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

The latest archaeological finds are the soil-encrusted backbone of a documentary that looks hundreds of thousands of years back in time. The Neanderthals were spread right across what is now Europe, and evidence of their lives is still there below ground — it suggests that they might have been mentally and spiritually more advanced than was previously thought. But then they suffered a calamity that could bear some lessons for us today.

The story is lent gravitas by narration from Patrick Stewart.

Jack Seale

If you liked Cush Jumbo in Criminal Record on AppleTV+, be sure to check out her powerhouse performance in this drama, first shown on BritBox in 2021. A revenge thriller led by Jumbo as a woman who infiltrates the privileged but emotionally rotten family life of the man (Jared Harris) she thinks killed her young son in a hit and run, it confidently tells its winding, foreboding story at its own pace, wringing every raw but nuanced emotion out of the disturbing premise.

Billy Howle is also superb as a vulnerable police detective who turns TV cop stereotypes upside-down.

Jack Seale

The late CJ Sansom’s popular detective novels come to dark, teeming life in a dramatisation by Stephen Butchard (The Last Kingdom, Baghdad Central). Arthur Hughes takes on the role of Matthew Shardlake, seemingly one of the few men in Tudor England who is dedicated to honesty and justice, not treachery and scheming — certainly his boss Thomas Cromwell, as played by a crimson-clad, candle-lit Sean Bean, is not above some dark arts.

With scoliosis having left him in pain and largely rejected by society, Shardlake gets on with the job of catching bad guys, starting with whoever has killed one of Cromwell’s men in a remote monastery that was about to be dissolved. Shardlake goes there, accompanied by Jack Barak, a nicely contrasting role for Masters of the Air’s Anthony Boyle: this guy is dashing, confident and possibly up to no good.

Jack Seale

The split-timeline comedy breezes merrily into season three, once more following the youthful adventures of Maximo (Enrique Arrizon), an employee at a top Acapulco resort in the hopeful, colourful 1980s. It’s now 1985, and our young hero is in the throes of a romance that is soon to become public knowledge.

That typically harmless, heart-warming tale is, as ever, related in the present day by the elder Maximo (Eugenio Derbez), now a somewhat rakish Florida entrepreneur.

Jack Seale

You might say that TV’s raiding of video games has gone too far when a sidekick from Sonic the Hedgehog gets its own six-part mini-series, but this new adventure slots into a well-established Sonic universe, in which Knuckles is the most popular character. Idris Elba archly voices the superheroic echidna as he trains schlubby deputy sheriff Wade Whipple (Adam Pally) to become a warrior. That personality clash produces dumb but entertaining fun.

Listen out for Ellie Taylor (Ted Lasso) as one of the goons trying to harvest Knuckles’s superpowers.

Jack Seale

As their 40th anniversary looms and with comeback shows to rehearse for, one of America’s biggest ever bands are afforded a lavish retrospective. The group’s life story recalls how Bon Jovi were a product of the same 1970s New Jersey scene that produced Bruce Springsteen, creating a less edgy commentary on the working-class American dream, with million-selling albums following.

In his late middle age Jon Bon Jovi is, however, bracingly honest about the challenge of staying healthy enough to do the old songs justice.

Jack Seale

A Dutch political thriller with intrigue at every turn, like a naughty, pulpy Borgen. Morten Mathijsen (Peter Paul Muller) is the roguish deputy of a party with the potential to win the Netherlands’ next election. He could become a dangerously popular PM. But the women in his life — his meek, troubled wife, his wayward teen daughter, his sharp and assertive new stylist, and a young woman whose father’s death years ago is a clue to Morten’s sexy but shameful past — might bring him down. Oh, and he’s being blackmailed!

Jack Seale

“The Asunta Case” is what this real-life crime saga is known as in Spain. There, it was a notorious news story in 2013: the adopted daughter of a lawyer and a journalist went missing, then was found dead a few miles from her home. This dramatisation shows how the police (including María León as investigator Cristina Cruces) were slightly suspicious of the parents from the off, becoming more and more so as a tangle of errant behaviour came to light.

But did that mean this odd couple were child-killers? As the media swarm, the tension steadily builds.

Jack Seale

This exciting, behind-enemy-lines thriller is set in the southern Philippines and revolves around a 48-hour battle against Islamic State. Tensions run high as drone operative Sergeant JJ “Playboy” Kinney (Liam Hemsworth) and his team (played by Liam’s brother Luke Hemsworth, plus Ricky Whittle and Milo Ventimiglia) attempt to rescue an asset. When the operation goes wrong, Playboy is left stranded alone in the jungle, while Captain Eddie Grimm “Reaper” (Russell Crowe) is back at base providing air support.

William Eubank is a great action director, and the attack scenes are terrific.

Matt Glasby

What would you do? This forbidding-looking South Korean drama begins with the news that the Korean peninsula is to be wiped out by an asteroid in a matter of months. As a giant Seoul billboard ticks down the days until disaster, martial law is declared and chaos erupts, with vigilantes and cultists on the rise and escaped prisoners on the loose.

When a student is kidnapped during a protest and then killed, young middle-school teacher Se-kyung (Ahn Eun-jin) tries to do her best for the children in her care, despite them apparently having no future.

Jack Seale

Based on the Neil Gaiman comic and qualifying as part of the Sandman Universe, this drama for teens and young adults never sits still: every scene is a visually impressive feat of imagination and, while you might struggle slightly to piece it all together into a coherent narrative, it’s never dull. Edwin Payne (George Rexstrew) and Charles Rowland (Jayden Revri) are best friends — at least, they are now they’ve died, having lived several decades apart. Their ghostly vocation is to solve paranormal mysteries, with the help of a mortal psychic, Crystal (Kassius Nelson).

As demons, witches and creepy living people cross their path, the cast sell every unlikely twist convincingly.

Jack Seale

The decade-hopping anthology returns, moving from the 1950s setting of Them: Covenant to 1991, while retaining Deborah Ayorinde as its lead performer. Now she’s LAPD detective Dawn Reeve, whose new murder case involves a body so badly damaged, there is speculation that the killer cannot possibly be human.

As the killings continue without any clues emerging, the gaudiness of the period stylings adds an extra layer of discomfort to a crime thriller with a hint of True Detective, but with an overt horror-movie aesthetic.

Jack Seale

Although the title might evoke a Game of Thrones spin-off, this six- parter is instead a police drama with a slice of folklore horror from Toby Whithouse, the writer/creator of BBC Three’s Being Human. Grace (The Lazarus Project’s Anjli Mohindra) is the latest cop to tread that well- worn TV path: getting transferred to a far-flung beat following a yet-undisclosed potential transgression at her previous inner-city post.

So she disembarks onto the island of St Jory — a local place for local people — and her arrival leads to lowered conversations and raised suspicions. An eerie tension hangs heavy in this tight-knit, closed-off community, where tourists are driven away and pagan parades plod through the streets.

When an unsolved case about a missing teenager rears its head, Grace is determined to investigate. Adjoa Andoh, Mark Lewis Jones and Marc Warren add heft to the cast.

Frances Taylor

Dinosaurs now live alongside humans in this third instalment in the Jurassic World series, having been set loose in previous film Fallen Kingdom. This time, the heroes from the original Jurassic Park (Laura Dern, Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum) team up with Chris Pratt (left) and Bryce Dallas Howard to take on the shady BioSyn Genetics company. Fun nods to earlier instalments come thick and fast, a sarcastic Goldblum and a sneaky Dern steal the show, while DeWanda Wise is a great new addition as a tough pilot.

This is a mostly satisfying film for fans of the franchise. The next instalment is due in cinemas in 2025.

Emma Simmonds

A series that just about got away with its unusual concept in season one — a small American town is rocked by the arrival of a machine that issues the user with a card, on which is written a cryptic clue about the different life they might have led — doubles down on it for the second run.

Dusty (Chris O’Dowd) is making some big decisions about his future, in a show that gently asks the question of ordinary family life: is that definitely all there is?

Jack Seale

Along with the podcast Serial and the BBC Four/Netflix television series The Staircase, Andrew Jarecki’s 2015 series The Jinx helped to start a modern true-crime boom that shows no signs of slowing down. In the original programme, Jarecki investigated whether the New York real estate heir Robert Durst was responsible for the disappearance of his first wife, and the deaths of two of his friends. Based on an extensive interview with Durst himself, The Jinx delivered its answer in a stunning final episode.

Durst died in 2022, while serving time for murder, but this follow-up series finds plenty more to talk about, starting with a look back at the impact of the 2015 broadcast. That led to new witnesses coming forward and new evidence being discovered — including some material that changes what seemed previously to be a clear-cut narrative. Durst’s prison phone calls add another layer of intrigue.

Jack Seale

Mark Linfield (Planet Earth) directs and Priyanka Chopra Jonas narrates a slickly produced, feature-length documentary released to celebrate Earth Day. Created from over 1,500 days of filming, the programme follows Ambar, a tigress raising her family in the Indian jungle — a task that involves teaching and controlling naughty cubs who are vulnerable to snakes, bears and marauding male tigers.

The sheer awesomeness of an adult tiger going about their business is something to celebrate, which the programme does with enthusiasm.

Jack Seale

The rapid rise and fall of mobile-phone manufacturer BlackBerry is compellingly chronicled in this true-life drama. In mid-1990s Canada, Mike Lazaridis (Jay Baruchel) and Doug Fregin (director and co-writer Matt Johnson) are struggling to gain investment for their portable phone prototypes. When fearsome executive Jim Balsillie (Glenn Howerton) comes on board, BlackBerry is soon the toast of the tech world — but for how long?

With a tone that’s more akin to The Big Short than The Social Network, this is a cautionary tale told with a satirical edge.

Max Copeman

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