Uma Thurman and Noah Emmerich in Suspicion.Zach Dilgard/APPLE TV+
The winds that blew were wicked. A convoy of protestors arrived in Ottawa and we watched in baleful silence – until we watched nervously as the police cleared the city. The Winter Olympics unfolded in a shuttered, hostile host city and we watched with strained enthusiasm. Days after the climactic clearing of Ottawa, Russian forces invaded Ukraine and the whole world watched in bleak anger and despair.
So, we sought distraction in stories of love, victories in the everyday, mysteries to be solved and the mad lampooning of familiar entertainment. In distractions, February was a fabulous month.
Here’s the best of the streaming services had on offer.
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Falling for Figaro (streams on Netflix) is a one-off, kind of small movie that inevitably heads to streaming. It’s an adorable comedy-romance, where the romance is in part about being in love with opera. Millie Cantwell (Danielle Macdonald) is a brilliant fund manager at a London company. But after a promotion, she decides becoming an opera singer is her real passion. Off she goes to Scotland, where an eccentric coach, Meghan Geoffrey-Bishop (Joanna Lumley in brilliant form), will help her. Hilarious culture clash ensues. And there’s Max (Hugh Skinner), another student of Meghan’s. Does romance await? Well, to find love you must first find your voice.
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The Porter (streams on CBC Gem) manages to pull off the magic trick of having the drumbeat energy of musical theatre balanced with a searing drama about race and class division. Inspired by real events, the series presents train porters Junior (Aml Ameen) and Zeke (Ronnie Rowe Jr.) as young men with different ambitions. Junior wants money. Zeke, driven by both his job experience and the words of activists, wants brotherhood in the form of a union of Black porters. The visual oomph is spectacular – a launching pad for an emotionally dense roller coaster of a ride. Eight episodes, two available now.
CBC’s The Porter isn’t just a history lesson, it’s one sizzling series
The Porter is an overdue win for Black representation on Canadian TV
Inventing Anna (streams on Netflix) became a reader favourite, an ideal binge watch to be lost inside. It’s a seething, funky drama, presented with a caveat: “This whole story is completely true. Except for the parts that are totally made up.” It’s the bizarre story of Anna Delvey, a.k.a. Anna Sorokin (Julia Garner) and “the fake heiress” ever since a 2018 New York magazine article explained how she conned her way upward in New York social circles – then spent a lot of money that wasn’t hers. Over nine episodes you can be enthralled by Garner as the mesmerizingly inscrutable Anna.
Netflix’s Inventing Anna: One sly, seething, funky drama
Suspicion (streams on Apple TV+) is a tense, involving ensemble thriller that requires concentration but rewards it. A young man is kidnapped in New York. Surveillance video showing the kidnappers wearing masks to look like members of the British royal family goes viral. A group of British citizens who happened to be in New York are arrested. But you know there’s something suspicious about how easily a fiction about their involvement can be created. It’s a slow-burner. Eight episodes, four available now.
Suspicion is a good slow-burn of a thriller
All of Us Are Dead (streams on Netflix) is a zombie apocalypse series (12 episodes) that’s both inside and outside the genre. It’s from South Korea and set at a high school. A familiar outbreak storyline evolves into a drama about class, wealth and poverty. There are the expected scenes of terror and lucky escapes, but what makes it absorbing is the depth given to the key characters.
Is All Of Us Are Dead the new Squid Game?
A group of students trapped in a high school and find themselves in dire situations as they seek to be rescued from a zombie invasion in All Of Us Are Dead.Netflix
The Tinder Swindler (streams Netflix) is a better-than-average true-crime story about a con game. It is more focused than many true-crime documentaries on Netflix, and a crisply done account of how a guy manipulated and exploited three women on Tinder. One of them took a little revenge. Consider it a perfect companion to Inventing Anna.
The Tinder Swindler: Heck of a true story about a dating scammer
The Head (streams CBC Gem) is a good example of “snow noir,” with the ingredients being cold isolation, snow and, well, the terrible things people do in these conditions. It’s set in an Antarctic research station during winter. Something terrible happens and the summertime team returns to find most of the crew dead. The sole person alive is young Irish doctor Maggie (Katharine O’Donnelly), who is diagnosed with memory loss and psychosis. Six episodes, four available now.
The Head: A wintry thriller for winter nights
The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window (streams on Netflix) aims for the giggles, and if you’ve watched a bunch of Netflix thrillers you will find it a rather pointed satire. Same if you’ve consumed the books (or movie versions of) The Woman in the Window and The Girl on the Train. The poking-fun is rampant. Kristen Bell plays Anna, an utterly unreliable narrator. Did she see someone die? Well, maybe. Eight episodes, 30 minutes each.
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