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

This drama is not the titillating romp you might expect: beneath the bosoms and fruity language, the saga of rival female brothel owners in 18th-century London is a sharp and at times brutal show about money, power and women in a man’s world.

The fine cast includes Jessica Brown Findlay, Julian Rhind-Tutt, future Slow Horses star Rosalind Eleazar and the excellent Samantha Morton and Lesley Manville.

Jack Seale

When Bank of Dave arrived on Netflix in 2023, based on the real life story of Dave Fishwick, a salt-of-the-earth businessman who battled the financial industry to start up Burnley Savings and Loans, the streamer had a surprise hit on its hands. Now comes the inevitable sequel, which repeats the formula to similar effect. Again, the film is inspired by a documentary that charted the protagonist’s crusading adventures, 2014’s Dave: Loan Ranger, in which he tackled the pernicious and very real threat of pay-day loan companies that prey on vulnerable and desperate people, lending them money at extortionate interest rates.

While the story stretches credulity in the final act, fans of the original will surely get a kick out of seeing Dave stick it to the money men once more.

James Mottram

David Schwimmer leads the second season of this enjoyable horror-thriller escapade, in which he plays the father of two teenagers. As they all prepare to spend summer together, he gives his kids just one instruction: don’t go in the basement… As the teens become fascinated by their family’s involvement in the disappearance of five young people a generation ago, it seems there is indeed something stirring in the cellar.

Schwimmer’s nervous energy is a perfect fit for the material.

Jack Seale

America will have to endure a period of hate and fear before it becomes a stable country… We’re talking about 1857, which is the year in which we visit Fort Bridger, a troubled place in the lawless wilderness beyond the end of the railroad in the nascent West. Betty Gilpin is Sara, a lone woman trying to shepherd her child to safety; Taylor Kitsch is Isaac, a man beset by demons who becomes their companion.

Throw in bounty hunters, Mormons and a portrayal of Native Americans that the producers have taken pains to get right, and you have a rich, sweeping, brutally violent drama.

Jack Seale

Dick Wolf made his name with Law & Order, a series that eliminated any fat from the storytelling. That approach is souped up in Wolf’s new drama, starring Troian Bellisario as Traci Harmon, a cop who takes on a rookie partner, Alex Diaz (Brandon Larracuente). The danger of their work means they must trust each other, but can he trust her?

The short runtime and the use of body-mounted cameras add to the vibrant energy.

Jack Seale

Ilary Blasi is roughly Italy’s answer to Victoria Beckham: the only thing more talked about than the model and TV presenter’s marriage to football superstar Francesco Totti is the couple’s subsequent divorce. In 2023, the documentary Unica allowed Blasi to give her side of that story.

Now, she’s back to tell us the details of her new life with a new man — another footballer — in a programme that will either make you swoon at the gossip and glamour, or gnash your teeth at the vapidity of it all, depending on your temperament.

Jack Seale

In so many ways The Jerry Springer Show started a modern malaise in TV and perhaps in Western culture itself: in 1991 it raised talk shows’ interest in confrontation, gossip and the shaming of ordinary citizens to a new level, and we’ve never gone back.

This documentary series charts its rise and its wide-ranging impact, while also looking behind the scenes to find that the show’s producers were almost as scarred by their involvement with the programme as some of the guests.

Jack Seale

It’s the 25th season of one of the original lads-and-lasses-behaving-badly reality shows and, if you haven’t kept up, you might assume every new year meant a fresh batch of 20-somethings, ready to drink and fornicate themselves silly. But no: especially since 2022’s “reunion” season, most of the cast have been in it for years, and several appeared in the very first episodes. They’ve since got married, had babies and generally grown up.

That said, this latest run does revolve around a stag do in Thailand. As the gang hit Bangkok, a familiar face awaits them…

Jack Seale

The Good Fight is well worth checking out. A standalone sequel to The Good Wife, it is consistently savvy and features a strong central performance from Christine Baranski as attorney Diane Lockhart, who is on her uppers after losing her savings in a financial scam.

Having originally debuted in 2017, the series also serves as a critique of the first Trump administration, which makes its availability here all the more timely.

David Brown

A quietly intense Cillian Murphy stars in this drama set in Ireland in the mid-1980s, when the Catholic Church’s Magdalene laundries were exploiting so-called “fallen” women. Adapted by playwright Enda Walsh (Hunger) from Claire Keegan’s novel, the film stars Murphy as a father of five who runs a coal business in County Wexford. Bill Furlong is compelled to take action after he finds a traumatised girl locked in the coal shed at the local convent.

Emily Watson excels as the Mother Superior, and it’s her scenes with Murphy that linger the most, in a story that simmers until it leaves its audience boiling over with rage.

James Mottram

Following the nostalgic dud Clerks III, film-maker Kevin Smith turns his lens onto his 1980s adolescence with a good-natured if under-powered teen comedy. Alex David (Austin Zajur) phones up his crush (Siena Agudong) and persuades her to join him at the cinema that afternoon. Until then, he and his two buddies will spend their time trying to sneak into the multiplex’s R-rated offerings.

It’s a simple and ultimately sentimental tale that cruises along on its well-played puerility.

Calum Baker

You might need a notebook handy for this 150-minute essay film, but it’s a dazzling ride. Writer/director Johan Grimonprez traces the brief rise of a “united” independent Africa in the 1950s and 60s, and the targeting of the Congo and Katanga by various shady forces.

Grimonprez uses meticulous research and archive footage to tell the story, all set to the pace of the insistent, political jazz of the era.

Calum Baker

Guy Pearce stars as Thomas Munro, a preacher who arrives in 1830 New Zealand during a bloody conflict between rival Maori clans. After a sluggish start, the plot picks up when Munro seeks to act as peacemaker between the feuding chiefs.

Unfortunately, while director Lee Tamahori takes much care over authenticity, and his widescreen vistas are evocative, the script is clumsy and many of the characters remain uninteresting ciphers. The climactic battle is effectively staged, though.

David Parkinson

An unusual drama, more thoughtful than it first appears, returns.

Originally we were aboard a North Sea oil rig, enveloped by a magical fog that made the crew behave oddly. After a somewhat eventful first series, the survivors (including Martin Compston’s comms officer) are once again trapped together, this time at a secret offshore facility in the Arctic Circle. Beneath all the portent and intrigue is a message about human beings messing with Mother Nature, and learning about her power the hard way.

Jack Seale

A spirited Colin Firth portrays Dr Jim Swire in this searing five-part real-life drama about a father’s fight for justice in the aftermath of the Lockerbie bombing.

It’s December 1988 and Swire’s daughter Flora boards a flight to the US. The residents of a small Scottish town are meanwhile going about their business in the lead-up to Christmas — a boy heads out on his bike and families are ice skating. Suddenly, a huge explosion engulfs the night sky and the lives of those on board and on the ground are changed for ever.

There’s immediate pain in the hours, days and weeks after the tragedy. But as the months pass, it morphs into anger for Swire. He pins documents and newspaper cuttings to his wall and, with the help of a local journalist, vows to get to the truth for his daughter and the 269 others who died. He lobbies the Government for answers: why was a call containing vital information dismissed as a hoax? Why wasn’t a memo advising US embassy staff not to fly with Pan Am filtered down to the public? And, ultimately, could the bombing have been prevented?

Frances Taylor

It’s the Slow Horses effect: Rosalind Eleazar is just a part of the ensemble in that show, but she and it are so good she’s now the lead in Netflix’s latest dramatisation of a Harlan Coben novel. Eleazar is Detective Kat Donovan, who suddenly sees her ex-partner’s face on a dating app, years after he vanished without explanation. Of course this leads Kat into a web of lies, intrigue and murder.

Ashley Walters, Lenny Henry and Steve Pemberton are key players in a strong cast.

Jack Seale

Bio-hacker Bryan Johnson’s translucent skin and unusually erect posture give the impression he contains alien DNA. But he’s certainly taking one for Team Human with the longevity regimes in this fascinating film, from 54 pills for breakfast to “penis shockwave therapy”.

Naturally, Bryan’s obsessive quest for life-extension has attracted its critics, but he’s clearly living with passion and purpose — which will likely benefit him more than any expensive tech.

Gary Rose

Actor Jesse Eisenberg makes an assured debut as a writer and director with this wry and sincere parenting drama. Julianne Moore is typically brilliant as Evelyn, a psychiatrist who is driven to distraction by her terminally self-absorbed son Ziggy, played with nuance by Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things). Ziggy, meanwhile, is struggling to figure out his own place in the world.

Eisenberg’s latest effort, A Real Pain, is in cinemas from 8 January.

Calum Baker

Writer/director Julio Torres (Saturday Night Live) makes his feature debut with this charming surreal comedy, in which he also stars as Alejandro, an aspiring toy designer from El Salvador trying to make it in New York. An unlikely saviour presents herself in Elizabeth (Tilda Swinton), a spiky English art critic.

There’s eccentricity aplenty in a film that also shrewdly highlights the absurdity of the US immigration system.

Emma Simmonds

It’s high time the Queen of Pop was given the feature-length documentary treatment, and this telling of Madonna’s rise to stardom rightly keeps her work and cultural contribution as the focus.

Hung on the recent discovery of revealing audio interviews, the film starts with her arrival in New York as an ambitious teenager and goes up to 1992 when she was the world’s biggest female recording artist. Friends and collaborators give an insight into those early days and archive footage reminds us just how big an impact she made.

Johnathon Hughes

Actor John Bradley perfected a look of forlorn sweetness playing loyal Samwell Tarly in Game of Thrones and he wears it again here as a British copper dispatched to Australia to observe a sensitive investigation: the death in Sydney Harbour of the daughter of a UK trade minister (Joanne Froggatt). But what looks initially like an accidental drowning is soon revealed to be murder, and one that could be part of a wider political conspiracy.

While the early focus is on a clash of cultures, Bradley’s lead detective is immediately likeable, his awkwardness masking what we sense is a keen mind.

David Brown

The life and times of musician and producer Pharrell Williams make for an uplifting tale when told through the filter of Lego bricks. From the housing projects of his childhood to the dizzy heights of showbiz royalty, the story plays out in vivid colours, with several of the subject’s famous friends along for the ride — Gwen Stefani and Justin Timberlake both voice themselves.

There are hurdles and setbacks along the way, the typical stuff of more usual biopics, but Piece by Piece navigates them with a winning playfulness, and Williams’s breezy charm is a perfect fit for the witty Lego world.

Terry Staunton

Pioneering camera operator Margaret Moth spent the 1990s and 2000s covering war zones for CNN. Utterly fearless, she would stand up and film under gunfire while male colleagues hid. She wasn’t only a trailblazer for women, though; her footage, often captured in hellish circumstances, helped to highlight violent regimes and hold them to account.

Moth’s adventures behind the camera are also dissected in detail in a powerful, sometimes deeply uncomfortable biography of an astonishing woman.

Jayne Nelson