The best TV shows to stream in Australia this month
Searching for a new TV show this month? Personally, I’m amped for SBS On Demand’s new Australian drama The Airport Chaplain, starring Hugo Weaving and The Pitt’s Shabana Azeez. Meanwhile, Lanterns on HBO Max has the potential to give us a superhero spin-off that actually matters.
Netflix
My top Netflix recommendation is My Brilliant Career (August 13).
How do you adapt a work that already exists as a foundational Australian novel and a revered movie? The answer: boldly. This six-part limited series will bring a new audience to Miles Franklin’s 1901 coming-of-age novel. Philippa Northeast (Territory) plays Sybylla Melvyn, a young woman trying to escape the limits of poverty and society’s narrow expectations, with Christopher Chung (Slow Horses) as Harry Beechan, the suitor whose attentions forces Sybylla to choose between personal and creative satisfaction. Judy Davis and Sam Neill were compelling together in those roles for Gillian Armstrong’s 1979 movie, setting a high bar for the show’s creator, Liz Doran (Barons).
Also on Netflix: In an apt reflection of contemporary anxiety, we’re getting a spate of horror films in which not even the family home can keep you safe. Leading the way is The Last House (August 7), a domestic thriller in which a married couple – played by Greta Lee (Past Lives) and Wagner Moura (The Secret Agent) – and their two children discover one morning that they’re sealed inside their house by an unknown force, cut off from the outside world with dwindling resources. The director is Louis Leterrier, taking an intimate break from the Fast & Furious franchise.
July highlights: A beloved 1970s show got a welcome remake as Little House on the Prairie brought back family life on the American frontier.
HBO Max
My top HBO Max recommendation is Lanterns (August 17).
Streaming spin-offs of blockbuster movie franchises are a fraught proposition. For every Andor and The Penguin there has been a Hawkeye or Obi-Wan Kenobi. This superhero mystery series is from the DC cinematic universe, telling the story of intergalactic peacekeepers the Green Lanterns. Veteran Hal Stewart (Kyle Chandler, Friday Night Lights) and new recruit John Stewart (Aaron Pierre, Rebel Ridge) find themselves on Earth, investigating a murder in rural Nebraska that may have extraterrestrial origins. There was a forgettable 2011 Green Lantern movie with Ryan Reynolds, but the fact Damon Lindelof (Lost, Watchmen) is involved here as co-creator gives me faith this new iteration will have an original take.
July highlights: Larry David – and a whole bunch of famous friends – gave America the 250th birthday it deserved with the sketch comedy series Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness.
Amazon Prime Video
My top Amazon Prime Video recommendation is Sterling Point (August 5).
The many, many devotees of The Summer I Turned Pretty are craving a new coming-of-age drama with a female protagonist beset by romantic anguish and family secrets. This may well be their next binge. Created by filmmaker Megan Park (My Old Ass), this series follows New York teen Annie Jacobson (Ella Rubin, The Chair), who receives a picturesque Canadian island home in the will of the grandfather she never knew. Once Annie makes the fish-out-of-water visit north to the idyllic haven, she makes a slew of new friends and has to confront her late mother’s hidden history on the island.
Also on Amazon Prime Video: I’m not sure how much more muscle Alan Ritchson can put on as the righteously unstoppable vigilante Jack Reacher, but Reacher (August 12) has become a reliable hit. Sticking to an 18-month turnaround, this will be the dad-action staple’s fourth season adapted from Lee Child’s series of bestselling novels, with Reacher plunged into a conspiratorial hunt when he tries to help a distraught woman on the New York subway. The trailer has Reacher headbutting goons, throwing assassins through windows and dragging flunkies down flights of stairs. In other words, we’re all systems go.
July highlights: The Legally Blonde franchise got a winning prequel with the high-school comedy Elle.
Stan*
My top Stan recommendation is You’re Killing Me (August 17).
After being one of most famous teenagers in the world in the 1970s, Brooke Shields has enjoyed a long and eclectic television career, whether headlining the hit 2000s sitcom Suddenly Susan or popping up in the final seasons of Jane the Virgin. Her latest series – which comes with some impeccable Murder, She Wrote vibes – is a cosy-crime mystery in which Shields plays successful crime novelist Allison Chandler. When Allison’s best friend dies under suspicious circumstances, she puts her creative skills to use and teams up with a young true-crime podcaster, Andrea Walker (Amalia Williamson, Sullivan’s Crossing), to solve the case. Comic mishaps, put-upon local police and some absurdist sleuthing ensue.
Also on Stan: With city crime dramas as his genre, rapper 50 Cent (aka Curtis Jackson) is well on his way to becoming a mini-TV mogul. He produced and had a recurring role in Power, which ran for six successful seasons and spawned three spin-offs, and now he’s crossed the Atlantic for Fightland (August 1). Mixing some Mike Tyson with Top Boy, the series stars Howard Charles (Whitstable Pearl) as Maduka “Duke” Kilroy, a disgraced former boxing champion newly released from jail and returning to London to destroy the crime family he believes betrayed him. This will not be for the fainthearted.
July highlights: A big tick for Australian content – The F Ward is a terrific local variant of the medical drama, plus 1980s New York crime time with The Westies.
Apple TV
My top Apple TV recommendation is Ted Lasso (August 5).
Game on! With the World Cup just concluded, football now gets back its fictional favourite. Having wrapped up the heartstring-tugging comedy about an American football coach trying to survive at an English Premier League club in 2023, star and co-creator Jason Sudeikis eventually decided to return as the folksy Ted Lasso. The coach will once more be in the employ of Richmond FC, but this time it’s the club’s struggling women’s team who will get the benefit of his encouragement. Most of the supporting cast will return, including Brendan Hunt’s Coach Beard, Juno Temple’s Keeley Jones and Brett Goldstein’s Roy Kent. Sudeikis has said he missed Ted’s optimism. Fans are likely to agree.
Also on Apple TV: Science fiction has become a cornerstone of Apple TV’s programming, with Foundation, Severance, and Silo among the eclectic hits. With its second season, Dark Matter (August 28) may well join them. The show is driven by an invention that allows travel between parallel dimensions, which leads to Chicago professor Jason Dessen (Joel Edgerton, Train Dreams) being kidnapped by a rogue version of himself and separated from his wife, Daniela (Jennifer Connelly, Top Gun: Maverick). The new instalment has the couple reunited, but they’re being pursued by not only more Jasons and the authorities, but also their own compromised decisions.
July highlights: Anya Taylor-Joy brought star power to the crime thriller Lucky, Silo became the new science-fiction obsession and Colin Farrell returned as a one-of-a-kind private eye in Sugar, while The Dink added to the silliness of sports comedies.
Binge
My top Binge recommendation is Two Weeks in August (August 12).
Drawing White Lotus comparisons when it debuted in Britain, this BBC drama turns a summer holiday on a Greek island with old friends into an increasingly fraught test of endurance for high school teacher Zoe (Jessica Raine, Patrick Melrose). Her husband, Dan (Damien Molony, Brassic) is struggling with depression, some friends have changed for the worse, and there’s both an entitled second wife and a French nanny to navigate. Then they all start drinking. This is a barbed comedy, satirical critique, and astute character study. Creator Catherine Shepherd (The Shrink Next Door) is not lacking in ambition.
Also on Binge: Possession (August 27) is a supernatural thriller doused in Caribbean juju, dark family secrets, and cursed colonial crimes. Gugu Mbatha-Raw (Loki) plays Claudia, the diligent London lawyer dispatched to Jamaica to assist a client, Oliver (Jonny Lee Miller, Elementary), who has been denied a vast inheritance. Once she arrives at the family estate, law starts giving way to lore. The plot also folds in the story of Charlotte (Bel Powley, Morning Wars), a forebear of Oliver’s who may have been a little too focused on witchcraft even as the family fortune was being built through slavery.
July highlights: Colin from Accounts finished on a high note, Jennifer Garner led an all-star cast in the female friendship drama The Five-Star Weekend, while the Kiwi suburban crime thriller Ms X brought Melissa George back into the spotlight.
Disney+
My top Disney+ recommendation is The Shards (August 6).
Given his predilection for homoerotic tableaus, blood-soaked gore and wealthy misdeeds, it’s actually surprising that it’s taken this long for powerhouse creator Ryan Murphy (American Horror Story, the Monster anthology) to collaborate with American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis. This six-piece series, set in 1981 Los Angeles, is an adaptation of Ellis’s 2023 novel, which was a combination of fictionalised memoir and serial killer thriller. The on-screen Bret Easton Ellis (Igby Rigney, Midnight Mass) is a privileged private school student whose indolent affairs and nascent screenwriting career are derailed by an unsettling newcomer, Robert Mallory (Homer Gere, Euphoria). Get ready for Beverly Hills 9021-woe.
July highlights: Furious was a taut new psychological drama about the uncomfortable connections between a serial killer and the FBI agent pursuing her, plus the verdict on the final season of The Bear.
SBS On Demand
My top SBS On Demand recommendation is The Airport Chaplain (August 26).
Created by Elise McCredie (Stateless) and Jude Troy (The Clearing), this Australia drama unfolds in the contested space of an Australian international airport. Squared off against each other, across multiple divides, are the bustling facility’s long-time chaplain and unofficial fixer, Tobias (Hugo Weaving, Slow Horses), and his new and less-than-impressed boss, Mira (Shabana Azeez, The Pitt). The duo’s clash affects not only them, but the multitude of unseen staff who keep the facility operational. With the supporting cast including Claudia Karvan (Bump), this limited series is shaping up as a timely depiction of how things should work in this country, and how they actually do.
Also on SBS On Demand: Interview with the Vampire and The Vampire Lestat (August 21) are one acclaimed gothic horror series. The former, available on free-to-air for the first time, is the first two seasons of the sensuous adaptation of Anne Rice’s best-selling novel about Louis (Jacob Anderson, Game of Thrones), a 1920s New Orleans club owner who gets turned into an immortal vampire by the licentious French aristocrat Lestat (Sam Reid, The Newsreader). It’s one of the best shows you haven’t seen this decade. The latter is the show’s brand-new third season, renamed to reflect the bloody Rice novel in which Lestat runs wild as a rock star. This is a series of nocturnal machinations, queer desire and decadent wit.
July highlights: Crime fans got a final season of one of the great Los Angeles series, with Bosch: Legacy concluding.
Other streamers
My top recommendation for the other streaming services is Paramount+’s Dalliance (August 27).
It’s a big month for Hugo Weaving. As well as The Airport Chaplain, one of the Australia’s finest actors also features in this Sydney-set relationship drama, which follows the romantic entanglements facing a group of sixty-somethings. Weaving plays Billy, a former cameraman who instantly strikes sparks with restaurateur Dani (co-creator Heather Mitchell, The Killings at Parrish Station), despite being happily married for four decades to Rose (Georgie Parker, All Saints). When Billy introduces Dani to Rose, the emotional guardrails in their respective lives start to give way. David Wenham (Fake) is also a headliner, making for a series that should make us look anew at desire and connection among an age group usually sidelined in our culture.
Also: In BritBox’s The Rumour (August 13) it only takes a few ill-chosen words by a newcomer at school drop-off to set off a small British town’s hysteria. It’s Joanna (Rachel Shenton, All Creatures Great & Small) who asks about a rumour she’s heard of a former child killer living locally, but her attempts to bond with the other parents quickly leads to paranoia and retribution. With just five episodes, this is a succinct drama that’s keen to move the plot along.
July highlights: Tracy Morgan and Daniel Radcliffe were hilarious together in the sports sitcom The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins, plus a witty addition to the mockumentary ranks with the cheerleading comedy Stumble.
* Nine owns Stan and this masthead.
