Samuel L Jackson fights aliens in Secret Invasion – but who will save the poor audience from this Marvel monstrosity?

Secret Invasion’s title sequence has been made entirely by AI. You wouldn’t be surprised if the script had been written by ChatGPT, too. This is Marvel slosh not worth Samuel L Jackson.

Samuel L Jackson returns as Nick Fury in Secret Invasion. Picture: Supplied

Watch out, you stars of stage and screen. Be careful, all actors of any notable worth. The big, scary, unavoidable Disney vortex is coming to gobble you up.

A very famous actor once told Review that it doesn’t matter how many Oscars or BAFTAS you get, no matter how acclaimed or beautiful you are – if you’re not in a huge film or TV franchise now, you’re finished. We can probably blame Harry Potter. The boy wizard is the only reason most people these days recognise Maggie Smith or Michael Gambon or Richard Harris.

And its American equivalent in the Marvel superhero universe has held everyone from Michelle Pfeiffer to Jeff Bridges, Julia Louis-Dreyfus to Don Cheadle in its grasp.

Not even a critical darling like Annette Bening could escape being lured into the role of a shapeshifting, outer space super intelligence shooting green lasers from her hands.

But nobody has been more unfairly trapped in the Marvel franchise whirlpool than Samuel L Jackson, who’s been made to play the gruff boss of the superspies, Nick Fury, for the past 100 years or so. Not only did Disney make the vaunted star of Pulp Fiction and Django Unchained play the most boring spymaster ever over and over again, it has cast him in a whole TV series.

Secret Invasion is the latest attempt by Disney to kill television, having succeeded in murdering cinema.

Okay, okay, the previous Marvel straight-to-streaming boxsetter – WandaVision with Elizabeth Olsen and Kathryn Hahn – was kinda arty and cool.

And Tom Hiddleston’s Loki was not dreadful. But like Disney’s often dreary recent attempts at Star Wars TV, Secret Invasion is impenetrable to anyone but the adoring fans.

It also manages to take the drama out of a hurricane, and wastes the talents of its brilliant leading man and his many top-rate co-stars.

Jackson has been hanging out in outer space for a while when we get to episode 1, having been slightly traumatised by the events of the last Avengers film (weren’t we all).

But he’s called back to Earth by the most Aussie ocker alien ever, Ben Mendelsohn, and former spy underling Cobie Smulders to stop his old foes – the Skrulls – taking over the planet.

The Skrulls – the race of Mendelsohn, who is a nice Skrull – can shape shift into the form of anybody on the planet. So understandably they take the form of Game of Thrones beauty Emilia Clarke and a bunch of Balenciaga male models.

Throw in Olivia Colman as a nutty British spymaster – clearly she’s doing an audition tape to play M in the next James Bond film – and you have quite a cast for this weekly sci-fi spy thriller. That’s if you can understand what anyone is talking about.

Secret Invasion is the epitome of the Marvel TV and film franchise. Even an armed chase through the streets of Moscow seems stunted, fake and without life.

And even the title sequence of this show has been raising eyebrows, because it’s been made entirely by artificial intelligence – no artists, no nothing. But honestly, you wouldn’t be surprised if the script had been written by ChatGPT, too. It’s just Marvel slosh not worth Jackson, the man who delivered one of the greatest monologues of any actor in Pulp Fiction.

It is interesting that Secret Invasion is being put out weekly – more proof that bingeing is dead – and maybe it will grow into itself. But with the way it consumes talent like Jackson and Colman, this series is proof even the high-class world of streaming TV is not safe from Disney’s clutches.

Catherine Tate stars in BBC sitcom Queen of Oz. Picture: Darren Leigh Roberts

Talking of people who appear to be from a totally different planet, the ABC has a new sitcom about the British royal family. Queen of Oz is the latest star vehicle for UK super-comic Catherine Tate, with plenty of Antipodean connections as the title suggests.

Tate plays the spare to the throne – a princess who’s hard drinking, rude as all hell, and a total wreck of a woman. Instead of letting her roam wild and embarrass Buckingham Palace any further, the king abdicates his crown in Australia and names his unruly daughter the new monarch Down Under. It’s a concept rooted in royal history actually. Prince Henry – the spare sibling to the brother kings Edward VIII and George VI – was governor-general between 1945 and 1947.

And for years there were rumours the current King, Prince William and Prince Harry would all be named the late Queen’s representative in Canberra, in the hope that it would sort the spoiled little men out and teach them about responsibility.

This sitcom takes things one step further by making Tate the full-on Queen of Australia (yes, that could technically happen as the Australian crown has been totally legally separate from the British crown since 1986).

Of course, it leads Tate and her merry band of servants and palace advisers on a hilarious journey full of weird bugs, kangaroos, and pesky, casual, cheeky Aussie dinky-di folk.

No one is going to accuse Queen of Oz of being the most complex take on the Australia-Britain relationship. There’s too many “Oh no, there’s an actual snake inside an actual house!” kind of jokes. And Tate’s signature gross out humour – she does a lot of screaming and vomiting – doesn’t always lend itself to a wry commentary on monarchy in a postcolonial world.

But the British comic does possess excellent timing, an innate sense of how really awful human beings can be (as she perfected in her wicked grandmother character from The Catherine Tate Show), and even gets to show a more quiet, poignant side to her drunken queen from time to time.

Local comedy talent Jenna Owen (best known for her viral skits for SBS’s The Feed) is very good as the Aussie PR woman tasked with trying to make the new monarch presentable.

And Rob Collins (Cleverman, The Drover’s Wife) is very dashing as the no-nonsense bodyguard who Tate’s queen begins to open up to.

You might not be hollering Vivat Catherine Tate at the end of bingeing Queen of Oz, but it’s a fun watch for a wintry weekend.

Kim Cattrall stars in Glamorous. Cr. Amanda Matlovich/Netflix 2023

If you’re currently watching the second run of Sex and The City sequel And Just Like That you surely have that gnawing question in your head – in what weird multiverse is Kim Cattrall?

The woman who made Samantha Jones – one of the most popular characters in TV history – is set to appear in the last episode of And Just Like That, after her most extraordinary bust up with fellow SATC star Sarah Jessica Parker (she’s appearing on the phone).

Until that episode drops, you can find Cattrall leading the gang in Netflix’s newest rom-com series Glamorous.

Cattrall has done plenty of very interesting work since abandoning the SATC girls and she’s a real get for any show. She’s played Cleopatra on stage in England, she was fantastic as a Southern matriarch who gets in touch with her Sapphic side in the recent reboot of Queer as Folk, and Cattrall was very moving as a widow in the Canadian remake of the Joanna Lumley hit Sensitive Skin.

But in Glamorous, she’s more wooden than that talking shopfront doll she played in her first big hit Mannequin. She plays a former Christina Crawford type who now runs a worldwide makeup empire. Fairy godmother-like, she appears at a department store makeup counter run by a young non-gender conforming TikTokker (Miss Benny) and takes her on.

It’s all a bit Ugly Betty or Devil Wears Prada with the TikTokker struggling to fit into the world of high fashion. Luckily, she has Cattrall to give them sage advice and platitudes you’d expect more from Mr Miyagi than Samantha Jones.

It’s all very schlocky and you do wonder if, while reciting some of this turgid dialogue, Cattrall thought: “Ah screw it, tell Parker I’ll do one scene.”

The show does have some bright young talent in it. Zane Phillips is decent as Cattrall’s repressed, beefcake son who wants to sell the makeup business. Michael Hsu Rosen makes for a very adorkable love interest for Miss Benny, and his big, sad, brown eyes will break the odd heart.

But Cattrall is the one we’re here to see. The only big name in Glamorous is very under-utilised and badly served by a script with very little bite. It’s a shame for Cattrall and for all of us.

Secret Invasion is streaming on Disney Plus.
Queen of Oz is streaming on ABC iview.
Glamorous is streaming on Netflix.