnight, given the right impetus—its biting vision of the prevailing codes, and what passes for right and wrong in political society.

It aired on the ABC in 2019 and a second season’s due this year.

Also new next month will be seasons two of French whodunit Balthazar (March 1), Finding Joy, the Irish comedy about a blogger seeking online fame  (March 15), and the costume drama that first screened on SoHo, The Miniaturist (March 1), starring The Queen’s Gambit’s Anya Taylor-Joy.

You also can see Yellowstone’s Kelly Reilly in two earlier roles: as a neurologist in the 2014 drama series Black Box (March 1) and in S3-4 of the 10-year-old detective series, Above Suspicion (March 8).

But the month’s best blast from the past will be the 1976 classic, I, Claudius (March 29).

You can view trailers for this, as well as Total Control, Finding Joy, The MIniaturist and Code of a Killer (March 22), a three-part 2015 thriller about the use of DNA in catching the killer of two schoolgirls.

Other March highlights will include:

March 8

• The Sounds
• WPC 56 S1

March 15

• In Deep S1
• Murphy’s Law S1

March 22

• Moving On S9-10

March 29

• In Deep S2
• River.