Bella Ramsey steals the show in devastating prison drama

The Last of Us star plays a pregnant, heroin-addicted young woman in the second season of the Jimmy McGovern knockout, Time.

Tamara Lawrance, Jodie Whittaker and Bella Ramsey in Time

Time 
Season 2
Binge

I love a British prison drama — there’s something so thrilling about the way the ”r” rolls off a character’s tongue when they insist they’re no grass. Jimmy McGovern’s Time, which debuted back in 2021 with a knockout three-parter starring Sean Bean as an alcoholic locked up for a fatal drink-driving incident, is back for a second season. This time the story takes place in a women’s prison, with the central theme of motherhood. A better-than-ever Jodie Whittaker (Doctor Who) stars as Orla, a single mother who has been done for “fiddling the leccy” — that is, tampering with the electricity meter to “steal electricity” — an offence so trifling that she assumed she wouldn’t be jailed and hasn’t organised anyone to pick up her three young kids from school. She is sharing a cell with Abi (Tamara Lawrance), who is serving a crime that is best revealed by watching the show, so as not to ruin its devastating blow. Then there’s the absurdly brilliant Bella Ramsey (The Last of Us), who gives a ferocious performance as Kelsey, a pregnant, heroin-addicted young woman who decides to keep her baby solely to get a lighter sentence. It’s devastating.

Utopia
Prime Video

This utterly original British series, which originally aired back in 2013, is one of streaming’s weirdest, most exciting hidden treasures — just don’t confuse it with its limp American remake or the Australian infrastructure comedy of the same name (though the latter is well worth your time). It’s a paranoid thriller about a group of oddbod internet forum posters, all bonded by an obsession with the graphic novel The Utopia Experiments — which they believe to have predicted several disastrous epidemics. As they delve deeper into the conspiracy, they become targets of shadowy organisations. It’s a knotty, violent, and cruel mystery made crueller by the fact that the show was cancelled after two seasons. If you don’t mind never getting closure and live for gorgeous visuals (think Tarkovsky’s The Sacrifice on acid) and a banger, queasy score — there’s plenty here for you. One for fans of The Leftovers.

Revealed: Ben Roberts-Smith Truth On Trial
Stan

This documentary is about as good as you’d expect something with a title as horrendously clunky as Revealed: Ben Roberts-Smith Truth On Trial to be. As the name suggests, it follows the defamation trial between Australia’s most decorated soldier and the media, told through lengthy interviews with journalists Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters. The story and the talking heads are not the problem here; rather, it’s everything else. The production is unsightly and monotonous — cheesy re-enactments, mundane B-roll footage, and a score that flits between a cheap imitation of the Game of Thrones theme and Linkin Park-lite piano riffs. The whole thing completely washes over you. It might engage those unfamiliar with the trial details, but for those who closely followed the case, it lacks the bombshell moments and big revelations to justify its existence.

Everyone Else Burns
SBS on Demand

What a delight to see Simon Bird back on the screen in what feels like his first meaty role since playing the smarmy, know-it-all teenager Will in The Inbetweeners. In Everyone Else Burns, he’s all grown up. Bird plays David, the zealous and narcissistic patriarch of a Manchester family who are members of the evangelical cult The Order of the Divine Rod, who believe doomsday is nigh. When we meet him — sporting a bowl cut literally snipped from a plastic bowl not unlike one you may have been handed as a sick child — he’s rousing his family in the middle of the night for an apocalypse training session: “Get down the stairs before your soul turns to ash!” Forcing his perpetually put-upon wife, ungainly daughter, and violence-hungry young son to slog up a hill, rucksacks in tow. You won’t find any knee-slapping jokes in this comedy; rather, it’s a sunny, good-natured look at a dysfunctional family. And at just six episodes, it whizzes by.

The Beautiful Lie
Netflix

A pre-Succession Sarah Snook stars in this beautifully crafted modernisation of Anna Karenina, set among the upper crust of Melbourne society. Writers Alice Bell and Jonathan Gavin have done a wonderful job of transforming the Tolstoy classic into a smart, sexy, distinctly Australian drama. The series is anchored by the entangled lives of Anna (Snook) and her husband, Alexander (Rodger Corser), two former tennis stars; and Skeet (Benedict Samuel), who in this represents Vronsky. Instead of being a military officer, he is commanding the trenches of an indie music production. This has everything you want out of a drama — it’s intelligent, with well-cast and directed actors, and gorgeous, sun-dappled cinematography. Come for the romance, stay for the real estate porn.