Five things to watch this weekend
Let the backstabbing commence: the high-finance drama Industry returns for a third season. Plus, a cult kids’ show gets a reboot.
Industry
Binge
Season 3 premieres Monday, August 12
If your idea of perfect television is watching the worst people in the world do despicable things with the object of making equally heinous people rich, Industry will be right up your strasse. This hit drama, returning for a third season, invites us into the brutal and backstabbing world of high finance. It follows five millennial “grads” who are competing for a job at the top London bank Pierpoint & Co. By the time the credits roll on the first thrilling episode (led by Girls mastermind Lena Dunham), only four will have survived. Industry was written by two first-time showrunners, Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, both former finance boys who worked in investment banking. So yeah, there’s a lot of impenetrable jargon here — but also the kind of deliciously cruel insults that could only be dreamt up by two people who have done their time on the trading floor.
Ray Martin: The Last Goodbye
Premieres on Wednesday, August 14 at 8.30pm on SBS and SBS On Demand
How often do you think about your own funeral? Have you compiled a list of people you absolutely do not want in attendance and given it to your best friends and de facto burial bouncers? Do they know what’s on the playlist? If you haven’t indulged these morbid fantasies, don’t fret. You’re far from alone. If you have, rejoice: this show is for you. In this new series, stalwart journalist Ray Martin – who has discovered that most Australians don’t plan or talk about funeral arrangements, and only half have a will –examines Australia’s relationship with death, while also looking at the way other cultures and subcultures say their final farewells — be it at a mosque or in a mosh pit. This three-part series is Australia’s answer to Celebrity Send-Off — the buzzy British show in which famous people ask their loved ones to arrange a funeral for them. Except instead of Bez from the Happy Mondays cobbling together a wake for frontman Shaun Ryder, it’s Martin planning his own do.
Life Is Not A Competition, But I’m Winning
Mubi
Here’s a timely watch in the wake of the politically charged hoo-ha over gender and fair play in sports, brought on by a women’s boxing event at the Paris Olympics that resulted in Italian boxer Angelini Carini’s withdrawal 46 seconds into her match-up against Algerian boxer Imane Khelif. First-time director Julia Fuhr Mann’s documentary, Life Is Not A Competition, But I’m Winning, set in the Olympic Stadium in Athens, explores the rigid and murky gender boundaries of competitive sports through the testimonials of trans and intersex athletes, including Annet Negesa, Uganda’s 800m Olympic hopeful, who, at the advice of a World Athletics physician, underwent irreversible surgery because of her naturally elevated testosterone levels. This is a beautifully shot and soundtracked documentary that is at its most effective when it tells it straight. Unfortunately, it too often indulges its arty farty impulses, which are maddeningly distracting and ultimately take away from its emotional punch.
Yo Gabba GabbaLand
Apple TV+ from Friday, August 9
While the original Nickelodeon television show, Yo Gabba Gabba! — which aired from 2007–2015 — was firmly for toddlers, it didn’t stop my then high-school mates (and our gen X parents) from being utterly obsessed. Created by Christian Jacobs and Scott Schultz, muso friends with no prior television experience who believed that children’s music could be more than tinkly lullabies, Yo Gabba Gabba! was educational, entertaining, and crucially, very cool. With a cast of fluffy technicolor monsters — Muno, Foofa, Plex, Brobee, and Toodee — and the madcap tangerine host DJ Lance Rock, the show was a revolving door that welcomed in all the hottest bands and celebrities of the era. Think guest appearances from Anthony Bourdain, Tony Hawk, and Bill Hader, and musical performances from The Shins, Solange, My Chemical Romance, The Flaming Lips, Biz Markie, and the king of children’s TV music, Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo (who composed The Rugrats theme). This month, a reboot of the series will launch on Apple TV+, with a new host, 13-year-old dancer Kammy Kam, and some reliably excellent guests (Thundercat, Kurt Vile, Anderson .Paak). Hot Potato, be warned... your days are numbered.
The Umbrella Academy
Netflix
Speaking of My Chemical Romance, the fourth and final season of The Umbrella Academy, the superhero drama based on a series of comic books written by MCR frontman Gerard Way, hit screens on Thursday. For those who haven’t yet been roped into this daft saga, there are better ways to spend your time. But if you have a craving for superhero slop that must be satiated, don’t let me stop you. In brief: a reclusive billionaire named Reginald Hargreeves (Colm Feore) adopts seven babies who have all been born on the same day to mothers who have become mysteriously pregnant, gone full-term, and into labour within a few hours. Hargreeves had a hunch that there was something special about these kids — lo and behold, these babes had the power of voodoo. Cut to the present, daddy is dead, and the miracle children have grown up as a dysfunctional family. But they must put aside their differences and save the world from an impending apocalypse. If you’re going to watch this for any reason, it will be for its charming cast: Elliot Page and Robert Sheehan are standouts.