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What To Watch: Our Picks For The TV Shows And Movies We Think You Should Stream This Week
By Josh Kurp,
9 hours ago
20th Century Studios/Merle Cooper
Each week our staff of film and television experts surveys the entertainment landscape to select the ten best new/newish shows available for you to stream at home. We put a lot of thought into our selections, and our debates on what to include and what not to include can sometimes get a little heated and feelings may get hurt, but so be it, this is an important service for you, our readers. With that said, here are our selections for this week.
Presumed Innocent is guilty… of having an all-star collection of talent! Created by David E. Kelley and produced by Gracie Abrams ‘ somewhat famous father, the legal thriller stars Jake Gyllenhaal as a chief deputy prosecutor who is suspected of murder. Per Apple TV Plus: “The series explores obsession, sex, politics, and the power and limits of love, as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.” Fun fact: Gyllenhaal’s character was played by Harrison Ford in the 1990 movie of the same name.
Before House of the Dragon premiered, I was concerned that it would be nothing more than a shameless extension of the Game of Thrones brand. A DLC to check out but not engage with. Those fears have been unfounded. House of the Dragon quickly proved itself a worthy successor to Thrones (which, disappointing finale aside, is still one of the best shows of the 2010s). It exists on its own terms; it’s possible to enjoy the high-budget soap opera without prior knowledge of Westeros. House of the Dragon won’t be the monoculture behemoth that Game of Thrones was. No show will anymore. But it doesn’t need to be. House of the Dragon is doing just fine out of Game of Thrones ’ dragon-shaped shadow ( you can read our review here ).
Meet your summer TV obsession. My Lady Jane is a “radical retelling” of the life of Lady Jane Grey, who was the queen of England for nine days in 1553. She was executed soon after. But what if none of that happened? My Lady Jane , which stars Emily Bader in the title role, is “an epic tale of true love and high adventure, where the damsel in distress saves herself, her true love, and then the Kingdom.” Also, shape shifters (with some Buffy thrown in there, too).
Vulture recently pointed out that Rashida Jones has never hosted Saturday Night Live despite a) being friends with a lot of SNL folks, and b) she has the comedic chops. The campaign to get Rashida Jones in Studio 8H ( with musical guest Vampire Weekend? ) begins… as soon as I finish watching Sunny . The Apple TV+ series stars the Parks and Rec actress as Suzie, an American living in Japan who is gifted a robot following the disappearance of her husband and son. Together, they attempt to find out what happened to her family.
Sausage Party , the 2016 movie that was the highest-grossing R-rated animated film of all-time until Demon Slayer: Mugen Train came along, has been reheated as a streaming series. Prime Video’s proudly vulgar Sausage Party: Foodtopia is set after the events of the movie, with Frank, Brenda, Barry, and Sammy, the characters voiced by Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Michael Cera, and Edward Norton, respectively, attempting to build their own society. The rest of the voice cast includes Will Forte, Sam Richardson, Yassir Lester, and Natasha Rothwell. Expect lots of food puns and orgies.
Longlegs this, Longlegs that. But don’t forget about another 2024 horror movie gem: Abigail . The film follows a group of kidnappers — played by Melissa Barrera, Dan Stevens, Kathryn Newton, Will Catlett, Kevin Durand, and Angus Cloud (in one of his final roles ) — who are trapped in a house with a ballerina vampire, as one does. Abigail leans on the comedy more than the horror, and it’s a blast. Why isn’t Kathryn Newton in everything? She really should be.
A British mystery-comedy starring Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley? Yeah, that’ll do. Wicked Little Letters is about an English seaside town in the 1920s that gets upended by scandalous mail (or whatever they call it there ). A boisterous Irish migrant named Rose (Buckley) is charged with the crime, but as the townspeople, including buttoned-up local Edith (Colman) do their own investigation, “they suspect that something is amiss, and Rose may not be the culprit after all.” The trailer is very charming .
Here’s one for the freaks (I’m one of you). Rose Glass’ Love Lies Bleeding can briefly be described as a love story between a gym manager (Kristen Stewart) and a bodybuilder (Katy O’Brian), but it’s much more than that. It’s also about organized crime, steroids, and Ed Harris in full creep mode. Love Lies Bleeding has a daring ending that needs to be seen to be believed.
What Netflix’s Cobra Kai has pulled off over the years is nothing less than magical. The underdog spin off (which revived a franchise that celebrates underdogs) has accomplished what few TV shows or movies could have ever hoped for: successfully rebooting a 1980s entity while appealing to Gen Z to an even greater degree than capturing the original The Karate Kid audience. (You can read the full review here .)
Based on the Terry Gilliam movie of the same name, Time Bandits is about a lonely 11-year-old boy who joins a group of time-traveling thieves played by, among others, Lisa Kudrow. The fantasy-adventure series is created by Jemaine Clement ( Flight of the Conchords ), Iain Morris ( The Inbetweeners ), and Taika Waititi, who tends to do his best work — What We Do in the Shadows and Reservation Dogs — in a behind-the-scenes capacity.
Apple TV Plus’s Women in Blue is set in 1971 and follows “four women who defy the ultraconservative norms of the time and join Mexico’s first female police force, only to discover that their squad is a publicity stunt to distract the media from a brutal serial killer.” Created by Fernando Rovzar and Pablo Aramendi, the unsettling 10-episode drama stars Bárbara Mori, Ximena Sariñana, Natalia Téllez, Amorita Rasgado, Miguel Rodarte, Leonardo Sbaraglia, Christian Tappan, and Horacio García Rojas.
Tony Hale has a pretty solid track record when it comes to comedies. Buster in Arrested Development , Gary in Veep , FORKY in Toy Story 4 (do not hold Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip against him). Next up is The Decameron , which is like if The White Lotus took place during the bubonic plague pandemic (or as actress Jessica Plummer described it, “ Love Island , but back in the day”). The social satire is getting rave reviews for being “the best apocalyptic ensemble comedy since Clue .” Grab your juice and start watching.
A Batman animated series? It’ll never work . Prime Video’s Batman: Caped Crusader comes from creator Bruce Timm, one of the creative minds behind arguably the best-ever screen adaptation of the Dark Knight: Batman: The Animated Series . The new series has been described as “everything that Bruce Timm wanted to do in the original series but because it ran on a kid’s channel, he wasn’t able to do it,” and stars Hamish Linklater as Batman, Jamie Chung as Harley Quinn, Diedrich Bader as Two-Face, Christina Ricci as Catwoman, and in a fun bit of casting, Minnie Driver as Penguin.
Last season on Futurama , Fry, Leela, Bender, & Co. took on an Amazon-like company formed by Mom; caught a rage virus; and got turned into toys (that was a weird one). In season 12 (which is technically the second half of season eight if you go by production order, but let’s stick with Hulu’s season designations for the sake of ease), the gang “embarks on mind-bending adventures involving birthday party games to the death, the secrets of Bender’s ancestral robot village, A.I. friends (and enemies), impossibly cute beanbags, and the true 5 million-year-old story behind the consciousness-altering substance known as coffee.” Guest stars include Danny Trejo, Cara Delevingne, and Kyle Maclachlan. (Read more about the new season here .)
A while back, I remember seeing someone online make the case for Planet of the Apes as the most consistently good movie franchise. That’s overstating things (how soon we forget Ape Lincoln ?), but there are more keepers than stinkers in the series, especially among the recent films. Surprise box office hit Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes needed to justify its existence following the strong conclusion to the Caesar trilogy — and it did. The 10th overall Planet of the Apes features typically CGI work and a stirring story about determination. You won’t hate every ape you see, from chimpan-A to chimpan-Z.
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