What to watch this week: hanging with The Bear crew still a joy; Squid Game ends in bloody style
With the return of two of the most acclaimed shows of recent years in The Bear and Squid Game, and a fun, fab kids’ show from Andy Lee, it’s a big week of viewing.
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We’ve sifted through the latest offerings from TV and streaming platforms to find the best shows you should be watching this week.
SQUID GAME
NETFLIX
The six-episode final series of the hit Korean drama picks up right where season two left off, with Seong Gi-Hun (Lee Jung-jae) dealing with the fallout of his failed armed uprising against his captors that ended up with a bloody shootout. Broken and manacled, he’s cast back into the deadly game now dominated by the faction who want to see it through to its conclusion, no matter what the cost in human life. While the remaining games are best enjoyed spoiler-free, suffice it to say that the producers have excelled in inventing new and terrifying ways of killing people that also raise terrible moral choices. Viewers hoping for happy endings and neat resolutions might be disappointed but they shouldn’t be surprised by now. Such luxuries are in short supply in creator Hwang Dong-huk’s dark and bleak world view where the rich prosper, the poor suffer and the system always wins. But a coda that includes a shock appearance by Aussie A-lister Cate Blanchett after the final match does provide some respite for battle weary watchers as well as setting up the tantalising prospect of more.
IRONHEART
NEW EPISODES WEDNESDAYS, DISNEY+
Having first made an appearance in Black Panther: Wakanda, Riri Williams (Dominque Thorne) is back with a stand-alone spin-off show that also marks the end of the Phase Five of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. And while she shares a brilliance and penchant for creating hi-tech fighting suits with Robert Downey Jr’s late Tony Stark/Iron Man, coming from the mean streets of Chicago’s South Side she has none of his cash or resources. So when she’s kicked out of her prestigious uni, she falls in with a gang of tech-savvy thieves, led by Anthony Ramos’ mysteriously powered The Hood to fund her experiments. Compared to other MCU projects it all feels like rather low stakes and slightly second-rate so far, but there’s room for improvement.
THE KIM KARDASHIAN DIAMOND HEIST
THURSDAY, 8.30PM, CHANNEL 10
It’s fair to say that Kim Kardashian elicits extreme reactions between those who think she’s an admirable, self-made woman with a flair for fashion and those who regard her as a headline-seeking self-promoter with no discernible talents. Indeed, the first reaction of many when it was revealed she was terrifyingly robbed at gunpoint during the 2016 Paris Fashion week was that it was a put-up job for publicity or an insurance scam. Through interviews with journalists, culture commentators and law enforcement, this new documentary examines how Kardashian’s social media habits might have contributed to the robbery, how it was planned and executed, as well as the manhunt that saw the perpetrators brought to justice.
PATIENCE
FRIDAY, 8.35PM, ABC
From Sherlock Holmes to Monk and more recent examples such as Ludwig and High Potential, the quirky but brilliant detective has been a TV staple for decades. This new British crime drama stars neurodivergent actor Ella Maisy Purvis as Patience Evans, an autistic archivist who works for the Yorkshire police department in the Criminal Records Office, somewhat dismissively referred to by the frontline cops as “paper mountain”. Though she struggles with social and professional interactions, her remarkable ability to see patterns in criminal case files that others have missed bring her to the attention of a detective who is investigating a string of apparent suicides. The pair make an unconventional, but formidable, team as it emerges the deaths may also have a personal connection for Patience.
SINNERS
FRIDAY, MAX
Having previously worked together as director and star on Creed and Black Panther, Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan have once again come up with the goods on this smart, savage and sexy-as-all-get-out take on the well-worn vampire genre that went gang busters on the big screen. Jordan plays dual roles, Smoke and Stack, two small time crooks who return to their home in 1930s Mississippi with big ambitions of opening their own juke joint with the help of a smoking-hot blues guitarist. And as if fighting racism and class prejudice wasn’t hard enough, the brothers also come up against supernatural forces in a long and bloody opening night.
TOUR DE FRANCE
SATURDAY, 9.35PM, SBS
It’s that time of year where Australian cycling enthusiasts start mainlining coffee in their efforts to not miss a moment of the world’s greatest cycling race. This year’s race begins in Lille and is once again shaping up as a showdown between defending champ Slovenian Tadej Pogacar and Dane Jonas Vingegaard, who have won the past five tours between them. The best local hope is West Australian Ben O’Connor, who finished fourth in 2021, and Matthew Keenan, Simon Gerrans, Dr Bridie O’Donnell, David McKenzie and Christophe Mallet will take bleary-eyed viewers through every climb, sprint and time trial.
ANDY’S GLOBAL ADVENTURES: BABY ANIMAL MISSIONS
4PM, MONDAY, ABC KIDS
As the longest serving presenter on the BBC’s beloved CBeebies channel (home to the Teletubbies and Octonauts among others, Andy Day knows a thing or two about making TV for kids that’s educational as well as fun. The latest in his Adventures series that’s taken in dinosaurs and underwater life, sees Day virtually flying around the world with partner Jen and robot sidekick Scout to investigate how tiny critters live in different environments. With clever use of CGI, he puts himself right alongside ridiculously cute baby meerkats on the saltpans of Botswana as they try to find a new home and evade predators.
THE BEAR
DISNEY+
After wowing critics and scooping up awards in its first two seasons, many thought that the comedy-drama starring Jeremy Allen White as brilliant but troubled chef Carmen “Carmy” Berzotto went off the boil in its third season and failed to significantly advance the plot. This fourth season, which deals with the aftermath of The Bear’s opening night and the all-important first review, won’t do much to change that, but it’s still a whole of fun to hang out in the kitchen with the dysfunctional, shouty, passionate crew who run the joint. The financial clock is ticking as they each ponder their place in the business, and the cameos come thick and fast, with returning stars including Jamie Lee Curtis and Bob Odenkirk and new faces Rob Reiner and Brie Larson.
DO NOT WATCH THIS SHOW
MONDAY, 7.30PM, ABC FAMILY
Having sold more than 3.5 million copies of his Do Not Open This Book series worldwide, radio and TV presenter Andy Lee has now created 12 episodes of the adventures of Wizz and his increasingly desperate pleas to get viewers to switch off. Lee himself voices the pompous, long-legged blue monster star, as well as scientific sidekick Douglas, who occasionally interjects with nuggets of knowledge to counter Wizz’s comical bluster and bulldust. He’s joined by a who’s who of Aussie voice talent including his old pal Hamish Blake, Glenn Robbins, Denise Scott, Mick Molloy and many more, with supremely silly stories about frogs, farts, treasure, ghosts and getting older. Kids will love it.
PARAMEDICS
TUESDAY, 7.30PM, CHANNEL 9
Though you hope you’ll never see them face-to-face, there’s a certain vicarious thrill in watching selfless and dedicated frontline workers do their thing. These Adelaide ambos are no exception as they respond to a wide array of emergencies with speed, compassion and skill. In the season opener, there’s a woman who’s come off her horse in remote scrub too dense for a chopper to land, a mum who has come a cropper at a kid’s roller-skating birthday party, a 93-year-old on blood thinners with a dangerous wound and – most terrifyingly – a desperately ill teacher whose heart could give out at any second as she’s rushed to hospital.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT …
THE WORLD’S END
IN more recent years Simon Pegg has become best known for helping Tom Cruise save the world as part of the megastar’s Mission Impossible team. Here he is part of a somewhat less elite squad of heroes playing Gary, an immature alcoholic who stumbles into an alien invasion while on a pub crawl with his mates (Martin Freeman, Nick Frost and Paddy Considine). Also starring Pierce Brosnan and Rosamund Pike, the film is the final instalment in Pegg and Frost’s Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy (a spoof on Krzysztof Kieslowski’s three colours trilogy). It follows Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead, which likewise sees an underdog forced into a seemingly unwinnable battle with hilarious consequences.
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