What to watch this week

To mark the passing of Ozzy Osbourne, revisit Penelope Spheeris’s glorious glam-metal time capsule, The Decline of Western Civilisation.

Ozzy Osbourne in The Decline of Western Civilisation Part II: The Metal Years

The Decline of Western Civilisation Part II: The Metal Years
Plex

Farewell to the Prince of Darkness. To mark the passing of one of heavy metal’s founding fathers, revisit this 1988 documentary from punk filmmaker Penelope Spheeris. As the story goes, a group of insurance salesmen asked the Wayne’s World director if she’d direct a porn film. She declined — and pitched a documentary on punk instead. Thus began The Decline of Western Civilisation, a trilogy filmed between 1979 and 1998, each instalment capturing a different LA music scene. Part I is a grimy, furious portrait of late-’70s punk — Germs, Black Flag, X — featuring some truly death-defying mosh pit footage. Part II, focused on hair metal on the Sunset Strip (arguably the most heinous of all genres), is sillier and more fun, but it’s also profoundly depressing. At its core, it’s a cool-headed study of those who have “it” — and those who never will. Ozzy, it goes without saying, had unteachable charisma by the gallon. There’s a fabulous scene of him speaking about the pitfalls of fame while absolutely nuking scrambled eggs in a leopard-print robe. Lemmy from Motorhead is also a charmer. The same cannot be said for the members of Kiss — Paul Stanley is interviewed in bed, surrounded by three Playboy bunnies — or the many bozo wannabe glam-metal stars. Spheeris doesn’t shy away from brutal questions like “What if you don’t make it?” Most think they will. Others, like the band Odin (who didn’t), speak with alarming candour about how if they don’t become superstars they will kill themselves. There’s also a hilarious segment on parents trying to ban metal from young minds. Simply one of the greatest rock documentaries ever made.

Billy Joel: And So It Goes
HBO Max

Here’s another, far more wholesome, music documentary. Billy Joel: And So It Goes, a new two-part HBO feature, sets out to close the gap between the wildly popular and the (it argues) weirdly underpraised Billy Joel. Directed by Susan Lacy and Jessica Levin, the five-hour epic takes the music seriously, giving each album its due rather than racing to the scandals. Joel appears in 10 interviews, alternating between candid and cagey, alongside commentary from contemporaries like Bruce Springsteen and Pink. But it’s former wife and former manager Elizabeth Weber who offers the sharpest insight. Less an exercise in myth-making than a sincere attempt to reckon with a legacy, it’s a film for the diehards, obviously — but also surprisingly worthwhile for the previously uninterested (present company included).

The Assassin
Stan

If you’re in the market for a faintly ridiculous but entirely watchable series you’ll finish in one sitting and forget just as quickly, The Assassin is just that. Keeley Hawes is magnificent as Julie, a retired gun for hire living in quiet exile on a Greek Island (one likes to think Hawes has it written in her contract that all gigs must include a Mediterranean breeze — a la The Durrells). Her grown-up, and wimpy, son Edward (Freddie Highmore), a journalist, drops by, blissfully unaware that Mum used to knock people off for a living. That changes fast when the entire village is wiped out by heavily armed visitors from Julie’s past. Also caught in the crossfire: Edward’s fiancee Kayla (Shalom Brune-Franklin), her ketamine-snorting brother Ezra (Devon Terrell), and their father Aaron Cross (Alan Dale), an Australian mining magnate with exactly the moral compass you’d expect. What follows is a bloody mother-son romp across Europe to outrun the baddies. Great fun, very little thinking required.

Critical: Between Life and Death
Netflix

From the team behind the enormously popular 24 Hours in A & E, this six-part Netflix series spends three harrowing weeks inside four of London’s busiest trauma centres. The result is an unflinching, often overwhelming look at frontline emergency medicine, where life-and-death decisions unfold minute by minute. The editing keeps a punishing pace, and the show occasionally overplays its hand — repeated slow-motion shots of a fairground accident are a particular offender, as if the tragedy needed help being tragic. And we could do without the music cueing our emotions. But at its most effective, Critical finds real power in restraint: a quiet moment with a trauma consultant, recalling the teenage crash that shaped her career, is moving stuff. It’s graphic and not for the squeamish — but also an admirable testament to the people who show up on everyone else’s worst day.