What to stream this week: Teresa Palmer's Gen X drama and five more to add to your list

Sydney Morning Herald

19 hours ago

Our picks this week include an Australian-Irish romantic drama, an Agatha Christie adaptation starring Matthew Rhys, and documentaries about an eccentric football legend and U2's Bono.
Mix Tape ★★★ (Binge and Foxtel)
Mix Tape is all about the wonder. First love, favourite songs and inescapable heartbreak are the building blocks of this Irish-Australian romantic drama. Ricocheting between past and present, the teenage protagonists and their middle-aged successors, these four hour-long episodes have an inexorable momentum.
It's not subtle, but it's effective. Yes, the plot forcefully pushes these characters into bitter circumstances, but there's also a deeper recognition that sometimes a gesture, or an unspoken decision, or a great song, can add more than carefully crafted detail.
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Sheffield, England, 1989: lanky teen Dan O'Toole (Rory Walton-Smith) sights high school classmate Alison Connor (Florence Hunt) across the room at a house party. New Order's Bizarre Love Triangle is playing: 'I feel shot right through with a bolt of blue.' Cut to the present day and Dan (Jim Sturgess) is a music journalist, still based in Sheffield and married with a son to Katja (Sara Soulie), while Alison (Teresa Palmer) is getting far more sunshine in Sydney, mother of two daughters and married to surgeon Michael (Ben Lawson).
Why aren't they together? When will they get back together? Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart is obviously cued up, but this adaptation of Jane Sanderson's 2020 novel knows, as does the viewer, that Dan and Alison are meant to be together, both as a means of healing and a wellspring of happiness. Their children are mostly leaving home and their partners are slightly off – the emphasis Michael puts on the 'my' in 'you're my wife' lingers uneasily.
'You never forget the boy who makes you your first mix-tape,' Alison tells her daughter, Stella (Julia Savage), which means more once Alison explains to her Spotify-era child what a mix-tape is.
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Irish writer Jo Spain (Harry Wild) and Australian director Lucy Gaffy (Irreverent) treat love and longing as a magnetic force. It draws the teenagers together, with montages and shared reveries that come with an impeccable soundtrack – Psychedelic Furs, The Church, The Cure – and immaculate production design for the adolescent bedrooms.
There's a degree of nostalgia, which some will happily succumb to, but this Gen X mix of Nick Hornby and Nancy Meyers (Alison's home has Bondi Beach views) also liberally applies tragic circumstances, especially in Alison's case, to divide the young lovers.
There are tendrils of other shows, including the reckoning with unspoken trauma, the meaning behind a midlife crisis and the technical wonder that was a dual cassette deck, but fulfilling kismet is the goal. And when that happens, shared gazes and the right song do the job.
Towards Zero ★★★½ (BritBox)
To its last collective breath, the BBC will be producing Agatha Christie adaptations. The late author is a murder-mystery franchise that cannot be killed. The question is how they can defy, or at least tweak, tradition. This three-part update of Christie's 1944 novel tries a few diverse gambits, which surprisingly mesh. There's a stellar cast, led by Anjelica Huston (Transparent) and Matthew Rhys (The Americans), but also structural adjustments and a knowing celebration of cliches.
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As conveyed by a fateful opening monologue, Rachel Bennette's adaptation wants to track how the many suspects came to be assembled in the Devon mansion of bedbound tyrant Lady Tresillian (Huston), and their torturous connections. The key crime isn't the plot's inciting incident, it's a culmination well after the introduction. By then you've studied tennis star Nevile Strange (Oliver Jackson-Cohen), his new wife Kay (Mimi Keene), and his former wife Audrey (Ella Lily Hyland). Add suspicious cousins and creepy servants, too.
With incitement from director Sam Yates, the plot leans into period scandal – a courtroom collectively gasps when Kay is labelled a 'gold digger' – and throwback designer chic.
It would be all too wink-wink if the investigating detective, Inspector Leach (Rhys), wasn't dishevelled, depressed, and disinclined to believe anyone. Leach's professionalism, like the show, has a wilful streak. It's not clear that solving the case will save him.
Pernille (seasons 1-5) ★★★★ (Netflix)
Here's a stealth winter watch. A slice-of-life Norwegian comic-drama that takes in bittersweet lows and everyday hopes, it follows child-welfare worker Pernille (Henriette Steenstrup, the show's creator), a single mother juggling two demanding daughters, a demanding career and, frankly, several other demands.
It's a messy, matter-of-fact life – Pernille neglects herself at times while trying to help others, copes in good and bad ways, and reveals a sardonic worldview. One Mississippi or Better Things are points of comparison but Pernille feels more connected to everyday struggle. It's a show that's doing exactly what it wants.
Bono: Stories of Surrender ★★★ Apple TV+
Australian filmmaker Andrew Dominik (Chopper, Blonde) continues his music documentary arc, switching from Nick Cave to U2's frontman for this filmed performance of the singer's 2023 one-man show. It's a mix of memoir, focused on Bono's childhood when he was still just Paul Hewson, and the salvation U2 afforded him after teenage losses, matched with stripped-down versions of the band's hits. It's revelatory in a sense but Bono has long been a master of rock'n'roll mystique, and that's maintained by Dominik, whose black-and-white images reverently cloak Bono.
Ange & the Boss: Puskas in Australia ★★★½ (DocPlay)
Ange is Ange Postecoglou, the recently sacked Australian manager of English Premier League side Tottenham Hotspur, whose initial playing career at South Melbourne FC included a stint as defender, driver and translator – from Greek to English – for Ferenc Puskas, the Hungarian legend who was the best player in the world in the 1950s prior to Pele's ascent, before enjoying a nomadic managerial career that brought him to Melbourne in 1990. This is a joyous sports documentary about Australia's migrant heritage, footballing philosophy and an idiosyncratic giant of the game.
Rick and Morty (season 8) ★★½ (Max)
An adult animated comedy created by Community's Dan Harmon and the since-departed Justin Roiland, Rick and Morty has become one of television's enduring cult series. It has a good-sized and furiously devoted audience – the reason it has now reached its eighth season – but it can also repel first-time viewers as it cartwheels through the cosmic mishaps of mad scientist Rick Sanchez (Ian Cardoni) and his press-ganged grandson Morty Smith (Harry Belden). I have tried with this show repeatedly and fallen short as its madcap verve can drift into the self-referential, but it's not going anywhere.