Watch this gripping British show ... before it vanishes again

This brilliantly tense slow-burn thriller was one of the best shows of 2023, and for a long, torturous spell it’s been completely unstreamable in Australia.

Clockwise from top left: Miss Austen, Somewhere Boy, Platonic, Mandy

Miss Austen
ABC iView
Sundays 8.50pm on ABC TV

Keeley Hawes, last seen swanning about with a pistol in The Assassin, commits a different sort of murder here: the destruction of letters. Timed with the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, Miss Austen is a pleasurable companion piece to the inevitable rewatch of the BBC’s 1995 Pride and Prejudice. Based on Gill Hornby’s novel of the same name, it tells the story of the beloved author not through Jane herself — already dead and posthumously en route to literary sainthood — but through the eyes of her long-surviving sister, Cassandra (or Cassy), played by Hawes, who is, as ever, just wonderful. The drama circles the scandal that has long aggrieved Austen scholars and Janeites alike: the great letter-burning. Why did Cassy torch the bulk of Jane’s correspondence? In this version, it’s framed not as vandalism but devotion — a protective, painful act of love. Jane, we learn, was fond of a bitchy letter about friends and family; and Cassy’s bonfire was about shielding her reputation, privacy and family ties. Stately and scandalous.

Platonic
Season 2 out now on Apple TV+

Here is a lovely, moving comedy about that eternal minefield: can straight men and women stay just friends once they’re grown up and married off? Rose Byrne and Seth Rogen — reuniting after 2014’s Bad Neighbours, a foul film buoyed by their great chemistry — play Sylvia and Will, former best friends who reconnect in midlife. Sylvia’s married to a near-perfect husband (Luke Macfarlane) and has three kids, but there’s a whiff of ennui creeping in. Will, meanwhile, is a man child navigating a messy divorce: he wears bucket hats unironically, runs a hipster brewery, and has a much younger girlfriend. Their friendship is rekindled — tentatively, hilariously, and entirely platonically. Sharp, charming, and genuinely insightful about the weird emotional politics of adult friendship. While you’re here, if you’ve yet to check out Seth Rogen’s other Apple TV+ comedy, The Studio, do so post-haste — it’s excellent.

Somewhere Boy
SBS on Demand

It’s back. One of the best shows of 2023 — and for a long, torturous spell, completely unstreamable in Australia. A peculiar little British gem that slipped out quietly and disappeared just as fast — but if you caught it, you haven’t stopped thinking about it since. A brilliantly tense slow-burn thriller that’s best watched with as little information as possible. Lewis Gribben is magnetic as Danny, a sheltered 18-year-old raised in a rotting house in the middle of nowhere by his grief-stricken, definitely deranged dad, Steve. His mum died when he was younger, and Steve kept him locked up inside to protect him from the “monsters” of the outside world. His only connection to life is his steady diet of old Hollywood romances like Casablanca and Brief Encounter. When his dad suddenly dies, Danny’s thrown into the real world — wide-eyed, awkward, and utterly unprepared. What follows is moving, unsettling, and totally gripping. Strange in all the right ways. Watch it before it vanishes again.

Mandy
Britbox

With the world seemingly conspiring to make everything as grim as possible, sometimes the only sane response is to watch something proudly, unapologetically stupid and laugh full-bellied. Call it self-preservation. Thank God for Diane Morgan. In this series, the woman behind Philomena Cunk returns with her most beastly creation yet: Mandy Carter — a work-shy, chain-smoking wrecking ball with a beehive. If there isn’t a cigarette dangling from her crooked gob, it’s setting a chicken shop alight. The plot, such as it is, goes like this: Mandy gets a crap job, something goes horribly wrong, carnage ensues (severed limbs, mass casualties). It’s framed as a story of trials and tribulations — except Mandy never really tries, and nothing ever seems to trouble her. She has no family, no real responsibilities, and one eternally patient friend: Lola, her nail tech (always in the shade Minty Pig). She’s basically Mr Bean if he lived a life of sin. Low-rent and proudly idiotic, Mandy is a short (15-minute episodes), sharp jab of joyful nihilism — comfort viewing for the end times. Plus, there’s a coterie of amazingly random guest stars, think: John Cooper Clarke and Shaun Ryder from the Happy Mondays.

Hunting the Yorkshire Ripper
Prime Video

I’m not what you’d call a true crime junkie, but I’ll watch anything to do with Peter Sutcliffe. Possibly because my beloved late Nanna once had the police round after insisting she saw him at a bus stop in Birmingham (it was just some bloke). Anyway. You could argue we don’t need another Yorkshire Ripper doc — not after Liza Williams’ sensational 2019 series The Yorkshire Ripper Files, or last year’s dramatisation The Long Shadow. But this new two-parter from Nick Mattingly takes a different tack. It zeros in on the bizarre detour in the case: the infamous hoaxer Wearside Jack, aka John Humble, who derailed the investigation by sending police a tape pretending to be the killer. Former DCS Chris Gregg, who spent years chasing both the hoaxer and the real murderer, gives a fascinating interview about how badly the case went off course — and what it cost.