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

Netflix's binge-worthy social experiment is back for a seventh season. Over the course of the series, we'll watch as 28 singletons date, get to know, and even get engaged to one another. But the gimmick is that for the first part of the show, they'll be dating in isolated 12ft pods, meaning that they have no idea what their prospective partner looks like.

Is beauty really in the eye of the beholder? Or is love and romance a little bit deeper than all that? Love Is Blind aims to answer these all-important questions...

Charlotte Colombo

This often harrowing biopic is based on the story of American ballerina Joy Womack and her quest to become prima ballerina at Moscow’s legendary Bolshoi Ballet. Accepted into the Bolshoi Academy in 2009, a teenage Joy (Talia Ryder) is told by her tutor (Diane Kruger) that she “dances like an American” and will never be accepted by the company. But Joy will go to extraordinary — often selfish — lengths to prove everyone wrong.

A rich visual feast with a bitter, edgy core.

Dave Golder

Layla Mohammadi plays Leila, an LGBTQ+ film-maker who is estranged from her Iranian-American family. When her father falls ill, a fractious return to the nest follows.

Director Maryam Keshavarz reflects Leila’s personality with style, ladling on voiceovers, colours and alt-pop songs. Niousha Noor, who plays Leila’s mother, gives a nuanced turn that sells the film’s moments of emotional truth.

Kevin Harley

Rosemary’s Baby was one of the most controversial films of the 1960s; this prequel is set just prior to the events of director Roman Polanski’s influential horror. Julia Garner is Terry, a young dancer who is taken under the wing of a kindly old couple (Dianne Wiest and Kevin McNally), who move her into their spacious apartment block. Terry’s fortunes take an upturn as her benefactors become increasingly involved in her life, but sinister goings-on suggest all is not as it should be.

What the story lacks in surprises (until the final minutes) is counterbalanced by Garner’s captivating performance.

Terry Staunton

Award-winning documentary director Lauren Greenfield delivers a sobering five-parter that meets Los Angeles teenagers and then shadows them on social media.

The teens talk frankly about how the majority of their personal interactions are via social networks, with all the problems that brings: unrealistic beauty ideals, sexually inappropriate content, bullying... But being online can also let the kids be themselves in a way school often doesn’t. Watch it with your children or through your fingers.

Jack Seale

Ocean’s Eleven players George Clooney and Brad Pitt team up for a slick, if insubstantial, comedy thriller. Clooney plays an unnamed fixer hired by a district attorney (Amy Ryan) to remove the corpse of a young man who died after falling from the bed in her penthouse suite. Then in walks Pitt, hired by the hotel owner to do the same and avoid scandal. The two smooth operators reluctantly get to work together, but the job gets far more complicated when drugs are found and it turns out the body isn’t dead.

Writer/director Jon Watts (who made the Spider-Man films with Tom Holland) keeps things lightweight, powered by the easy-on-the-eye chemistry of its A-list leads and the occasional gag at the expense of their advancing years.

James Mottram

In this well-meaning road-movie documentary, Will Ferrell, the A-list comic actor, reunites with his former Saturday Night Live colleague Harper Steele, a writer who has undergone gender reassignment. As a way to rekindle their friendship, the pair decide to drive from New York to LA, taking in the good old Americana of bars, steak houses and sports games.

Directed by Josh Greenbaum, the film has an amiable, shaggy-dog quality; Ferrell’s comic schtick can grate, but the film makes serious points about transphobia and when it lets Steele take centre stage, it poignantly shows that it’s never too late in life to find happiness.

James Mottram

In 1993, British boxing had two big showdowns to be excited by: Lennox Lewis v Frank Bruno and Nigel Benn v Chris Eubank.

The animosity between the two heavyweights is startling, but it can’t compete with the story of the arrogant, eloquent Eubank and the pure aggression of Benn — all four are interviewed for this rousing series that is full of explosive archive footage but takes time also to discuss the four men’s struggles outside the ring.

Jack Seale

Anthony Hopkins is excellent in this biographical drama about Nicholas Winton, whose exploits in Czechoslovakia before the Second World War would see him later dubbed the “British Schindler”.

We meet Nicholas as a young London stockbroker (played by Johnny Flynn), who helps to evacuate Jewish children from Prague. Hopkins delivers a powerful performance, and he’s aided by Lena Olin and Helena Bonham Carter.

Jeremy Aspinall

By turns emotive, insightful and comfortably rote, this low-key drama, inspired by a true story, follows the trials of a high-school basketball team after their star player takes his own life. Native American film-maker Sydney Freeland directs a fine, lived-in ensemble cast as this Navajo team overcomes grief, domestic turbulence and a height disadvantage to regain their form in the fast-paced world of “reservation ball”.

Debuting actor Kauchani Bratt stands out as the team’s new captain.

Calum Baker

Have you heard the one about the rabbi and the gentile? Adam Brody and Kristen Bell enjoy intoxicating chemistry in this comedy: Joanne, the co-host of a hit dating podcast whose endless run of bad relationships might be about to come to an end, meets unconventional rabbi Noah and hits it off with him immediately. Can they overcome the obstacle of her not being Jewish? More to the point, can their friends and families?

It’s a proper romcom, effortlessly balancing cynical snark with a full heart.

Jack Seale

Ryan Murphy (the man behind Glee, Nip/Tuck and American Horror Story) is a co-creator of this series that bears a lot of his hallmarks. His latest effort to examine what’s wrong with America via the medium of schlocky horror stars Niecy Nash as a detective who teams up with a nun to investigate a run of ritual killings.

It has a bit of everything: a naughty priest; a mentally fractious protagonist; Lesley Manville vamping it up as a sinister nurse; and the surprise casting of Kansas City Chiefs’ tight end Travis Kelce, aka Taylor Swift’s other half.

Jack Seale

In 2022, violent career criminal Casey White was escorted out of jail in Alabama by the prison’s assistant director, Vicky White (no relation), to attend a mental health assessment. The appointment wasn’t real and the pair never returned, having fallen in love while Casey awaited his murder trial.

Gradually, law enforcement and the prison authorities realised the lengths Vicky had gone to in order to pull off the outrageous escape, but that still left the big question: where were they?

Jack Seale

An unusual Italian drama returns, with a significant change to its format. Season one took us through a week in a psychiatric ward, centred on reluctant patient Daniele (Federico Cesari). Now he’s free and trying to rebuild his life, chiefly by taking up a new job...as a nurse on the same ward.

The show continues to display great empathy as Daniele hopes he can now be of even more help to his friends on the ward, without being sure that he can safeguard his own mental health.

Jack Seale

American wrestling is a global phenomenon thanks to one man: longtime CEO and occasional face of the “sport”, Vince McMahon. He made stars of Hulk Hogan, The Rock and the rest, as well as becoming an entertainment brand himself, until allegations around steroid abuse among the wrestlers and, more gravely, sexual abuse by the boss himself brought the circus to a halt.

This series tells the story of a world where, for better but then for worse, everything was artificial and everyone was playing a character.

Jack Seale

In Mexico City, an underfunded ambulance service cannot keep up with the demand for emergency help from citizens. Imagine that! Stepping into the breach in this new drama (inspired by an award-winning documentary) are the Tamayo family who’ve invested in a private ambulance.

The dynamics of a family living through precarity are compassionately drawn and, with each patient providing a fresh drama of their own, the show’s energy never dips.

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

Tom Hardy oozes gruff charisma in this stylish, absorbing chronicle of a 1960s Midwest biker gang. Hardy plays Johnny, a family man and truck driver who founds the Vandals after watching Marlon Brando in The Wild One. Joining him is Benny (Elvis star Austin Butler), who soon attracts the attention of Kathy (Jodie Comer).

Director Jeff Nichols (Mud) traces the rise and fall of the Vandals with consummate skill, and the result is cool, classy cinema.

James Mottram

It’s hard to make a drama set on the Paris fashion scene and not have something visually stylish — and this French-language saga is suitably chic. The genius at the head of one of the city’s top couture brands cancels himself when he makes racist remarks about a client; is this the chance for his underlings to take over, or for his firm’s rival to swoop in?

There’s a soupçon of Succession to the dirty deals, but this is more emotional: everyone is in a fierce sibling rivalry or a clandestine affair. The intrigue makes up for a slightly slow pace. Lambert Wilson and Amira Casar are among the stars.

Jack Seale

You have to put the original Frasier out of your mind as you watch this reboot, which — aside from the odd guest spot — only retains Kelsey Grammer from the original core cast. It may fall far short of the 1990s show, but it’s settled down to become a perfectly decent studio-audience sitcom about a pompous but harmless man and his less pretentious loved ones.

It does feature the odd Frasier-esque piece of visual comedy: in the comeback episode, Niles’s son David (Anders Keith) is entrusted with his Uncle Frasier’s prized jamon Iberico. What could go wrong?

Jack Seale

Azazel Jacobs’s drama hinges on a trio of incredible performances. Natasha Lyonne plays Rachel, who has been living with and tending to her father Vincent (Jay O Sanders) before her two sisters descend on their small apartment for Vincent’s final days. Elizabeth Olsen is the softer Christine, still in new mum mode, while Carrie Coon is uptight and critical Katie.

This is plausible and insightful as the women struggle to process their grief and hold their tempers while wondering what their connection will be once their father’s gone.

Emma Simmonds

As the Liverpool players who couldn’t get past him in the 2022 Champions League final will tell you, Real Madrid’s Thibaut Courtois is the world’s best goalkeeper.

Arguably that isn’t enough to warrant a biography where team-mates and Courtois himself rhapsodise about how amazing he is, but his cruciate ligament injury puts some grit in the oyster — and gives us an insight into the technology and psychology involved in rehabilitating superstars.

Jack Seale

Film-maker James Gray (Ad Astra) reflects on his own adolescence in this thoughtful coming-of-age drama. The film is set in 1980s New York, where 12-year-old Paul (Banks Repeta), who is part of a Jewish-American family, and his African-American classmate (Jaylin Webb) learn hard lessons about race and class at school.

The young leads hold their own alongside co-stars Anne Hathaway, Jeremy Strong and a superb Anthony Hopkins, as Paul’s grandfather.

Max Copeman