TV
The Crown (available on 4 November)
Is the world ready for a blowjob scene between the Queen and Prince Philip? On Friday, when Netflix launches its lavish royal drama in 190 countries, I guess we’ll find out. It looks lovely, ticks along nicely – and has led creator Peter Morgan to “duck” out of meeting anyone from the Palace because of its possible controversies (the aforementioned, plus the use of the c-word on the Queen’s wedding day and HRH panicking about her lack of intelligence). As splendid as it looks, and as scandalous as it may prove, it remains to be seen whether a show with an episode devoted entirely to The Great Smog of 1952 will be top watercooler talk. But Netflix usually have a hit every quarter – and Stranger Things have happened.
Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life (available 25 November)
It’s back! The American comedy drama about a mother and daughter, 16 years apart in age, who are more like best friends. They talk fast, eat crap and live in quintessential Small Town, USA. This is comfort TV with minimal cheese and maximum smarts.
Films
A Syrian Love Story (available now)
Sean McAllister’s agonising, unmissable documentary about Amer and Ragdha, a couple whose relationship falls apart as they flee the horrors of the regime in Syria.
The 13th (available now)
Ava Duvernay’s incendiary documentary traces America’s incarceration of black men back to its roots in the amendment that abolished slavery and the right to deprive citizens – deemed criminal – of their liberty. Moving from the 19th century through to the Jim Crow days and Nixon’s war on drugs, it is a persuasive argument about how the enslavement of black men is effectively perpetuated by the very law that sought to end it.
The Ivory Game (available 4 November)
Executive-produced by Leonardo DiCaprio, this documentary shows that the grisly, illegal ivory trade remains out of control – and that one of the largest mammals on Earth could vanish for good in just a few years if China’s appetite for luxury goods carved from ivory is not curbed. As one of the anti-poaching campaigners says: “One person holds in his hands the fate of elephants: the president of China.”
Capote (available 5 November)
Philip Seymour Hoffman is chillingly brilliant in this biopic of the writer and arch manipulator who, back in 1966, released the brutal work that kickstarted a whole genre of literature and made him, for a time, the most famous man in the US: In Cold Blood.
Days of Heaven (available 23 November)
Terrence Malick’s stunning American pastoral from 1978. Richard Gere and Brooke Adams star as Bill and Abby, a couple on the run who masquerade as siblings to get work as farm-hands in Texas. A slow, sumptuous masterwork.
