Premieres Wednesday:
Bionic — Brazilian moviemaking goes “cyberpunk” with a thriller that has two sisters competing for the long-jump crown in a future world where athletes get high-tech physical enhancement. If you think sports is bad now, wait until parents start demanding to check some poor kid’s underwear for a USB port. (Netflix)
Colors of Evil: Red — A crusading Polish prosecutor tries to get justice for a mom whose daughter was found dead on the beach. Next time, they’re going to UPS the remains to her like civilized people, dammit! (Netflix)
Dancing for the Devil: The 7M TikTok Cult — Learn what happened when a bunch of TikTok dancers signed on with a management company that turned out to be a nest of religious wackos. (Netflix)
Traces of Love — In this sci-fi-inflected Brazilian romcom, a jilted groom gets unstuck in time (yep, just like Billy Pilgrim) after he’s left at the altar. Hopefully, he’ll get sent far enough back to cancel the catering. (Max)
Premieres Thursday:
Eric — Benedict Cumberbatch stars in a six-episode limited series that chronicles the mental breakdown of a TV puppeteer who believes a 7-foot-tall blue puppet can help him find his missing son. In the shocking final episode, Eric the puppet is about to crack the case when Larry David shows up and throttles him into a coma. (Netflix)
Geek Girl — The 2013 YA novel becomes a live-action series about a supposedly awkward high-school outcast who gets tapped to become a top fashion model. I guess we still haven’t outgrown the trope of the bookworm that nobody notices is beautiful until she takes off her glasses. And she’s the one this show expects us to believe is “neurodivergent?” (Netflix)
Pyramid Game — A South Korean schoolgirl places dead last in a pupil popularity contest, forcing her to take desperate measures in order to avoid the violent bullying that comes with the title. If she lives, she’s a shoo-in to major in either PR or mixed martial arts. (Paramount+)
We Are Lady Parts — Season 2 of the comedy about an all-female Muslim punk band features a special appearance by none other than activist and Novel laureate Malala Yousafzai. Or as it’s called in the business, a “guest shot.” (Peacock)
Premieres Friday:
How to Ruin Love: The Proposal — The How to Ruin Christmas franchise gets a spinoff in which a South African woman accuses her boyfriend of cheating, only to find out he was planning on popping the question. (And no, the question wasn’t going to be “Would you be willing to try polyamory?”) (Netflix)
Jim Henson: Idea Man — Ron Howard directed this intimate retrospective of the genius puppeteer’s life and work, which includes interviews with his surviving family members and artistic collaborators. In a rare show of restraint, Frank Oz actually waited for the cameras to stop rolling before declaring he could have made a better movie. (Disney+)
The Outlaws — Back for Season 3 after a two-year hiatus, our cast of petty crooks are now trying to go straight, but complications arise when they become the prime suspects in a murder. Come on, guys! Like Boeing ever let that slow them down. (Prime Video)
Stopmotion — Live action and (you guessed it) stop-motion animation converge in a horror flick about a film artist whose sculpted creations become terrifyingly real. If it happened to Henry Selick, he’d mostly be afraid of the credit going to Tim Burton. (Shudder)
Premieres Saturday:
Trixie Motel: Drag Me Home — In the second season of the Drag Race superstar’s very own reality series, she’s appealing to the HGN crowd by doing an extreme makeover on her 100-year-old California home. Oh, and the place just might happen to be haunted, which means she’s got the A&E demo covered as well. If the show gets a Season 3, expect her to muscle in on the History Channel’s turf by introducing us to the Nazis next door. (Max)
Premieres Sunday:
Mayor of Kingstown Season 3 — Everybody’s treating it like some kind of miracle that this crime-thriller only went 16 months between seasons, when star Jeremy Renner had to recover from nearly getting cut in half by a snowplow. Meanwhile, The Boys is returning in a mere two weeks, and Erin Moriarty had to learn to act through so much Botox they could have cut her offa Mount Rushmore. (Paramount+)
Premieres Tuesday:
The Acolyte — The latest series set in the Star Wars universe has the Jedi trying to solve a crime spree that takes place in the days before Episode I. In a fun metafictional twist, the crimes are actually Episodes I through III. (Disney+)
Clipped — Ed O’Neill is Los Angeles Clippers owner Donald Sterling and Laurence Fishburne is coach Doc Rivers in a series dramatization of the scandal that erupted in 2014 when Sterling’s racist rants were exposed to the nation. In retrospect, he just had really lousy timing. If he had waited two years, he could have been President! (Hulu)
Exhuma — In South Korea’s biggest box-office hit of the year (so far), a shaman and her assistant investigate a family grave that appears to be the source of a deadly curse. Meanwhile, up in North Korea, the biggest problem with family graves is that they’re crowding out the basketball court in Kim’s backyard. (VOD and various digital platforms; comes to Shudder June 14)
Jo Koy: Live from Brooklyn — Koy’s fifth stand-up special for Netflix was taped last November, two months before his now-infamous flameout at the Golden Globes. That’s so long ago, he wasn’t even pissed off at Barbie yet. He was still railing against Betsy Wetsy. (Netflix)
The Price of Nonna’s Inheritance — The sequel to the 2022 Italian comedy The Price of Family finds Carola and Anna planning to murder their grandma’s new boyfriend, because they’re convinced he’s after her money. Hey, maybe he just likes that party trick she does with the ping-pong balls. (Netflix)
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This article appears in May 29 – Jun 4, 2024.