You should watch The White Lotus star's dark comedy

As we collectively swoon over Will Sharpe, now is the right time to revisit his 2016 show Flowers.

As we collectively swoon over Will Sharpe, now is the right time to revisit his 2016 show Flowers.

Flowers

As we’re collectively swooning over Will Sharpe’s tender and gawky tech-but-no-bro character in The White Lotus, it feels like the right time to revisit Flowers, Sharpe’s deranged and delightful black comedy about mental illness (which Paul Thomas Anderson called ‘perfect.’)

Flowers is a portrait of a family of barely-functioning eccentrics: Patriarch Maurice (The Mighty Boosh’s Julian Barratt) is a clinically depressed children’s book writer, who has opened up his marriage with wife Deborah (Olivia Coleman) a sweet but highly-strung music teacher; they live with their adult children, 25-year-old twins Donald (Daniel Rigby), a no-hoper inventor, and Amy (Sophia Di Martino), a reclusive, bipolar goth musician. They also live with Shun (Sharpe), an extreme caricature of a Japanese, erotica-obsessed illustrator.

Flowers is a weird thing, the humour is absurd, tonally it feels a bit like a twisted fairy tale, and the plot is loose and secondary — though there’s something about it that cuts to the bone. These kooks will leave you emotionally knackered. 

Watch on Netflix. 

My Brilliant Friend

The achievement of this show — an adaptation of anonymous author Elena Ferrante’s outrageously popular Neopolitan Novels — is its faithfulness to the spirit of its source material. The elegant HBO drama tells the story of Lenú and Lila, two gifted best friends that find solace in each other and in literature, amid the violence, sexism, and machismo of poverty-stricken post-WWII Naples. In one scene, the girls pore over Little Women whilst a man is stomped to near death on the sidewalk.

Their friendship is thorny: they are as intimately devoted to each other as they are fiercely competitive, and, as they grow older, unequal opportunities threaten to drive a wedge between them. Everything about this show is excellent, and the acting is bar none — casting directors looked at 9,000 children just to cast the two protagonists. 

Watch on SBS on Demand. 

Marie Antoinette

Shows about sex that rely heavily on corsetry are really having their time in the sun, huh? Marie Antoinette is the latest, luxurious addition to the fold, is a cut above the rest. Unlike the philanderers in Bridgerton and Dangerous Liasions, our dear heroine isn’t having sex. 

The show, created by British screenwriter Deborah Davis, who co-wrote Yorgos Lanthimos’ Academy Award-nominated film The Favourite, is a decidedly feminist account of the decade following Marie Antoinette’s (Emilia Schüle) marriage to the timid and sex-petrified Louis XVI (Louis Cunningham), and their struggle to produce an heir for France.

In the wake of the release of the lavish $35m drama, shot at Château de Versailles, Fontainebleau, French purists called for British and American filmmakers to “be banned from Versailles.” I hope, for the sake of our entertainment, this never happens. Marie Antoinette is a delight. 

Watch on Binge. 

La Veneno

Creators Javier Ambrossi and Javier Calvo have concocted a dazzling spectacle in their reconstruction of the life of La Veneono, or Cristina Ortiz, the feisty trans-woman entertainer and sex worker who dug her heels into the heart of Spain in the nineteen-nineties. The fascinatingly meta show is based on the book ‘I Say! Not a Whore, Not a Saint: The Memories of La Veneno’ by transgender journalist Valeria Vegas, and follows La Veneno and Valeria (Lola Rodríguez), as they write a book about the icon’s life. The narrative spans three time frames, in each, La Veneno is played by a different transgender actress: Jedet Sanchéz as her young, transitioning self; Daniela Santiago as La Veneno in her full, voluptuous glory, and Isabel Torres when she is past her prime and approaching death. La Vevo hits that sweet spot between achingly funny (there’s a brutal catfight in a car park that ends in Veneno tearing off the nipple of a competing sex worker with her teeth) and painfully sad.

Courtney Barnett Anonymous Club

Anonymous Club is an intimate glimpse into the life, art and anxieties of acclaimed Australian songwriter Courtney Barnett. Who was projected onto the global stage seemingly overnight when, in 2015, she released her debut record Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit.

Despite international critical acclaim, and the ubiquitous proclamation that Barnett is “this generation’s Bob Dylan”, the artist is painfully shy. She told The Australian that for a long time, parts of her were ‘closed off and ashamed’. Her reticence is what makes this documentary so fascinating.

Directed by longtime collaborator and friend Danny Cohen, and short warmly on 16mm film over three years, Anonymous Club tracks the lonely global tour for her second album, Tell Me How You Really Feel. Overlaying the film is an audio diary recorded by Barnett via Dictaphone, giving us a front-row seat to her inner monologue. 

Watch on ABC TV+, Sunday, 10:30pm.