Chief of War to Hurricane Katrina: the seven best shows to stream this week
Twenty years have now passed since the horrifying events surrounding Hurricane Katrina, but this gripping series brings the trauma back to life in visceral style. What began as an appalling natural disaster soon became a national crisis then an outrage of governmental negligence and structural racism which came to embody – and irrevocably taint – the final years of George W Bush's presidency. To watch the footage now is to be reminded of how close even the most seemingly advanced societies are to breakdown and chaos. Essential. PH Disney+, from Sunday 27 July
This documentary, delayed from June, explores the death of British woman Christine Robinson who was raped and murdered at a safari lodge in South Africa in 2014. After the local police drew a blank, Robinson's niece Lehanne took it upon herself to hunt her aunt's killer remotely. She located the suspect online and began a long-distance relationship with Andrea Imbayarwo, who had, by this time, fled the country. Her actions led to his arrest and conviction. Harrowing but also a remarkable story of crime and punishment in the social media age. PH
Prime Video, from Sunday 27 July
This Netflix series is turning out to be an engaging source of quirky, marginal human interest stories. Its latest documentary explores the 2019 Storm Area 51 Facebook event, which was started by Matty Roberts as a joke but soon became dangerously real. The nominal idea was to see if anyone fancied uncovering the truth about alien lifeforms held in the US airforce facility Area 51. However, by the time the event had attracted the (virtual) attention of more than three million people, Roberts realised he'd created a monster he could no longer control. PH
Netflix, from Tuesday
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A trippy and inventive animation for the summer holidays. StuGo introduces six gifted students tricked into attending a fake summer camp by eccentric scientist Dr Lullah, whose propensity for swishing her gown around like she's on a catwalk should have been a dead giveaway. Once the youngsters arrive on her island, they find an environment that is rife with danger but also full of perilous fun. It's a world of mind-reading manatees, huge fighting fungi, human cacti and a crocodile wearing jeans, and soon the kids are having a blast. PH
Disney+, from Wednesday 30 July
The southern belle stylings of Leanne Morgan meet the sitcom smarts of Chuck Lorre (The Big Bang Theory, Two and a Half Men) to create this comedy. Morgan plays Leanne, who discovers that Bill (Ryan Stiles), her husband of 33 years, has cheated on her. The devastating blow launches a flurry of gags about menopause, midlife crises and recovering your dating mojo, as Leanne – with her sister Carol (Kristen Johnston) – looks to move on. It has hysterical studio audience reactions and hits its formulaic comic beats with confidence. PH
Netflix, from Thursday 31 July
The idea of spies who alternate domestic bliss with espionage activities peaked with The Americans. But this French-Canadian thriller retools the premise, starring Mélissa Désormeaux-Poulin and Patrick Labbé as Rachel and Émile, two agents with a loving relationship, a couple of kids and – after a shooting at a consulate exposes a CIA operation – dangerously contrasting professional missions. To make matters worse, Émile needs to root out a double agent in the organisation. Could this lead him dangerously close to home? PH
Channel 4, from Friday 1 August
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The Independent
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It was September 2012 and dozens of residents looked on as police cordoned off the area around a shed just northeast of Detroit. Low whispers about what — or who — officers were searching for grew to more excited chatter when the name Jimmy Hoffa started floating around the normally quiet street. By that time, the name had become sort of mythical in and around Detroit. Wednesday marks 50 years since the iron-fisted former Teamsters union boss disappeared from a restaurant about 10 miles (16 kilometers) north of the city. Presumed dead long before being legally declared deceased in 1982, Hoffa's remains were not found beneath the concrete shed floor in Roseville in 2012. Nor were they uncovered eight years earlier, below floorboards in a Detroit house. Neither were they found in 2013 at a horse farm miles northwest of the city. In 2013, digging equipment found mostly dirt as authorities excavated a field in Oakland Township, about 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Detroit. And no signs of Hoffa were found in 2022 during a search of land beneath the Pulaski Skyway in New Jersey. Who was Jimmy Hoffa? Hoffa, the son of a coal miner who died when he was 7, was born in Brazil, Indiana, but moved with his mother to Detroit while still a boy. He quit school at 14 and went to work, landing a job on a grocery warehouse loading dock. In 1932, Hoffa led a workers' strike over poor labor conditions and unfair treatment of workers by the store, according to a post about him on the International Brotherhood of Teamsters website. He joined the union a year later and became a business agent for Local 299 in Detroit, the website said. Hoffa was elected the local's president in 1937 and would become a union organizer. He often found himself on the other end of the law. In 1937, he was convicted of assault and battery. In 1940, he pleaded no contest to charges of conspiring with unionized waste-paper companies to prevent non-union competitors from selling their products. Seven years later, he was arrested for attempted extortion. Each time, Hoffa only received fines. He continued to rise in the union's ranks. From 1957 to 1971, he served as the Teamsters general president. Hoffa had a history of associating with organized crime. In the late 1960s, he was convicted of fraud, conspiracy and jury tampering. He was sent to federal prison in 1967. President Richard Nixon commuted Hoffa's 13-year sentence in 1971. On July 30, 1975, Hoffa, now 62, was to meet reputed Detroit mob enforcer Anthony 'Tony Jack' Giacalone and alleged New Jersey mob figure Anthony 'Tony Pro' Provenzano at the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Oakland County's Bloomfield Township. Hoffa called his wife, Josephine, about 2:15 p.m. from a pay phone to tell her no one showed up for the meeting. He has not been seen or heard from since despite scores of tips and multiple searches spanning several states. A grand jury later was convened in Detroit, but no one ever has been directly charged in Hoffa's disappearance or death. From missing to legendary 'I think it confirms in my mind ... somebody did a pretty good hit job on him,' Wayne State University educator Marick Masters said of Hoffa. Masters, professor emeritus at the university's Mike Ilitch School of Business in Detroit, told The Associated Press on Wednesday that Hoffa was considering getting back into Teamsters' leadership at the time of his disappearance. 'He still, obviously, was very much passionately involved in the union and he wanted to find a way of moving forward in it,' Masters said. 'Whatever the circumstances were, he was tragically prevented from doing that.' Hoffa was inducted into Labor's International Hall of Fame in 1999, according to the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which refers to Hoffa on its website as 'a worker's hero.' 'He was viewed as a very passionate champion of the Teamsters,' Masters said. 'On the other hand, he had problematic associations which besmirched the image of organized labor. He was a very controversial figure. He was capable of accomplishing things and also capable of having associations that raised questions about his integrity.'
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