Overview
Not all that long ago, the idea of getting cosy on your couch, clicking a few buttons, and having thousands of films and television shows at your fingertips seemed like something out of science fiction. Now, it's just an ordinary night — whether you're virtually gathering the gang to text along, cuddling up to your significant other or shutting the world out for some much needed me-time.
Of course, given the wealth of options to choose from, there's nothing ordinary about making a date with your chosen streaming platform. The question isn't "should I watch something?" — it's "what on earth should I choose?".
Hundreds of titles are added to Aotearoa's online viewing services each and every month, all vying for a spot on your must-see list. And, so you don't spend 45 minutes scrolling and then being too tired to actually commit to anything, we're here to help. We've spent plenty of couch time watching our way through this month's latest batch — and, from the latest and greatest through to old and recent favourites, here are our picks for your streaming queue from September's haul.
BRAND NEW STUFF YOU CAN WATCH FROM START TO FINISH NOW
STARSTRUCK
Living up to its splendid first date with audiences has never been a problem for Starstruck. When the Rose Matafeo (Baby Done)-starring BBC and HBO series first strode into streaming queues in 2021, its initial episode was an all-timer in the charming stakes, as was the show's entire six-instalment debut season. When Starstruck returned for a second run in 2022, its next go-around instantly proved as much of a smart, savvy and charismatic delight, too. Season three continues the trend, and keeps demonstrating that no romantic rendezvous, no matter how idyllic, can just keep repeating itself. Plot-wise, Starstruck has always had one couple at its centre: New Zealander-in-London Jessie (Matafeo) and British actor Tom (Nikesh Patel, Four Weddings and a Funeral). Frequently, however, they're not actually together, with the show charting the ins and outs of a complicated relationship that started with a New Year's Eve meet-cute and one-night stand. The hook from the get-go: that Tom is an A-list star, which Jessie doesn't know until after they've hooked up. So, Starstruck asks what it's like to live the Notting Hill life.
In season three, it more accurately ponders what comes after that's been and gone. Season two might've finished with a scene right out of The Notebook, and with echoes of Bridget Jones' Diary as well, but its follow-up quickly establishes that Jessie and Tom didn't get their happy-ever-after ending — they're no longer together, and haven't been for some time. This return starts with a bold move, spending a few minutes zipping through Jessie and Tom's romance since season two via a heartbreaking montage. That choice is also deeply fitting for a show that's exceptional at endings. One of the best newcomers of its debut year and best returning series of its second, Starstruck's excellence is like a perfect bouquet, with vibrancy blooming everywhere — in Matafeo's lead performance, the show's ability to unpack a genre it clearly loves, its glorious nods to rom-coms past, and its astute insights into 2020s-era dating and life, to name a mere few. How its star, creator and co-writer wrapped up both season one and two was equally as sublime, though. So, season three goes all in on something cherished and blissful approaching its conclusion.
Starstruck streams via TVNZ+. Read our full review.
FLORA AND SON
No filmmaker believes in the power of music quite like John Carney. In Flora and Son, the Once, Begin Again and Sing Street writer/director again lets his favourite refrain echo, this time with an Irish single mother, her rebellious teenage boy and the American guitarist who she pays to give her lessons via zoom. The eponymous Flora (Eve Hewson, Bad Sisters) feels like she's never had an adulthood of her own after falling (swiftly, not slowly) pregnant at the age of 17 to musician Ian (Jack Reynor, The Peripheral) — whose big claim to fame is that his band once opened for Snow Patrol — then being a mum through their relationship highs and lows. When she salvages a thrown-out instrument for now-14-year-old Max (Orén Kinlan, Taken Down) but he doesn't want it, she decides to give it a try herself. It's an escape from simply getting by, arguing with Ian, coping with Max's run-ins with the law and young mother-style existential malaise. It could be a path to a new future, too. And, with her teen also into music — but hip hop, rap and EDM, or whatever will impress his crush (feature first-timer Alex Deegan) — it's a way to bring Flora and son closer together.
Music is in Hewson's blood given that she's the daughter of Paul Hewson, aka U2's Bono, with the Behind Her Eyes and The Knick star well-cast — and magnetic, and also endlessly charismatic — as the forthright, sweary, just-trying-to-get-by Flora. There's both yearning and energy in her electrifyingly lived-in performance, and in the melodic and soulful tunes that her character pens with teacher Jeff (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Poker Face) via video chats as they reflect upon their lives, loves, hopes and dreams via songwriting. Flora and Son boasts lovely performances all round, in fact. Kinlan is a dynamic find who deserves many more credits on his resume, Gordon-Levitt charms quietly and softly, and sparks fly when Carney gets the latter in the same space as Hewson through an easy but nice visual touch. The movie's moniker makes plain where its heart belongs, though, as Flora and Max learn not just about themselves but about their complicated bond with each other by making music. As always with this filmmaker's work, the original soundtrack is sublime. Also, the mood feels like a warm but clear-eyed hug.
Flora and Son streams via Apple TV+ from Friday, September 29.
TELEMARKETERS
No one likes it when their phone rings from an unknown number, whether "no caller ID" or digits that you don't recognise flash up on your mobile's screen. Telemarketers isn't going to change that response. It won't dampen the collective ire that the world holds towards the pushy people on the other end of the line, either. HBO's thrilling three-part docuseries doesn't just reinforce what viewers already feel about the nuisance industry that thinks it can interrupt your day and life with a spiel that no one wants, and impact your bank balance in the process. In addition, it spins a true tale that demonstrates why a deep-seated dislike of telemarketing is so well-founded, and also why cold-calling operations can be so insidious. This true-crime story about the New Jersey-based Civic Development Group surpasses even the most call centre-despising audience member's low expectations of the field — and it's gripping, can't-look-away, has-to-be-seen-to-be-believed stuff. In fact, it's also an account of a tenacious duo revealing a billion-dollar fraud, and bringing this stunning whistleblower documentary to the masses.
"Every other telemarketer who drives you crazy in the whole world is because of CDG," advises one of the series' interviewees. That might seem like a big claim, but co-directors Sam Lipman-Stern (Live From the Streets) and Adam Bhala Lough (The New Radical) step through its truth. The former knows the outfit's approach from experience, working there for seven years from the age of 14 after dropping out of high school, while the latter is the filmmaker cousin he wasn't aware of. Lipman-Stern is Telemarketers' on-screen guiding hand, too, but his ex-colleague Patrick J Pespas is its heart and soul. As seen early, Pespas is called a "telemarketing legend". Although he's happy snorting heroin on-camera in 2000s-era footage, he's switched on to CDG's shonkiness; more than that, he's determined to expose it even if it takes two decades. Everywhere that Lipman-Stern and Pespas look from there, this tale gets worse. It's no wonder that Uncut Gems and Good Time filmmakers Benny and Josh Safdie are among Telemarketers' executive producers, plus Eastbound & Down's Danny McBride, Jody Hill and David Gordon Green.
Telemarketers streams via Neon. Read our full review.
SEX EDUCATION
Before it introduced anxious teen sex counsellor Otis Milburn (Asa Butterfield, Flux Gourmet), his fellow-therapist mother Jean (Gillian Anderson, The Great), his ever-exuberant best friend Eric Effiong (Ncuti Gatwa, the next Doctor Who), and his whip-smart and rebellious crush Maeve Wiley (Emma Mackey, Emily), Sex Education's very-first episode started with trembling lights. With that debut back in January 2019, depictions of adolescent sexuality on-screen earned a welcome shake up as well. Horny high schoolers struggling with life, love and lust are such a pop culture staple that they inhabit their own genre, which this British series has always recognised. But when a show bursts onto streaming queues with a roll in the sheets that ends with a guy (Barbie's Connor Swindells as Adam Groff) faking an orgasm with his girlfriend (Living's Aimee-Lou Wood as Aimee Gibbs), it's clearly not interested in sticking with the usual tropes — and it wants its audience to know it. Candidly and enthusiastically subverting well-worn cliches about growing up and exploring all things carnal has always been Sex Education creator, lead writer and executive producer Laurie Nunn's focus in her first major project beyond the stage and shorts. It was true in that attention-grabbing premiere run, then 2020 and 2021's equally excellent second and third seasons, and now the show's big finish.
Another key element right through to the series' fourth and final go-around, which caps off its tale with as much charm, heart, humour and maturity as ever: knowing that it's far more relatable to be open, honest, warm, authentic, inclusive and diverse than to just spill out the same old coming-of-age story. Here's a third factor that's also long been crucial to Sex Education: understanding that life doesn't begin or end with surging hormones. So, as change sweeps in — and goodbyes as well — this series couldn't be better placed to handle it. Otis is still as uncertain as always when season four kicks off. With his old school shuttered and snapped up by developers, he's forced into a new start, as well as a new bid to become the on-campus sex therapist, competing with existing student O (Thaddea Graham, Wreck). While Eric doesn't want them to be dubbed outsiders from the get-go, he fits in easily when he sees "all the gays everywhere", in his excited words. The fact that Maeve is at university in the US just after they've just come to terms with their feelings for each other was always going to hold Otis back, of course. The pair are finally more than friends, but also on different continents.
Sex Education streams via Netflix. Read our full review.
EL CONDE
What if Augusto Pinochet didn't die in 2006? What if the Chilean general and dictator wasn't aged 91 at the time, either? What if his story started long before his official 1915 birthdate, in France prior to the French Revolution? What if he's been living for 250 years because he's a literal monster of the undead, draining and terrifying kind? Trust Chilean filmmaking great Pablo Larraín (Ema, Neruda, The Club, No, Post Mortem and Tony Manero) to ask these questions in El Conde, which translates as The Count and marks the latest exceptional effort in a career that just keeps serving up excellent movies. His satirical, sharp and gleefully unsubtle version of his homeland's most infamous leader was born Claude Pinoche (Clemente Rodríguez, Manchild), saw Marie Antoinette get beheaded and kept popping up to quell insurgencies before becoming Augusto Pinochet. Now holed up in a farm after faking his own death to avoid legal scrutiny — aka the consequences of being a brutal tyrant — the extremely elderly figure (Jaime Vadell, a Neruda, The Club, No and Post Mortem veteran) is also tired of eternal life.
The idea at the heart of El Conde is a gem, with Larraín and his regular co-writer Guillermo Calderón plunging a stake into a despot while showing that the impact of authoritarianism rule stretches on forever (and winning the Venice International Film Festival's Best Screenplay Award this year for their efforts). The execution: just as sublime in a film that's both wryly and dynamically funny, and also a monochrome-shot visual marvel. A moment showing Pinoche licking the blood off the guillotine that's just decapitated Antoinette is instantly unforgettable. As Pinochet flies above Santiago in his cape and military attire in the thick of night, every Edward Lachman (The Velvet Underground)-lensed shot of The Count — as he likes to be called by his wife Lucia (Gloria Münchmeyer, 42 Days of Darkness), butler Fyodor (Alfredo Castro, The Settlers) and adult children — has just as much bite. El Conde's narrative sets its protagonist against an accountant and nun (Paula Luchsinger, Los Espookys) who digs through his crime and sins, and it's a delight that punctures. As seen in the also magnificent Jackie and Spencer, too, Larraín surveys the past like no one else.
El Conde streams via Netflix.
NO ONE WILL SAVE YOU
Thanks to Justified, Short Term 12, Booksmart, Unbelievable and Dopesick, Kaitlyn Dever has already notched up plenty of acting highlights; however, No One Will Save You proves one of her best projects yet while only getting the actor to speak just a single line. Instead of using dialogue, this alien invasion flick tells its story without words — and also finds its emotion in Dever's expressive face and physicality. Her character: Mill River resident Brynn Adams, who has no one to talk to long before extra-terrestrials arrive. The local outcast due to a tragic incident from her past, and now living alone in her childhood home following her mother's death, Brynn fills her time by sewing clothes, making models of her unwelcoming small town like she's in Moon and penning letters to her best friend Maude. Then she's woken in the night by an intruder who isn't human, flits between fighting back and fleeing, and is forced into a battle for survival — striving to save her alienated existence in her cosy but lonely abode from grey-hued, long-limbed, telekinetic otherworldly interlopers with a penchant for mind control.
With Spontaneous writer/director Brian Duffield's script matched by exacting A Quite Place-level sound design and The Witcher composer Joseph Trapanese's score, this close encounter of the unspoken kind is a visual feat, bouncing, bounding and dancing around Brynn's house and the Mill River community as aliens linger. Every single frame conveys a wealth of detail, as it needs to without chatter to fill in the gaps. Every look on Dever's face does the same, and every glance as well; this is a performance so fine-tuned that this would be a completely different film without her. Bringing the iconic 'Hush' episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer to mind, No One Will Save you is smartly plotted, including in explaining why it sashays in silence. Just as crucially — and this time recalling everyone's favourite home-invasion film, aka Home Alone — it's fluidly and evocatively choreographed. There's also a touch of Nope in its depiction of eerie threats from space, plus a veer into Invasion of the Body Snatchers, all without ever feeling like No One Will Save is bluntly cribbing from elsewhere. The result: a new sci-fi/horror standout.
No One Will Save You streams via Disney+.
CASSANDRO
The story of luchador Saúl Armendáriz comes to the screen in Cassandro, which takes its title from the American-born Mexican performer's ring name. As writer/director Roger Ross Williams (Life, Animated) works through with help from his charismatic star Gael García Bernal (Werewolf By Night), Armendáriz first came to wrestling in a mask — as an amateur living in El Paso but heading over the border to Juarez to get scrapping — then made a big switch to take on an exótico identity. That's where the openly gay competitor not only found himself, but also earned fame. He takes convincing, however, as this affectionate and thoughtful feature unpacks. Of course he wants to be able to express himself, bounce between the ropes with glamour and joy, carve out an accepting space and have crowds showering him with love. But exóticos have been traditionally positioned to lose. Dressed in drag, they've been used to show up the masculine strengths of their opponents. That homophobic situation isn't one that Armendáriz wants to embrace, but trainer Sabrina (Roberta Colindrez, A League of Their Own) thinks that he could make a difference, subvert the trend, stand out and become a better wrestler.
Frequent documentarian Williams, who won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short for Music by Prudence, knows a great story — and stellar talent. Cassandro has both, including Armendáriz's rise to become the 'Liberace of Lucha Libre', the many ups and downs on that path, his relationship with his mother Yocasta (Perla De La Rosa, Villa, itinerario de una pasión), and Bernal's layered performance in his shoes and spandex. There's both passion and heartbreak in the actor's portrayal — shyness as Saúl and blossoming confidence as Cassandro as well — in another of Bernal's big career highlights. Indeed, he puts in a tour-de-force effort as the film explores Armendáriz's devotion to his mum; his complicated feelings about his absent, disapproving dad (Robert Salas, Family Portrait); his secret liaisons and not-so-clandestine love for married fellow luchador Gerardo (Raúl Castillo, The Inspection); his flirtations with the assistant (Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio aka Bad Bunny, Bullet Train) to his key promoter (Joaquín Cosio, Narcos: Mexico); and what it means to get a shot in the ring with icon silver-masked El Hijo del Santo (as himself).
Cassandro streams via Prime Video.
NEW SHORTS ARRIVING IN FULL BEFORE SEPTEMBER IS OUT
THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUGAR, THE SWAN, THE RATCATCHER AND POISON
Fresh from stepping into a play as a live production in a TV show in Asteroid City, and also flicking through a magazine's various articles in The French Dispatch before that, Wes Anderson now gets an author sharing his writing in The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar. The 39-minute short film features Ralph Fiennes (The Menu) as Roald Dahl, who did indeed pen the tale that gives this suitably symmetrically shot affair its name — the book it's in, too — with the account that he's spilling one of several in a film that enthusiastically makes Anderson's love of layers known in its playful structure as much as its faux set. So, Dahl chats. The eponymous Henry Sugar (Benedict Cumberbatch, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness) does as well. And, Dr Chatterjee (Dev Patel, The Green Knight) and his patient Imdad Khan (Ben Kingsley, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings) also have a natter. The stories within stories within stories (within stories) share the fact that Khan has learned to see without his eyes, Chatterjee couldn't be more fascinated and Sugar wants to learn the trick for himself — to help with his gambling pastime.
In his three decades as a filmmaker, Anderson has only ever made both features and shorts with one of two people responsible for their ideas: himself, sometimes with Owen Wilson (Haunted Mansion), Noah Baumbach (White Noise), Jason Schwartzman (Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse) and/or Roman Coppola (Mozart in the Jungle) contributing; and Dahl. With the latter, first came Anderson's magnificent stop-motion Fantastic Mr Fox adaptation — and now The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar sits among a series of four new shorts, all releasing before September is out, that are based on the author's work. This is still a dream match, with the director's beloved jewel and pastel colours, dollhouse-esque visuals, moving sets, love of centred framing and dialogue rhythm all proving a treat in this account of personal and spiritual growth. The cast is as divine on-screen as it sounds on paper, too, especially Cumberbatch and Patel. The next in the set, the 17-minute The Swan, pushes Rupert Friend (High Desert) to the fore in a darker tale about a bully. With The Ratcatcher and Poison arriving, too, the only quibble is with the decision to release all four shorts separately, rather than package them together as an anthology film.
The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar streams via Netflix, as is The Swan. The Ratcatcher arrives on Friday, September 29, followed by Poison on Saturday, September 30. Read our full review.
NEW AND RETURNING SHOWS TO CHECK OUT WEEK BY WEEK
THE CHANGELING
It isn't by accident that watching The Changeling feels like being read to, rather than simply viewing streaming's latest book-to-TV adaptation. Landing from the pages of Victor LaValle's novel of the same name, this horror-fantasy series is obsessed with stories, telling tales and unpacking what humanity's favourite narratives say about our nature, including myths and yarns that date back centuries and longer. Printed tomes are crucial in its characters lives, fittingly. Libraries, bookstores, dusty boxes stacked with old volumes, beloved childhood texts, a rare signed version of To Kill a Mockingbird with a note from Harper Lee to lifelong friend Truman Capote: they all feature within the show's frames. Its protagonists Apollo Kagwa (LaKeith Stanfield, Haunted Mansion) and Emma Valentine (Clark Backo, Letterkenny), who fall in love and make a life together before its first episode is out, even work as a book dealer and a librarian. And, The Changeling also literally reads to its audience, because LaValle himself relays this adult fairytale, his dulcet tones speaking lyrical prose to provide a frequent guide
In a show created and scripted by Venom, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, Fifty Shades of Grey and Saving Mr Banks screenwriter Kelly Marcel, there's nothing more potent and revealing than a story, after all — and The Changeling believes in the power of tales to capture, explain, transport, engage, caution and advise, too. Aptly, New Yorkers Apollo and Emma meet amid books, in the library where she works and he frequents. It takes convincing to get her to agree to go out with him, but that leads to marriage and a child. The Changeling's astute thematic layering includes Apollo's repeated attempts to wrangle that first yes out of Emma, however, setting up a train of thought that has many future stations. In-between early dates and domesticity, Emma also takes the trip of a lifetime to Brazil, where an old woman awaits by Lagoa do Abaeté. The locals warn the visitor to stay away but she's mesmerised. What happens between the two strangers sends the narrative hurtling, with the lakeside figure tying a red string around Emma's wrist, granting her three wishes, but advising that they'll only come true when the bracelet falls off by itself.
The Changeling streams via Apple TV+. Read our full review.
GEN V
Instead of Gen V, you could call this spinoff The Boys Jnr and it'd fit — to a point. The superheroes are younger, with the series' eight-episode first season focusing on students attending Godolkin University, rather than adults. The minutiae of their lives is teen-centric, including dates and crushes, dorms and lectures, making new friends and peer pressure, and the like. Their worries largely aren't world-weary, been-there-seen-that, years-of-existential-malaise woes. There's nothing smaller about the hefty, hearty, utterly gleeful splashes of gore and violence — the guts and penises, too — in the latest show inspired by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson's comic book, however. Prime Video's next dive into this satirical caped-crusader world after the OG series (which has dropped three seasons, with a fourth on the way) and the animated The Boys Presents: Diabolical stems from the 'We Gotta Go Now' storyline, and embraces making The Boys with younger characters but zero other tone and vibe changes. So springs an OTT coming-of-age tale that's gruesome, irreverent, subversive, funny and filled with bodily fluids.
Set at the same time that The Boys' fourth season will take place when it hits, Gen V follows the blood-bending Marie Moreau (Jaz Sinclair, Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) as she scores an enrolment at Godolkin University that could change her life. Dwelling under the cloud of a past tragedy until now, her scholarship to the Vought-approved college is the ticket to her dreams, with becoming the first Black woman in The Seven her ultimate aim. As she rooms with Emma Meyer (Lizze Broadway, Based on a True Story), who can scale down her size — and meets the campus cool clique, including literally hot top pupil Luke 'Golden Boy' Riordan (Patrick Schwarzenegger, The Staircase), his persuasive girlfriend Cate Dunlap (Maddie Phillips, Teenage Bounty Hunters), the magnetic Andre Anderson (Chance Perdomo, also Chilling Adventures of Sabrina) and the gender-shifting Jordan Li (Never Have I Ever's London Thor and Shining Vale's Derek Luh) — all isn't exactly what it seems at her new school, though. While a few key cameos pop up, Gen V's focus is firmly on the franchise's newbies, their supe and uni experiences, and the mystery around them — and it's as entertaining as The Boys to watch.
Gen V streams via Prime Video from Friday, September 29. Read our full review.
SOLAR OPPOSITES
It isn't the approach that Rick and Morty has taken, as the trailer for its upcoming seventh season shows, but Solar Opposites' method of handling its big casting change is genius. In its own sneak peek before its fourth season arrived, the other animated sitcom with Justin Roiland as a co-creator revealed how it was moving on after ties being cut due to domestic abuse allegations — and it was as glorious then as it is in full episodes. Enter Dan Stevens, star of everything from Downton Abbey, The Guest and Colossal to Legion, I'm Your Man and Gaslit, as the new source of Korvo's voice. He's using his British accent and sounds absolutely nothing like his predecessor as a result, but the change couldn't be easier to work in. When a show is about aliens living a life of mayhem on earth — chaos caused in no small part by their non-stop array sci-fi gadgets — anything can and does happen, including the lead Shlorpian out of its core quartet suddenly sporting new tones. That's the only shift that season four of Solar Opposites makes. Before the first new episode is out, with the series as anarchic and hilarious as ever, Stevens feels like he's always been in the role.
Across an 11-episode run, Solar Opposites does what it has since 2020 — and well — following Korvo, his boyfriend Terry (Thomas Middleditch, Silicon Valley), and their replicants Jesse (Mary Mack, Kiff) and Yumyulack (Sean Giambrone, The Goldbergs) as they experience life among humans. This time around, that means getting jobs, which devolves into a fight to get a ping-pong table and a one-upping battle to impress a client; the crew's artificial intelligence AISHA (Tiffany Haddish, The Afterparty) giving online dating a go; bringing a dinosaur back to life just to get a pet; getting stuck among stock photos; and new birthday traditions. Smart, perceptive and sidesplittingly funny, Solar Opposites parodies the ridiculousness of human life from two angles, however — not just witnessing the Shlorpians grapple with adjusting, but also observing the society that evolves in the wall of Jesse and Yumyulack's bedroom thanks to the annoying folks that they've shrunk down for a range of petty slights. Cherie (Christina Hendricks, Good Girls) is there for serving the wrong food at Benihana, for instance, and is now caught up in a religious war, with the show's writers consistently finding an ideal balance between its two plot threads.
Solar Opposites streams via Disney+.
A RECENT-ISH TV GEM YOU MIGHT'VE MISSED
LODGE 49
When Monarch: Legacy of Monsters starts streaming before 2023 is out, it'll see father and son Kurt Russell (Fast and Furious 9) and Wyatt Russell (Under the Banner of Heaven) co-star as older and younger versions of the same character. That's dream casting, although the younger of the pair already scored a stellar part with his first TV lead in Lodge 49. Debuting in the US in 2018, then ending with its second season in 2019 — due to low ratings, sadly — this Long Beach-set dramedy chases bliss. The potential solution for former surfer-turned-pool cleaner Sean 'Dud' Dudley (Russell): the titular place. It's the town's chapter of a worldwide fraternal order called the Order of the Lynx, complete with rituals, secrets, a lengthy history, and a motley crew of eclectic and eccentric characters. Among them are plumbing salesman Ernie Fontaine (Brent Jennings, All American), journalist Connie Clark (Linda Edmond, Only Murders in the Building) and her patrol officer husband Scott Miller (Eric Allan Kramer, CSI: Vegas), alchemy professor Blaise St John (David Pasquesi, White House Plumbers) and the lodge's Sovereign Protector Larry Loomis (Kenneth Walsh, The Kids in the Hall).
The now-late Walsh's pre-Lodge 49 resume includes Twin Peaks — and, while nothing will ever match David Lynch's TV masterpiece, and also this series doesn't dare try, the two share a an embrace of being their own distinctive, idiosyncratic and surreal kinds of television shows. Here, the tone is lighter, but the always-optimistic Dud and Twin Peaks' Agent Dale Cooper don't lack in similarities as outsiders entering an insular world filled with unique personalities and odd happenings. Easygoing in tone, too, and also sunnily shot, Lodge 49 muses on what it means to seek happiness, how anyone can ever hope to find it, the search to fit in, what matters in a time of increasing disconnection, signs and omens, and the enduring value of friendship, especially when found in unlikely places. Russell is perfectly cast as the amiable Dud, but everything about this show, its quirks and its mysteries is wonderful. Two ten-episode seasons aren't enough, especially given how quickly loveable and bingeable those seasons prove.
Lodge 49 streams via AMC+.
Need a few more streaming recommendations? You can also check out our best 15 new shows from 2023's first six months, top 15 returning shows over the same period and best 15 straight-to-streaming movies from January–June.
And, our list of highlights from January, February, March, April, May, June, July and August 2o23 as well.