What to watch on streaming: today's picks from Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and more

Tye Sheridan and Sean Penn star as New York paramedics in this gritty and grim drama. Sheridan plays rookie Ollie Cross, who joins the night shift with Penn’s grizzled veteran Gene Rutkovsky. Patrolling the Brooklyn borough of Brownsville, they bounce between emergency calls, each one seemingly more brutal and dangerous than the last.

Stylishly made by French film-maker Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire (Johnny Mad Dog), the film feels grungily authentic, though some will find the relentlessly bleak narrative tough to take.

James Mottram

Zack Snyder's Star Wars-lite sci-fi saga continues with this second part. Sofia Boutella returns as Kora, the war orphan with a dark secret who leads a band of rebels on a distant moon against an imperial army. It's more of the same from Snyder, who rolls out more rousing speeches (Djimon Hounsou's warrior chews plenty of futuristic furniture), explosive action sequences and slow-mo duels with weapons that look suspiciously like lightsabers.

While there are some spectacular set-pieces and undeniably beautiful shots - Kora and love interest Gunnar (Michiel Huisman) kissing at sunset - The Scargiver's derivative story means you'll simply be left yearning to rewatch Star Wars.

James Mottram

One of the most wholesome programmes on television returns for a second season of imaginative animal adventures for kids, “inspired by the mission of Dr Jane Goodall”. Jane (Ava Louise Murchison) continues to use her vivid mind and curious brain to liven up life in her ordinary apartment, with her first new quest being to reunite a lost baby panda with its mother. Once that’s sorted out, there’s a quick lesson on pandas’ real lives, and how we can better look after them.

It’s a neat way to teach older primary-schoolers about conservation and climate change.

Jack Seale

Tom Hollander makes for a formidable Truman Capote — mannered and monstrous, without tipping over into unbelievable caricature — in a corkingly gossipy drama based on real events. We hop between various timelines to tell the story of the fabled writer befriending a group of female socialites in the 1960s, only to destroy the relationship in the 1970s by transparently basing a novel on their secrets and heartbreaks.

The portrait of a bygone elite, riven with drugs, booze, betrayal and insecurity, is delicious and the cast is indulgently stellar: Diane Lane, Demi Moore, Chloë Sevigny and Naomi Watts all dial up the vicious glam.

Jack Seale

Almost no animals live in true isolation, and the natural world’s interconnectedness is the theme of a handsomely filmed documentary series, narrated by Cate Blanchett.

It travels the world looking at how the living creatures within different ecosystems rely on each other’s existence to survive — and shows that sometimes those networks spread more widely than you think. Its other main point is that almost every such system is affected by the actions of one animal in particular — us.

Jack Seale

This life-affirming romantic drama follows writer Michael Ausiello (The Big Bang Theory’s Jim Parsons) as he deals with the fallout of his partner Kit’s cancer diagnosis. After Kit (Ben Aldridge) discovers he has a rare form of the disease, he and Michael determine to make the most of their time together, with support from Kit’s parents (played by Bill Irwin and a scene-stealing Sally Field).

Director Michael Showalter nimbly avoids mawkishness in much the same way he did with The Big Sick, and the result is both tongue-in-cheek and touching.

Mark Williams

One of the most talked-about films of the past year, and the one that scooped up an incredible amount of awards, Oppenheimer, is available to stream on Sky Cinema Premiere. Now able to watch at home, our TV screens may not quite be as impressive as the IMAX format director Christopher Nolan intended us all to see it on, but the strong bones of this movie prevail in whatever its format.

Cillian Murphy delivers quite the mesmerising performance as the well-known physicist, who we follow as he works with a team to create the atomic bomb. While the film has been criticised for failing to capture the true extent of the destruction inflicted by the bomb itself, the movie remains a standout, as we see Oppenheimer rally against his own guilt and his growing political influence at the time, as well as reckoning with his legacy.

Morgan Cormack

Richard Gadd may not be a name lots of people are familiar with, but in Baby Reindeer, the comedian, actor and writer takes centre stage as Donny to tell us the very real story of his own stalking experience. Without giving too much away, the series does of course delve into the stalking, but it's so much more than that – instead, the show takes us on a journey through Gadd's burgeoning comedy career, the paths he took to get to where he is and the abuse he endured at the start of it.

Far from an easy watch, this dark series doesn't shy away from pivotal self-reflection as we get a window into Gadd's trauma, his sexuality and dating life. Jessica Gunning is especially captivating (and equally quite terrifying) as Donny's stalker, Martha, who isn't your archetypal villain.

Morgan Cormack

Westworld co-creator Jonathan Nolan is on directing duties for this dramatisation of a popular video-game franchise, which arrives with a bold take on a post-apocalyptic Earth. Ella Purnell is Lucy, a young woman who has grown up in a “Vault” — an underground society created to help humanity survive nuclear armageddon.

When she emerges two centuries after the end of the world, she discovers the people and the fragmented society that exist on the surface. This prompts a retro-futuristic romp with everything from bounty-hunters and full-on warfare to killer mutant sea creatures. The visuals are riotously impressive.

Jack Seale

A mystery thriller set in a quiet town in the Alps? Oh, Anthracite is practically screaming out to be the kind of show that will leave you with chills and a lot of questions. With the setting lending itself well to the kind of foreign language series that do pulsating stories so well, this new Netflix release combines secrets, cults and murder for one multi-layered watch.

When a girl is found killed following the rituals of a strange community, panic rightfully ensues. Does it have ties to the mass suicide of a cult 30 years prior? Or is it perhaps linked to the cold case of a reporter? As we follow the reporter's computer whizz of a daughter, she endeavours to find out what happened to her father - but will uncover so much more in the process.

Morgan Cormack

In this sweet, if slow, romantic drama, grieving Harriet (Lucy Boynton) discovers that she can visit her dead boyfriend Max (David Corenswet) in the past by listening to a song from their time together. While obsessing over finding the specific song that might help her to save him, Harriet is also conflicted over her feelings for David (Justin H Min), a man from her group counselling sessions.

The film’s exploration of grief is rather surface level, but writer/ director Ned Benson uses the time-travel elements well, and Min is hugely likeable.

Jayne Nelson

If you’re aged 60-plus and American, the title of this new animated sitcom will spark some memories: it’s a reboot of a hit live-action comedy from the 1970s, which at the time broke new ground by being the first sitcom in the classic two-parent family set-up to feature black lead characters.

Three generations on, the Evans clan still live in Apartment 17C, but the animated format allows for greater flights of fancy, the social commentary hits harder and the jokes have some of the saltiness of Family Guy — the creator of that show, Seth MacFarlane, is an executive producer.

Jack Seale

Michael Douglas plays Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, in a mini-series with lofty ideals. In 1776, the Revolutionary War is going badly, so Franklin takes a gamble: he and his bright teenaged grandson Temple (Noah Jupe) decamp to Paris to ask France for help, an ambition that prompts a delicate, extended diplomatic chess game, with court rules to learn and backstabbers to outmanoeuvre.

Can Franklin’s wiles and charm win? Yes, but can the show stay on the right side of the line between lightly witty and slightly boring? In the early episodes: non.

Jack Seale

A case that shocked Canada in 2010 is recalled in this feature-length true-crime documentary. Police receive an emergency call from Jennifer Pan, a young Vietnamese-Canadian woman who lives with her parents and has suffered a lethal home invasion: gunmen have entered the house, killed her mother and left her father seriously wounded.

As the investigation goes on, however, secrets about Pan’s past, and the fact that her father is not dead, allow the even darker real story to be uncovered.

Jack Seale

It may feel very soon for Netflix to have produced this dramatisation of the events that led to the 2019 Newsnight interview, but upon its release it has immediately climbed to the top of the Netflix charts, evidently gripping viewers across the country and the world.

The drama film features some stellar performances from Billie Piper and Keeley Hawes, while Gillian Anderson and Rufus Sewell impressively transform into Emily Maitlis and Prince Andrew respectively. It might not get that far under the surface of the events it's re-creating, but it's still a well-paced and authentic take on journalistic procedure and the stresses of the newsroom environment.

James Hibbs

Private investigator John Sugar (Colin Farrell) feels like a man out of time. His beat may be contemporary Los Angeles, but he very much draws on that mythic figure of hardboiled detective stories, Philip Marlowe. Black-and-white fragments from Humphrey Bogart movies flash through Sugar’s mind, while world-weary voiceover narration settles like cigarette smoke from a bygone era over the 21st-century action.

Why this stylistic device has been employed isn’t yet clear, but it’s a mystery that’s as diverting as the one that Sugar’s employed to solve — that of the granddaughter of a Hollywood mogul who has gone missing.

David Brown

This third run of the teen spy drama (based on Anthony Horowitz’s novels) will be its last, which is a shame — it’s been an entertaining take on a familiar genre, and this series ups the ante considerably. Reluctant underage-nt Alex (Otto Farrant) investigates an evil plot cooked up by a friendly-sounding organisation called Scorpia, who may hold secrets about his long-dead parents.

The Bridge’s Sofia Helin joins stalwarts Vicky McClure and Stephen Dillane. Expect stunts, shoot-outs and adolescent angst.

Huw Fullerton

For as long as he can remember, teenager Archie (Heartstopper's Sebastian Croft) has been madly in love with his best friend, Amelia (Bridgerton's Charithra Chandran). Just as he makes the decision to confess his feelings, she falls head-over-heels for the new boy in class, Californian heartthrob Billy Walsh (Cobra Kai's Tanner Buchanan). In a jealous tailspin, Archie tries to scupper their growing romance, including using a disguise to offer Amelia terrible dating advice.

Yes, this is a tired old trope and no, there's nothing new here to elevate it beyond the familiar.

Jayne Nelson

Andrew Scott is a vessel of distilled venom and rage in this handsome new dramatisation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr Ripley. The feeling that the anti-hero, Tom Ripley, is a rootless demon with nothing to lose comes through strongly when we meet him, trying and failing to earn a living as a mail fraudster in a 1960s Manhattan made to look lonely, quiet and cold.

When he is unexpectedly hired to track down a rich man’s errant son (Johnny Flynn) in coastal Italy, a new life begins for Tom as a murderous conman. Scott is superb but the star is writer/director Steven Zaillian (The Night Of), who shoots in black and white and keeps finding unexpected camera angles to ensure that we never feel safe.

Jack Seale

While the premise of The Regime alone may have you believing that this is quite the political drama, this new six-part series is more comedy than anything, as we dive headfirst into the heady world of a fictional European state.

Academy Award winner Kate Winslet turns her hand at crafting our protagonist Chancellor Elena Vernham, who turns to soldier Herbert Zubak (Matthias Schoenaerts) as her dystopian regime begins to unravel. While the tone and style of the series may not win everyone over, Winslet is a key reason to tune in, as she once again embodies a unique role – even if it doesn't quite deliver the kind of gut punch that you'd expect from a series about politics.

Morgan Cormack

New docuseries Files of the Unexplained is now available to stream on Netflix, with the episodes investigating a series of perplexing phenomena. While later episodes focus on bizarre disappearances and chilling cold cases among other stories, the first tells the story surrounding the Pascagoula Abduction.

Calvin Parker was one of two men to have reported that they were abducted by a UFO while out fishing off a pier on the Pascagoula River in Mississippi on the evening of 11th October 1973. The pair claimed they were abducted by an oval-shaped spaceship with flashing blue lights - they were "conscious but paralysed" when three "robotic creatures" with wrinkled skin and "hands shaped like mittens" examined them on board the ship before returning them. The men reported the encounter to officials at Keesler Air Force Base, and later the Jackson County Sheriff’s Office, where they passed lie detector tests.

James Hibbs

Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight has returned to his Birmingham roots once more for this new drama, which is set in the city during the 1980s, during the era of ska and two-tone music. It follows Dante, an aspiring poet who decides to form a band and put his words to music, while his family are also caught up in the dangerous political environment at the time.

Its blend of elements, themes and storylines might not suit everyone, but the series is earthy and authentic, with some impressive performances and a soundtrack to die for. Knight's projects have always got style and This Town is no different, but there is also an emotional core running through it which makes it worth checking out.

James Hibbs

A reliable case-of-the-week show that was soon recommissioned following its February debut in the States. Justin Hartley, formerly of This Is Us, is Colter Shaw, a tough, enigmatic, sometimes shirtless loner who lives in a cool Airstream caravan and is a “tracker” for hire — in other words, he finds missing people.

With a team behind him including a tech whizz and a sexy lawyer, a lot of popular-drama boxes are shamelessly but very effectively ticked. Plus, someone is tracking the tracker...

Jack Seale