New to View: June 13 – 19

A weekly guide to what’s new of note on air and online

Monday

➢ Eden SoHo, 9.30

Australian missing-person mystery that The Guardian dubbed “mediocre … Sometimes it’s compellingly strange, as if its very form has been affected by the narcotics consumed by the characters; sometimes it’s frustratingly elusive. Eden dances to its own woozy beat, laced with images that are either cryptic or like visions from a beach-set soft drink commercial: a paradoxical mixture of high and low art, serious and smutty, layered and vacuous.”

➢ Leonardo TVNZ OnDemand

The Italian artist reflects on his life while waiting to stand trial for the murder of his best friend. Poldark’s Aidan Turner stars in a Stephen Thompson (Sherlock) dramatisation. “This new series is worthy-but-dull – and stonkingly chaste … Feels like a quick sketch rather than the fuller portrait one of history’s greatest minds surely merits.” — The Telegraph.

➢ Patrick Gower: On P Three, 8.30

Although he tried cannabis for On Weed, Patrick Gower told RNZ he was never going to sample meth for this documentary. “I just felt awful watching [a person in the doco] use it. I felt like I’d crossed an ethical line even letting this happen because of just how evil this thing is… there’s just nothing good about it.”

➢ Amazing Grace TVNZ 2, 8.40

New lightweight Australian drama series starring Wentworth’s Kate Jenkinson as a midwife whose chaotic personal life includes a chance encounter with the pregnant teenager she adopted out years earlier. “While Amazing Grace is handsomely-packaged, and the cast are all fine performers, it’s somehow underwhelming as a whole … full of pretty safe choices which is fine if you are chasing a broadly-appealing female-skewing audience, but TV needs more risk than this if it also wants to break the mould.” — TV Tonight.

➢ Staged BBC UKTV, 9.30

“Can we add Michael Sheen and David Tennant to the list of defining double-acts of our time? That’s one response to the giddy pleasures of Staged, a delicious comedy series made for the BBC that owes its existence to the theatrical desolation of the coronavirus pandemic … [They] play the often fractious co-stars of a postponed theatrical revival.” — New York Times.

➢ Normal People Amazon Prime Video

If you missed its TVNZ 2 run, catch up with the drama about two Irish teenagers’ on/off romance ahead of the same creators’ newest project, Conversations With Friends (you can still stream it for free on TVNZ OnDemand). “If Sally Rooney is the ‘Salinger for the Snapchat generation’, then it seems only fitting the TV adaptation of her novel that garnered the title should be radical, risque and boundary-pushing.” — The Guardian.

Wednesday

➢ Limetown Neon

“Facebook Watch’s creepy new podcast adaptation stars Jessica Biel as a reporter investigating a decade-old mass disappearance in a Tennessee town … Mostly a bit dull and insufficiently expansive.” — The Hollywood Reporter.

➢ Jamestown Vibe, 7.30

Broadcast premiere of the settler drama set in 17^th-century Virginia that streams on Neon and Amazon Prime Video. “Putting women at the centre of a story about the birth of America (played here by Hungary) works well. It all looks gorgeous, like a Garden of Eden that venal men are set on ruining. A just-plausible-enough period saga from the makers of Downton Abbey.” — Radio Times.

Thursday

➢ Cocaine Trade Exposed: The Invisibles Three, 9.30

New six-part series about the rise of a shadowy new generation of cocaine kingpins and of law enforcement’s desperate efforts to bring them down (it screened on Sky One in the UK as The Invisibles: Hunting Narcos). As journalist Jeremy McDermott explains: “Colombia’s drug lords realise that their best protection is not a private army, but anonymity. That is why we are calling the fourth generation of drug traffickers in Colombia the ‘Invisibles.'”

➢ Motherland SoHo, 10.00

Premiering after the launch of David Schwimmer’s spy comedy Intelligence is season three of this mothers’ group comedy. Well, almost. The season starts proper next week, after this Christmas special. “The slapstick carnage in this one-off episode – there’s a broken nose, a toppled tree and an explosion of flour – is not as funny as the more low-key moments.” — Independent.

Friday

➢ GameStop: The Wall Street Hijack Three, 9.40

The “Wolf of Wall Street”, Jordan Belfort, fronts this Discovery+ documentary about how a group of young day traders caused the stock price of a struggling videogame retailer to skyrocket in a play that shook financial markets.

➢ Physical Apple TV+

Jacinda Ardern wannabe Rose Byrne plays a dutiful San Diego housewife who liberates herself as an ’80s aerobics guru. “A bold, brilliant & deeply empathetic reimagining of the female antihero.” — The Playlist.

➢ The Most Dangerous Animal of All Disney+

“This four-part docuseries, based on Gary L. Johnson’s book of the same name, documents the journey Johnson took to find his birth parents, and what happened when he found out his birth father, Earl Van Best, Jr., was in all probability the Zodiac Killer … Intriguing enough to spend three-and-a-half hours on, but you may find yourself wondering why this story couldn’t have been told in half the time.” — Decider.

➢ Love, Victor Disney +