What to watch this weekend: CBC Gem’s Rise of the Raven is a Game of Thrones for those allergic to dragons | Canada Voices

Rise of the Raven, CBC Gem

A European co-production with a budget somewhere around $98-million, this historical television series is the most impressive thing the Hungarians and Austrians have done together since the House of Habsburg fell.

Produced by Canadian Robert Lantos, Rise of the Raven follows the rise and political education of Janos Hunyadi (Gellert Kadar), a military figure from 15th-century Hungary who played a significant role in staving off Ottoman expansion into Europe, notably during the Siege of Belgrade in 1456.

But the series has an expansive viewpoint, venturing into the wider, inbred decadence of the Holy Roman Empire and the imperial harems of the Ottoman Empire, too, the latter through the fascinating POV of Mara Brankovic (Franciska Torocsik), a Serbian princess who became the diplomatically influential wife of Sultan Murad II yet never converted to Islam.

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Characters speak their own languages – whether Hungarian, Turkish, Italian, German or Serbian – and strong performances by European actors you’ve likely never heard of abound.

In the episodes I screened, showrunner Balazs Lengyel consistently made the complex machinations and murky morality of the period’s religious geopolitics fascinating – while throwing in enough gruesome beheadings and gratuitous nudity to entice fans of Game of Thrones to tune in despite a lack of dragons. On CBC Gem from Sept. 19.

Reunion, CBC Gem

It’s a big week for intriguing foreign series with subtitles on Canada’s national public streaming service. This British five-part drama – which, like Rise of the Raven, recently showed at TIFF as part of its TV program – follows convicted murderer Daniel Brennan (Matthew Gurney) as he leaves prison on parole.

Produced by Warp Films (co-producer of Emmy winner Adolescence) for BBC One originally, it’s a solid thriller in structure but strongest in the specifics of its setting, taking place largely in a deaf community in northern England. Gurney gives a compelling central performance as a slippery character who will make your sympathy see-saw. The characters speak British Sign Language and English. On Gem starting Sept. 19.

The Morning Show, Apple TV+

The hook of this addictively soapy series – starring Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon and set in the American TV world – is that each season’s plots are anchored in the actual current events of a year or so ago.

As Season 4 begins, the leaders and on-air talent of the newly merged network UBA-NBN are getting ready for the 2024 Paris Olympics – and nobody knows yet that you-know-who is on his way back to the White House. Except the writers do, of course, which allows them to position Stella (Greta Lee), now chief executive officer, as sensing the vibe shift toward broader acceptance of authoritarianism. “I do think the tide is turning with the January 6 crowd,” she says. “Like it or not, the centre has moved.”

French Oscar-winning actress Marion Cotillard (La Vie en Rose) joins the cast as Céline, the chicly coiffed chair of UBN’s board; Aniston’s Alex grapples with deepfakes; and, thankfully, Billy Crudup’s Cory and Witherspoon’s Bradley quickly squirm and strut their way back to New York after their respective exiles at the end of Season 3. The Morning Show, which drops new episodes each Wednesday, knows what it is – and what it needs to work: conspiracy, betrayal and steamy sex scenes.

Black Rabbit, Netflix

The ultrahip titular bar-restaurant that Jake Friedken (Jude Law) runs may be located under the Brooklyn Bridge, but he’s on top of the culinary world as this new eight-episode Netflix thriller begins. Then Jake’s brother Vince (Jason Bateman) arrives on the scene deep in gambling debt and followed by gangsters out to collect.

Co-created by Zach Baylin and Kate Susman, this is a thriller steeped in an increasingly inequitable and despairing United States according to The Globe and Mail’s Johanna Schneller, who reviewed it ahead of the show’s world premiere at TIFF: “Black Rabbit is one of those series, like Breaking Bad and Ozark, where the clock is ticking and the characters are sweating and the rubber-band tension is winding tighter and tighter until you think it just has to snap. It’s terrific.”

Clearcut, Tubi

Graham Greene, the Oscar-nominated Oneida actor of stage and screen who died this month, sometimes cited this cult 1991 horror thriller that slices and dices white saviourism as his favourite screen performance, rather than his acting in Dancing With Wolves. On Tubi for free (with ads), it stars Ron Lea (Street Legal) as a white liberal lawyer named Peter Maguire who loses a case trying to stop a mill from cutting down trees on First Nations territory.

Oscar-nominated actor broke down stereotypes and blazed a trail for Indigenous performers

Peter, fulminating with fury, is invited to a sweat by an elder (the late, great Floyd Westerman) who interrogates his anger: “Who do you feel bad for? Us, or yourself?” Soon after, Arthur – Greene at his most puckish – arrives on the scene to take a venomous offhand remark by Peter about skinning the logging company’s plant manager alive seriously. What follows is a metaphorical revenge flick, with Peter alternatively captive and collaborator.

Reviewing the film, which was shot around Thunder Bay and directed by Polish dissident director Ryszard Bugajski, The Globe and Mail’s former film critic Rick Groen said Greene’s performance blew everyone else off the screen: “Greene is exactly what he’s meant to be – mesmerizing, dominant, making us feel the sheer, deliberate, exhilarating power that is generated when pure anger gets harnessed to physical might.”