What to watch on streaming in October on Netfllix, Disney, Prime, ABC, HBO, SBS, 7plus, Stan and more

EAST OF EDEN

Netflix, 1st

When it comes to sprawling American epics of the 20th century, John Steinbeck has cornered the market. His novel about the tragic Trask family was adapted into a film by Elia Kazan in 1955 and now Kazan’s granddaughter, the actor and filmmaker Zoe Kazan has made it her own.

This seven-episode miniseries rebalances the scale to focus more on Cathy Ames, the maligned mother of twins Aaron and Caleb, delving into the backstory of the fallen woman condemned as a manipulative monster throughout literary history. If you’re going to do that, Florence Pugh is definitely who you want in that role.

THE LOWDOWN S2

Disney+, 15th

Sterlin Harjo’s (Reservation Dogs) irreverent twist on a western is one of the most criminally under-appreciated shows of 2025. It’s playful, it’s entertaining and it has a strong perspective about corruption, violence and money in embedded power structures. It also has Ethan Hawke, and that alone should be enough.

If, for some wild reason, Hawke isn’t, this second season has added two performers you always to see more of: Betty Gilpin and Tommy Lee Jones. The story is centred on a wily and occasionally self-destructive citizen journalist trying to get to the bottom of things in Tulsa.

LUPIN PART 4

Netflix, 23rd

Is there a sexier show than Lupin? Not in that more conventional, horny kind of sexy, but in the slinky, stylish, oh-so-French way. In the way that Omar Sy looks at you through the camera.

The heist thriller Lupin returns for a fourth season with Sy as a man inspired by the fictional stories of Maurice Leblanc’s gentleman thief. The stakes are higher with an imposter out there who’s going to great lengths to frame Lupin for a series of crimes. It threatens not just our hero, but all those around him.

WAR

HBO Max, 2nd

The glossy War has the delicious premise of a high-profile couple – he a tech founder and she a famous actor – fighting for power and money through their divorce, as well as the armies of expensive lawyers.

Just what happens when there’s that much cash involved, as well as their public reputations if certain events come to light? Dominic West returns to a familiar role as the philandering husband while Sienna Miller is luminous as the star who is served divorce papers on the red carpet. That too, should ring a bell.

THE DIPLOMAT S4

Netflix, 15th

What’s kind of crazy is that The Diplomat is now onto its fourth season and most of the geopolitical power games and betrayals still stems from the original crisis of a British warship being attacked. There have been twists and spin-off disasters, but it all emanates from that first moment.

TV queen Keri Russell’s Kate Wyler, the titular diplomat, now has to contend with knowing that the president (Allison Janney) and her husband Hal (Rufus Sewell) aren’t to be trusted, and now you can add into this combustible mix, the first husband, Todd (Bradley Whitford), a still unknown element who’s vowed to be much more present.

VISIONQUEST

Disney+, 11th

VisionQuest is the third chapter of a trilogy of Marvel streaming shows which began with WandaVision in 2021. WandaVision, if you remember, was a potent and creative exploration of grief, that is until the final episode when it went a bit silly.

But that throughline of thematic heft should still exist, and let’s not forget it was Vision who uttered that line (“What is grief, if not love persevering?”), and is now trying to understand who he is by confronting the AI programs that preceded him, which means the return of James Spader and his character Ultron to the MCU.

YAGA

Binge, 23rd

This Canadian horror series re-imagines the Baba Yaga myth, you know, the one about the witchy old woman from Slavic folklore. Carrie-Anne Moss leads a cast that also includes a Schitt’s Creek alum in Noah Reid. But the real reason people are paying attention is because it also features Hudson Williams in his first post-Heated Rivalry role. Yes, that guy,

The story is centred on a private investigator who arrives in a small town to look into the disappearance of a local fishing heir. Spooky things happen.

70 UP

SBS on Demand, 3rd

Talk about follow-through. What began as Seven Up in 1964, the groundbreaking docuseries which tracked the lives of 10 boys and four girls in the UK, checking in with them every seven years, will now culminate as 70 Up.

Two of the participants have since died, as well as director Michael Apted who took on every film from 1970 onwards (Senna’s Asif Kapadia helmed 70 Up). There is nothing else like it, where a screen project has followed a group of people over such a span time, and considered what effects their beginnings have had through their lives.

This is the final chapter, and so is the most reflective of the series.

NEWLYWEDS

HBO Max, 24th

Goodness gracious, is there a more handsome onscreen and offscreen couple than Tea Leoni and Tim Daly. The pair married in 2024 after playing fictional husband-and-wife for six seasons on Madam Secretary.

In a case of life imitating art imitating life, Leoni and Daly have reunited in the show Newlyweds, a sitcom which follows a couple who tie the knot after a whirlwind romance, and despite their surface differences – she’s a free spirit, he’s more uptight etc etc.

NOCTURNE

Apple TV, 30th

OK, there are a few layers to this series starring Stephen Graham, Liev Schreiber and Zazie Beetz, think of it as going for Silence of the Lambs meets Black Bird.

Graham plays a notorious serial killer, Jurek, who is now locked up in some special facility, but even though he’s been caught, the murders keep happening. Schreiber plays the FBI agent who caught him, and Beetz plays a young agent with a personal connection to Schreiber, who goes undercover in the prison to try to discover Jurek’s secret.

BLUE LIGHTS S4

SBS on Demand, 4th

If you love a gritty British cop procedural, odds are you’re already obsessed with Blue Lights – and with good reason because Sian Brooke is nothing short of marvellous in this Belfast-set crime drama.

The series started with following the day-to-day of three probationary constables, including Brooke’s later-in-life new starter, Grace, as they faced challenges in a city still on tenterhooks. Now the characters are better embedded in their worlds, but that doesn’t mean work has gotten easier.

GNOMES

Stan, 8th

Part-comedy, part-horror, all-shenanigans, Gnomes continues the antic-filled tradition of Hot Fuzz and Gremlins with this oddball show about two cops and former lovers, trying to reign in the chaos of a town besieged by killer ceramic garden figures.

British actor Asa Butterfield co-leads with Megan Smart in this Australian series which also draws on local talent including Alison Wyte, Matt Okine, Darren Gilshenan, Brett Tucker, Luke McGregor and Nina Oyama.

ANIMALS

Netflix, 9th

Have you heard about recent best friends Ben Affleck and Netflix? Netflix bought Affleck’s AI company for $US587 million, and he makes movies for the streamer. It’s a win-win, at least for them. The latest, after The Rip, is called Animals, which he directed and co-wrote.

In the crime thriller, Affleck plays a mayoral candidate whose son is kidnapped for ransom, he and his wife (Kerry Washington) have to cross lines and expose secrets that were never meant for the light of day. The cast also includes Gillian Anderson and Steven Yeun.

MASTERPLAN

Prime Video, 16th

Citadel wasn’t exactly a heist thriller but it did feature Stanley Tucci in someone’s earpiece, guiding high-stakes operations. The bug must’ve bit, because there are some similar broad strokes in Masterpiece, a comedy action movie in which he is the brains leading the charge of an audacious plan.

The target is none other than the Mona Lisa (geez, the Louvre really is getting it from all sides, fictional schemes and otherwise), and his team consists of two young thieves who don’t know that they are actually related and that he’s their dad. What could go wrong?

ELSBETH S4

Paramount+, 9th

Elsbeth is great! It’s a fabulous weekly hit of quirky crime solving, and usually being committed by an interesting guest star actor which this season will include Jemima Kirke, Nicholas Braun, Nicole Scherzinger and basketballer OG Anunoby.

Those dastardly characters are always underestimating the sleuthing skills of Elsbeth (Carrie Preston) just because she’s in too much pink, carries an overabundance of bags and disarms you with her smiley nature.

A TASTE FOR MURDER

7plus

Series creator Matt Baker seems to have a particular penchant for putting British characters in Italy. He did it first with Hotel Portofino, a 1920s-set drama about an Englishwoman who runs a hotel in, you guessed it, Portofino.

Now, it’s A Taste for Murder, a crime series in which a grieving London cop (played by Warren Brown, who was the doomed protégé in Luther) and his daughter are in Capri for the summer when they caught up trying to solve local mysteries.

DUSTFALL

ABC iview, 11th

Either the Australian production sector or the commissioners love a crime drama, or there really is just something in the water. Dustfall is exactly that: a crime drama that wants to explore something about our national psyche, in this case, sexual assault and sexism.

Anna Torv stars as a detective recently returned to her hometown, and works a case involving a young girl who is found in a cane field, naked, bloodied and bruised and with no memory of how she got there. The cast also includes Juliet Stevenson, Kate Box, Martin Sacks, Gemma Chua-Tran and Jay Ryan.

LOVE OF YOUR LIFE

Prime Video, 14th

The title might sound twee and easily dismissed, but this drama starring Margaret Qualley was directed by Rachel Morrison, the American cinematographer who has lensed the likes of Black Panther, Fruitvale Station and Mudbound. Love of Your Life is her second feature as director, and that alone gives it more cache than first impressions.

It tells the story of Maya, a 26-year-old woman who falls deeply in love and when that union is ruptured by tragedy, she flees for Portugal where she meets someone new. But her grief and her history makes it hard to accept a new connection. The ensemble includes Catherine Keener, Aaron Pierre and Patrick Schwarzenegger.

CRYSTAL LAKE

Stan, 16th

Oh, yikes. You ever wondered about the backstory of Pamela Voorhees? No? Maybe? The Big Bad villain of the Friday the 13th movies, and mother of the hockey mask-wearing Jason Voorhees will be the centre of her own tale, and with the star power of Linda Cardellini to boot.

Crystal Lake, named for the murder camp you should never, ever send your kids to, is a prequel to the classic 1980 slasher film, set in the year after her young son died from neglect. The showrunner is Brad Caleb Kane, who worked on It: Welcome to Derry and – this is the more fun fact – was also the singing voice of Aladdin.

THE GREAT BRITISH BAKE OFF S17

Binge, 20th

Not much has really changed in The Great British Bake Off over the years. It has that same spirit of generosity, healthy, wholesome competition, and challenges involving choux pastry creations, towering cakes and salivating savoury pies. It’s why GBBO has remained a stalwart on TV.

But the one that occasionally shifts are the presenters and judges, and this season has a great big one: Nigella Lawson, who has replaced Prue Leith.

NOBODY WANTS THIS S3

Netflix, 22nd

Nobody Wants This was always a massive gamble in terms of a title, if it had failed either creatively or commercially, it was just there for the taking. Luckily, that first season was a barnstormer. Everybody loved it, and everybody wanted more.

And more is what we got in the story of sex podcaster Joanne and rabbi Noah, that is to say, more of the same. The beats in the main story was almost like-for-like and by the end of the second season, it was tiresome. So, now, with season three arriving this month, it’s fair to say, fewer people want this.