Five things to watch this weekend

Full Swing — Netflix

Taking the formula applied thus far to Formula One drivers and tennis pros, Netflix’s new sports docuseries takes viewers behind the scenes of the high-pressure world of big money professional golf. Away from the pleasant, rolling greens and fancy, genteel clubhouses, things can get a little bitter and competitive in the world of the game that’s still, as Mark Twain famously quipped, the best way to spoil a good walk.

This show probably wouldn’t change Twain’s mind but for ardent golf fans, it should provide ammunition in their attempt to convince naysayers that golf really is the high-drama, high-intensity sport they tell everyone. For everyone else, it’s more evidence that Netflix’s application of a successful formula in one sports show doesn’t always translate to everything sports related.

Hello Tomorrow — Apple TV +

Billy Crudup, Hank Azaria and Haneefah Wood star in this retro-future-world set dramedy about a group of salesmen and women who like to believe that their chosen profession of selling people timeshare on the moon may help in a small way to make the world a better place.

Sharper — Apple TV +

A twisty confidence trickster thriller that’s slickly executed but disappointingly shallow when it comes to characters and motivations. Set in the world of upper-class Manhattan it’s a trust-no-one story of back-stabbing, betrayal and greed that has its moments but ultimately is a con you can see coming miles off and fails to deliver on its initially intriguing promise. What could have been a solid update of the best examples of the genre made by David Mamet in the 1980s and ’90s, ends up being a glitzy, hastily erected, blunted imitation that lacks any real menace, meaning or wit.

American Gigolo — Showmax

John Bernthal takes the role made famous by Richard Gere in Paul Schrader’s original 1980 film for this series adaptation. Unfortunately, this version, which makes much of its protagonist’s backstory and centres the plot on a dull murder mystery, wastes much of its star’s undeniable talents in favour of a sprawling, unfocused narrative that misses the point and powers of its dark, noirish existentially moody source material. In trying to deepen its central character through a preachy explanation of his actions through the predictable prism of childhood abuse and trauma, the series loses sight of the bigger-picture targets of the original — the psychological emptiness and cruelty that lurk behind the shiny surfaces of materialism and the capitalist dream.

Jim Jefferies: High and Dry

Australia’s most acerbic and grouchy stand-up comedian returns for a typically un-PC but caustically funny special in which he offers hard lessons from middle-age for his audience to laugh at without having to learn from.