With bulls, guns and baddies, dusty land saga Territory aims to thrill
Territory ★★★
Netflix, Friday
This Top End drama begins with a statement finish: a pack of dingoes maul to death an injured cattle baron. Dan Lawson (Jake Ryan) goes down swinging, but the real action stems from the void created by his death. His fractured clan turn on each other, while rivals look to exploit the tragedy. More dingoes, just larger ambitions. “Everything up here is trying to kill you,” muses Dan’s wary sister-in-law, Emily (Anna Torv), setting up a dusty milieu of bulls, guns, crime, corporate conspiracies, and a brutal patriarch.
Basically, everything on this show is trying to thrill you. Territory is a land saga – the obvious and envious comparison is Taylor Sheridan’s Montana blockbuster, Yellowstone. Set on and around the biggest cattle property in the world, the Lawson family’s Marianne station, it’s rife with big gestures. Whether it’s romantic attraction or villainous scheming, nothing is that subtle across these six episodes. Creators Ben Davies and Timothy Lee have made a litmus test: how little contemplation does your storytelling need?
Michael Dorman as Graham Lawson, Robert Taylor as his father, Colin Lawson, in Territory.Credit: Netflix
Characters vehemently deliver lines like, “When this is over, I’m coming for you”. Although here, it’s delivered by Torv’s Emily, a woman toughened by a drunk husband, Graham (Michael Dorman), and a sneering father-in-law, Colin (Robert Taylor), who can’t forget that she’s from a family of cattle thieves now run by brother Hank Hodge (Dan Wyllie). Emily’s daughter, Susie (Philippa Northeast), wants to buck her grandfather’s misogyny, while stepson Marshall (Sam Corlett) is the black sheep in exile running with outback criminals.
The middle episodes get into sinewy topics, such as native title and the outlook of the Indigenous community, but even then the focus is on whether aspiring Aboriginal cattle baron Nolan Brannock (Clarence Ryan) is willing to match the skulduggery of his white contemporaries. Given the imposing landscape, it’s not surprising that everything central leans in hard, even the emotions. The self-despair comes off Graham in waves, as he struggles to match brother Dan’s example, while Colin registers on the Menendez parenting scale.
Anna Torv as Emily Lawson and Philippa Northeast as her daughter, Susie, in Territory.Credit: Netflix
The dialogue has an earthy bluntness – “pick a window, you’re leaving”, is a tasty start to a pub brawl – but the show’s bullish refusal to slow down does start to wear. You’re told that Marianne station is the size of Belgium, yet the characters quickly meet up as required, while at a certain point what should be a crushing loss comes and goes so quickly that you’ll be checking whether you skipped forward by accident. Territory does exactly what it sets out to do, but there are limits to its ambitions.
Kathy Bates stars as the brilliant septuagenarian Madeline Matlock in Matlock, inspired by the classic TV series of the same name.Credit: Paramount+
Matlock ★★★½
Paramount+
The revival of the case-of-the-week procedural continues with this crafty reboot of the 1980s American legal drama about a gruff but guileful veteran lawyer who cleared his clients in the courtroom. Gender-flipped, so that Kathy Bates takes over from Andy Griffith, Matlock still delivers a brisk case from go to whoa in a 42-minute episode. But it also has some modern conspiratorial strands, which raises the stakes and reconfigures familiar outlines.
Terrific throughout, Bates plays Madeline “Matty” Matlock – “like the old TV show”, she cheerfully declares – who is first seen infiltrating the Monday morning partner’s meeting at high-powered New York law firm Jacobson & Moore. With grandmotherly charm, the 74-year-old claims an associate’s position, perplexing her new twentysomething colleagues and trying to impress her new boss, hard-nosed junior partner Olympia (Skye P. Marshall).
Within hours Matty is helping crack cases, deploying a mix of wisdom and her superpower of everyone underestimating a folksy 74-year-old widow. It’s not particularly complex, but creator Jennie Snyder Urman (Jane the Virgin) has an economical and sure hand that makes Matty’s challenges pleasurable viewing. Occasionally, the storytelling wrings the emotions a little too blatantly, but that’s offset by an underlying arc that makes you reconsider Matty and adds a thriller element. Crafty move, crafty show.
Harrison Ford and Jason Segel in Shrinking, season 2.Credit: Apple TV+
Shrinking (season 2)
Apple TV+
The first season of this bittersweet comedy was centred on co-creator Jason Segel’s newly widowed therapist, whose despair impacted his patients, friends, and colleagues. It had just the right ratio of unease to idiosyncrasy. The second season holds that mix, but the writing’s focus has empowered the supporting cast, starting with Harrison Ford’s gruff but caring fellow shrink and really hitting the mark with Christa Miller’s straight-talking neighbour. Is it Apple’s successor to Ted Lasso? A prominent guest role certainly makes the connection obvious.
Anna Faris is one of the guest stars in It’s Florida, Man.Credit: Binge
It’s Florida, Man
Binge
Much like True Story with Hamish & Andy, this American comedy anthology about the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction antics of Florida’s eccentric – and sometimes criminal – residents is a mix of documentary interviews and recreations shot with notable guest stars such as Anna Faris and Juliette Lewis. The source material all matches the Florida Man meme, although the individual subjects are on a tonal spectrum. An episode about a man’s life after losing an arm to an alligator is engagingly satiric, while a feud between two professional mermaids becomes a true crime drama.
Anna Wintour.
In Vogue: The 90s
Disney+
Popular culture’s fascination with Anna Wintour, the inscrutable British gatekeeper of haute couture through her many decades as the editor of Vogue’s American edition, continues with this glossy six-part documentary series about the decade where she reinvented the magazine as fashion went through a series of defining changes. It’s a star-studded, laudatory narrative, where Wintour keeps her sunglasses on and her fashionista lieutenants audition for a role in a mockumentary as Kate Moss, grunge, the Met Gala, and the breakthrough of London’s iconoclastic designers all come and go.
Maggie Smith cracks up during a scene from Tea with the Dames.Credit: Mark Johnson
Tea with the Dames
BritBox, DocPlay
A reminder that if you’re seeking some enlightenment on Maggie Smith’s storied career, Roger Michell’s 2018 documentary – which has her in gregarious conversation with fellow holders of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire Eileen Atkins, Judi Dench, and Joan Plowright – is a good place to start. Made without pretension, the focus is on the camaraderie the four women share, whether through the roles they’ve played or the challenges they’ve faced in their careers. The topics allow for some thorny observations, and Smith is the saltiest of the quartet.
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