From action comedies to back-stabbing reality shows, check out our critics’ picks of the best shows to watch On Demand right now. The experts have chosen their top ten programmes streaming this weekend, as well as reviewing new releases. Read on to find out what to watch this weekend…
Our picks of the week:
Role Play
Kaley Cuoco and David Oyelowo star in a hitman action comedy
Year: 2024
Certificate: 15
Watch now on Prime Video
When suburban parents Emma and Dave (Kaley Cuoco and David Oyelowo) wangle a night away from their kids in the big city, they decide to indulge in a little role play. Trouble is, Emma already has a secret life – as a globetrotting international assassin – and tonight her undercover identity is about to come home to roost.
Cuoco is clearly having a ball slipping in and out of disguises as she moves from one action sequence to another, while Oyelowo makes a great befuddled foil as he realises that there’s much more to his mild-mannered missus than meets the eye. Throw in Bill Nighy as one of Emma’s fellow killers and you’ve a top-notch slice of action comedy. (100 minutes)
Lift
Kevin Hart turns into an action hero in a heist movie extravaganza
Year: 2024
Certificate: 12
Watch now on Netflix
When it comes to action movies, Kevin Hart is best-known for playing the comedy sidekick to the likes of Dwayne Johnson. But this movie sees the comic step up to take the lead, and he does a bang-up job. He plays Cyrus, the leader of a gang of thieves who are recruited by the government to steal a gold shipment before it can reach the vaults of a bunch of terrorists. There’s just one problem: they’re going to have to steal it from a plane in midair…
Chockful of slick caper nonsense, high-tech gadgetry, laughs and action, this is part Ocean’s 11, part The Fast And The Furious. In short? The perfect Friday night Netflix movie. (104 minutes)
Criminal Record
Cush Jumbo and Peter Capaldi star in this London crime thriller
Year: 2024
Certificate: 15
Watch now on Apple TV+
Could Peter Capaldi be playing the bad guy? That’s what you’re wondering in episode one of this bruising London crime drama, which stars Cush Jumbo as a rising detective who thinks she’s found something suspicious in an old investigation. Capaldi plays a grizzled veteran who rebuffs her concerns, and the sparring between them is a joy to see – so it’s no surprise to learn that the show was actually born out of Jumbo and Capaldi’s desire to work on something together, and their mutual love of crime dramas.
So, is DS Lenker (Jumbo) being overeager and missing the bigger picture? Or is DCI Hegarty (Capaldi) covering something up? Both actors are great at keeping us guessing in a rich and twisting eight-parter that, despite its grimy London feel, clearly wasn’t short on cash. It was created by Paul Rutman, a seasoned crime writer (Vera, Inspector Lewis, ITV’s Marple) who has weaved racial and generational themes into his script here. He’s also pretty keen on drinks. Keep an eye out for how many times we learn character details from what and how people are drinking in a scene. During a Q&A after a preview screening for the show, Rutman remarked that ‘every cup of tea is different’ and, if you watch closely in this show, you’ll see that kind of eye for detail reflected everywhere. (Eight episodes)
Zuckerberg: King Of The Metaverse
Documentary examing the rise of Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg
Year: 2024
Certificate: 15
Watch now on NOW
Watch now on Sky
The story of the how a Harvard dropout created the world’s most influential social media network is hardly unknown – it spawned multi-award-winning movie The Social Network in 2010, after all – but the world’s fascination with the tale of Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg remains undimmed.
This feature-length documentary digs into previously unmined areas, though, using interviews with key figures and rarely seen chunks of archive footage to uncover new facets of the world’s youngest billionaire. It’s detailed stuff that also isn’t afraid to ask serious questions about Facebook’s place in the world, investigating the avenues it provides for previously unimaginable and potentially catastrophic levels of political and social misinformation. (90 minutes)
Society Of The Snow
Spanish drama based on the infamous 1972 Andes plane crash
Year: 2023
Certificate: 15
Watch now on Netflix
The 1972 plane crash that stranded a Uruguayan rugby team deep in the Andes mountains with little hope of rescue is infamous. The story of how the survivors eventually resorted to cannibalism in order to survive has already inspired one movie (1993’s Alive) and surely features in the DNA of the hit series Yellowjackets, but this Spanish-language retelling of events is perhaps the most hard-hitting and complex of the lot.
The sense of isolation, cold and hopelessness it conveys is crushing as the teammates make momentous decisions in order to stave off death long enough to find a way back to civilisation. (144 mins)
The Traitors (Series 2)
Addictive game show of barefaced treachery, hosted by Claudia Winkleman
Year: 2024
Watch now on BBC iPlayer
This back-stabbing reality series was the TV hit of 2022 and, in series two, cloaked host Claudia Winkleman welcomes a new group of 22 people to a dramatic Highlands setting, where three of the contestants will be secretly assigned as Traitors before the tense games begin. Who will win the prize of £120,000 this time around?
Superfans of the show can also find the US and Australian versions on iPlayer and, if you want to get a little closer to the action, give the online game a whirl. You can work your way up a leaderboard by predicting who will be murdered, who will make it through to the end and answering other bonus questions about the show. It’s available at bbc.co.uk/traitors and on mobile devices. (12 episodes)
Masters Of Sex
Period drama exploring the world of 1950s sex researchers in America
Year: 2013-2016
Certificate: 15
Watch now on UKTV Play
There’s sex in the title and the subject is sex, but there will be no juvenile sniggering at the back watching this accomplished drama that spins a heavily fictionalised series out of the real-life story of American sex researchers Masters and Johnson.
Like Alfred Kinsey before them in the 1940s, William H Masters and Virginia E Johnson (Michael Sheen and Lizzy Caplan) sought, in the 1950s and beyond, to apply rigorous scientific methodology to the study of sex. It was groundbreaking to observe this kind of human behaviour in laboratory settings, but laboratory sex is not the least bit sexy, and if that was all this show was about, it would get tired pretty quickly. Instead, the series focuses on Masters and Johnson themselves, on their working relationship and their family lives. (Four series)
Dune: Part One
Epic and star-filled adaptation of Frank Herbert’s space story
Year: 2021
Certificate: 12
Watch now on Netflix
Frank Herbert’s Dune novels are a space epic for the generations, telling a complicated story of warring families and religion that unfolds across centuries. Hollywood’s finest have been trying to make it work on screen for years, and David Lynch’s divisive 1984 project, featuring Sting and some of the finest actors of their generation, was the best effort until this.
Director Denis Villeneuve’s film is accessible and human where Lynch’s is eccentric and alien, a blockbuster that wisely divides the initial novel across two movies and, like Lynch’s film, features a seriously impressive cast. Timothée Chalamet stars as Paul Atreides, the potential saviour of embattled desert planet Dune, with Zendaya as a fearsome local warrior and Silo’s Rebecca Ferguson as Paul’s mother – the standout performance of the film. That really only scratches the surface of the cast but, if you’re in the mood for some blockbuster action with an epic feel, they don’t come much better than this.
Part Two is on the way, although it was only officially ordered when Part One was a box office hit. Which makes the choice of title all the bolder. (155 minutes)
Accused
Bold US crime dramas about defendants’ brushes with the law
Year: 2023
Certificate: 15
Watch now on Paramount+
In 2010, Jimmy McGovern wrote and produced a series of standalone dramas, each chronicling a seemingly ordinary person’s brush with the legal system. This US anthology show takes its inspiration from that idea, with each standalone episode telling a different story in flashback, explaining how small ripples in a character’s life unexpectedly combined into a disastrous tsunami that sweeps them into court.
Touching on everything from assault and murder to school shootings and white supremacist terrorism, it offers up some bold mini dramas that allow an ever-changing cast that includes Michael Chiklis, Rhea Perlman and Abigail Breslin plenty of opportunities to shine. A second series has already been commissioned. (One series)
Good Grief
Paris-set drama about loss starring Schitt’s Creek’s Daniel Levy
Year: 2024
Certificate: 15
Watch now on Netflix
A year after his beloved husband dies, artist Marc (Schitt’s Creek’s Daniel Levy) feels like he’s recovered enough to be able to take his two best friends (Ruth Negga and Himesh Patel) on a trip to Paris to thank them for all the support that they’ve given him. But once there, harsh truths emerge about their relationships that force them to re-evaluate their friendship, all while Marc begins to see hints of a renewed romantic life.
An elegant and bittersweet movie that mixes wry smiles with emotional investigation, this is a lovely heart-tugging watch directed with commendable restraint by Levy himself. (100 mins)
New this week:
Disappearance At Clifton Hill
Atmospheric mystery thriller about a woman haunted by disturbing memories
Year: 2019
Certificate: 15
Watch now on Channel 4
An offbeat thriller that is blackly comic and somewhat muddled, but also atmospheric and intriguing. Tuppence Middleton (Downton Abbey) plays a young woman returning to Niagara Falls, to a motel that was her childhood family home. There, she tries to piece together fragmented memories of a child’s abduction. Was it real, or is her mind playing tricks? (100 minutes)
After The Flood
Peaky Blinders’ Sophie Rundle stars in ITV’s disaster drama
Year: 2024
Watch now on ITVX
Sophie Rundle found herself in a most unusual situation while filming this pulsating crime thriller. ‘I was getting into a giant, freezing-cold paddling pool every day wearing a large pregnancy belly beneath a police uniform,’ says the Peaky Blinders star. ‘It was certainly different!’
Sophie plays heavily pregnant PC Joanna Marshall, helping to save lives in the wake of a catastrophic flood in a fictional northern town. The paddling pool was in fact a giant tank in which rows of houses were built before millions of gallons of water were poured in. The series begins with PC Marshall and colleagues battling to save a mother and child from a swollen river. Later, a man is found dead in an underground car park and it’s assumed he’s drowned, but there are signs he was murdered. PC Marshall decides to investigate — without telling her bosses. (Six episodes)
The Effect
Paapa Essiedu stars in Lucy Prebble’s powerful, darkly funny play about love
Year: 2023
Watch now on National Theatre At Home
It’s interesting to watch actors you know from film and TV performing on a stage – they seem freer, somehow. Paapa Essiedu – of The Lazarus Project, Genie and The Capture, to name but three – certainly seems that way in this powerful performance of Lucy Prebble’s searingly incisive and sharply comic drama about love.
Essiedu stars with Taylor Russell (Lost In Space) as a man and a woman pumped full of ‘Viagra for the heart’ as part of a drugs trial. Are they actually falling in love, or is it just the medication? And what does love mean, anyway? And where are they left once the trial is over? Prebble (I Hate Suzie) has a sharp eye for this subject, and the starkness of the white-on-black staging gives all the focus to the performers delivering her words, which they do with unflinching power and precision.
The Effect is a funny, thought-provoking, surprising and ultimately quite disturbing play. And, if you watch it with the lights off, it’ll bring you one step closer to the power it would’ve had live in the theatre. (105 minutes)
The Trust: A Game Of Greed
American game show about deception with a $250,000 prize
Year: 2024
Certificate: 12
Watch now on Netflix
At the start of this US gameshow, the 11 contestants assembled in a beachside mansion are all informed that they have already won an equal share of $250,000. Unless, that is, one of their fellow contestants decides to vote them out before the end of the series – in which case the evicted player’s share gets split among the survivors.
As the title suggests, this is a show that’s all about trust. Will the contestants do the sensible thing and just all happily pocket $23k? Or will some of them jostle to manipulate the others as they try to secure a bigger slice of the pie for themselves? If you enjoyed The Traitors, you’re going to find a lot to relish here. (One series)
Boy Swallows Universe
Coming-of-age crime drama set in 1980s Brisbane
Year: 2024
Certificate: 15
Watch now on Netflix
A bright-eyed young boy challenges both the law and the drug boss who rules the dusty streets of Brisbane in the 1980s as this oddball, funny and bittersweet eight-part drama plays out. With a missing father, an addict mum, a mute brother, a heroin dealer stepfather and a criminal for a babysitter, Eli already has the odds stacked against him. But if he wants to save his mum from disaster, he’s going to have to risk everything.
Felix Cameron is perfect as roguish urchin Eli, but watch out for a ton of familiar faces from Aussie TV and film scattered through the cast, not least Bryan Brown, Anthony LaPaglia and The Mentalist’s Simon Baker. (Eight episodes)
Letterkenny
Quirky small-town Canadian comedy
Year: 2016-2023
Certificate: 18
Watch now on ITVX
An off-kilter Canadian comedy you’ve probably never heard of, despite running to 12 series, this has definitely flown under the radar this side of the pond. Rolling Stone magazine describes it as a ‘guys-being-guys show’, and those guys (and a handful of gals) are rural folk of the kind we don’t see over here – a mix of hockey jocks, hicks, loafers and happy clappers. What it might lack in the familiar, it makes up for with sharp wit, small-town quirks, plus a fair bit of swearing, sex and liberal use of puns. If you enjoyed Schitt’s Creek, but prefer your humour more rough and earthy, this is well worth a look. (12 series)
Echo
Marvel series that spotlights a reformed deaf assassin
Year: 2024
Certificate: 15
Watch now on Disney+
Introduced in the Hawkeye series a few years ago, mobster Echo aka Maya Lopez (Alaqua Cox) has fled New York after turning against her crime-boss godfather Kingpin (Vincent D’Onofrio). Heading to her hometown in Oklahoma, she struggles to fit in as the ghosts of her past return to haunt her.
Cox is excellent in this five-part series as the former killer who defies her deafness and prosthetic leg to be one of Marvel’s most lethal fighters. It’s a must-watch for fans of the old Netflix Daredevil show too – as well as the brooding presence of D’Onofrio as Kingpin, it also sees Charlie Cox (no relation…) return as Daredevil, ahead of his own series Daredevil: Born Again. (Five episodes)
Don’t Trust The B**** In Apartment 23
Krysten Ritter and James Van Der Beek star in an edgy, smartly written US comedy
Year: 2012-2014
Certificate: 12
Watch now on Disney+
Dawson’s Creek’s James Van Der Beek plays a sleazy version of himself in this edgy, fast and playful US comedy about two female flatmates of very different temperaments – one sweet and newly arrived in New York (Dreama Walker), the other a cynical party girl (Jessica Jones’s Krysten Ritter).
Created by Nahnatchka Khan (Fresh Off The Boat, Totally Killer), Apartment 23 was the smartest and edgiest comedy on US TV at the time, and still feels fresh and punchy today. Ritter is gleefully vicious as Chloe, a character who never truly softens in the way you might expect her to, and Van Der Beek has a terrific time sending himself up. Ritter has spoken since about how good the atmosphere was on set, and how much room the actors were given to do their thing – and you can certainly see the results of that on screen. It’s a show that richly deserves a new generation of fans, so bravo to Disney+ for dusting it off from the ABC TV library and giving it the chance to attract exactly that. (Two series)
Fast X
Dom Toretto and his family are targeted by the vengeful son of a drug lord
Year: 2023
Certificate: 12
Watch now on NOW
Watch now on Sky
The Fast & Furious movies have taken car stunts to new heights (to space, in the ninth film) and that doesn’t slow down in the tenth instalment.
Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and co end up driving underwater in the globe-trotting Fast X, a movie in which the stunts are far, far more important than the wonderfully silly story which, for the record, involves the rise of a vengeful threat from the past – the deranged Dante, played with suitable flair by Jason Momoa. The Aquaman star’s performance fits right into the tone of a movie that, for the audience, is all about sitting back and enjoying the ride. (141 minutes)
Foe
Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal star as a couple living in a ruined future
Year: 2023
Certificate: 15
Watch now on Prime Video
Our planet is headed for Mad Max territory in this haunting film, set in a time in which the harsh climate has pushed people to flee the inhospitable surface for outer space. The story it tells is very human and contained though, and revolves entirely around one couple living in a farmhouse in the American Midwest in 2065. Saoirse Ronan and Paul Mescal play the couple and we’re told, just before we meet them, that this is a world in which artificial humans have started living and working in these harsh environments.
As a result, you spend much of the rest of the movie wondering whether either of them is a robot. We won’t reveal what happens, but the film feels more like a play at times as we steadily head toward the Twilight Zone-style finale and, despite the sci-fi ideas, this is ultimately a deep dissection of one relationship. It’s a little long for that story, perhaps, but it’s also one of those films you’d be tempted to watch twice once you know how it ends. (110 mins)
