New to View: May 30 – June 6

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

Sunday

➢ Heaven and Hell – The Centrepoint Story TVNZ 1, 8.30

“Features intimate and revealing photographs by the photographer, Phil Fogle, himself a former Centrepoint resident.There is also startling footage from Centrepoint: A Spiritual Growth Community, a controversial 1980 TVNZ programme directed by Geoff Stevens. Heaven and Hell’s director, Natalie Malcon, blends this material with uncaptioned re-enactments. ‘It is a docudrama,’ she says, ‘and it is clear that there is drama on occasions.’” — Stuff.

➢ Upright TVNZ 1, 11.50

Acclaimed comedy about the black sheep of a family (Tim Minchin) who meets a teenage runaway (Milly Alcock) en route to visit his dying mother with an upright piano in tow. “With a light touch and electric performances, the series marries melancholy with comedy to deliver an odd-couple narrative that goes beyond the norm.” — The Guardian.

Monday

➢ Mare of Easttown SoHo, 9.30/Neon

➢ C.B. Strike: Lethal White Prime, 9.30

A troubled young man asks Strike to investigate a heinous crime he believes he witnessed as a child. “Daft, dark hokum from JK Rowling … Believability is not the strongest element of the latest adaptation of the author’s private detective series – but when has that ever been a prerequisite of TV crimefighters?” — The Guardian.

➢ Duncanville Neon

“Animated series from Amy Poehler and the former Simpsons showrunner Mike Scully. Poehler voiced both 15-year-old Duncan and his mother, Annie (advice on driving: ‘Check your rear-view mirror, check your back seat for murderers’), in another portrait of an American family just about saved from terminal dysfunction by love … Probably better than Marge and Homer’s recent outings, and you could get a Duff-like buzz from it, but it wasn’t quite the real thing.” — The Times.

➢ Snow Angels (Snöänglar) TVNZ OnDemand

The latest exercise in Nordic noir is billed as “a character-driven, six-part crime drama  … The story, set during a cold winter in Stockholm, is about three women — a mother, a policewoman and a child nurse — connected to the case of a missing infant.” — Screen Daily.

Wednesday

➢ Why Women Kill TVNZ OnDemand

“Season one flipped between the 60s, 80s and present day. In a twist on the show’s anthology theme, all of the plotlines taking place in season two of Why Women Kill will occur during the same year of 1949. The series focuses on Alma, a timid and awkward housewife, who remains optimistic in the face of the world’s cruelty. Alma yearns for a spot in the local garden club and to see her ungainly daughter married, but her life is disrupted once she learns of her husband’s secret hobby.” — The Sun.

Friday

➢ Celebrity Best Home Cook 2021 TVNZ 1, 8.30

“All but one of the ingredients that went into Celebrity Best Home Cook were reassuringly familiar. The recipe was Great British Bake Off meets MasterChef, with former Bake Off supreme being Mary Berry presiding over a kitchen of celebs striving to impress … If ever there was such a thing as boil-in-a-bag reality TV this was it. But there was a curious aftertaste mixed in and that was, of course, the flavour of a global pandemic … Bobbed along pleasantly but without tension.” — The Telegraph.

➢ Lisey’s Story Apple TV+

“Stephen King adapts his own 2006 novel, with Pablo Larrain directing this limited series about grief, marriage, the literary process and imaginary worlds … The strength of Lisey’s Story is in its portrait of a committed-if-codependent marriage, and that gets frequently lost as people ramble through a Where the Wild Things Are-style fantasy realm that yields diminishing returns.” — The Hollywood Reporter.

➢ Sweet Tooth Netflix

“Is anyone really hankering for pandemic-based storytelling right now? Pity Sweet Tooth, a victim of bad timing, whose production was halted by COVID-19 for some months last year before resuming shooting in New Zealand, but whose story — despite its fanciful premise — often resonates with uncomfortable relevancy, as characters turn on one another and inflict merciless violence against the suspected infected.” — The AV Club.