Five things to watch this weekend

Daisy Jones and the Six — Prime Video

Amazon is betting big on this adaptation of the best-selling novel of ’70s rock and roll excess by Taylor Jenkins Reid. Starring Elvis Presley’s granddaughter, Riley Keough, it’s the “loosely inspired by Fleetwood Mac” story of Keough’s Daisy Jones, an unloved child with singer-songwriter talents and rockstar ambitions whose life is changed when she’s introduced to lead singer of band The Six, Billy Dunne (Sam Claflin), and is asked to collaborate with him.

Told in flashback through a series of interviews in VHI’s Behind the Music style, it’s an engaging enough tribute to an era when rock, though it had taken a distinctly sunny Californian detour musically, was still characterised behind the scenes by the old demons of sex, drugs and wild narcissistic abandon. The tensions between Daisy and Billy and the “will they, won’t they?” nature of their difficult personal, if creatively productive relationship drive the intrigue and keep the drama tensely moving towards its inevitable, crashing conclusion.

Lushly recreated and committedly performed, it’s a solid attempt to retell a story we’ve seen many times before whose enjoyment will depend on how you feel about what is arguably one of 20th-century pop’s most aurally anodyne and sterilised periods.  

The Consultant — Prime Video

Christoph Waltz turns up the creep in this dark mix of workplace drama, absurdist comedy and atmospheric horror. Waltz plays a mysterious business consultant who arrives to revive the fortunes of a video game company after its head is murdered in the bizarre and uncomfortable incident that opens the show. His arrival and intentions attract the interest of two employees played by Nat Wolff and Brittany O’Grady who are sure that he’s up to no good and are determined to unmask him. It’s a task that will prove difficult, dangerous and downright weird.

The English — Showmax

One of 2022’s best shows, Hugo Black’s revisionist revenge western is now available for bingeing. Featuring standout performances from leads Emily Blunt and Chaske Spencer and a strong cast of distinctive supporting turns, it’s a dark existential drama about two loners thrown together by circumstance who embark on a quest for the revenge of a past sin committed against them by a nefarious and dangerously unpredictable psychopath. Their desire for revenge sets them on a journey to the darkest corners of the frontier and its myths and reveals a damning secret that upends the very idea of the Old West and its values perpetuated by popular culture for generations. Dark, violent, uncomfortable, but always smart and intriguing, it’s one of recent television’s most intellectually and dramatically rewarding experiences.

The Capture Season 2 — Showmax

The BBC surveillance drama manages to keep walking a strange line between silliness, thoughtfulness and good old-fashioned thrilling political drama in its second outing. Holliday Grainger returns as the detective working in the fictional “Correction” division of the police, tasked with using digital technology to plant evidence against bad people looking to bring down the government. This time it’s the Chinese and their frightening artificial intelligence capability who are the villains of the drama in a thrilling if somewhat ludicrous, but always entertaining, examination of the dangers of state-sponsored terrorism.

Empire of Light — Disney Plus

Sam Mendes gets personal, with admittedly mixed results, in this lovingly rendered dramatic ode to the power and magic of cinema as a means of escaping the hardships of real life. Set in an English seaside town in the 1980s, it’s the story of a troubled woman who works in a cinema and struggles with mental health issues (Olivia Coleman), and whose life is upended when she falls for a handsome, young black usher (Michael Ward). Mendes bravely tries to keep all the plates of issues arising from this premise spinning — racial tension in Thatcher’s Britain, mental health, the restorative escapist power of the movies — but, in spite of strong performances and some breathtakingly evocative cinematography by Roger Deakins, the final result is a bit too diluted.