1 week ago
14
Pick of the week
No 1 Happy Family USA
As the co-creator of the brilliant comedies Ramy and Mo, Ramy Youssef has been exploring the Muslim American experience with wit and precision for several years. His latest series is an adult animation about the Hussein family. It begins in 2001, which patriarch Rumi is confident will be a good year for the family – this optimism is misplaced. The series is a study in privilege and diasporic desperation, with a dark subtext: despite his best intentions, Rumi’s desire to fit in and prove himself and his family’s loyalty to the US is almost never rewarded. But, as ever, Youssef renders the Husseins’ travails with warmth, comedy and humanity.
Prime Video, from Thursday 17 April
Spinal Destination
On the face of it, there are more suitable subjects for comedy than sudden paralysis. But this New Zealand series gives it a go, introducing us to Tessa (Bree Peters), a no-nonsense journalist whose sudden disability sees her sent to a spinal unit where she is patronised, pitied and discouraged from believing that her life can ever be truly hers again. However, with the help of alter ego “Walking Tessa”, she’s soon pushing back. It’s a curiosity rather than essential viewing but it deserves credit for looking the unthinkable in the eye and daring to laugh.
U&W, out now
The Glass Dome
Lejla Ness (Léonie Vincent)is a criminologist who fled her small town for the city at the first opportunity. As this Swedish thriller unfolds, it’s easy to see why: as a child, she was kidnapped and forced to live in a glass box. When a relative dies, she returns – but a short visit threatens to extend when she is informed that another girl has gone missing. Can Lejla and her former police chief partner find the girl and, in doing so, can Lejla come to terms with her own past? It’s a mildly absurd premise but the doom-laden Scandi noir beats are hit with precision.
Netflix, from Tuesday 15 April
Government Cheese
Hampton Chambers (David Oyelowo) is a dreamer; a man who won’t let minor inconveniences such as jail or debts to crime families slow his roll. Upon his release from prison, he returns to his home in the San Fernando Valley to find that his family aren’t particularly pleased to see him, despite him having invented a self-sharpening drill that he’s sure will make his fortune. What unfolds is a surreal, mildly hallucinatory fable that feels gratuitously quirky but is carried along by fine performances and an era backdrop (the US in 1969) that raises the stakes for a Black family just about getting by.
Apple TV+, from Wednesday 16 April
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The Stolen Girl
This twisty thriller adapted from Alex Dahl’s novel Playdate begins as low key domestic drama. Elisa (Denise Gough) allows her young daughter Lucia to sleep over at a new friend’s house, but upon arriving to pick her up, finds everything has changed. The house is now unoccupied, but what has become of her child? What unravels is an interesting exercise in switching sympathies – the hunt for the girl soon becomes an international affair but it turns out Lucia has been taken for a very particular reason. Ambika Mod and Holliday Grainger also star.
Disney+, from Wednesday 16 April
The Diamond Heist
Sometimes life is better for being predictable. And everything about this documentary series about the attempted 2000 theft of the Millennium Star diamond from the former Millennium Dome is in its rightful place. The robbers – who look and sound exactly how a gang of London diamond robbers should – now seem breezily cocky about the whole thing (“It was a bit of a piss take, putting it where it was”). As do the Flying Squad cops who foiled their plan. And the whole enterprise is tied together by the inevitable presence of Guy Ritchie as executive producer.
Netflix, from Wednesday 16 April
Sloborn
This spookily prescient German-Danish drama launched in summer 2020 and depicted an unfolding global pandemic as it affected the fictional North Sea island of the title. While its popularity could have gone either way in the circumstances, it became a hit in Germany and is now into its third season. It’s slow-burning but gripping; suffice to say, the spread of “pigeon flu” has not been kind to the islanders. As we rejoin them, the survivors are considering life on the German mainland after finding their defences breached by a gang of pirates. PH
Channel 4, from Friday18 April
