New to TVNZ+: June 21-27

Small Town, Big Story (June 21) stars Mad Men’s Christina Hendricks as a top TV producer who reunites with her childhood sweetheart (Paddy Considine) when she returns to her small Irish hometown to film a big-budget movie.

He’s now the local doctor — with a secret he’d rather forget.

“It’s perfectly jolly to watch and there are some decent turns and funny lines,” The Times said.

“But it does meander, and nothing is making me crave the second series for which it is clearly set up.”

“How much you enjoy Small Town, Big Story will depend on how you feel first about whimsy and second about genre mashups,” The Guardian said.

“If your appetite for both is large, then Chris O’Dowd’s creation (he wrote and directed) has plenty to make you happy.”

But The Telegraph warned: “The saving grace is the chemistry between Hendricks (wisely avoiding an Irish accent) and Considine as old flames reunited …

“But his and Hendricks’s hard work runs aground on a screenplay that can’t make up its mind how Oirish it wants to be.”

All six episodes of Sky Atlantic commission can be binged.

What it Feels Like For a Girl (June 24) is named after a transgender teenager determined to escape their small town at any cost.

The Guardian thought it “deeply disturbing and totally fearless TV”, the Financial Times “a gritty, bold, coming-of-age tale”, and NME “heartfelt, hedonistic and utterly brilliant“.

Also new are every episode of sibling rivalry sitcom Home Economics (June 23), which ran for three seasons off-peak on TVNZ 2, and the Adam KcKay-produced documentary, You Need This (June 23), which reveals how consumer-based capitalism has grown and evolved to become the world’s dominant religion.

“Unpacking the history of advertising and media manipulation, this film exposes capitalism’s relentless push toward overconsumption, inequality, and planetary destruction,” said Modern Times.

“Though at times heavy-handed, you need this.”