TVNZ+’s Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams, Neon’s Funny Woman among the great shows available to stream this week

ALASKA DAILY (DISNEY+)

The Oscar-winning director and co-writer of Spotlight has returned to the newsroom – and he’s bought a two-time Academy Award-winning actor with him.

Like that true-life tale focused on The Boston Globe’s uncovering of a massive scandal involving the Catholic Church’s cover-up of child molestation, Tom McCarthy’s Alaska Daily is a testament to the power of investigative journalism and the importance of a newspaper in keeping a community informed and its leaders’ accountable.

Hilary Swank plays hard-nosed New York journalist Eileen Fitzgerald, who somewhat reluctantly has to seek a fresh start at an Anchorage newspaper after a scandal brings down her illustrious career in the Big Apple,

A kind of a cross between Sharp Objects and Northern Exposure, Alaska Daily benefits greatly from McCarthy’s ability to create colourful characters and give them something meaningful to say.

FREDDIE FLINTOFF’S FIELD OF DREAMS (TVNZ+)

This three-part, 2022 BBC series follows the former England all-rounder, current Top Gear host and pedalo enthusiast, as he attempts to create a team out of a group of eclectic teens from his Lancashire hometown of Preston.

Reminiscent of Jamie Oliver’s televised attempts to introduce cooking as a career to disadvantaged youths – in both the UK and Australia – back in the early noughties, Field of Dreams is an entertaining and absorbing watch, thanks to Flintoff’s easy charisma and self-effacing humour and the young “characters” the producers have unearthed.

Part of the joy comes from the youngsters’ pithy remarks towards and disregard for England’s national treasure Flintoff. Impressed far more by his wife Rachel’s “fitness” than his MBE, when not pointing out that his posh-bashing is a bit rich coming from a man who owns a Ferrari (“I’m really enjoying being coached by a millionaire,” one cheekily japes), they’re horrified at the proposed show’s synopses describing them as “underprivileged kids”.

READ MORE:
* Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams: TVNZ debuts Top Gear host’s delightful new cricket reality series
* Star Trek: Picard, Funny Woman, Rūrangi: Rising Lights among February’s must-see TV
* Poker Face: Knives Out’s Rian Johnson’s scripting just as sharp on new TVNZ+ show
* After The Last of Us, what will be 2023’s other must-see TV shows?

FUNNY WOMAN (NEON)

Gemma Arterton headlines this six-part adaptation of Nick Hornby’s 1960s-set 2014 novel Funny Girl. She plays Barbara Parker, a Blackpool beauty queen who decides that her true passion lies in comedy. Inspired by her idol Lucille Ball, she’s determined to make it as a sitcom star.

Arterton is a charismatic and compelling presence here, able to segue seamlessly between the tale’s lighter and darker moments with ease. Like her character, she has an ability to channel a number of voices (Barbara’s talent is inspired by constant listening to radio plays with her father since a very young age) and boasts terrific comedic timing. But she also doesn’t shy away from the moments of doubt, harrowing setbacks and traumatic encounters that (mostly) men put in her way.

The impressive ensemble also includes David Threlfall, Morwenna Banks, Tom Bateman and Rupert Everett.

HAPPY VALLEY (TVNZ+)

The hotly anticipated third and final six-part season of this multi-Bafta award-winning drama sees Sergeant Catherine Cawood (Sarah Lancashire) discover a gangland murder victim in a drained reservoir.

That sparks a chain of events that leads her straight back to Tommy Lee Royce (James Norton) – the father of her grandson, and her daughter’s rapist.

“Lancashire’s marvellous performance aside, its excitements are so much richer and deeper than those of its nearest rivals — it is a family/small town saga as much as it is a police procedural — and I adore its sense of place,” wrote The New Statesman’s Rachel Cooke.

KINDRED (DISNEY+)

Eight-part, sci-fi mini-series about aspiring writer Dana James (WeCrashed’s Mallori Johnson) who has just moved to Los Angeles to establish a life close to her only remaining family – an Aunt – when she finds herself transported back to a 19th Century plantation.

Based on the beloved 1979 novel by Octavia E. Butler.

“This gripping adaptation expands Butler’s groundbreaking exploration of America’s racist history into a profound puzzle-box thriller,” wrote Entertainment Weekly’s Kristen Baldwin.

MAYOR OF KINGSTOWN (PRIME VIDEO)

Much grittier and darker than his wildly popular Yellowstone, this feels more like Taylor Sheridan’s big-screen stories like Wind River – and in particular – Sicario. There’s also a sense of trying to evoke something akin to David Simon’s The Wire, with its focus on the interactions between those on either side of the law, but its more melodramatic moments mean it sometimes feels closer to Prison Break, or any one of Dick Wolf’s long-running police procedurals.

What there’s no debate about, is that Mayor offers a terrific showcase for the often under-rated Jeremy Renner. Nearly lost to us after a recent mishap involving his snowplough, the 52-year-old is simply superb as the under-fire elected official Mike McLusky.

It’s a role that offers him a chance to show his softer side, as well as the hard-nosed broodiness that has been his trademark in movies like The Hurt Locker and American Hustle, not to mention his recurring role as Clint “Hawkeye” Barton in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

SHRINKING (APPLE TV+)

Jason Segel joins forces with Ted Lasso co-creator Bill Lawrence and one of that show’s stars Brett Goldstein for this 10-part comedy about a grieving therapist (Segel) who starts to break the rules by telling his clients exactly what he thinks.

Ignoring his training and ethics, he finds himself making huge, tumultuous changes to people’s lives – including his own. The cast also includes Christa Miller, Jessica Williams and Harrison Ford.

Closer in style to late-noughties/early 2010s dramedies like Californication, Nurse Jackie or The Big C than Lasso, how much you enjoy the show will really depend on your love/tolerance for the hapless hero/slapstick comedy stylings of former Forgetting Sarah Marshall, The Five-Year Engagement and The Muppets star Segel.

WOMEN AT WAR (NETFLIX)

Eight-part French drama set during World War I. It’s 1914 and the destinies of four women intersect: Marguerite, a mysterious Parisian prostitute; Caroline, propelled to the head of the family factory; Agnes, Mother Superior of a requisitioned convent; and Suzanne, a feminist nurse.

“It isn’t exactly War and Peace, though it may be a bit Les Misérables, but Women at War is a comfortably bingeable watch, and has its sinews stiffened by all-round strong performances from its excellent female cast,” wrote The Arts Desk’s Adam Sweeting.