
COLIN FROM ACCOUNTS
- Binge
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Colin From Accounts blew up the profiles of creators and stars Harriet Dyer and Patrick Brammall, with the latter even appearing in The Devil Wears Prada 2 alongside Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep.
The real-life couple have returned for a third and final season of their romantic comedy series, which picks up three years after the season two cliffhanger.
We left off with Gordon (Brammall) - several beers deep - deciding the perfect time and place to spring a spur-of-the-moment proposal on Ashley (Dyer) was the dancefloor of her best friend's wedding. In a surprise to no one, this was a terrible call and, we learn in the first episode of season three, marked the end of their relationship.
In the intervening years Ashley moved to Warrnambool, and has been back in Sydney for six months when she runs into Gordon again for the first time. Their circumstances have changed a lot, but their chemistry is still undeniable - if only they didn't both have significant others at the moment.
The snappy and very Australian dialogue is what has always set Colin From Accounts apart, and fans are immediately treated to a heavy dose in the season three premiere.
Gordon's brewery colleagues are top value support characters, while Ashley's new boyfriend David (Thomas Cocquerel, The Gilded Age) also adds a new dynamic to the series.
If you're a fan of the series already, you'll burn through the first two episodes in no time and rue the fact that you must wait another week to continue watching - not least because you're desperate to find out if and how Gordon and Ashley find their way back to one another.
This show is a treasure, and if you've never watched, what are you waiting for? Get cracking!

THE DINK
- Apple TV
Yes, Jake 'Nick Miller' Johnson might be the lead of this silly but enjoyable Apple TV comedy, but as far as Aussies are concerned, this is Aaron Chen's film.
The popular homegrown comedian - who made his name doing stand-up and appearing on the likes of Have You Been Paying Attention and Taskmaster - is a scene-stealer in the film, absolutely killing it in what is probably his introduction to viewers around the globe.
The Dink takes washed-up former tennis prodigy Dusty Boyd (Johnson) from trying to relive his glory days by teaching kids at his dad's tennis club, to embracing what was once the enemy: pickleball.
For those unfamiliar - though you'll be all clued in after watching the film - pickleball has the same basic structure as tennis, but is played with a paddle instead of a racquet and an airy plastic ball filled with holes rather than a tennis ball. The less strenuous nature of the sport makes it popular with seniors.
When Chuck Boyd (Ed Harris), Dusty's father, is asked to add more pickleball courts to the tennis club, he decides to look into the venue's bylaws to quash the motion instead of putting it to a vote (knowing the pickleballers would win out). The club's charter allows for a duel (via tennis match) to be played to decide the outcome, with either side selecting a champion to compete.
When Dusty injures his wrist in the selection tournament, his doctor (played by Ben Stiller) prescribes pickleball as the best way to get himself fighting fit. Naturally, Dusty is resistant, but eventually grows to admire and enjoy the sport, in large part thanks to his pickleball partner, Candace (Mary Steenburgen).
Johnson is a solid lead, bringing all the grumpy charm of his most famous roll - New Girl, of course - to the sports comedy arena. He and Steenburgen share an easy chemistry and are quite watchable.
But it's Chen as Dusty's offsider and bestie PJ who has all the best lines and is responsible for most of the laugh out loud moments in the film. He's an utter delight.
While much of the comedy is silly, bordering on stupid, The Dink builds up to a truly engaging and riotous crescendo.
The film also stars tennis legends Andy Roddick and John McEnroe as themselves. If Chen's not the one who steals the film, then the trophy goes to McEnroe - he's incredibly fun to watch.

POMPEII: OUT OF TIME WITH TOM HIDDLESTON
- Disney+
Tom Hiddleston went to Pompeii when he was a teenager, and he studied classics and Latin at university. He really wants you to know that, evidently, from how often he brings those facts up in this three-episode documentary series.
Loki himself is the presenter of this look at Pompeii, the Italian city that was lost beneath the choking rubble of Mount Vesuvius in 79CE, and its people.
The series takes a rather novel approach to delivering information. Fans of historical docos would be familiar with the standard approach - a narrator lays the scene, animations or reenactments help illustrate the ancient site, and modern experts explain how they found the information through artifacts and historic record.
This doco takes a far more dramatic approach however. Hiddleston, despite not being part of the reenactment cast, does a lot of overacting to force audiences to connect emotionally with the citizens of Pompeii who perished in the volcanic eruption. He approaches the information like some sort of historical detective, with each 'new' piece of evidence (new to his narrative, not new to the world) changing his understanding of the disaster.
The series follows three documented Romans who lived at the time of the eruption; a young blacksmith's apprentice, a businesswoman and a soldier at nearby Herculaneum, which was also destroyed in the volcanic blast. Using various pieces of evidence - including information about human behaviour from a disaster psychologist - Hiddleston and the series concoct a story to explain what may have happened to each of the three individuals chosen.
For a child or student who has never heard of Pompeii before, this docuseries is probably a decent entry point into learning more. The recreations are rich and well-made, and there's a solid enough explanation of the contemporary account of the eruption from Pliny the Younger, and a bit of a look at the site as it stands today.
But if you're more interested in the archaeological side of things, the discovery and unearthing of artifacts, this series will be grating.
The most grating part is the insistence on utilising a gimmicky 'time travel' editing technique, with Hiddleston repeatedly stopping the momentum of the story to go back and reimagine his view of the city and its locals given a newly introduced piece of information. Because, he says, "at Pompeii you can travel through time".

FURIOUS
- Disney+
Elizabeth Meriwether - the writer/producer behind New Girl, The Dropout and Dying For Sex - is back with a new series, and this one is serious business.
Gone are the laughs of her previous series (even The Dropout had some humour about it); Furious is centred around the trauma of abused girls and women.
Emmy Rossum (Shameless) plays FBI Agent Alice Black, a bit of an outcast who is new to the agency after leaving her job at the NYPD. It turns out Alice had been in an abusive long-term relationship with a fellow cop (played by Jake Lacy, All Her Fault) and left the force after he put her in the hospital, and the boys' club closed ranks and shut her out.
With that kind of history, it's no surprise that Alice isn't the most warm and fluffy figure at the FBI - but what she does have is a determination to believe women who have been overlooked by her colleagues, and a drive to secure justice for victims of sexual predators and abusers.
She's barely kicked off her job at the agency when her former NYPD partner Danny Kelly (Scoot McNairy, Gone Girl, perfectly cast) reaches out to get her help on what at first seems to be a routine overdose case. But it quickly becomes obvious that the dead man - the son of a prominent figure in New York and a former judge - was murdered, and Alice believes the killer to be a woman.
This, though, is of no surprise to us viewers, as we saw said killer (played by Lola Petticrew, Say Nothing) at work.
Less about who did the crime than why'd they do it, and how can justice be served, Furious is, as the title suggests, a series bubbling with feminine rage. How come the men who purchase sex from trafficked girls are not sent to jail? Why does the fact someone engages in sex work exclude her from the right to be believed and fought for by the justice system?
Episodes are arriving weekly after an initial drop of three episodes.

ALSO STREAMING
Kevin Hart is back with another comedy film in Netflix's 72 Hours, which also stars Mason Gooding and Marcello Hernandez. He plays a 40-something-year-old who ends up at the three-day bachelor party of three 20-something friends after his is mistakenly added to their group chat. Over on HBO Max, fans of The Big Bang Theory are in for another spin-off, with sci-fi comedy Stuart Fails to Save the Universe. Kevin Sussman is the title character, reprising his role from the original series. Also on HBO Max you'll find a documentary special, Euphoria: A Look Back, celebrating the streamer's popular series which helped launch the careers of Jacob Elordi and Sydney Sweeney. Meanwhile on Paramount+ is a new season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, and on Stan is another season of The Walking Dead spin-off Dead City.

