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.
The Diplomat, Season 2, Netflix
The Diplomat returns to Netflix for Season 2.Netflix
The Americans star Keri Russell made her return to international TV intrigue with this Netflix series, in which she plays Kate Wyler, newly appointed American ambassador to the U.K. The Debora Cahn-created show’s tone is like Aaron Sorkin if he were pulpier and understood women better (or so saith my wife). Season 2, now streaming, starts in the aftermath of the car bomb that brought the first season to an end – did it kill Kate’s meddling husband? – but soon enough madame ambassador is back in the swing of trying to figure out who was really behind a recent attack on the British navy, all the while resisting the uncomfortable formal apparel forced upon her by her role. Joining the cast this season, and making a welcome return to the multiverse of fictional West Wings, is Allison Janney as vice-president Grace Penn.
Music by John Williams, Disney+
Music by John Williams streams on Disney+.Travers Jacobs/Supplied
John Williams is probably the only composer whose claim to immortality could rest on just two notes: Duh-dun. But the suspenseful shark theme from Jaws is just skimming the surface of the career of this 92-year-old, who has the most Oscar nominations of any living person and has scored everything from Star Wars to Schindler’s List, Home Alone to Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. Steven Spielberg acolyte Laurent Bouzereau directs this new Disney+ appreciation of Williams – landing on the streamer Nov. 1 – in which Spielberg appears alongside the likes of George Lucas and Coldplay’s Chris Martin, praising the movie maestro’s ability to set the right tone for a film and sometimes even help a director find it.
All and Eva, CBC Gem
All and Eva on CBC Gem.Ragna Jorming/Viaplay Group/Supplied
Remember that spate of the Canadian sperm-donor comedies a decade ago – the hit Quebec film Starbuck (remade as Delivery Man with Vince Vaughan) and the CityTV sitcom Seed? Sweden’s six-part dramedy All and Eva comes at the subject from a different angle: On the cusp of 40, Stockholm museum curator Eva (Tuva Novotny) travels to Copenhagen to be inseminated; last-moment jitters that she might be having a psychopath’s baby lead her to sneak a photo of the donor she’s chosen – and track down Mads (Joachim Fjelstrup) through a reverse Google image search. Sounds like an Apatow-style premise, but creator Johanna Runevad has given her series the pacing of an indie art film, filled with borderline-Bergman dinner-party conversations. The second episode leaves Eva’s story entirely to follow James (Bengt Braskered), a 56-year-old gay man and self-described “love addict” as he goes on two very different dates in one day; Braskered’s tender performance earned him a best supporting actor prize at the 2024 Kristallen Awards, Sweden’s television awards.
Tú También lo Harías (You Would Do It Too), Apple TV+
Tú También lo Harías (You Would Do It Too) on Apple TV+.Apple TV+
This Spanish series is a police thriller that intersects with the heist and mystery genres. In the grabbing first episode, Barcelona cops arrive on the scene of an airport bus hijacking to find three bodies. The five remaining passengers and driver say that the deceased were robbers who forced them to hand over their phones and bank passwords – and that they were gunned down by a mystery man in a hoodie who fled into the woods. The media make the vigilante into a hero as the cops chase him. There are plenty of twists and turns to come; they divided viewers when the show premiered on Disney+ in Spain, before Apple TV+ snapped up the worldwide rights.
Love Actually, Crave
Love Actually is streaming on Crave.Crave
Are there really human beings who, upon waking up the morning after handing out candy to kids on Halloween, think: Well, I’m ready to watch holiday movies now? The streamers are under that impression that there are – and so their Christmas+ portals launch on Nov. 1. On Crave’s holiday landing page, you’ll find Love Actually, so you can get a head start on your annual rewatch – or hate-watch. The 21-year-old British omnibus film with its who’s who cast (Hugh Grant, Emma Thompson, Alan Rickman, Colin Firth, Rowan Atkinson, Keira Knightly, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Andrew Lincoln) is both loved and loathed. If you’re curious, The Globe and Mail’s Liam Lacey originally gave it a middle-of-the-pack 2½-star review in 2003: “With a bevy of stars, and almost as many sub-plots, this is a sprawling multipart narrative, a really nice version of Robert Altman’s Shortcuts, but set in a Christmas-decorated London, with a lot of sensitive, good-humoured blokes and birds.”