My streaming industry antennae are up. Earlier this month Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime announced that in America the former will be available as an add-on subscription through the latter. Basically, Prime subscribers can stay on the Amazon system, but pay to have Apple TV+ and all its content present as a viewing option on the user interface.

While this initiative isn’t available in Australia, the message is clear. When two of the five largest companies in the world co-operate on streaming, it’s obvious that strategies are changing.

For decades, Americans favoured the cable bundle: one monthly charge got you cable or satellite access to a spectrum of channels from rival networks that featured scripted hits, live sports, news, reality shows and more. Consumers had one cost, and the participants quietly split the proceeds in private. That’s where I think streaming is heading. Consumers will be offered subscriptions to multiple platforms for one fee and one log-in, presumably with a discount for stacking services together. I have no idea who’ll partner up, but I believe it’s coming.

In the meantime, the individual streaming services are gearing up for a promising month, albeit with different focuses. Paramount+, for example, is debuting two major new shows headlined by established stars (The Agency and Landman), while Apple TV+ has second seasons for two of their under-the-radar successes (Bad Sisters and Silo).

As ever, our inbox is open, so please drop us an email and let us know what you’re watching, what you’re looking forward to, and most importantly what I need to catch up on. Let’s keep all the recommendations in one place. The only bundling I’m practising pertains to couch-viewing snacks.

Binge

My top Binge recommendation is The Day of the Jackal (November 7).

Ronan Bennett, the Northern Irish screenwriter and novelist who created Netflix’s acclaimed London crime drama Top Boy, has done an impressive job reinventing one of the original pillars of the assassin-thriller genre. Reworked from both Frederick Forsyth’s 1971 novel and Fred Zinnemann’s 1973 film of the same name about a meticulous assassin hired to kill the president of France, this contemporary reboot stars Academy Award-winner Eddie Redmayne (The Theory of Everything) as a ruthless killer planning a major hit while being pursued by authorities. Lashana Lynch, who gave Daniel Craig’s Bond a jolt in No Time to Die, plays his equally obsessive hunter. It’s a knotty, thoughtful procedural.

Also on Binge: The abiding quality of The Penguin, the recent HBO offshoot from the 2022 superhero blockbuster The Batman, increases my confidence for Dune: Prophecy (November 18). Set 10,000 years before the events of Denis Villeneuve’s acclaimed Dune movies, this science-fiction series focuses on the origins of the Bene Gesserit, the secretive sisterhood attempting to steer the galaxy and its crucial bloodlines. Emily Watson (Breaking the Waves) and Olivia Williams (Counterpart) play Valya and Tula Harkonnen, sisters and Bene Gesserit leaders whose surname is one of several – including the Atreides clan – familiar to Dune fans. The show has had a difficult production process, but the trailer has an enticing, otherworldly hum.

Get Millie Black (November 26) is a bet on great talent being able to translate. Jamaican author Marlon James, who won the Booker Prize in 2015 for A Brief History of Seven Killings, migrates to television with this crime drama about a Jamaican-born Scotland Yard police detective, Millie-Jean Black (Time’s Tamara Lawrance), who returns to serve in her homeland and becomes embroiled in a missing persons case that reveals a deeper conspiracy. Joe Dempsie (Game of Thrones) plays a British police officer whose own case becomes tied to Black’s. Few authors have better captured Jamaica’s contradictions than James, making his first series one to watch out for.

October Highlights: Superhero movies got the satire they needed in The Franchise, a wallflower found her power in the terrific black comedy Sweetpea, plus a final season for the bittersweet Somebody Somewhere, one of the best series of the last five years.

Netflix

My top Netflix recommendation is A Man on the Inside (November 22).

Few American creators have as strong a CV as Mike Schur: Parks and Recreation, Brooklyn Nine-Nine and The Good Place are all among the best comedies of the last 15 years. Like the latter, his new show has a thorny, absurd concept, with The Good Place star Ted Danson playing Charles, a retired university professor who accepts an offer to go into a nursing home as an undercover operative to investigate the facility. This is a half-hour comedy with thriller undertones, touching on ageing and how the elderly are perceived by themselves and others – starting with Charles’ baffled wife. Stephanie Beatriz (Brooklyn Nine-Nine) and Stephen McKinley Henderson (Lady Bird) co-star.

Also on Netflix: An American conspiracy thriller about a respected media pundit who discovers a bloody murder and has to prove himself innocent as nefarious forces draw closer feels timely during US presidential election season. But the best recommendation going for The Madness (November 28) may well be the presence in the lead role of Colman Domingo. A working actor for decades, Domingo has honed his craft and ascended to headlining roles thanks to his standout work opposite Zendaya in Euphoria and his Oscar-nominated turn in the title role of last year’s civil rights biopic Rustin. Watching him grapple with a paranoid political drama should be fascinating.

October Highlights: Australian Top End drama Territory made a splash worldwide, basketball heads got an inside view with the big-name docuseries Starting 5, while The Lincoln Lawyer and The Diplomat returned with new seasons.

Apple TV+

My top Apple TV+ recommendation is Bad Sisters (November 13).

It’s been too long a wait. The first season of this darkly comic Irish thriller, which came with the imprint of co-creator and star Sharon Horgan (Catastrophe), debuted in August 2022. That said, the gap might have been necessary because the show, which followed a group of tightly-knit sisters who plotted to save their foundering sibling by murdering her malicious husband, needs to think carefully about how to unfold new episodes after satisfyingly concluding the original batch. Maintaining the masterful tone, which spliced female agency, familial idiosyncrasies and some very Irish risky business, is essential, but the ensemble cast is terrific. Alongside Horgan, Eve Hewson (The Perfect Couple), Sarah Greene (Dublin Murders), and Anne-Marie Duff (His Dark Materials) all return.

Also on Apple TV+: The British filmmaker and video artist Steve McQueen is not prolific, but each of his feature films matter – Hunger, Shame, 12 Years a Slave, Widows and the Small Axe anthology is a top-tier run stretching back to 2008. His latest movie, debuting exclusively on Apple TV+, is Blitz (November 22), a World War II drama about a young boy, George (Elliott Heffernan), who runs away from a train evacuating children out of a London reeling under Nazi bombing and travels across the city in a bid to return to his mother, Rita (Saoirse Ronan). Music aficionados take note: that’s The Jam’s Paul Weller playing George’s grandfather.

Another series that has high expectations and tricky circumstances to master second time out is Silo (November 15). Headlined by Dune and Mission: Impossible star Rebecca Ferguson, the first season of this dystopian thriller was a vertical puzzle-box set inside a vast, sequestered underground city that had operated in isolation for centuries beneath the Earth’s deadly surface. The ratio of character-based drama to answers that inspired more questions had an engrossing energy. The end of the first season suggested new possibilities, which creator Graham Yost (Justified) tackles head-on in the show’s return.

October Highlights: Cate Blanchett and Kevin Kline were adversaries in the knotty psychological thriller Disclaimer, plus a wily, witty German take on the kidnap drama in Where’s Wanda?

Stan*

My top Stan recommendation is Nugget is Dead: A Christmas Story (November 21).

Before it concluded in 2022, SBS’s youth-leaning current affairs show The Feed unearthed a serious amount of talent, spotlighting the likes of Marc Fennell, Jan Fran, Mark Humphries and many more with its mix of issues-based reporting and satirical analysis. Now two Feed contributors, Victoria Erbst and Jenna Owen, have co-written and co-star in this festive season Australian feature comedy about a dysfunctional family forced to reunite when the one thing they all agreed on – their beloved family dog, Nugget – is at risk. Gia Carides (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) and Damien Garvey (Rake) co-star in the film, which promises sitcom snappiness and absurd mishaps.

Also on Stan: I think it’s safe to say that Yellowstone (November 11) will not go out on a quiet, contemplative note. Ever since its debut in 2018, Taylor Sheridan’s modern-day western about the many threats facing Kevin Costner’s Montana ranch patriarch – Californian property developers, biker gangs, a cartel assassin, investigative reporters, his fearsome daughter … it’s a long list – has tended to draw out big monologues and operatic violence. With Costner at loggerheads with Sheridan behind the scenes, the next six instalments are the final batch of Yellowstone episodes. And if you haven’t checked it out yet, that’s quite a binge waiting for you.

October Highlights: Thou Shalt Not Steal was an eccentric, entertaining comedy that roared through the Northern Territory, while Game of Thrones star Sophie Turner found the leading lady role with the 1980s crime drama Joan.

Amazon Prime

My top Amazon Prime recommendation is Cross (November 14).

Alex Cross is one of the best-known names in modern crime fiction. Since 1993, author James Patterson has written more than 30 thrillers centred on the African-American police detective from Washington DC. Their commercial success has led to several Hollywood adaptations, including Morgan Freeman playing Cross in 1997’s Kiss the Girls and Tyler Perry taking a shot in 2012’s Alex Cross. For this eight-part series, Aldis Hodge (City on a Hill) steps up, playing the grieving widower and father of two as he struggles to unfold a series of suspicious killings. Ben Watkins (Burn Notice) is the showrunner responsible for separating this potential franchise from the numerous versions that precede it.

Also on Amazon Prime: Private school melodramas with dollops of salaciousness and solace have been popular in recent years – Netflix’s Spanish drama Elite ran for eight seasons, while Stan recently added the British variant, Boarders. It makes sense to revive the genre’s cornerstone, so here’s the series reboot of Cruel Intentions (November 21). Loosely based on Dangerous Liaisons, the original 1999 American film starred Reese Witherspoon, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Philippe as respectively an innocent and two scheming step-siblings. There are no prominent names in the new cast, which is set at a university, but the outline is familiar. Competitive seduction, sneering privilege and double-crossing galore.

October Highlights: After much curiosity and some apprehension, the Australian edition of The Office proved to be a success, Citadel: Diana put an Italian spin on the spy thriller, and The Pradeeps of Pittsburgh was an endearing immigrants-in-America comedy.

Disney+

My top Disney+ recommendation is Interior Chinatown (November 19).

Author Charles Yu wrote his 2020 novel Interior Chinatown as a commentary on and satire of Asian-American under-representation on the screen. Now he gets to directly address the disparity by serving as the showrunner on his 10-episode adaptation of the novel, which comes with the imprimatur of Taika Waititi (Thor: Ragnarok) directing the first episode. Jimmy O Yang (Silicon Valley) stars as Willis Yu, a Chinese restaurant waiter who feels like he’s living his life as a background actor. When Willis witnesses a crime and starts digging into the Chinatown underworld, his life gets a lot more frenetic. Reality will bend in this show, but the wisecracking is in good hands: comic Ronny Chieng (The Daily Show) plays Willis’ best friend.

Also on Disney+: Say Nothing (November 14) is addressing many decades of cruel silence. Via a New Yorker article and then a bestselling 2018 non-fiction book, writer Patrick Radden Keefe explored the 1972 kidnapping and murder of Jean McConville, a widowed mother of 10 from Belfast accused by the IRA of being an informer for the British as sectarian violence in Northern Ireland intensified. The book explored how different sides ignored McConville’s fate, the struggles of her orphaned children, and the broader impact on communities during and after the conflict. The 10-part adaptation by Josh Zetumer (Patriots Day) spans multiple generations, with an Irish cast that includes Anthony Boyle (Manhunt).

October Highlights: There were cads, shoulder pads, and much bad behaviour in the 1980s British romp Rivals; English Teacher was a standout new comedy, while Doctor Odyssey was a wild mix of medical drama and cruise ship romance.

Iview

My top iview recommendation is Headliners (November 19).

The ABC has had considerable success recently with documentary series that use focused experiences to create a sense of tangible change for those involved, whether it’s the neurodiverse young journalists of The Assembly or the various iterations of Old People’s Home. In this new series, musician and inclusivity advocate Elly-May Barnes, who is living with cerebral palsy, attempts to assemble and upskill two bands whose members all have disabilities. Mentoring the young hopefuls are Killing Heidi’s Ella Hooper and You Am I’s Tim Rogers, while Elly-May’s father, rock icon Jimmy Barnes, will also make an appearance. Hopefully, it gets loud.

October Highlights: Brendan Cowell and Asher Keddie headlined the new Australian drama Plum; Grand Designs Australia polished up nicely at its new home, and A Bite to Eat with Alice proved to be tasty culinary viewing.

SBS on Demand

My top SBS on Demand recommendation is Spy/Master (November 21).

HBO has commissioned several series in Europe which often arrive here after a long delay but are usually worth the wait. The Norwegian science-fiction mystery Beforeigners was one (it’s currently unavailable), and next up is this Romanian Cold War thriller. Inspired by historical events from the 1970s, it follows the web woven by Romanian spymaster Victor Godeanu (Alec Secareanu, God’s Own Country), a confidant for the country’s brutal dictators, Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu, but also a mole for Soviet intelligence. When the latter threaten to unmask him, Godeanu defects to the CIA, but they baulk at his demands. Covert chaos erupts, shadowed by potential acts of terrorism and desperate family gambits.

October Highlights: The Marc Fennell documentary series Red Flag: Music’s Failed Revolution mixed cultural history and true crime, while the romantic drama Four Years Later offered a fresh perspective on Australia’s multicultural make-up.

Paramount+

My top recommendation for Paramount is The Agency (November 30).

If you’ve asked me for a recommendation in the espionage genre in the last 10 years, then I’ve enthusiastically pitched The Bureau to you. Across five seasons this French drama about an undercover operative returned to Paris after many years in the Middle East was a gripping intelligence procedural that dived deep into personal identity. It was so good the Americans set up a remake, relocated to London. It won’t be the same show, but the key creatives genuinely inspire confidence. The adaptation is by Jez and John-Henry Butterworth (Ford v Ferrari), filmmaker Joe Wright (Darkest Hour) directs the first two episodes, and the lead role goes to Michael Fassbender (X-Men: First Class, The Killer), an actor who somehow renders icy professionalism with ferocious focus. I’m in.

Also on Paramount+: Yellowstone may be concluding, but Taylor Sheridan is just getting started. His latest series is Landman (November 18), a boom-or-bust drama set in the contemporary oil and gas boom in West Texas. Billy Bob Thornton plays Tommy Norris, a fixer for an oil company trying to stay alive while keeping the drilling on schedule. Sheridan, who was raised in Texas, will undoubtedly have strong opinions to share, some of which will be monologued by Jon Hamm (Mad Men), who plays Tommy’s boss, Monty Miller. The cast, per Sheridan’s previous series, is stacked: Demi Moore (The Substance), Michael Pena (Ant-Man) and Andy Garcia (Ocean’s Eleven) all feature.

October Highlights: Zoe Saldana and Nicole Kidman geared up for another season of the run-and-gun CIA drama Lioness, while the quirky procedural Elsbeth had a fresh batch of episodes.

* Nine is the owner of Stan and this masthead.

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