Pick of the week
Landman
Tommy Norris (Billy Bob Thornton) is a crisis executive for an oil giant colonising Texas and it’s a stressful job – especially when he is tied, hooded and bloodied while trying to negotiate a multibillion-dollar land lease with a drug cartel. This drama is loosely adapted from the Boomtown podcast, which explored the race to exploit the state’s Permian Basin oil fields. It’s a rough-handed, picaresque affair – there are huge sums of money at stake and everyone from the farmers occupying the land to the working stiffs seeking their fortunes fancy a piece of it. Thornton is excellent as the man trying to conduct the chaos, with Jon Hamm and Demi Moore among his illustrious co-stars.
Paramount+, from Monday 18 November
***
Our Oceans
It hasn’t been a great month for Barack Obama. Perhaps he can take comfort from the knowledge that he has an excellent voice for nature broadcasting. The content of the former president’s narration during this five-part underwater odyssey isn’t always as scholarly as Brits have come to expect. For example, you wouldn’t catch David Attenborough calling a fish “this little guy”, however cute and colourful it was. But what Our Oceans may lack in scientific rigour, it makes up for in sheer spectacle: from the dancing cuttlefish to the towering underwater kelp forests, startling and revelatory footage abounds.
Netflix, from Wednesday 20 November
***
Zombieverse
It’s season two of the utterly berserk South Korean reality show in which celebrities (including K-pop star Taeyeon, comedian Je Se-ho and rapper Defconn) are dumped into a simulated zombie apocalypse. They are then surrounded by horror actors as they perform survival tasks. It’s magnificently ridiculous, partly because of the immersive detail of the situation, but mainly because pretty much everyone involved takes the whole enterprise incredibly seriously. This time, the players have to create an anti-zombie serum while transporting an infected person to hospital.
Netflix, from Tuesday 19 November
***
A Man on the Inside
The Good Place creator Michael Schur joins forces with Ted Danson again in this quirky comedy. Widower Charles (Danson, on sprightly form) is looking for a project to stave off loneliness. After responding to an advert placed by PI Emily (Mary Elizabeth Ellis) he goes undercover in a retirement community to investigate a jewellery theft. What seems to be a giddy, low-stakes crime caper morphs into a deft meditation on ageing: Charles isn’t ready for group living but his awareness that it might be just round the corner adds a layer of poignancy.
Netflix, from Thursday 21 November
***
Cruel Intentions
This series is a loose reimagining of the 1999 teen drama of the same name and is set among the appalling, wealthy teenagers of an exclusive Washington DC college. Caroline and Lucien are a pair of manipulative and status-obsessed stepsiblings whose grip on the power dynamics of the place is vice-like. It’s a gleefully glossy parade of hazing rituals, sorority parties and shady lecturers which fans of Gossip Girl will lap up. Sarah Catherine Hook and Zak Burgess star as the terrible twosome at the heart of everything.
Prime Video, from Thursday 21 November
***
Only Child
This bittersweet comedy explores a universal situation: an elderly parent, alone, cranky and in need of assistance. Ken (Gregor Fisher) lives in the Scottish Highlands, wallowing in squalor and upsetting his neighbours. His son Richard (Greg McHugh) is a struggling actor in London – and when he returns for a funeral, he reluctantly realises his dad needs more than the occasional visit. Only Child is not very subtle, but is at its best when it allows moments of tenderness for Ken to ponder his mortality and Richard to acknowledge his father’s frailty.
BBC iPlayer, from Thursday 21 November
***
Judge Marianne
This French comedy drama follows the exploits of magistrate Marianne Vauban (Marilou Berry) who, as TV convention often demands, favours unorthodox methods to gets results. Somehow managing to sidestep potential conflicts of interest, Marianne is a strange mixture of legal arbiter and private investigator – along with her trusty sidekicks Yves and Raphaël, she completely immerses herself in every case that comes her way. And as if she hasn’t got enough on her plate, she’s investigating a murder on the side. Not a series unduly troubled by issues of plausibility.
Channel 4, from Friday 22 November
