What to watch on streaming: today's picks from Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and more

Emma Stone reunites with director Yorgos Lanthimos for their third — and most divisive — collaboration, following The Favourite and Poor Things. It’s a triptych of dark-humoured and shocking short films, all fronted by Stone and Jesse Plemons, who won the best actor award at Cannes for his efforts.

In the first tale, Plemons plays a man whose life is dictated by Willem Dafoe’s tycoon. Plemons is then a cop convinced his wife (Stone) has been replaced, while the final segment sees a third Stone character abandon her family for a cult.

James Mottram

If you have a vague idea of what K-pop is — yes, it’s pop music from South Korea, which has largely replaced the manufactured boy bands and girl groups the US and UK music industries used to churn out — but want to get a better handle on it, this documentary series will sort you out.

We are behind the scenes as new groups and seasoned solo artists try to please the armies of K-pop fans worldwide. We’re left in no doubt that it’s a ruthlessly orchestrated business, despite the joy it clearly brings.

Jack Seale

This well-crafted British cross-cultural romance stars Ben Hardy as Luke, an Essex mechanic who meets glamorous Aysha at a club. In reality, Aysha is Ashiq (Jason Patel), living a secret existence without his family’s knowledge. Initially shocked and angry, Luke gradually falls for Aysha/Ashiq after he starts driving the dancer to performances.

James Krishna Floyd’s screenplay strikes a fine balance between romance and intense drama.

James Mottram

Jeff Goldblum is God! His fans have been saying that for years, but it is actually the case in this wicked new comedy drama. Specifically, he’s Zeus, the king of the Greek gods, who now walks among us but whose rule is beginning to fracture. In a show created by Charlie Covell and with tonal notes of The Boys and The Regime, Zeus is about to endure a paranoid late-life crisis that will have serious repercussions for mere mortals — the poor humans are about to realise that the gods might not be on their side.

Goldblum’s dominating screen presence is matched by Janet McTeer as Zeus’s queen, Hera, who has ways and means of controlling her man and the world around her.

Jack Seale

Season one of Amazon’s extremely expensive Tolkien prequel revolved around one question: who is Sauron? Now we know which apparently human character is actually the Dark Lord of the Rings in disguise, the show moves on to a war footing.

While Galadriel prepares for battle and vain forger Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) suffers a troubling run of “oops, what have I done” moments, the series only gets more spectacular.

Jack Seale

Now feels like a good time to revive the Terminator franchise: it has always imagined a future where artificially intelligent machines turn on humans, but now we actually live in a world where AI is a major force.

In this retelling — presented as animé — 1997 is the point where Skynet has gained sentience and become belligerent. A scientist who could stop that finds himself under the protection of a soldier from the war-ravaged future.

Jack Seale

True-crime series Worst Roommate Ever has proved a hit for Netflix, with cases involving cons, stalking and even murder between people living under the same roof, covered across two seasons. Lovers rather than lodgers are at the heart of this new spin-off. Four chilling cases include a custody battle that took a sinister turn and a murder plot that was hatched following a divorce.

Each story unfolds via police recordings and interviews, while animated sequences add further detail to each terrible story.

Frances Taylor

The light-hearted whodunnit returns with its eyebrows a little more arched, as Charles, Oliver and Mabel (Steve Martin, Martin Short and Selena Gomez) are whisked off to Hollywood, where a studio is readying a film about their hit podcast.

In LA it’s revealed who will be embodying them on screen: enter Eugene Levy, Zach Galifianakis and Eva Longoria, who attempt to ape the mannerisms of the show’s stars while also playing heightened and knowingly shallower versions of themselves. But before things get too self-reflexive, the plot finds a way to circle back to New York and the Arconia.

A wise move, as the city and specifically the apartment building is the heart of the series — and it’s here that there’s a fresh mystery to solve.

David Brown

The reliably excellent sports documentary strand scoops up a recent story that you probably won’t be aware of — unless, that is, you follow American college football.

The interviewee is Connor Stalions, an analyst who lost his job at the University of Michigan last year when he was accused of “sign-stealing”. But for someone like Stalions, is it cheating to work out what the opposition are about to do, by learning their secret hand signals? Or is it just being good at your job?

Jack Seale

Lovely anime fantasies Your Name and Weathering with You from Makoto Shinkai are available until the end of September. Your Name became a hit in 2016 with its tale of two teens who develop a psychic connection. Weathering with You follows in the same vein with a runaway meeting an orphan who can control the weather.

Shinkai’s elegantly designed romances are both told with real heart.

Calum Baker

Tough times at the Smallest Cog, the car restoration workshop co-founded by former Top Gear presenter Richard Hammond. In season one of this enjoyable reality series, the business was founded; in season two it grew; and in the third run, it went racing, with mixed results.

Now it’s time to put the firm on a stronger footing by streamlining it — but the looming threat of a management consultant doesn’t distract too much from the team’s first task, to spruce up a 1970s Lancia.

Jack Seale

Aidan Gillen leads this playful hark back to film noir of old, playing a gumshoe in modern-day Dublin on the trail of a missing woman. Gillen’s Val Barber walks the mean streets, not of 1940s LA but of a 2020s “woke Ireland”.

Director Fintan Connolly and his co-writer Fiona Bergin are keener on juxtaposing eras than relating what’s going on, but Gillen is reliably relaxed and naturalistic.

Steve Morrissey

Writer/director Owen Kline makes an assured feature debut with this coming-of-age tale. Teenager Robert (Daniel Zolghadri), a budding cartoonist, moves out of his parents’ house and into a dingy apartment. When he encounters ex-artist Wallace (Matthew Maher), Robert thinks he’s found a mentor, but naively underestimates Wallace’s emotional instability.

The cast, not least a stand-out Maher, does well with a script that swerves sentimentality in favour of absurdist gags.

Calum Baker

Following a breakdown, astronauts Adam (Anthony Mackie) and Jane (Zoë Chao) have been stuck in space together for three years, with no hope of rescue. When Adam broaches the question of sex — purely for “debate” — Jane is scornful. It’s a straightforward romcom premise that grows into something knottier and rather moving, as the pair deal first with encroaching dread and, later, a twist that upends their dynamic.

Kristian Mercado directs the likeable leads with a light touch that allows them to shine.

Calum Baker

Having skipped most of the Second World War, this masterful, epic drama following Korean exiles in wartime Japan, and the same family two generations later, returns. In Osaka in 1945, fear of a devastating US attack is growing, but for Sunja (Minha Kim), keeping her family fed is hard enough. In 1989, her grandson is still struggling to be accepted as a Korean businessman in Tokyo.

As ever, each scene is profound and beautifully shot, but with the lightest of dramatic touches; and although the show is inspired by the experiences of Koreans who came to colonial Japan at the start of the 20th century and never left, its depiction of the immigrant experience — and of making one’s way in a world that can be harsh and confusing — is universally recognisable.

Jack Seale

If your main criticism of Love Island is that the contestants’ clothing is too conservative, here is the show for you: it’s dating, it’s in a sunny villa, it’s spiced up by regular departures and arrivals...and the whole time, everyone is absolutely starkers.

With Paramount+ proudly promising to present the action “without any blurring or pixellation” and with a clothed Rylan as the presenter, expect plenty of eyebrow-raising. A fresh pair of episodes will be revealed every week.

Jack Seale

”Whoever it is that said life is too short is right!” Former England football coach Sven-Goran Eriksson’s terminal cancer diagnosis lends this biography an affectingly wistful tone, as he surveys the beautiful landscapes of his homeland of Sweden and reflects on a career that took him far and wide.

His success as a manager is remembered (by David Beckham, among others), alongside a private life studded with beautiful women that was catnip to UK tabloids. There is much to look back at.

Jack Seale

This charming animated adventure from the studio behind Despicable Me delivers a winning combination of sight gags, smart dialogue and wacky high jinks.

It’s the story of a family of overly cautious ducks (voiced by Elizabeth Banks, Kumail Nanjiani and Danny DeVito) who migrate from New England to Jamaica. Along the way they encounter a possibly predatory heron (Carol Kane), a crazed chef and a pigeon mafia.

Alan Jones

Every generation has its classic filthy coming-of-age movie: Animal House, American Pie, Superbad. Following in their grubby footsteps is Incoming, which focuses on four horny 15-year-old boys at a party full of girls. Some of the dialogue is genuinely funny, and Bobby Cannavale has fun as a teacher whose life is unravelling.

But while it’s possible to forgive the film’s puerile mess of scatological humour, Incoming’s creepy misogyny simply doesn’t belong in a post-#MeToo era.

Jayne Nelson

And still they come, slow and relentless and infinite in number: it’s another Walking Dead spin-off!

Dead City reunites us with Maggie (Lauren Cohan) and Negan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) from the original series and follows them to a post-apocalyptic Manhattan, where once buzzing landmarks are now scenes of anarchic horror. It hovers on the borderline between a retread only of interest to devotees and a show that, thanks to the specific location, is of wider appeal.

Jack Seale

David Attenborough narrates an immersive and thoroughly charming visit to the forests of Sumatra, Indonesia, where we observe a family of orangutans getting themselves through everyday life.

The species has a better infant survival rate than any other great ape, and we see why here, as a mother and baby share an intense relationship based around protection, affection and the child’s ability to cling on tight as Mum goes hunting for those all-important juicy leaves.

Jack Seale

This six-parter mixes drama and documentary, which is often a dodgy combination. It works well here, however, largely because the historian talking heads only rarely pop up to interrupt the re-enactments. Mainly, a nicely arch Ed Harris voiceover helps tell the story of hard-punchin’ lawman Wyatt Earp and his 1881–82 battle with Ike Clanton’s outlaw gang, the Cowboys.

The gunfight at the OK Corral is just part of a cracking tale.

Jack Seale

Pixar’s sprightly sequel picks up with Riley after the onset of puberty, as the colourful characters representing her emotions are joined by a more complex, difficult crew including Anxiety and Envy. The film covers recognisable coming-of-age territory, but with less of an acid tongue, and arguably more insight, than peer pressure movies like Heathers.

Meanwhile, the backdrop of a girl’s mind provides endless avenues for invention, creating a film rich in colour, texture and gags.

Terry Staunton