What you should be watching on TV and streaming platforms this week
From a drama-thriller with an Oscar winner to wall-to-wall coverage of the Olympic Games in Paris, these are the shows you don’t want to miss this week.
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We’ve sifted through the latest offerings from TV and streaming platforms to find the best shows you should be watching this week.
THE LADY IN THE LAKE
APPLE TV+
Oscar-winner Natalie Portman makes an indelible, award-worthy impression in her first foray into TV for this seven-part series based on Laura Lippman’s 2019 bestseller of the name same – and the less heralded Moses Ingram is just as impressive. Set in 1960s Baltimore, Portman plays Jewish woman, Maddie Schwarz, who is jolted out of her rich, sheltered existence by the murder of teenager, sending her on a voyage of self-discovery and empowerment as she hustles her way into a job on the local newspaper to find the truth about what happened to her. Moses is young black woman Cleo, who has a deadbeat husband and is working multiple jobs to build a future for her children while trying to avoid being sucked into the shady criminal enterprises that surround her. Their very different lives – although both marred by the prejudices of the era – begin to intertwine when Maddie movies into a predominantly black area and tragedy befalls Cleo as she becomes embroiled in local politics. It’s a bit of a slow burn to start, but impeccably made, and well worth your patience.
DIRTY POP: THE BOY BAND SCAM
WEDNESDAY, NETFLIX
By creating boy bands Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC, Lou Pearlman changed music history forever (whether for better or worse is debatable), but their association was short-lived. Members of both bands recount why they broke ties with the wheeling, dealing, well-connected Pearlman – who made his money in aviation – once they realised how much money he was making from their tours and hit records, and how little they were getting. That sets the scene for the career of lies and dodgy deals exposed in this three-part doco, as Pearlman lured wannabe music stars in with promises of private jets and shrimp cocktails, and shady investment schemes that left many ruined and even cost lives.
LET THE GAMES BEGIN
WEDNESDAY, CHANNEL 9, 7.30PM
The title says it all really, with this special presentation from the Wide World Of Sports team on the ground in Paris (and including the announcement of the Aussie team flag bearers) launching wall-to-wall coverage of the Olympic Games from Paris. It will be followed by coverage of the Men’s Rugby Sevens and the Men’s Football and the following night will see the highly fancied Matildas kicking off their campaign to bring home gold. Then put on a put of strong coffee for the opening ceremony from the Stade de France, with proceedings beginning at 3.30am and buckle up for 19 days of some of the fiercest competition in the sporting world. Go Aussies!
THOSE ABOUT TO DIE
PRIME VIDEO
The sequel to the Oscar-winning Gladiator won’t be with us until November, but in the meantime sword-and-sandal enthusiasts can make do with this slightly low-rent series from master of disaster Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow). It’s the year 79 and Emperor Vespasian (a slightly bemused Anthony Hopkins slumming it in a toga) rules a Rome rife with corruption and decay. To appease the starving citizens, he’s built a brand new amphitheatre to house bloody contests for the people, which is putting the rich nobles off-side, while a streetwise gambling kingpin (Game Of Thrones’ Iwan Rheon) plots to create his own chariot racing team. It’s a bit of a mishmash of odd accents, over-the-top acting, heaving bosoms, gratuitous gore and slightly dodgy CGI, but it has an undeniably pulpy appeal.
WOULD I LIE TO YOU
THURSDAY, 8.30PM, ABC ENTERTAINS, ABC IVIEW
The local version of this comedy quiz show with Chrissie Swan was actually pretty good, but there’s no comparison with the UK original and it’s a pleasure to see it back with new episodes. There are few better hosts than the lightning fast Rob Brydon, who just about maintains order from his equally witty team captains David Mitchell and Lee Mack and their rotating roster of guest comedians, musicians and other worthies. As always, contestants try to bamboozle the rest of the panel, who have to guess whether the outlandish and often wildly inappropriate stories are true or false, but the final points tally always takes a back seat to the number of laughs generated.
FIFTEEN LOVE
SUNDAY, 8.30PM, ABC
As this tense, taut, tennis-set thriller begins, young British player Justine Pearce (Ella Lily Hyland) – one of the most exciting talents of her generation – is one the brink of making the final of the French Open for the first time, spurred on by the married coach she clearly harbours feelings for. Playing through the pain barrier, the 17-year-old prodigy suffers a devastating wrist injury and, unable to deal with the pressure and scrutiny of rehab and expectation, disappears from the sport. Five years later she’s a hard-partying physio working in an elite academy for rich kids when the coach Glenn (a terrific Aidan Turner) re-enters her life and the memories triggered lead Justine to accuse him of sexually assaulting her as a teenager. But is the family man really a power-abusing predator or is Justine a fantasist taking revenge for a life and a career that didn’t turn out the way she’d dreamt?
MALPRACTICE
SUNDAY, 9PM, CHANNEL 7
This five-part medical drama is set in the UK, but it could just as easily take place in one of Australia’s hospitals, where staff are overworked and underappreciated and there’s never enough resources or beds. Niamh Algar plays Lucinda Edwards, a forthright and skilled doctor who works in the accident and emergency department and is used to making split-second decisions that can mean the difference between life and death. But when she loses a patient to an opioid overdose after a crazed gunman leaves behind a bleeding accomplice, her judgement is called into question by a review board. As the timeline for the fateful evening is scrutinised, more and more questions are raised, both about Lucinda and her hidden demons and a much bigger pharmaceutical conspiracy.
WE’RE ALL GONNA DIE
MONDAY, 8.30PM, SBS VICELAND
Canadian comedian-actor Jay Baruchel tackled the terrifying prospects of asteroids, nuclear war, climate change, pandemics, alien invasions and volcanoes in the first season of his documentary about existential threats, and he’s quite right when he observes that things have gotten worse rather than better since then. He begins this season by Googling what our current most urgent threat is and it comes back with Artificial Intelligence. The amusingly panicked then Baruchel seeks out some of the top boffins in the field to find out how far away from Terminator territory we really are and why making something that’s smarter than us might be the stupidest thing we ever do. Also covered in this season will be Scary Space Shit, Insect Extinction, Nanotechnology, Simulation Theory, and Death.
I WAS ACTUALLY THERE
TUESDAY, 8PM, ABC
It was 60 years ago last month that The Beatles toured Australia for the first and last time – and nowhere was their presence felt more keenly than in Adelaide. After a petition to add the city to the schedule attracted more than 80,000 signatures paid off, 350,000 people – more than half the population turned out to greet the Fab Four – and brought a burst of youthful energy and dynamism that the grey and sleepy City of Churches had never seen before. And that joy is still palpable for the people who recall seeing it all play out and how it literally changed their lives – from the DJ who had to follow them around on the whole tour, the screaming teenage girls who infiltrated the band’s hotel, and the young fans who went on to form The Angels and Master’s Apprentices.
THE YOUNG WOMAN AND THE SEA
DISNEY+
Sports stories are everywhere in the lead-up to the Olympics and they don’t come much more inspirational and stirring the true story of the first woman to swim across the English Channel. Star Wars favourite Daisy Ridley is absolutely radiant as Trudy Ederle, the New York born daughter of German immigrants who overcame disease, moderate means and rampant sexism to win a Gold Medal at the 1924 Olympics in Paris and then conquered the treacherous stretch of water between France and the United Kingdom. Ridley perfectly captures Ederle’s mix of steeliness and joy in proving her doubters wrong, including Christopher Ecclestone in moustache-twirling form as a dinosaur of a swimming trainer.
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Originally published as What you should be watching on TV and streaming platforms this week
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