The best (and worst) streaming TV shows & films right now

A regular column in which GARY STEEL sifts through the mountain of available streaming TV and brings your attention to great new and old shows as well as those to avoid.

Cassandra (Netflix) 6/10

This six-part German thriller got a 100 percent rating on one of the popular opinion aggregators, and it’s easy to see why. Our TV screens are currently festering with post-apocalyptic sci-fi but Cassandra is a kind of demonic super-computer origin story that will appeal to those who look back to films like 2001: A Space Odyssey with affection. Cassandra’s setting is a large house in the far-flung German suburbs rather than deep space, but like that classic film, at its heart it’s a robot/technology warning story. A family dealing with a recent traumatic event moves into a home that, it turns out, was a prototype 1970 smart home featuring a huge computer and a robot (with a TV screen head) who follows them around and whose face beams from every room. At first, they’re intrigued, but Cassandra soon shows her evil side as she sets out to destroy the mother’s life. Annoyingly, everyone thinks Mum is just being psychotic and no one believes her, which allows the slim story to get the full 6-episode treatment.

I really wanted to love this series, and there’s a lot to like for anyone intrigued by dated technology and funny old robots, but the progression of the storyline relies on too many exasperating behavioural stupidities to be totally credible. The origin story, told in flashback, explains how the 1970s mother ended up having her personality inserted inside the computer/robot (yeah, the computer tech guys must have been very ahead of their time!) and her consequent frustration at being tied to the machine. Not a bad watch, but I pretty much saw everything I wanted to in the trailer, without knowing it at the time.

Longlegs (Neon) 5/10

A strange and queasy 2024 horror starring Nicholas Cage (again?) as Longlegs, a possibly mythical magical serial murderer, the film also stars former scream queen Maika Monroe as a rather disturbed FBI agent obsessed with tracking down the killer, whose speciality is some kind of occult practice in which he convinces fathers to kill their entire families. And oh, they all involve a strange doll.

The film is quite moody and well-acted and the design and editing are both effective and imaginative but like so many contemporary films, it left out the gory details that you really like to know at the end of a movie, like who the fuck was Longlegs really, and why did he do what he did? Too many questions and not enough answers leave the whole affair feeling unfinished, like they’ve come up with some cool ideas over drinks but forgotten to thrash out the plot details.

MaXXXine (Netflix) 7/10

The third in Ti West’s acclaimed ‘X’ series of horrors, all of which star the incredibly versatile Mia Goth, MaXXXine (2024) is set in the Hollywood of the ‘80s amidst the fear being generated by the Night Stalker serial killer. It’s hard not to love Maxine Minx (Goth), a porn actress determinedly making her crossover move to (more or less) respectable films with a new slasher pic. We see how the incredibly plucky Maxine begins to unravel as friends around – all of whom spend their last hours at a Hollywood hills party that she’s declined an invite to – start to die. Concurrently, a sleazy private eye (Kevin Bacon) is threatening her, and even following her onto film sets where she’s preparing for her first legitimate role.

While MaXXXine somehow lacks the all-round allure and surprise factor of its brilliant predecessor, Pearl, West’s vision (he wrote, directed, produced and edited the film) keeps it undiluted and full of bizarre intersections between Maxine’s imagination and reality. The culmination is mind-blowing. It turns out his extreme evangelical pervert father plotted to hold a bizarre exorcism but instead, she partakes in a military operation to wipe him and his bizarre cult from the face of the earth. You’ll have to see it yourself to know what really happens, but it’s a great watch.

McCartney 3.2.1 (Disney+) 9/10

Stupidly, I’ve been putting off watching this six-part 2021 series, in which producer Rick Rubin chats with Paul McCartney about his illustrious career. The setting and design looked off-putting somehow: stylised black and white, cameras hovering around the two of them in a recording studio over a mixing desk. Well, anyone with an interest in The Beatles or the history of 20^th century popular music will find this an easy, fascinating watch and – more to the point – will enjoy hearing McCartney casually revealing details about recordings that help to explain why the Fab Four are still so revered more than half a century after their breakup.

It feels like a great privilege to hear Rubin isolate parts of the recordings, thereby revealing amazing insights about the radical way The Beatles worked and the symbiotic relationship they had with producer George Martin. And although at times McCartney (who would have been 78 going on 79 at the time) seems tired, it’s wonderful to see him come to life while revealing key memories of recording sessions that took place all those years ago. Each 30-minute episode is a gem, and he gets to explain the artists that inspired The Beatles, the way their early experience performing in Hamburg toughened them up, as well as sharing some quite intimate details of the group’s recording evolution. At the end I wanted more, and it made me want to immerse myself in their incredible discography once again, armed with the insights these conversations had unleashed.

Moana 2 (Disney+) 6/10

Our whole family loved Moana (2016), which was a breath of fresh island air after the rather Aryan likes of Frozen, and while it cleverly presented a family-friendly picture of Polynesia, it avoided the overtly politically correct posturing of several more recent Disney projects. One friend lambasted it for casting blokes in a weak light, but hey, in the history of film, how many females have been portrayed as the “weaker” sex? Whatever, it was an inspiring story with heart that captured some of the warmth of the Polynesian peoples, and it was beautifully animated and heartwarming.

It’s taken so long for the sequel to appear that kids who saw the first film have gone from toddlers to Goths in the making, but our 10-year-old (going on 15) still adored it. Not so much this grumpy old reviewer, who didn’t really get the point of the plot: Moana must leave her village and go in search of a sunken island in a quest to somehow lose its curse and bring it out of the ocean and create a feasible way for connecting with other tribes. Okay, if you say so. This, of course, requires the help of that very silly demigod Maui as well as an island goddess, Te Fiti. Moana’s journey is packed with dizzying adventure, too many emotive ballads, and a resolution that seemed rather flat to this viewer, but does include the odd comedic diversion featuring creatures of the deep.

Mufasa: The Lion King (Disney+) 5/10

Oh for goodness sakes, do we have to throw this lame crap at our kids? For some reason, I thought this might be a worthwhile TV dinner filmic family experience, but Mufasa, the sequel to the 2019 remake of The Lion King, really never achieves take-off. Essentially a story based around a pride of lions that is decimated by a clan of evil white lions (make of the colour what you will… a metaphor for colonisation?), leading to stepbrothers Mufasa and Taka escaping. For pretty much the whole film, they’re on the run from the whities, but while they travel, they hook up with a pretty female, leading to a massive sibling fall-out (of course).

Naturally, there’s a happy ending, but in between we have to endure digital animation that’s superficially impressive but ultimately discombobulating; and when the animals talk – which they do, a lot – it all kind of falls apart. Then there’s the musical element, which is ballad torture. Thankfully, there aren’t too many songs, but they still ruin what’s left of the movie. Oh, and on top of that, there are the annoying interruptions from animal storytellers. It seems the filmmakers forgot the basics, especially in regards to kids’ films: never interrupt the flow over and over again with characters that needlessly discuss what’s happening. Once, Disney would have been the preferred streaming service in our house, but neither the 6-year-old nor the 10-year-old wants to spend time there.

No Other Land (DocPlay) 6/10

No Other Land has been in the news lately, firstly as winner of the Best Documentary Feature Film at the Academy Awards, and secondly because one of its team of directors was violently attacked by Israeli “settlers” in retribution for the film and detained by Israeli authorities in March this year. Filmed between 2019 and 2023 on disputed land in the West Bank, it captures raw footage of Israeli soldiers demolishing the homes of Palestinians, claiming that their ancestral land belongs to Israel and has been taken over for use by the military. These are forced evacuations by attrition. Some families finally give up the ghost and leave, forever losing their land. Others cling to their land and end up living in caves.

The film hinges on a friendship between a Jewish Israeli journalist and a Palestinian activist who has spent his life recording the slow destruction of his community. When we’re not seeing the inevitable arrival of graders and soldiers and the consequent destruction, by contrast we’re privy to quiet contemplative conversations between Basel (the activist) and Yuval (the journalist). It’s a confronting film as we witness very poor families powerless to prevent the destruction. Especially upsetting is the sequence in which their school is demolished. It’s an important film, but suffers the 21^st century blight of first-person reportage. The assumption, I guess, is that we already know the wider context in which all this takes place, but it could really have done with a voice-over (at least) giving a précis of the big picture, and because of that, there’s just not enough for the viewer to chew on.

Paradise (Disney+) 7/10

Created by Dan Fogelman, writer of films like Cars and Tangled, Paradise (2025) is actually a good watch, despite what those earlier credits might suggest. The main publicity shots for Paradise suggested a kind of detective thriller, but it’s much more interesting (and somewhat ingenious) than that: Sterling K. Brown (Atlas, Army Wives) plays Xavier, a dedicated and loyal head of security to a charismatic but reckless President (played with elan by James Marsden of Westworld and Dead To Me). The twist is that, as the story tells in flashbacks, the world as we know it has come to an end, so the setting is an immense fake underground world with a pretend piped-in sky and just enough room for a town of 12,000.

And then, the President is murdered, and all bets are off as to who committed the crime and why. Xavier, of course, rises to the challenge, but quickly finds that few can be trusted. Even grief specialist Gabriela (Sarah Shahi of Sex/Life fame), with whom he spends one delicious night, would appear to be in on the conspiracy as part of a cabal led by the world’s richest woman, Samantha/“Sinatra” (Julianne Nicholson of Law & Order/Mare Of Easttown). There’s a lot of talking in this eight-part series, but it’s never dull, and its combination of political thriller with a side of sci-fi makes it something a bit new.

Relentless: Missing In Missouri (Neon) 8/10

Generally, I dislike the current trend towards epic length in both movies and TV shows, and this trend has inflicted itself on documentaries too, to generally dull and frustrating ends. Relentless: Missing In Missouri, however, is worth watching through its six one-hour episodes and those who only view a couple of them will miss the creeping terror that builds up as part-time filmmaker Christina Fontana relentlessly pursues the truth about a young woman who has been missing since 2009, and uncovers a hotbed of smalltown drugs, violence, sex trafficking and police corruption in the unlikeliest of towns: Hannibal, Missouri, where Mark Twain grew up. YouTube-type straight-to-camera diary narrations can easily pollute the intent of a documentary, but Fontana never talks herself up; in fact, she’s relentlessly hard on herself and her obsession as every lead she gets (and she gets plenty) turns to dust.

Each episode comes with its revelations as she discovers that trusted sources (like the family of the missing woman) can be unreliable, and she’s shaken when videotape reveals a bizarre level of family dysfunction. Even worse, a former police detective who had been her most helpful collaborator kills himself when he’s discovered with a computer full of child porn. Relentless… is at times an emotional roller-coaster and at others simply a documentary of great unease, not to mention frustration, as the local police force refuse to co-operate or even answer Fontana’s questions. Frustratingly, there’s no happy ending and there’s no sign that since the documentary came out in 2021 there’s been any breakthrough in the case; proof, perhaps, that in certain jurisdictions, the law truly are above the law.

Strange Darling (Prime Video) 7/10

Strange Darling is one of the most audaciously different films I’ve seen in donkeys’ ages, and it has the kind of kinetic energy and surprise factor audiences encountered in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. Writer/director JT Mollner’s thriller starts with a classic chase sequence featuring Willa Fitzgerald (she’s never named in the movie) running away from a threatening individual we assume to be a serial killer. Having crashed her car and with a gaping wound to the head, she runs for her life, finding herself in a bizarre country haven. But nothing is linear here, and we now backtrack to a sleazy one-night-stand, in which we’re never quite sure what’s going on. Clearly, the man is the serial killer we saw earlier, but the woman is behaving psychotically too.

It kind of spoils things to explain too much, but although there’s not too much to think about (only so much is ever explained, anyway) we’re presented with a series of subsequent surprises which ultimately lead back to the film’s beginning. It’s daring, with brilliant editing and cinematography, and Willa Fitzgerald (Reacher, Scream) is nothing short of amazing. There’s a lot demanded of her character, which goes through a bizarre range of emotions, and she carries it all off with aplomb. Strange Darling stops short of explaining how we got to the short period visualised by the film, and that’s rather frustrating for this befuddled old viewer, but for those who can handle the savage violence, it’s worth watching simply because it resonates with freshness.

The White Lotus – Season 3 (Neon) 6/10

Perhaps television drama really is in a bad way. Why else would The White Lotus have garnered such acclaim? Sure, its setting is novel (each season takes place in a different international resort) and it uses top-class character actors, but it’s also the definition of excruciating. Almost the entire third season feels like scene-setting as it predictably drifts from one set of holidaymakers to another, exploiting the captive aspect of resort vacationers to expose dysfunction in their lives. Essentially, it’s one big tease, leaving it up to the very last episode (and the end of the holiday) to reveal a murderer and various other outcomes.

I read somewhere that the dialogue is fabulously sharp, but as with so many recent shows, there’s just not enough of it, and it just doesn’t go deep enough to resonate. Worse still, as with so many dramas, the characters are made to do stupid things just to move the story forward; stupid things that it feels out of character for them to make. And why was it so important to choose well-known actors whose faces are too familiar from other recent shows? There’s Walter Goggins (Fallout, The Shield) and the toothsome Aimee Lee Wood (Sex Education) just for starters. But… somehow I’ve watched three seasons of this flawed series. The latest, set in a Thai wellness resort, is visually lush, and there is a guilty voyeuristic pleasure to be had in watching the thing. But don’t kid yourself that it’s art.

The Best & Worst Streaming TV is a regular column in which Gary Steel assesses the worth – or otherwise – of the vast trove available to stream. Unlike other media, our policy is to dig deep and go further than just Netflix or what’s new this week.