Good news!
The ABC Entertainment team has done the hard yards for you and found no less than *six* shows and films that are very good and new to streaming for you to watch tonight.
Let us tell you about…
- Elisabeth Moss's shapeshifting performance in new spy thriller The Veil
- HBO's new miniseries The Sympathizer, starring Robert Downey Jr and Hoa Uranide
- How real-life fear is blended with horror film sensibilities in Them: The Scare
- Conan O'Brien being a comedic Swiss Army knife in Conan O'Brien Must Go
- Cringe comedy at its best in Such Brave Girls
- A whole lot of hair in Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story
The Veil — Disney+
Nicola Heath
The Veil, an international spy thriller from Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders), opens with a stilettoed Elisabeth Moss striding through a private airport lounge, where she coolly informs the waiting man (in an English accent) that she is not who he believes she is — and Interpol is on the way.
Moss is Imogen Salter, an undercover MI6 agent, whose next assignment takes her to a snow-covered refugee camp on the Turkish-Syrian border where Adilah El Idrissi (Yumna Marwan), a suspected ISIS fighter, is being kept under guard. The woman is believed to be the Djinn al Raqqa, one of the few female ISIS commanders, and is considered extremely dangerous.
Imogen leaves the camp with Adilah, ostensibly to transport her to another refugee camp, but the pair soon make for Paris via Istanbul. On the ensuing road trip — think Homeland meets Thelma and Louise — the women exchange stories as Imogen tries to establish Adilah's identity and where her allegiance lies.
While their rapport appears genuine, just what is true and what is not remains unclear. The Djinn al Raqqa is known as a shapeshifter, and the enigmatic Imogen proves similarly elusive, easily switching between personas and languages and showing a propensity for going rogue.
In Paris, the intrigue deepens. Malik Amar (Dali Benssalah) is Imogen's handler at France's international security agency — and her lover, to complicate matters — and his rival is Max Peterson (Josh Charles), a gung-ho CIA agent. Imogen plays the rival intelligence agencies off against each other as they jostle for supremacy.
The stakes are raised when new intelligence reveals a major attack on an unknown western target is coming in seven to 10 days. Imogen seeks to reveal Adilah's secrets while also battling her own personal demons in a classic — and captivating — race against time.
For fans of: The Americans, Killing Eve, Mr & Mrs Smith.
The Sympathizer — Foxtel/Binge
Jared Richards
Based on the 2015 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Viet Thanh Nguyen, this seven-part spy thriller is a sharp, complex and surprisingly funny look at how the Vietnam/American war has been simplified in western depictions.
Created by South Korean auteur Park Chan-wook with actor-writer Don McKellar, it's a stylish, tense drama following the Captain (Australian Hoa Xuande; Ronny Chieng: International Student), a North Vietnamese spy who is sent to America after the fall of Saigon to go undercover as a South Vietnamese refugee.
He keeps eyes on potential militia efforts within the community and, later, via his CIA links, consults on an American film set during the war, mirroring the infamously chaotic production of Apocalypse Now. We hear his story of subterfuge as recounted at a Vietnamese prison, the Captain having been captured upon his return.
The Captain is not a calculated, emotionless spy or killing machine: He is a sympathiser to all he comes across and crosses, refusing to relegate the war to a simple narrative or view anyone solely as an enemy. Allegiances are unclear and emotions divided, especially as he enters a relationship with Ms Mori (Sandra Oh), a Japanese-American with little knowledge of his past.
Another layer: The Captain is marked an outsider by all thanks to glowing green eyes inherited from his French father, plus college years spent in America. In his own words, "I am half and half. Biracial, bilingual, a synthesis of incompatibilities." It's a meaty role masterfully played by Xuande (his first major US part, after years of bouncing around Australian TV).
The Sympathizer's heavy first episode, set before the Captain arrives in America, may put off viewers, but things lighten in large part thanks to Robert Downey Jr, who plays the various powerful, ridiculous white men the Captain encounters. His casting in multiple roles is the most obvious part of the show's intent to flip the perspective on western views of the war: If the US is going to flatten nuances, two can play at that game, with these antagonists essentially interchangeable symbols of American arrogance.
For fans of: The Little Drummer Girl, The Americans, Slow Horses.
Them: The Scare — Prime Video
Velvet Winter
Them: The Scare is not for the faint-hearted. Not just because it is fantastically frightening in a classic horror way, but because of how it anchors that horror in real-life atrocities that unfortunately still exist after the show finishes.
The Scare is the second entry in the Them catalogue, following on from 2021's retroactively named Them: Covenant, and creator Little Marvin brings the same twisted malice to the horror anthology's second offering.
Covenant was set in a 50s America grappling with segregation, but The Scare flashes forward to 1991, in an LA that's dealing with the devastating aftermath of the Los Angeles Police Department's (LAPD) assault on Rodney King.
The Scare follows Dawn Reeve (Deborah Ayorinde), a detective in the LAPD who's hot on the trail of a serial killer who leaves their victims in such an extreme condition they don't even look human anymore. But Reeve's white co-workers don't believe there's even a killer on the loose, content to pin the grisly crimes on local Black youths.
And while the traditional horror visuals are eerie, the sadistic scenes featuring the outwardly racist cops Reeve walks alongside are what will really turn stomachs. In the end, it doesn't matter if the action on screen is the work of supernatural forces or police intimidation — the feeling you're left with is one of overwhelming dread that bad things are going to happen to innocent people.
It's a tough watch. But rewarding and raw performances from Ayorinde and Luke James make it a worthwhile one.
For fans of: American Horror Story, American Crime Story, Get Out.
Conan O'Brien Must Go — Foxtel/Binge
James Brennan
Conan O'Brien can't stop. There's even a whole documentary about it: 2011's Conan O'Brien Can't Stop. It follows a national tour he called "The Legally Prohibited from Being Funny on Television Tour", after he was dramatically and unceremoniously pushed out of NBC's The Tonight Show in 2010, having only spent a year in the prime-time slot.
That little nugget of info pretty much captures the essence of this man. He's extremely adept at adapting his comedic skill set to the framework of his chosen (or allowed) medium. In Conan O'Brien Must Go, he's dipping back into his travel show bag with a bigger budget than ever.
If you're a fan of O'Brien, you'll very much get a kick out of this manic journey across the globe. There are four episodes, each set in a different country. O'Brien's goals for each episode are as follows:
- 1.To have you watch the episode
- 2.Laugh at his fish-out-of-water chaos
- 3.Learn absolutely nothing about the place
If you're not on board the gravy train at this point, you still may get a kick out of it. O'Brien and his team are comedy veterans, and they're making extremely well-produced episodes, with sketches, running gags and sharp writing among the improvised travel moments.
For fans of: Saturday Night Live, The Simpsons.
Such Brave Girls — Stan
Katherine Smyrk
In the opening credits of this show, the words Such Brave Girls, formed out of dark and tangled pubic hair, slide slowly down a bathroom wall.
Such Brave Girls is not for the faint-hearted: If you are easily grossed out or deeply unamused by crude and cringe-y humour, this is maybe not one for you.
But if you like your humour jet-black, inappropriate, and unabashedly roasting dramatic and selfish young people (and their parents), then get ready to laugh until it hurts a bit.
The show follows Josie, a deeply depressed and closeted lesbian whose sad face has been known to impact people's libidos. Her sister Billie is an awful person, really — a caricature of vacuous gen Z, in all the best ways (I was screaming when she home-bleaches her hair to impress a boy, vomiting from the pain). They're both still hoping the maternal instinct will kick in for their single mother Deb, but it doesn't seem likely.
The trio are trying to keep their lives together after their father and husband went out for teabags and never came back, with their hopes pinned on Deb's odd and clueless new boyfriend, who has "a really big house".
Get ready for the three women being truly awful to each other and everyone else, deadpan jokes about depression that will have you spitting out your drink, someone getting an abortion while dressed as the Wicked Witch of the West and lines like: "Ask any woman, none of us likes dick. This not something you enjoy, it's something you get through."
For fans of: Why Are You Like This, All My Friends Are Racist, Girls, The Inbetweeners.
Thank You, Goodnight: The Bon Jovi Story — Disney+
Anastasia Safioleas
Pretty boys in make-up, torn T-shirts and leather pants, stadium shows with over-the-top pyrotechnics, big major label deals, even bigger hair – everything was epic in the early 80s glam metal scene.
This four-part documentary on perhaps the most successful glam-pop metal band of all time – Bon Jovi – is a nostalgic, mostly poignant, trek back in time. Grainy archival footage of concert performances and TV interviews are peppered throughout as frontman Jon Bon Jovi tells his story.
He talks about how in the early 80s you were either a post-disco new wave kid, or a glam metal freak. And about how the latter was especially huge, with bands such as Mötley Crüe, Ratt, Twisted Sister and Quiet Riot riding high on the radio airwaves.
It was against this backdrop that a young John Bongiovi Jr and his covers band emerged; they were regulars at live venues in New Jersey's Asbury Park, alongside Bruce Springsteen and Southside Johnny. They would eventually morph into Bon Jovi, going on to become one of the biggest bands in the world.
Forty years on and now in his 60s, Bon Jovi is greyer, wiser and battling serious vocal issues. You get the distinct feeling he misses his younger, wilder days. The melancholy is tangible.
Still, despite the wistful reflection, the four episodes — ranging in length from an hour to an hour-and-a-half long — are a wild ride.
For fans of: McCartney 3, 2, 1; Metallica: Some Kind of Monster; Springsteen on Broadway.
Honourable new-to-streaming mentions:
- Fallout — Prime Video: A surprisingly funny adaptation of the beloved video game that actually hits the mark.
- Dead Boy Detectives — Netflix: Two teenagers who happen to be ghosts investigate supernatural crimes in this paranormal detective comedy.
- Swift Street — SBS on Demand: A fast, funny and deep father-daughter heist escapade, set in Melbourne.
- The Jinx — Part Two — Foxtel/Binge: The next instalment of the Emmy Award-winning series The Jinx: The Life and Deaths of Robert Durst, from Andrew Jarecki.
- Our Living World — Netflix: A beautifully shot four-part nature series about how we're all interconnected, narrated in soul-soothing dulcet tones by Cate Blanchett.