What you should be watching on streaming platforms and TV this week
From the return of Australia’s best legal drama to a wildly inappropriate animated sequel, here are this week’s must-watch shows.
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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 TWELVE
THURSDAY, BINGE
Following up one of the best legal dramas to come out of this country in years was never going to be an easy task, but this season of The Twelve is shaping up to be just as compellingly unpredictable as the first. Sam Neill is back in his Logie-winning role of the cunning and charismatic defence lawyer Brett Colby, but fighting for justice with a new crime in a new location – ex lovers accused of murdering a wealthy, hard-nosed but-widely hated, local farmer in small town Western Australia. Fellow Senior Counsel Meredith Nelson-Moore (Frances O’Connor) shares the defence stand with him, as well as his bed, and they begin by horse trading of potential jurors who are most likely to sympathise with their clients in their bid to explain the death as a tragic farming accident. Among the twelve who will decide the fates of Sasha Price, daughter of the victim who stood to inherit millions, and ex-con Patrick Harrows, are a motley group of locals with their own prejudices and relationships, and out-of-towners, all with their own backstories. And with one juror observing that “people would have been lining up to knock the old bitch off”, there will be plenty of twists to come before a verdict is reached.
BONDI RESCUE
WEDNESDAY, 7.30PM, CHANNEL 10
In this chilly spell of winter, it’s a joy to go back to the sweet times and hot nights referred to in the theme song of the long-running and much-loved reality show set on the country’s most famous beach. But for those tasked with making sure “every swimmer goes home safe”, there’s never a dull moment in their biggest swimming season in years and no more so in the season opener, with a literally heart-stopping episode involving a swimmer dragged unconscious from the surf that tests their lifesaving skills to the max. And of course, it’s as much about those low-key, laid-back legends as anything, with motormouthed audience favourite Reidy back to entertain and infuriate his colleagues after a couple of years off being a dad.
BEST OF TARONGA: WHO’S WHO IN THE ZOO
WEDNESDAY, 7.30PM, CHANNEL 9
Next time you visit the zoo, it’s worth remembering that what you see in the increasingly nature-like enclosures is just the tip of the iceberg. Behind the scenes is an extraordinary team of professionals overseeing their health, wellbeing and, crucially, their breeding. Narrated by Virginia Gay, this final episode of a three-part series puts the spotlight on the dedicated professionals at Taronga Zoo in Sydney and its Western Plains counterpart, including the human obstetrician who helps diagnose and treat a chimp’s fertility issues, the handlers responsible for setting up a pair of breeding age lions and the poor, hardy soul who spends at least part of his day with his arm up critically endangered black rhino’s rear end. And if there’s anything more adorable on this green earth than an otter pup, I haven’t seen it.
SAUSAGE PARTY: FOODTOPIA
THURSDAY, PRIME VIDEO
Just like the hilarious 2016 movie that spawned it, Seth Rogen’s wildly inappropriate animated eight-part sequel is definitely not for kids. Set right after the events of the movie, the sentient food led by Rogen’s Frank Frankfurter and Kristen Wiig’s Brenda Bunson, have escaped their supermarket and are celebrating their overthrow of humanity with a giant sex party (if you’d ever wondered how a gherkin and a Swiss cheese get it on, this is the show for you). But when a rainstorm and the loss of their Stephen Hawking like mentor Gum sour their victory and threatens their lives, the freed foodstuffs realise they need some “humies” to show them how the world they inherited actually works. Stuffed with groan-worthy puns and pop culture references, it’s funny and filthy in equal measure.
SUNNY
FRIDAY, APPLETV+
There are shades of Apple TV+’s brilliant thriller Severance and it’s slightly off-kilter, vaguely threatening vision of the near future in this black comedy based on the novel, The Dark Manual. Rashida Jones stars as Suzie, an American woman living in Japan, who loses her husband and young son in a plane crash and becomes increasingly isolated in a foreign culture and hits the bottle to cope. When a colleague from her late husband’s company presents her with a domestic robot companion called Sunny, who is programmed to meet her every need, she discovers he was not the gentle fridge technician she’d known for 12 years, but rather a demanding and fearful boss at a mysterious tech company. Together Suzie and Sunny go looking for answers, and you just know that things are going to get seriously weird.
RESTAURANTS AT THE END OF THE WORLD
FRIDAY, 7.30PM, SBS FOOD
Kristen Kish, owner of the hip Arlo Grey restaurant in Austin, Texas, says that every challenge she’s had in her career has helped make her a better chef, and viewed a travelogue/cooking show that takes her to remote areas of Panama, Norway, America and Brazil as a chance to up her game even further. In this week’s first episode, she treks to the highest mountain in Panama to visit Hacienda Mamecillo, a home restaurant run by a former pilot that uses ingredients created by a misty microclimate and rich volcanic soil. The quest for the freshest of produce to impress a revered visiting chef pushes Kish to the extremes of rappelling down a waterfall to gather the last watercress of the season and (unsuccessfully) spearfishing for grouper. With its stunning scenery and unconventional local recipes, it’s feast for eyes as well as the tastebuds.
BIG BACKYARD QUIZ
SATURDAY, 7.30PM, SBS, NITV
This new comedy quiz show, heralding the beginning of NAIDOC week, focuses on Australian people, culture and history, with a First Nations slant. Journalist Narelda Jacobs asks the question, with actor Steven Oliver throwing in one-liners, explainers and songs from the sidelines, while two teams led by musician Barkaa and Triple J announcer and comedian Dave Woodhead attempt to wrangle their two teammates for the answers. Like a slightly more chaotic version of Have You Been Paying Attention or Spicks and Specks it’s as much about being funny as being right – with word games, cooking challenges and mystery masked guests thrown in – but you might just learn something Indigenous culture too.
SISTER BONIFACE
SATURDAY, 7.30PM, ABC
It just wouldn’t be a Saturday night without an amateur detective solving crimes in picturesque English villages on the ABC, and Sister Boniface is back in the habit for another season. This week, the winemaking, moped-riding, crime-busting nun – with the help of her fellow sisters and colourful constabulary characters in the Cotswolds – is trying to find out who killed the battle-axe editor of visiting kids TV show who turns up dead on live TV. As always, there’s no shortage of suspects, from the ex-marine presenter who drinks to cope with PTSD, an ambitious female host sick of the show’s old-fashioned ways and a ventriloquist with connections to a notorious crime clan. But it might just be chatty parrot who holds the key to nabbing the culprit.
THE AUSTRALIAN: 60 YEARS OF NEWS
MONDAY, 8PM, SKY NEWS
It was 60 years ago next Monday that The Australian, the country’s only national broadsheet, was launched in Canberra, largely due to the force of will of its then 33-year-old creator Rupert Murdoch. In doing so, he was fulfilling a long-held dream of his father, Sir Keith Murdoch, and in this hour-long documentary, Sky News Host and Associate Editor of the Australian Chris Kenny, traces the paper’s extraordinary journey using historic newsroom footage and interviews with prominent figures including former editors and columnists, and former prime ministers Tony Abbott and John Howard. And in a series of exclusive interviews, former editor-in-chief of The Australian, Paul Whittaker, talks to the Chairman Emeritus of News Corp and Fox Corporation about the early challenges of bringing the paper to life and its ongoing impact on the local media landscape.
THE MAN WITH 1000 KIDS
NETFLIX
Another one from Netflix’s seemingly endless stranger-than-fiction documentary pipeline, this three-parter explores the bizarre true story of serial sperm donor Jonathan Meijer. Beginning in his Holland homeland and then spreading all over Europe and as far afield as Africa and Australia, he initially helped make dreams come true for childless couples. But what initially seemed to be altruism turned into something far more sinister as suspicious mothers – worried about “Luke and Leia syndrome, where close relatives can become attracted to each other without knowing they are related – learned he was brazenly flouting the poorly regulated rules to father literally hundreds of children. After finding each other on social media, they set out to stop him in some very murky legal territory.
Reality star shocks with mic-drop moment
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90210 star wishes she’d never done the show
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