It’s too easy to miss brilliant streaming shows, movies and documentaries. Here are the ones to hit play on or skip.
The Virtues ★★★★★
Stan, from Friday
It’s almost impossible to imagine this riveting, emotionally devastating mini-series without Stephen Graham at its centre. Singularly fearsome, vulnerable and magnetic, Graham has delivered brilliant performances on both sides of the Atlantic, not least in Shane Meadows’ 2006 film This Is England (Stan) and its television sequels. And he’s never been better than in this four-part mini-series, which reunites him with Meadows once more.
Stephen Graham plays Joseph in British mini-series The Virtues, streaming locally on Stan.Credit:Stan
Graham plays Joseph, a Liverpudlian painter and decorator on the verge of a nervous breakdown. In heartbreakingly tender scenes we see Joseph saying goodbye to his young son, whose mother is taking him to live in Australia, and then see him trying to drown his sorrows in a self-destructive night out on the town.
In the vomit-splattered aftermath, the broke and broken Joseph makes a fateful decision: to take a ferry to Ireland to reunite with his sister, who has no idea what happened to him after they were orphaned and split up 30 years earlier. It’s here that Meadows (who directs once more, having written the script with regular collaborator Jack Thorne) really ratchets things up.
Joseph’s sister, Anna, is played by Helen Behan, a veteran of the This Is England sequels, who delivers a visceral, multifaceted and sharp-tongued performance to match Graham’s. Anna, married to builder Michael (Frank Laverty) has three charmingly impudent children and an increasingly crowded house, given that Michael’s troubled sister, Dinah (Niamh Algar), has also come to stay. Behan and Algar are strokes of casting genius who play off each other in wonderfully sparky Irish style. Also crucial is Mark O’Halloran as sad-eyed construction worker Craigy, who thinks he recognises Joseph from a boys’ home where sexual abuse was rife.
Niamh Algar as Dinah in The Virtues.Credit:Stan
Meadows fairly aches with compassion for his wounded characters, and The Virtues is especially harrowing knowing that it is inspired in part by abuse that Meadows himself suffered as a child. The aged, blurry visual qualities of the series’ flashbacks to the boys’ home makes that setting seem all the more distant and the characters trapped within it all the more helpless, and original music by PJ Harvey adds to the ominous air.
Meadows doesn’t labour his observations of the past cruelties of institutions and society, and while he chooses to leave us with a ray of hope he makes sure we get some hammer blows to go with it. Outstanding television.
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Fate: The Winx Saga ★★★½
Netflix
Yes, it’s a Hogwarts for human-looking fairies but it’s a self-aware one that gets the Harry Potter references out of the way early while making a gnomic passing reference to Tinkerbell for good measure. The real story involves a Californian teenager named Bloom (Abigail Cowen, a familiar face from Chilling Adventures of Sabrina), who unexpectedly learned of her magical heritage in a terrifying, near fatal manner, and has managed to find her way to a special fairy school (stunning Killruddery House, near Dublin).
Abigail Cowen as Bloom in Fate: The Winx Saga.Credit:Jonathan Hession
As you’d expect, the place has lots of devastatingly handsome boy fairies who are all chins and cheekbones, lots of fractious girl fairies who provide Bloom with patchwork insights into her fairy nature, and teachers who are preoccupied with bigger things. Such as the threat posed by supernatural beings known as The Burned Ones – who have a habit of tearing people, sheep and fairies to bloody pieces.
Based, improbably enough, on an Italian cartoon series, it’s surprisingly engrossing telly as showrunner Brian Young (The Vampire Diaries) and the genuinely scary Burned Ones get going.
Jensplaining
Amazon Prime Video
Canadian gynaecologist Jen Gunter provides a much-needed antidote to the false, misleading and sometimes dangerous claims that are all too common in the multibillion-dollar “wellness” and beauty industries. Each short episode of this highly entertaining series has Gunter, other experts and ordinary women discussing such topics as menstruation, menopause and childbirth, exploding myths and critiquing products that range from worthless to potentially unsafe. Gunter’s take on sea sponges will likely convince viewers to stick with ordinary tampons.
Graves
Stan*
Nick Nolte as Richard Graves in the US comedy Graves, streaming locally on Stan.Credit:Stan
Nick Nolte is a Republican ex-president who has come to realise that his policies have had disastrous effects on the lives of millions and wants to make some things right. Nolte’s ornery, irascible character evokes presidents of a much earlier generation – he certainly isn’t getting woke about everything all at once – but in quiet moments his sorrow at what he has done fills his eyes with tears. Somehow, this engrossingly oddball half-hour comedy-drama manages not to come off too preachy. Nolte got nominated for a Golden Globe.
Headspace Guide to Meditation
Netflix
Headspace Guide to Meditation streams on Netflix.Credit:Netflix
Meditation can be a daunting prospect for those who don’t know how to go about it, or who gave up because they didn’t feel they were getting it right right away. Fortunately, former Buddhist monk Andy Puddicombe and his soothing Bristol accent are here to take the pressure off. Relaxing pastel animations play as Puddicombe reminds us not to overthink things, shares insights from his own journey and in each 25-minute episode provides a guided meditation to suit a different goal or circumstance. Well worth checking out.
Muscle Shoals
Docplay
Muscle Shoals, Alabama is the unlikely breeding ground for some of America’s most creative and defiant music.Credit:DocPlay
When it comes to the American soul music of the 1960s, there’s no story more extraordinary than that of the powerful, enduring sounds that came out of the racially integrated music studios of one small town in segregated Alabama. Director Greg “Freddy” Camalier’s uplifting documentary captures a magical time and place in which a young hospital orderly named Percy Sledge could stroll in and belt out When a Man Loves a Woman, and it also gets huge names to put decades of great music in historical context.
*Stan and this masthead are owned by Nine.
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