Streaming

So, the new – and supposedly final – season of Stranger Things has arrived in Netflix, just in time for Thanksgiving. Expectations have been through the roof that this installment will not be a turkey, but the good (stranger?) thing about the series so far is that it has maintained a remarkably high level of quality since it began in 2016. This is by no means a given for an Eighties-inflected fantasy show that is so devoted (the cynics might and have said slavishly) to all things that Steven Spielberg produced in that decade that the bearded one might have sued for plagiarism, were it not for the fact that the homage remains an affectionate and heartfelt, rather than cynical, one.

When Bryan Cranston staggered on-screen in the opening scene of Breaking Bad in 2008, stumbling out of a crashed RV dressed only in his underpants, and addressed the camera with, “My name is Walter Hartwell White…to all law enforcement entities, this is not an admission of guilt,” he immediately changed perceptions of who he was as an actor. Previously, he was best known for being the goofy dad in Malcolm in the Middle, and despite some effective straight performances, most thought of him as a comedic performer, rather than the star of what became the most talked-about crime drama series since The Wire. Jason Bateman would, one presumes, like to follow Cranston’s lead.

Making a spin-off of a spin-off is the trickiest task on television, not least because it assumes that the audience is sufficiently fond of the original and the reinvention alike to be happy to go steady with the third round, too. In all fairness, the new workplace-themed sitcom (although on the evidence of this first season, comedy-drama is probably a more accurate designation) The Paper is only a callback to the US The Office, in that its premise is that the same documentary crew that captured the bewildering banality of life at Dunder Mifflin has headed to Toledo, Ohio, there to follow the travails of a once-proud, now-flailing newspaper, the Toledo Truth-Teller.

On the face of it, Beth seemed that most old-fashioned of TV genres: the single play. In fact, Monday’s programme was the complete version of a three-parter made for YouTube and excitedly announced as Channel 4’s first-ever digital commission. A less excited interpretation, however, might be that it was Channel 4’s first sign of surrender to the hostile forces of streaming now threatening all of Britain’s terrestrial networks. Either way, it was a peculiar watch that, over the course of its 36 minutes, felt less like a fully fledged drama than notes towards one. In a nervous bid to ensure YouTube viewers were gripped before they could search for something else, it began with a good-looking couple having sex. But not for long.

After a relatively quiet few weeks at the US box office, now that the Barbenheimer phenomenon has finally receded from view, it has fallen to another all-conquering icon to drag audiences back to theaters in their millions. Yes, Taylor Swift is no longer content with conquering stadia, but has now managed to establish herself as an unparalleled draw for the big screen as well, with Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour opening in American cinemas. With a first weekend gross of $97 million, it will either be the highest October launch since Joker in 2019, or even surpass it. Not bad for something made on a budget of no more than $20 million, self-produced by Swift herself and bypassing studios to be distributed directly to theaters.

Screen adaptations of Agatha Christie mysteries never go out of style. The problem is that they're so often concerned with literal fidelity that they get bogged down in self-seriousness, so desperate to “update” everything that they veer into the ludicrous. With 2019's Knives Out, Rian Johnson successfully updated the Christie-style whodunit because he had a deep knowledge of its formula and he played it with a pitch-perfect, kooky sensibility. For Knives Out’s sequel, the newly released Glass Onion, Johnson does what you should do when Netflix gives you buckets of money to make a whodunit. There are expensive locales and production design, a bevy of great character actors and a twistier murder plot.

Blockbuster is a single-cam sitcom about the last Blockbuster (located inside a strip mall in Michigan). The set is dressed in authentic signage, fluorescent lights, blue walls and an oddly prophetic Howard the Duck poster. The employees have real Blockbuster name tags and uniforms (the producer, John Fox, acquired the rights and handed it over to established showrunner Vanessa Ramos: I have the rights to Blockbuster. Would you like to develop a workplace?). Every episode is packed with movie references and checkout-counter humor. The transitions between scenes are scored to hip-hop beats that sound like something you’d hear on Nickelodeon in the Nineties. You’re inside a Blockbuster for the first time since Carol Danvers fell through its roof in Captain Marvel.

The studio pitch for Hulu’s new direct-to-streaming action thriller The Princess probably went something like this: “What if we crossed The Princess Bride with The Raid: Redemption?” Honestly, though, that logline makes the film sound better than it is. The Princess is a dizzying, hyperviolent spectacle that blends nonstop combat with a decidedly progressive moral vision, resulting in an eminently GIF-able — but emotionally sterile — finished product. The eponymous Princess (Joey King, whose breakout role was Beverly Cleary’s Ramona Quimby), who’s never given a proper name, inhabits a quasi-fantastical European kingdom devoid of magic or monsters on the model of The Princess Diaries’ Genovia.