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.
La Máquina, Disney+
La Máquina arrives on Disney+ on Oct. 9.Nicole Franco/Disney+
The appearance of big-screen talent in a small-screen show is not necessarily a sign of anything all that special anymore. But the impishly charming Mexican film star Gael García Bernal is superb at picking his TV material – from the cult classical-music comedy Mozart in the Jungle to the emotionally intelligent dystopian miniseries Station Eleven. In this new Spanish-language show set in Mexico City, La Máquina, García Bernal plays an aging boxer named Esteban whose nickname, per the title, is “the machine”; he fights to keep his anxiety at bay and his sobriety intact as he attempts a comeback. Diego Luna, García Bernal’s co-star in the Alfonso Cuarón film Y tu mamá también back in 2001, plays his sketchy manager Andy, over his head in a plastic surgery addiction and, as it turns out, the criminal world, too. The two still have the greatest of chemistry.
Disclaimer, Apple TV+
Kevin Kline in Disclaimer.Sanja Bucko/Apple TV+
Speaking of Alfonso Cuarón, the first two episodes of the Mexican filmmaker’s much-anticipated Apple TV+ series – or is it a seven-chapter movie? – starts streaming this week. Based on the novel by Renée Knight, Disclaimer stars Cate Blanchett as an investigative documentary filmmaker who has the tables turned on her when a retired teacher, played by Kevin Kline, tries to expose her dark secrets. The Globe and Mail’s Barry Hertz, who binged the series at Toronto International Film Festival this fall, made it a Critic’s Pick but advises: “Stick with it, because Cuarón’s work here is a shattering magic trick of serialized storytelling, engineered with the ambition and innovation of a true cinematic visionary.” (You can always wait until Nov. 15 and then binge the whole thing at once, Hertz-style.)
The Office Movers, Crave
The Office Movers follows Everett (Jae Richards) and Eric Saunders (Trey Richards), two brothers reluctantly following in their father’s footsteps in commercial office moving.Crave
There have been dozens of sitcoms set in offices – even more than one called simply The Office – but the world of office movers has never been given its proper comedic due until now. Brampton-raised, Toronto-based online duo Jae and Trey – credited by their full names Jermaine and Trevaunn Richards – star as brothers who run a moving company staffed by the otherwise unemployable and the dubiously documented. Physical comedy – dented drywall, smashed windows – abounds as do shots of exteriors of the ugliest buildings in the Greater Toronto Area, and likely the world. But the pleasure of The Office Movers primarily comes from the way the characters embrace and utilize the much derided “Toronto accent,” or what’s sometimes known as Multicultural Toronto English. As with some of Jae and Trey’s most-watched sketches (such as “T-Dot Goon Scrap DVD” featuring none other than Drake), there are subtitles to decode this “Toronto lingo” for those not in the know.
Catastrophe, CBC Gem
Catastrophe stars Rob Delaney and Sharon Horgan.Ed Miller/CBC GEM
A decade ago, American actor Rob Delaney (currently in Apple TV+’s Bad Monkey) and Irish actor Sharon Horgan (currently in Apple TV+’s Bad Sisters) teamed up to make this charmingly off-kilter and uncommonly honest romantic sitcom for Britain’s Channel 4; having made the rounds of other North American streamers, Catastrophe’s first season now lands on CBC Gem this week, with the second season available to stream as of Oct. 25. Delaney and Horgan play Rob, an American adman, and Sharon, an Irish teacher, respectively (obviously); the two have a one-night stand while the former is in London on an overseas business trip – and, after an unexpected pregnancy result, decide to make a go of it as a couple. Their marriage may not be perfect, but Catastrophe is a perfect marriage of its creators’ transatlantic approaches to comedy. Among the supporting cast, there’s some fine work from Carrie Fisher as Rob’s mother.
Ali Wong: Single Lady, Netflix
“I do believe that 40 is the golden age,” Ali Wong says in her new special that landed on Netflix this week, “to get divorced.” The American comedian, who notably recorded a couple of her stand-up shows for the streamer while expecting, is a master of the pregnant pause – followed by some of the dirtiest sex jokes you’ll hear anywhere. In Single Lady, she doesn’t dwell too much on her parting of ways with the father of the kids we previously saw her gestating while cracking jokes (or her new relationship with Bill Hader) – but rather focuses on her adventures in a dating pool that now ranges from 25 to 55. (True story: I bought my wife tickets to see Wong when she was passing through Toronto last winter not knowing that her show was about how great it is to get divorced; do better research for date night, fellow husbands.)