Streaming in May: What to watch on Netflix, Disney, Max, Apple, Stan, ABC and Prime Video

THE FOUR SEASONS (Netflix, 1st)

Whatever Tina Fey has cooking is always going to pique your interest. For The Four Seasons, she has reunited with two of her 30 Rock writers, Lang Fisher and Tracey Wigfield, her SNL co-star Will Forte and Date Night buddy Steve Carell. Add to that mix, Colman Domingo and the source material, an Alan Alda-penned movie. The talent alone makes The Four Seasons a must-sample.

The eight-episode miniseries is set across one year (an hour dedicated to each season) and centred on three couples who always travel together and frequently. But their group dynamic is disrupted when Carell’s character leaves his wife of 25 years and shacks up with a much younger lover, forcing the other friends to reckon with their own relationships.

ANOTHER SIMPLE FAVOUR (Prime, 1st)

The original 2018 film was unhinged, involving double-triple-quadruple crosses, a secret twin (or was it triplets) twist and lots of arch staring. So many meaningful glances! But it also had killer vibes thanks to its soap opera-esque hijinks and dramatic costuming and production design.

A sequel wasn’t a given but it makes sense – social media in 2025 is even more suited to Another Simple Favour than it was in 2018. This time, con woman Emily (Blake Lively) is about to marry an Italian count in a lavish wedding when a murder takes place. For some reason, she has invited her old nemeses, Stephanie (Anna Kendrick) and Sean (Henry Golding) as guests.

TUCCI IN ITALY (Disney+, 19th)

Is there anything more pleasurable than watching Stanley Tucci gallivant around Italy, tasting his way through his ancestral homeland, savouring the pastas, salivating over a juicy cut of meat and hearing the stories behind every delectable dish.

Tucci had a two-season run with Searching for Italy and it was clearly a massive success, and having now become something of a tastebud expert with four published books, it’s an absolute joy to have him back on our screens waxing lyrical about all things deliziosa.

POKER FACE S2 (Stan, 8th)

Rian Johnson’s masterstroke of marrying Columbo and Natasha Lyonne has paid off in huge dividends. The crime sometimes-comedy, sometimes-thriller, sometimes-genre-mash returns with a second batch of episodes centred on Charlie Cale, a human lie-detector.

Charlie is itinerant, which gives her the opportunity to come across a different mystery each week and this season will features a long list of guest stars including Cynthia Erivo, Giancarlo Esposito, Rhea Perlman, Alia Shawkat, John Cho, Awkwafina, Richard Kind, Katie Holmes, Geraldine Viswanathan, Method Man, Kumail Nanjiani and Justin Theroux.

ADULTS (Disney+, 29th)

The former name for Adults was Snowflakes, which should give you an idea about the tongue-in-cheek tone of the comedy series written by a couple of The Tonight Show writers.

The story follows a group of five twentysomething friends who move in together into one of their family homes. Just as many have proclaimed at some point, “Adulting is hard!”, the series will explore the challenges of dating, work, hosting dinner parties and generally accepting responsibility for your own life.

AND JUST LIKE THAT S3 (Max, 30th)

God help us. Seriously. Only divine intervention can bring this woeful sequel series back from the pits of despair and creative bankruptcy. It doesn’t matter that Che is not returning for this third season, she was never the problem. The issue is that the filmmakers have abandoned the north star that made the original Sex and the City bold and funny.

Now, it’s just sad, like yesterday’s croissant left out on the bench that’s somehow both stale and hard. All And Just Like That has done is betray the core of Miranda’s characterisation, remind us that Carrie is insufferable and Aidan is a pill. We’re happy Kim Cattrall got that massive payday for a 74-second scene but she is the only person winning by mostly staying away. We should too.

DUSTER (Max, 16th)

J.J. Abrams hasn’t been properly involved in a TV series since the largely forgotten 2010 spy drama Undercovers, which was cancelled after seven episodes. But the man behind Alias, Felicity and Lost couldn’t stay away forever. There was an aborted show called Demimonde which was culled during widespread spending cuts in 2022 but HBO kept development going on Duster.

Co-created with LaToya Morgan, it reunites him with Lost’s Josh Holloway for a 1972-set story about the FBI’s first Black female agent (Rachel Hilson) who works to stop a crime syndicate with the help of a getaway driver (Holloway).

SIRENS (Netflix, 22nd)

This should not be confused with Netflix’s first Australian original, a show called Tidelands that had drug-dealing sirens that you were not allowed to confuse with mermaids. Everyone forgot that series existed, thankfully, but there’s still this latent ick now associated with sirens.

As far as we know, Sirens doesn’t have literal mystical creatures but there is something culty in the water. Meghann Fahy plays Devon, a woman trying to stage an intervention for her young sister (Milly Alcock) who has developed a creepy relationship with her boss (Julianne Moore). It plays out in a world of luxury and also stars Kevin Bacon, Glenn Howerton and Bill Camp.

NINE PERFECT STRANGERS S2 (Prime, 22nd)

Nine Perfect Strangers was weird. It started off as a series about the guests of an ultra-ritzy wellness retreat but then devolved into some strange trip about grief, and trying to connect with the afterlife through smoothies? Yeah, weird.

The second season sees Nicole Kidman’s Masha trading sun for snow, set up at a resort in the Austrian Alps with a whole new set of guests to emotionally torture. It always had almost The White Lotus vibes, but now it also has Murray Bartlett, who was Armand in the Maui season. He’s joined by Henry Golding, Christine Baranski, Lena Olin and Triangle of Sadness’s Dolly de Leon.

MURDERBOT (Apple TV+, 16th)

The name is something of a misdirect. The android in question (Alexander Skarsgard) gave itself that name after it hacked its programming and became sentient. But rather than become a killing machine, Murderbot is a more like a bored office worker, dutifully completing his tasks without any high-level thinking. Instead, he’s bingeing bad TV and developing a contempt for humans that, thankfully, doesn’t graduate to homicide.

The series is based on the books by Martha Wells and was created by the Weitz brothers, best known for American Pie and About a Boy. It also stars David Dastmalchian and Sabrina Wu while the likes of Clark Gregg, John Cho and Jack McBrayer guest as characters within the show Murderbot is watching.

PEE-WEE AS HIMSELF (Max, 24th)

At various points in his life, people couldn’t distinguish comedian Paul Reubens from Pee-Wee Herman, a character he created originally for famed improv troupe Groundlings before popularising him in TV and film. When Reubens was arrested in 1991 for indecent exposure after he was caught masturbating in a Florida adult theatre, the contrast between the clean-cut Pee-Wee and the human Reubens created a scandal.

Pee-Wee as Himself explores the life and career of Reubens, filmed before his death in 2023.

RICK AND MORTY S8 (Max, 26th)

Rick and Morty fans will now need to subscribe to Max after the series left Netflix some months back. But considering where the beloved adult animation left fans at the end of 2023, surely that’s a no brainer.

Especially now that Evil Rick has been defeated, which creates not only a “what is my purpose” existential crisis for regular Rick, but also revealed that there is far greater threat out there - Evil Morty was the real big bad all along.

FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH (Apple TV+, 23rd)

On the one hand, a cast that includes John Krasinski, Natalie Portman, Domhnall Gleeson and Eiza Gonzalez is impressive. On the other, it’s directed by Guy Ritchie. It’s a battle of competing expectations.

The family-oriented film is trying to pull a National Treasure and features a pair of estranged siblings on a quest to discover the Fountain of Youth. As you do.

ANGELA’S EYES (7plus, 7th)

Given the sheer volume of crime procedurals involving a detective (sometimes in-house, sometimes a consultant) with special sleuthing skills (Monk’s OCD, Psych and The Mentalist’s fake psychics, High Potential’s genius brain) it should be its own special sub-genre.

This one-season series from 2006 features a woman who can tell if you’re lying just by watching your body language. And she has experience with liars, given her parents were both super spies who are now in prison. Angela’s Eyes was really memorable for one reason: It stars the wonderful Abigail Spencer.

THE PIANO (ABC, 4th)

There’s heartwarming and there’s soul-boosting. Occasionally, it’s both. This ABC docuseries is hosted by Amanda Keller and seeks to combine the rejuvenating spirit of art with the ambitions of every day Australians. Musicians are found not just in opera houses and among symphonies, they are everywhere.

The show set up a grand piano in public spaces and invited Australians to play with curious onlookers stopping by. They’re also being secretly observed by Harry Connick Jr and classical pianist Andrea Lam, and they pick most impressive among the ivory-ticklers to take part in a performance at the City Recital Hall in Sydney.

FEAR STREET: PROM QUEEN (Netflix, 23rd)

Any kid growing up in the 1990s will remember the spine-tingling chills of R.L. Stine’s Fear Street books. Between Stine and Christopher Pike, the fear centres of young readers’ minds were being lit up.

Fear Street made the leap with a trilogy of films in 2021 and now the franchise returns with another instalment, this time a 1988-set story about a race for prom queen which takes a scary turn when an unusual nominee emerges and her rivals start disappearing.

KEVIN COSTNER: THE WEST (Stan, 28th)

Kevin Costner is jonesing for the American west. Between Yellowstone, Dances with Wolves, Open Range, Wyatt Earp, Hatfields & McCoys and the still in limbo Horizon tetralogy, he has a lifelong obsession with spurs, wide-brimmed hats and grunting masked as stoicism.

Until he can figure out how to complete the Horizon movies (it’s not going to happen), what else can Costner do except a History Channel docuseries about the American West, a myth as much as a reality, depending on who you ask.

THE BETTER SISTER (Prime, 29th)

Based on a popular book by Alafair Burke, the drawcard here is the casting of Elizabeth Banks and Jessica Biel as estranged sisters Nicky and Chloe with a tense history between them. They haven’t really spoken in 15 years but must re-enter each other’s lives when Chloe’s husband Adam is murdered.

That husband was originally married to Nicky – how awkward – and it’s Nicky’s son with Adam who has been accused of the killing.

STRIFE S2 (Binge, 8th)

Perhaps it wasn’t that surprising Strife was renewed for a second season – apparently it broke streaming records for Binge when it premiered in late 2023. If nothing else, there’s a curiosity factor baked into a series drawn from the real-experiences of publisher Mia Freedman, a woman who has attracted attention.

For some, Freedman is a feminist icon forging her path in independent media, for others, she comes off as a privileged white woman who has been smashed for underpaying writers and publicly body shamed Roxane Gay. The series featured a fictionalised version of Freedman, played by Asher Keddie, and that first season was, to put it generously, not very good.