Month: February 2025

I am so over superheroes. I’m done with universes and origin stories and mythologies and I’m most definitely done with movies that require a viewing of all previous fourteen movies to even comprehend the first ten minutes of the fifteenth. Done.

Superhero movies, with all of their complicated and intertwining stories and timelines, multi-dimensional, galaxy-jumping characters and eye-popping special effects, are partly to blame for the near-total disappearance of the small, intimate movies that don’t rely on CGI or portal-jumping pandemonium to hold your attention. Remember stories about real people, real problems and real relationships in THIS world?

Well, there may not be a way to put the superhero genie back into the bottle, and there may never be a way to make small, personal stories box office gold again, but showrunner and writer Emma Moran did find a way to mine the best of both worlds for her series Extraordinary (2023-2024), available on Disney+ and Hulu, and it’s a perfect formula.

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I love a good crime drama series. Shows like Breaking Bad, Narcos, Ozark, The Wire, Sopranos, Fargo, and, of course, Law & Order all have a special place in my heart and will always be among my favorites. I’m always looking for shows that offer a new dimension or a different perspective from anything I’ve seen before but still give me that same adrenaline rush, that same edge-of-my-seat, pit in my stomach feeling, that same dramatic pull and gripping storylines, and boy, did I stumble across an unheralded gem that gave me all of that and more.

ZeroZeroZero, a series from 2020 and available on Prime Video, is a sprawling epic of a mini-series, told over eight episodes, that focuses on the three legs of the cocaine trade: the buyers, the sellers and the brokers. The story is played out as we watch one massive shipment of cocaine originate in Mexico and travel by sea to its destination in Italy, and we see all the players involved in the shipment, as their individual storylines eventually come together.

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The true beauty of streaming, besides the seemingly endless abyss of content that it offers, is the depth and breadth of its content. First it was cable TV that extended the limitations of what we could watch on TV. Then came pay TV. Now, with streaming, content creators have been allowed to explore any genre, travel any realm, break from any traditional storytelling format. Gone are the days when shows were limited to the half-hour sitcom or the one-hour drama all in the same familiar format. Now, any show can be anything to anyone, each show with the same chance of being a hit with a huge following or finding a cult following with a niche audience.

When I watched Baby Reindeer on Netflix last year, I felt like I was watching something I would or could have never seen on mainstream television ten years ago. It was something so bold, so different, so fascinating and disturbing, which is probably why it became so culturally engaging. I literally couldn’t stop watching.

I felt the same with another show I just stumbled upon, called Such Brave Girls, which can be found on Hulu. This show will not find an audience the way Baby Reindeer did, that’s for sure, but it most definitely is a show I would never have found on mainstream television twenty years ago, probably not even ten or five years ago.

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There’s something about discovering these Australian shows. First it was Mr. Inbetween, which was my inaugural “YOUR WEEKLY BINGE” recommendation, a dark but deeply engaging show that I just couldn’t believe the whole world wasn’t talking about, and then came Colin from Accounts, another under-the-radar Aussie import, a comedy that I fell in love with head over heels, as did everyone I suggested it to. These shows are the kinds of shows I created this feature for: hidden gems that nobody is talking about, nobody is awarding, no publicist is pushing, but are so much better than most of what we are watching. I feel it is my honor—nay, my duty—to find as many of these as possible for you, my loyal reader, so you too can discover these rare gifts that lay beneath the surface of your television landscape. They are there…you just need to know where to look.

And I’m so happy to say I’ve found another Australian miracle. It’s called Fisk, and it’s on Netflix. There are only two seasons currently available on Netflix, even though the third season just dropped in Australia and the UK, but those two seasons are tasty enough. And knowing that a third season is indubitably coming is beyond exciting.

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