Coronavirus: Streaming small-screen essentials in quarantine

A scene from Amazon’s ‘The Test: A New Era for Australia’s Team’

So much television, so little time. This, though, is an unusual time, with greater numbers of Australians choosing to quarantine themselves at home every day. Hence the renewed focus on streaming services, with movies and series from around the world.

The choices go beyond Netflix and Australian digital channels to the likes of Disney, Apple +, Stan and Amazon Prime. But when stuck at home, quarantined from infection, how to decide what to binge and what to avoid?

One of the more talked-about shows on Netflix is Sex Education, now into its second season, with Asa Butterfield and Gillian Anderson in the lead roles. The Crown is into its third season, The Kominsky Method is in its second and the third season of Ozark comes out next week.

Eddie Murphy in Dolemite Is My Name.

If you’re late to the party with The Good Place, one of the few successful shows that not only ends but ends on a high, Netflix is streaming all four seasons now. New British crime thriller Giri/Haji has plenty of fans, too.

If you missed Mad Men the first time around, it’s all there on Netflix. (Same goes for Breaking Bad on Stan, which also offers local dramas such as Bloom, from 2019,or Romper Stomper, from 2018.) Other older highlights on Netflix include The Meyerowitz Stories, a touching film by Noah Baumbach, Stranger Things, and the nihilistic Ricky Gervais comedy After Life, the second series of which comes out on April 24.

We can probably skip some of Netflix’s more average new releases, among them Spenser Confidential, the new action movie starring Mark Wahlberg. But there’s never been a better time to catch up on some of the films that dominated awards season, among them The Irishman, Martin Scorsese’s 3½-hour epic starring the heavyweight trio of Robert De Niro, Al Pacino and Joe Pesci, as well as Ray Romano, whose post-sitcom career continues to flourish. There’s also Marriage Story, another Baumbach film, American Factory, the Obama-backed film that won the Oscar for best documentary feature, and The Two Popes, starring Anthony Hopkins as Pope Benedict and Jonathan Pryce as Pope Francis.

Should Adam Sandler have been an Oscars contender? He certainly put in a memorable turn as a shady New York jeweller in Uncut Gems. But to my eyes, there was an even better Netflix contender that came and went without the recognition it deserved: Dolemite Is My Name, featuring a masterful performance by Eddie Murphy as Rudy Ray Moore. (Murphy is excellent, too, in Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, as one of the many comics who take a drive with Jerry Seinfeld.)

Stand-up is everywhere on Netflix, of course, and you could do worse than check out some of the new offerings, including sets by Pete Davidson, the Saturday Night Live star, and Marc Maron, who weighs in on contemporary existential anxieties in a show called, appropriately enough, End Times Fun. On April 10, Amazon is releasing a series of stand-up specials, filmed at Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre, featuring local talent including Lano and Woodley, Zoe Coombs Marr, ­Judith Lucy, Dilruk Jayasinha and Tom Gleeson.

Theodore Pellerin and Kirsten Dunst in On Becoming A God in Central Florida, available on SBS On Demand

Amazon Prime has been busy promoting Hunters, its new Nazi drama starring Al Pacino, and it also has Fleabag, but the pick of the streaming service has to be The Test, its new documentary series about the Australian men’s cricket team after the sandpaper debacle at Newlands.

There’s always a wealth of fascinating material at SBS on Demand. One popular series is On Becoming a God in Central Florida, the American comedy that earned Kirsten Dunst a Golden Globe nomination. SBS is also streaming the eighth and final season of Homeland, the spy ­series centred on Claire Danes as CIA agent Carrie Mathison. Six episodes in, and the tension continues to rise.

Asher Keddie in a scene from the ABC drama Stateless

And on the ABC, viewers can tune into the new series Stateless, with Cate Blanchett and Yvonne Strahovski leading a fine cast in a story inspired by true events. For those entertaining smaller viewers, the national broadcaster has us covered. ABC Kids on iView has endless programs for different tastes — including the impossibly charming Bluey, now in its second season.

The impossibly charming Bluey, on ABC Kids on iView