Do you feel like you’re drowning … but you haven’t even left your couch? Welcome to the Great Content Overload Era. To help you navigate the choppy digital waves, here are The Globe’s best bets for weekend streaming.
Pulse, Netflix
From left to right: Willa Fitzgerald as Danny, Chelsea Muirhead as Sophie Chan, and Colin Woodell as Xander Phillips in the medical drama series Pulse.Jeff Neumann/Netflix/Supplied
“Did you watch a lot of Grey’s Anatomy growing up?” Dr. Danielle (Danny) Simms (Willa Fitzgerald) asks an intern in the second episode of Netflix’s new medical drama. “Try to unlearn that.” In truth, Pulse – created by Canadian Zoe Robyn – has learned a lot from that long-running Shonda Rhimes show. Indeed, you can imagine the pitch: “What if Grey’s Meredith accused McDreamy of sexual harassment?”
Danny files just such a complaint against dreamy chief resident Xander Phillips (Colin Woodell) – and then has to work alongside him as a hurricane hits the Miami area and their trauma centre. The series, 10 episodes all dropping on April 3, takes place over a compressed period of time (not quite to the extreme of the other ER show du jour, real-time The Pitt) but it has plenty of flashbacks to nights out and shower sex to break up the fasciotomies. It’s soapy and enjoyable if you’re okay with ridiculous flirting over or with bleeding accident victims.
The White Lotus, HBO and Crave
HBO’s fan favourite The White Lotus brings its third season to an end with the finale on Sunday.Crave/Supplied
The Season 3 finale of Mike White’s anthology series set among rich Americans at high-end international resorts hits this weekend. Violence – humanity’s natural affinity for it; Buddhism’s opposition to it; whether it is ever necessary – was the theme of the penultimate episode, and we know from a flash forward that it is about to erupt.
Set in Thailand, this longest edition to date – featuring particularly great performances from Jason Isaacs, Carrie Coon and Walton Goggins – has been described as a slow burn, but its hypnotic (and, occasionally, hysterically funny) quality is pulling viewers back each week. More are watching than ever: Ratings are up in the United States and, in Canada, Crave reports that the average streaming viewership has increased more than 90 per cent from Season 2. No advance screener was available for critics, so I’ll be tuning in Sunday to find out who dies, too.
Anne Shirley, Crunchyroll
The anime adaptation of Anne of Green Gables is directed by Hiroshi Kawamata and boasts a theme song from J-pop singer Tota.Crunchyroll/Supplied
Lucy Maud Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables was introduced to the school curriculum in Japan in 1952 – but the PEI character’s popularity didn’t go into overdrive in that country until Isao Takahata’s animated series based on the book premiered in 1979. Now, a new Japanese anime adaptation for a new generation is coming out, produced by the Answer Studio and directed by Hiroshi Kawamata, with a theme song from J-pop singer Tota.
The 24-episode series begins this weekend on NHK Educational TV, which is probably not on your local cable package. But thanks to the anime-focused streaming service Crunchyroll – a joint venture between U.S.-based Sony Pictures Entertainment and Japan-based Aniplex that is available on most streaming devices – Canadians can watch this latest reinvention of the red-headed orphan with English subtitles starting April 5.
Mobland, Paramount +
From left to right: Tom Hardy plays Harry Da Souza and Antonio González Guerrero is Kiko in the gritty British series, Mobland.Luke Varley/Paramount+/Supplied
This British organized crime series created by Ronan Bennett (The Day of the Jackal) and written with Jez Butterworth (The Agency) about an Irish crime family that runs drugs and guns in England catered too much to the bloodthirsty crowd with its pilot episode last Sunday. A dozen nameless rival mobsters were gunned down in the first few minutes, and a significant character was offed in the final moments. All this had zero dramatic impact because the relationships had not been sufficiently built up.
In the second episode, streaming this Sunday, the action settles down a bit and the plot starts to cook. Tom Hardy is highly watchable as Harry Da Souza, a human pressure cooker who works as a fixer for the Harrigan family led by Grandpa (Pierce Brosnan) and Grandma (Helen Mirren), who are short-tempered and scheming, respectively. Guy Ritchie directs with in-your-face verve, but the members of Mobland’s central crime clan will have to stop being so uniformly psychotic for viewers to truly get lock, stock and smoking barrels invested.
The Apprentice, Crave
Director Ali Abbasi’s 2024 movie, The Apprentice, dramatizes the friendship between Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) and McCarthyite Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong).piefWeyman|pief.ca/Supplied
The Apprentice, the Donald Trump reality show in which he played a successful businessman, was recently made available to stream again on Prime Video in the United States – and only in the United States. While Amazon’s chief exec Jeff Bezos is seemingly trying to suck up to the President, he’s not looking to destroy his business internationally at the same time.
On Prime in Canada you can, however, rent the other The Apprentice: Director Ali Abbasi’s 2024 movie about how Trump (Sebastian Stan) was mentored by the ghoulish McCarthyite Roy Cohn (Jeremy Strong). Strong’s performance earned him both an Oscar and a Golden Globe nomination. Reviewing for The Globe and Mail, Radheyan Simonpillai wrote: “Strong plays the notorious lawyer and fixer like some unholy amalgamation of Succession characters, as if his own Kendall Roy had successfully become kingmaker like his dad Logan.” A Canadian co-production, the film lands on Canadian streamer Crave as part of its subscription on April 4.
