Pick of the week
The Martha Mitchell Effect
Photograph: Bettmann Archive
“It wasn’t that the president didn’t like women,” says one witness to Martha Mitchell’s story. “He didn’t like loud women.” Richard Nixon was soon to find out exactly how outspoken Mitchell could be, when she blew the whistle on his various dirty-tricks campaigns. Hot on the heels of Gaslit (StarzPlay’s fictionalised rendering of the Watergate scandal) comes this documentary portrait – and the extent of Mitchell’s unlikely heroism is once again apparent. Married to Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, she was playing a game with incredibly high stakes and no real hiding place available. “They’ll probably end up killing me,” she speculates, at one point. A story of remarkable courage.
Netflix, from Friday 17 June
***
God’s Favorite Idiot
“You have been chosen by God to help the world.” Not necessarily the kind of message you want to hear when you’re just a working stiff trying to get it on with a colleague. But Clark (Ben Falcone – who created the 16-episode series) doesn’t have much choice. This quirky comedy – which co-stars Melissa McCarthy as Clark’s love interest Amily – fancies itself as a sort of Monty Python’s Life of Brian, transposed to the banality of the modern American workplace. Can Clark juggle a new relationship and the pressures of work with averting the impending apocalypse and handling the arrival of Satan?
Netflix, from Wednesday 15 June
***
Becoming Elizabeth
Just in case you haven’t quite had your fill of royal intrigue, this series presents an origin story of the orphan Elizabeth Tudor, who went on to become one of England’s longest-reigning monarchs. Starring Alicia von Rittberg as the young Elizabeth, this eight-part drama imagines the future queen as a free-spirited but shrewd young woman with a keen head for politics and an even keener eye for power. TV has never exactly shied away from mining Britain’s deep past for melodrama but, even so, this retelling may prove to be well timed.
StarzPlay, from Sunday 12 June
***
Halftime
“I’m trying to give you something with substance … I want something real.” This documentary presents itself as an intimate, warts-and-all portrait of Jennifer Lopez, but it’s also clearly a self-produced affair, so it’s only revealing within carefully controlled parameters. J-Lo talks about her motivations, her anxieties and her longing to be taken seriously. We see her fiercely drill her dancers and tearfully gaze at her phone. It covers the period during which she performed at the Super Bowl and turned 50. And yes, there is a cameo from Ben Affleck …
Netflix, from Tuesday 14 June
***
Love, Victor
A show that has gained added intrigue in the context of the success of Netflix’s Heartstopper; Love, Victor has pursued its journey of high-school sexual self-discovery in a slightly more diffident way, but is no less touching for that. This third season is also the final one – having come out, Michael Cimino’s Victor is facing a series of complex relationship dilemmas, with his on/off relationship with Benji (George Sear) looking shaky and Rahim (Anthony Keyvan) sidling into the picture. A glossy, largely edge-free affair, but in itself that represents progress.
Disney+, from Wednesday 15 June
***
Love & Anarchy
The chemistry between Sofie (Ida Engvoll) and Max (Björn Mosten) might initially have expressed itself through office pranks. But it was never likely to end there: the first series of this oddball Swedish comedy saw a gradual escalation of the stakes – and the attraction – between the pair. As it returns for a welcome second season, it’s obvious that their urge to transgress is going to have real-life consequences. An intriguing addition to the workplace comedy canon, exploring the sterility of the office environment and the sense of unreality it can induce.
Netflix, from Thursday 16 June
***
The Summer I Turned Pretty
The first book in Jenny Han’s coming-of-age trilogy gets an adaptation and fans of the books are unlikely to be disappointed by the staging, which is all sunsets, summer balls and pool parties; idealised middle-class modern Americana to a T. Every summer, Belly (Lola Tung) and her family head to the same beach resort. Belly has always gone under the radar, but this summer the boys have finally noticed her. A basic morality tale emerges as she’s faced with a choice between two contrasting brothers.
Amazon Prime Video, from Friday 17 June
