Moving away from last week’s star-crossed lovers to star-studded offerings, this coming week’s streaming releases includes the Julianne Moore-led ensemble thriller Sharper, the final season Picard with all your old Star Trek: TNG faves, Billy Crudup’s intriguing retro-sci-fi show Hello Tomorrow!, the long-awaited return of Carnival Row, and more.
SERIES
Picard S3
Amazon Prime Video – 17 February 2023
This is it. The final hurrah of one of science-fiction’s most beloved characters. While the second season of Star Trek: Picard was a bit divisive for some, I rather enjoyed it. Especially with how it changed up the status quo of a few key characters. Now it’s time to wrap up the tale of Sir Patrick Stewart’s Jean-Luc Picard as he faces down a threat from space one last time. And this time, for the first time, he’s brought along every single one of his old Star Trek: The Next Generation friends for this last warp into the final frontier.
Hello Tomorrow! S1
Apple TV+ – 17 February 2023
I’ve got a huge love for classic science-fiction from the 1950s and 1960s and how they thought the future would look. And now somebody has gone and made a modern show using that retro-futuristic aesthetic and it looks superb! Hello Tomorrow! sees Billy Crudup star as a salesman who, along with his colleagues, sell people on the dream of timeshares on the moon. But underneath the shining vinyl and plastic, lurks a darker story.
Carnival Row S2
Amazon Prime Video – 17 February 2023
I never got around to watching the first season of Carnival Row, Travis “Pacific Rim” Beacham’s sprawling urban fantasy about a world in which mythical creatures such as faeries and faun fled their war-torn homeland to settle into Victorian Era-equivalent human settlements, sparking racial tensions. But that season came out so long ago, back in long-lost neolithic pre-pandemic days of 2019, that even if I had watched it, I would probably have forgotten it by now. But now, four years later, Carnival Row is back to finally wrap up the story (this will be the show’s last season) of Orlando Bloom’s human inspector and Cara Delevingne’s fae refugee, as they unravel a dark conspiracy at the heart of the city.
The Reluctant Traveler S1
Apple TV+ – 23 February 2023
Funnyman Eugene Levy is mostly known for his crazy eyebrows and his beloved run as Johnny Rose in Schitt’s Creek. One thing you may not have known about him is that he hates travelling. A self-declared homebody, Levy is not a natural fit to host a travel show… which is exactly why it will probably be fun to see him try. The Reluctant Traveler is an eight-episode docu-series that follows Eugene Levy as he visits some of the world’s most beautiful and intriguing destinations in Costa Rica, Finland, Italy, Japan, Maldives, Portugal, South Africa and the United States, exploring remarkable hotels and the places and cultures surrounding them.
MOVIES
Sharper
Apple TV+ – 17 February 2023
The official blurb for Sharper, Apple TV+’s star-studded thriller, says “No one is who they seem in Sharper, a neo-noir thriller of secrets and lies, set amongst New York City’s bedrooms, barrooms and boardrooms. Characters compete for riches and power in a high stakes game of ambition, greed, lust and jealousy that will keep audiences guessing until the final moment.” Honestly, I have no idea what all that means. It’s a whole lot of words that say next to nothing about the film’s actual plot. Luckily, you have the trailer above is here to help, showing off Julianne Moore, Sebastian Stan, John Lithgow, Justice Smith, and Brianna Middleton as a twisted, scheming group of family and acquaintances all seemingly out to steal from each other with unintended consequences.
Girl, Taken
Showmax – 20 February 2023
For the youngsters reading this, you may not know the shocking tale of Zephany Nurse who was stolen from her mother’s care in the hospital three days after her birth in 1997. What began as a tale of familial tragedy would take a shocking turn more than a decade and a half later, when Zephany’s sister was introduced to a girl at her own high school with whom she shared an uncanny resemblance. Girl, Taken, a new feature-length documentary co-directed by multi-award-winners Francois Verster and Simon Wood, which won Best South African Documentary Film at the 2022 Durban International Film Festival, gives an in-depth look at the absolutely unthinkable story that unfolded, with unmatched access to the inner details of the bizarre fate that befell the Nurse family.
The Strays
Netflix – 22 February 2023
And if somehow both Sharper and Girl, Taken hasn’t given you enough familial drama and trauma, you can also check out The Strays. Earning some seemingly apt Jordan Peele comparisons based just on its trailer, this British psychological thriller/horror film follows a woman who seemingly has a perfect suburban mom life… that is until she starts seeing a strange man and woman watching her from a distance at random moments. But are these strangers real or just something in her head?