Kate Beckinsale is a woman on a half-baked quest for surly redemption in this intriguing new dark comedy-drama. She’s Beth Burgess, a Colorado newspaper journalist who’s an award winner one minute and a pariah the next when it’s alleged that she made up a quote for a story.

Reduced to working for a vacuous clickbait outlet and blindsided by her park-ranger husband’s sudden desire to move to the boondocks of Wyoming, she needs to get her mojo back. Then she gets a letter from Toni Plimpton (electrifying newcomer Jules Latimer), a black woman who has been jailed for life for the murder of her abusive white husband but who claims she didn’t do it.

Series creator Rebecca Addelman (New Girl) is more than happy to go a bit silly – Beth keeps bluffing her way back into the newspaper office to play spiteful pranks on her old editor. But there’s an authenticity to Beth’s resentment and disorganisation, and especially to Toni’s righteous rage at her treatment in prison, and her scepticism about potential white saviours – of whom she’s auditioning more than one.

Queenpins
Paramount+

Kristen Bell stars in this thoroughly enjoyable comedy crime caper set in the wild world of extreme couponing. Broke and addicted to the high of using discount coupons to save money at the supermarket, Arizona woman Connie (Bell) and pal JoJo (Kirby Howell-Baptiste) start selling stolen and counterfeit coupons online. They make a fortune, make bizarre attempts to launder it, and attract the attention of odd-couple investigators (Paul Walter Hauser and Vince Vaughn). Lightweight fun very loosely based on a true story.

Chicago Party Aunt
Netflix

The alcohol-fuelled id of the middle-aged woman is a wondrous thing to behold. And for Chicago hairdresser Diane Dunbrowski (Lauren Ash, aka Dina from Superstore) not even her husband walking out is going to stop the party. She gets a new roomie in the form of her nephew, who is just starting out in the world and is a naive receptacle for worldly wisdom on things like why the men you pick up in bars are like the cocaine you pick up in bars.

Fear the Walking Dead
Binge, new season from Monday

Radioactive zombies! A nuclear apocalypse sure is one way to liven up a zombie apocalypse that has been dragging on for a decade now. But for Victor Strand (Colman Domingo) things are pretty chill. He’s strutting around in vintage military cosplay as dictator of a community that has its own outdoor veggie garden (because all the fallout blew the other way). When a stranger named Will (Gus Halper) blows in from the wasteland Strand senses a chance to find Alicia again. The pot boils.

Lego Star Wars Terrifying Tales
Disney+

Does Darth Vader take a big yellow rubber ducky in the bathtub? That’s heavily implied in this goofy Halloween special. In any case, Poe Dameron (from the new Star Wars movies) and soccer-ball droid BB-8 land on a remote planet where Jabba the Hutt’s property-developer cousin is doing up Vader’s old castle. The place’s creepy caretaker tells spooky stories, one of them a parody of both The Monkey’s Paw and the first Star Wars movie that has Luke Skywalker joining the baddies. Mildly amusing.

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