New to SoHo in May

A TV adaptation of Picnic at Hanging Rock and a true-life dramatisation of the travails of one of the world’s richest families head next month’s highlights on SoHo.

Trust will explore the Getty family’s trials and triumphs over several seasons, with the first focusing on the 1973 kidnapping of oil fortune heir John Paul Getty III (which is also dramatised in the new Blu-ray release, All the Money in the World).

It stars Donald Sutherland, Hilary Swank, Brendan Fraser and Anna Chancellor, with Danny Boyle directing the first three episodes.

“It’s hard to anticipate where this imaginative history piece will go,” Variety said.

But for once, this is a story that feels like it might be worth the investment. It’s offering multiple thematic layers for entry — including a pretty bonkers magical realist layer, starring an apparently omniscient statue-performer, that maybe has to be seen to be believed. But maybe best of all, Trust offers a plot with significant dramatic stakes, even if the end is already a foregone conclusion.

But The Hollywood Reporter thought the opposite, arguing the series “struggles to find a relatable centre”.

The 10-part Trust will screen 9.30 Mondays from May 7, by when it will have only three episodes to run on FX in the US.

At least Picnic at Hanging Rock will premiere only a week after its May 6 Foxtel launch — and 10 days ahead of its Amazon Prime bow in the US (where subscribers presumably will be able to stream  it in 4K).

THR called it a “glossy” six-part adaptation of the novel that originally was filmed in 1975.

[Peter] Weir’s movie was a haunting tone poem about Victorian sexual repression colliding with unknowable Nature, channeled through a gauzy dreamscape of soft-focus haze and fluttering pan flutes. This new version, by contrast, is a simmering nightmare drenched in lush colour, energetically shot with a propensity for psychologically unsettling Dutch angles, and powered by a surging contemporary score.

Also new next month will be season three of Hap & Leonard: The Two-Bear Mambo (8.30 Fridays from May 18) and two HBO documentaries.

The Oscar-nominated Traffic Stop (May 6, 8.30) investigates the traumatic arrest of a 26-year-old African-American teacher; Notes from the Field (May 245, 8.30) is Anna Deavere Smith’s solo show about America’s school-to-prison pipeline.

Back for box set weekends in May will be American Gods, Homeland (S7), Counterpart and The Looming Tower.