Max: Five hidden gem TV shows you can stream that you probably didn’t know about
OK, so you’ve signed up to, Max, the newest streaming platform in Australia.
You know that it has The White Lotus, The Sopranos, The Wire, Succession, Veep, Industry and I May Destroy You or movies such as the Harry Potter franchise, Barbie, Dog Day Afternoon, The Dark Knight and Ocean’s 11.
But what about the under-the-radar or forgotten classics? This is what you should be streaming on Max this weekend.
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This isn’t a show you want to watch if you’re wavering about your long-term relationship, it might trigger some uncomfortable questions. Or, conversely, maybe this Scenes from a Marriage is exactly the starter pistol you need to confront some truths.
A reimagining of Ingmar Bergman’s 1973 Swedish drama, the five-part series stars Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain as a couple married for 10 years. She’s a tech exec and he’s a philosophy professor, and outwardly, they seem happy and successful. When she tells him she’s leaving, he didn’t see it coming.
The series is a performance showcase, the two thesps turning in jawdropping performances in captured moments of all the passion, despair and banality of a marriage breakdown.
JOHN ADAMS
In a post-Hamilton world, America’s second president now exists in the popular consciousness as the “little guy” King George gleefully condemns as, “That poor man, they’re going to eat him alive”.
But for all those American politics and history nerds who couldn’t rewatch The West Wing for the ninth time, John Adams was an absolute meal of a miniseries, which also happened to win 13 Emmy awards.
It starred Paul Giamatti as Adams, a studious lawyer who becomes pivotal to the American independence movement and the establishment of its first congress. The best part of the show, though, is Giamatti’s scenes with Laura Linney who plays his wife, Abigail, a woman of formidable intellect.
ENLIGHTENED
Something for everyone who is obsessing over The White Lotus and already freaked out that after the finale on Monday, what are they going to watch. Enlightened was Mike White’s 2011 comedy that he co-created with Laura Dern, and for which he also wrote every episode, as is his modus operandi.
Dern stars as a self-destructive 40-year-old woman who takes herself off to a wellness retreat in Hawaii after a breakdown at work. When she returns home after a month, all those new zen practices are quickly undone by the challenges of real life. Dern is fantastic, all elbows, flaws and relatable messiness.
WATCHMEN
Forget the 2009 Zack Snyder movie, which has merits for his superfans. This confident and declarative 2019 miniseries from Damon Lindelof is, surely, the definitive screen tribute to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ iconic 1980s comic book series.
This series balances spectacle with gravity in the way in pulls together a story that features a giant sky magnet and potent racial commentary. How’s that for impressive?
In a world where the internet was never invented and Robert Redford has been US president since the 1990s, it’s centred on police detective Angela Abar (Regina King in a career-best performance), part of a force that hides their identities behind masks. The villains here are white supremacists and the show is propelled by action but the real throughline is a love story, which sneaks up and knocks you over with its power.
THE NIGHT OF
It’s always baffling The Night Of isn’t name-checked on every list of best crime dramas of the decade, century, ever, because this is one of the best things HBO has made.
The 2016 miniseries was based on a UK format but transported the action to New York City where a young Muslim man is accused of murdering a white woman in a fancy brownstone when he wakes up next to her stabbed body.
The show is structured as a whodunit/did-he-do-it but it’s more interested in the textures of the city and of how the systems judge and treat you depending on where you’re from. The characters played by the likes of Riz Ahmed, Bill Camp, John Turturro and Poorna Jagannathan all feel real and lived-in. Stunning piece of television.
