African-based streaming service Showmax isn’t easing its foot off the accelerator when it comes to new content releasing in the last month of 2021, and first few weeks of 2022. You can check out the full release schedule here, covering series, movies and documentaries for the whole family. Alternatively, you can trust in us to cherry pick some gems to add to your Watch Later list. Find them below.
It’s actually a surprisingly serious month for international content, but you can balance that out with Showmax’s Countdown to Christmas Collection, which consists of a daily expanded set of 32 festive movies, ranging from comedies to romance and uplifting dramas. Local holiday movies aren’t neglected either, with seven releases landing between 9 December and New Year’s.
One is even, surprisingly, an LGBT love triangle. Releasing 31 December is Love, Lies and Hybrids, a Showmax Original Film about a woman who finds herself having to choose between her male fiancé and their female best friend.
Now onto the international series hitting Showmax over the next month or so.
Series
Probably the biggest returnee is intense teen drama Euphoria Season 2 (from 10 January). Meanwhile, episodes continue to arrive weekly, and in batches, for satirical comedy-drama Succession Season 3, and finance world-set Billions Season 5. Then there’s vampire mockumentary What We Do in the Shadows Season 3, out in its entirety now.
As for the most attention-grabbing new series on the block, all lean in a pretty “heavy” direction.
Based on the hit podcast, Dr. Death explores the terrifying true story of Dr. Christopher Duntsch (Joshua Jackson), a brilliant neurosurgeon whose surgeries start leaving maimed patients and corpses. As victims piled up, fellow surgeons Robert Henderson (Alec Baldwin) and Randall Kirby (Christian Slater), as well as Dallas prosecutor Michelle Shughart (AnnaSophia Robb), set out to stop him. Watch from January 1.
You want star power? You got it in hard-to-watch domestic drama Scenes from a Marriage, starring Jessica Chastian and Oscar Isaac as a contemporary American couple experiencing love, hatred, desire, monogamy, marriage and divorce. The superbly acted Scenes from a Marriage is a remake of the iconic 1973 Swedish miniseries by Swedish auteur Ingmar Bergman. Watch the five-episode HBO miniseries now.
The six-part British drama Little Birds stars Juno Temple as an heiress who arrives in Tangier in 1955. When her new marriage is revealed to be a sham, she tumbles almost immediately into a world of colonial decadence – even as it crumbles around her in the face of Moroccan independence. The risqué Little Birds is inspired by the erotic tales of Anaïs Nin. Binge now.
Movies
Nothing says the holidays like a brutal revenge thriller. Wrath of Man is a fresh, and critically acclaimed, team-up for filmmaker Guy Ritchie and action icon Jason Statham, who previously united to give audiences Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch and Revolver. This time, Statham plays H., a new security guard for a cash truck company. H.’s precise, brutal skills in handling heists raise questions from his colleagues. Screening from 20 December.
For intense survival drama, there’s Adrift, based on a true story. Sam Claflin and Shailene Woodley play a young couple whose desire for adventure turns into a desperate fight to survive at sea when their yacht comes up against one of the most catastrophic hurricanes in recorded history. Watch from 27 December.