It’s Chekhov in a New York apartment. Spanning a few final, fraught days, this bittersweet but elusive independent feature follows a trio of distant sisters reunited in their family home as their ailing father’s death looms. Katie (Carrie Coon) is officious and demanding, Christina (Elizabeth Olsen) is conciliatory but self-absorbed, and Rachel (Natasha Lyonne), who has been caring for their father for years, is lodged between stoned and shocked. They can’t face what they’re losing but don’t know what they have.

Filmmaker Azazel Jacobs has made some good films, such as 2020’s French Exit, but this is his first great one. The outline is archetypal, but there’s a distinct friction and tender eye at each turn. The framing is as initially jarring as the sister’s energy, with the camera defining the interiors. The dying patriarch, Vincent (Jay O. Sanders), is barely seen, putting the focus on his daughters and the hospice procedures explained to them by visiting professionals.

The storytelling is never schematic. The divide between the three women, and the uncertain bridging, feels lodged in the granular. That makes for an actor’s showcase, and all three leads deliver exceptional performances that are linked; they’re mysteries to themselves but silently understand each other. His Three Daughters tells us what we need to know without ever saying too much. The restraint is sublime.

Nightsleeper
Stan

If Apple TV+’s Idris Elba airborne thriller Hijack somehow didn’t move fast enough for you, this British drama about a digitally hijacked train hurtles along so fast it can barely stay on the story’s track. Joe Cole (Peaky Blinders) is the off-duty police officer on a Glasgow-to-London service who must work with a government cyber expert, Abby Aysgarth (Alexandra Roach), to regain control of the runaway train and identify the culprits. The goal is to move faster than your sense of plausibility, and the limited series mostly succeeds.

La Maison
Apple TV+

After the period biopic The New Look, Apple returns to the world of Parisian haute couture with this contemporary French language drama about the machinations inside and out of a revered, family-run fashion brand that is left tottering when its patriarch and chief designer goes viral in all the wrong ways. From an initial sampling, the intent is to mix 1 per cent glamour with some melodramatic machinations – think a lesser Succession but with better stitching. If nothing else it’s a welcome antidote to Emily in Paris. These characters can actually afford those Eiffel Tower views.

One Street Away
Shelter

“Housing crisis” has a different meaning in different countries. As this telling documentary reveals, in the Argentinean capital of Buenos Aires, it takes the form of “spatial inequality”. Several million residents have obtained housing through the “informal market”. The result is satellite shanty towns and high-rise tenements constructed on the fly with substandard materials, both lacking in basic public amenities and promoting division. Director Reed Purvis mixes academic insight with on the ground testimony, as communities organise to gain access to what they need against sometimes overwhelming intransigence.

Frasier (season 2)
Paramount+

Starting with a series of misunderstandings in the lead-up to Valentine’s Day, the new episode from the second season of the classic sitcom’s revival has much the same jury-rigged feel as the first. Kelsey Grammer’s portrayal of his haughty psychiatrist has barely lost a step, but the supporting players in this now Boston-set comedy too often fail to transition from pithy outline on the page to plausible foils. There’s a little too much urgency in some of the dialogue delivery – some of the cast don’t have the confidence of their predecessors.

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