A scene from The Peasants.
Vertigo
An oil-painted instant cult classic, the Game Awards nominees and more.
Kane Skennar/Binge
The new Binge series Strife is a fictionalised adaptation of Mia Freedman’s 2017 memoir.
Disney
The new Australian series The Artful Dodger is a surgical reworking of Oliver Twist, where the savagery is played for laughs.
Sarah Enticknap/Stan
The new series on Stan is most successful through its links to rural crime noir, pulling apart the vulnerability and deception of this small town.
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Samuel Taylor/Netflix
There’s less sex but more exploration as the Moordale crew embark on new adventures in the show’s last season.
Our experts bring you the best new shows, films and seasons. From comedy to reality television to crime drama, we hope you’ll find your new streaming favourite here.
FX Network
My research on chefs’ mental health shows restaurants valorise isolation, abuse and violence – but The Bear avoids idealising this obsessive mindset.
Prime Video
Based on the book by Holly Ringland, new Australian seven episode TV series The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart on Prime Video is solid, well shot, naturalistic and thoroughly middlebrow.
ABC
The harsh and unforgiving Australian environment provided a fertile ground for the development of a distinctive Gothic tradition. Bay of Fires explores the genre in humorous and unexpected ways.
ABC
The history of the goldfields too often focuses on men – but, as new Aussie TV series Gold Diggers gets right, the settlements were filled with women.
Stan
Vivian can’t believe her luck when she inherits a clifftop house – but the house comes with unexpected responsibilities.
SBS
Latecomers looks at the role of sex and sexuality in the lives of disabled people.
Dylan River/SBS
In her new SBS documentary, Rachel Perkins travels across vast territory to capture key aspects of a war that lasted more than 100 years.
Netflix
Heartbreak High avoids cliche and shows its teen heroes as complicated, messy people the audience can root for – even when they make mistakes.
ABC TV
Directed by Jocelyn Moorhouse, this new ABC crime drama Savage River explores complex social territory.
ABC TV
A new docu-comedy, The Exhibitionists asks why the dominant image of an artist is a man – and places women back in the frame.
SBS
SBS’s new four part murder mystery examines Chinese experience on the Australian goldfields during the 1850s.
Christine Baranski and Audra McDonald in The Good Fight.
Scott Free Productions, King Size Productions, CBS All Access
There are few politicians in The Good Fight, but it remains the most interesting American political series of the past few years.
Ben King/ABC
The new ABC drama Fires is a six-part series of interlinked stories inspired by the 2019-2020 Black Summer fire season.
Brook Rushton/Amazon Prime
Packed to the Rafters was an authentic TV show about an ordinary family. The new reboot has family at its centre while touching on issues such as climate change and homelessness.