The Unusual Suspects
A witty heist drama, The Unusual Suspects stars Aina Dumlao (Sanzaru, Ballers, MacGyver), AACTA award-winner Miranda Otto (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, Homeland, The Lord of the Rings trilogy) and Michelle Vergara Moore (Condor, The Time of Our Lives). The heist drama is as much about relationships and friendship as it is about a missing $16 million necklace. “The Unusual Suspects is unlike anything I’ve ever seen before. It’s a crazy ride with lots of twists and turns but, at the heart of it, it’s about female friendship. Underneath the wrapper of a crazy heist, it’s a story about empathy and finding common ground,” says Dumlao. Filmed in Sydney, the series was produced by the award-winning team behind the much-loved, Oscar-nominated Lion.
Find out more about the series . See The Unusual Suspects Thursdays at 8:30pm on SBS. The full series is also now . (Also available with subtitles in six languages.)
Red Light
Belgium turns out some very good drama. If you’re a fan of , its star, Maaike Neuville, is also a lead in brand new series, Red Light, alongside Halina Reijn and Game of Thrones’ Carice van Houten. The three women’s lives intersect when a man with whom they have very different relationships goes missing – Sylvia is a sex worker, his wife Esther is a well-known opera soprano who was unaware of his dalliances in the Red Light District, and Evi is the cop investigating. This intelligent, edgy drama, which travels between Antwerp and Amsterdam’s underworlds, is in Flemish.
Thin Ice
To add to your fix of Nordic Noir comes new series, Thin Ice. Elsa Engström (Lena Endre; Kingsman: The Golden Circle, ), former environmental activist and now Sweden’s foreign minister, arrives in Greenland to head a summit where she hopes to convince the Arctic Council to sign a treaty banning oil drilling in the region. But her plans are quickly derailed. A Swedish oil research vessel is attacked and its crew kidnapped, bringing intelligence officer Liv Hermanson (Bianca Kronlöf; Underdog) to the small village of Tasiilaq to investigate. There, she discovers rising tensions. Phone and internet connections to the town have been cut, and witnesses are being killed, all, it seems, to prevent the treaty from being signed. Featuring Swedish and Danish languages, this series boasts a brilliant cast including Alexander Karim (, ), Iben Dorner, Angunnguaq Larsen, Nicolas Bro (), Nukâka Coster-Waldau (), and Bianca Kronlöf (Underdog) as Liv.
Cheyenne & Lola
Two women who appear to have little in common come together in this French drama series created by Spiral writer Virginie Brac. Cheyenne (Belgium-born actress and singer Veerle Baetens) has recently been released from prison and now works as a cleaner and tattoo artist, and is trying to stay away from her criminal past. Lola (French-Canadian actress Charlotte Le Bon) is a ruthless Parisian who has just arrived in the north of France to move in with her lover. When things go badly wrong, Cheyenne and Lola form an unlikely duo.
Derby Girl
In this French comedy, Chloé Jouannet (, My Summer in Provence) stars as a 25-year-old former ice-skating star with a massive ego. Determined to become the greatest roller-derby champion of all time, she unwittingly joins one of France’s worst teams, the Cannibal Unicorns.
For Life
From Norway, procedural crime drama For Life focuses on hardened National Crime Service investigator, Victoria Woll (Tone Mostraum). The series follows Victoria across two different timelines: in the present, where she’s busy solving cases and putting away criminals, and 20 years into the future, where she herself is imprisoned. Each episode presents a present-day standalone case and intermittently reveals pieces of the puzzle to make sense of her future. Less dark than most Nordic Noir, this script from Emmy Award-winning writer Gjermund S. Eriken (Mammon) sparkles with wit and quick retorts.
The Handmaid’s Tale
It’s been a long wait, but worth it, as The Handmaid’s Tale season 4 is finally here. SO. MUCH. has happened to June (the brilliant Elisabeth Moss, who also makes her directorial debut on three eps of the new season). If you haven’t plunged into the new adventures of June et al. already, there’s a Handmaid’s Tale refresher to get you ready for season 4 . You can catch new episodes of season 4 on SBS and SBS On Demand (find links to the latest episodes, plus latest show news and more on the Handmaid’s Tale program page ) and then join the hosts of the as they talk it all over after every episode. You can also watch stars of the show discussing each episode on .
Watch The Handmaid’s Tale weekly at 9.30pm Thursdays on SBS. (The final episode of season 4 airs Thursday 17 June.) New episodes will be available to stream weekly .
Petra
Based on the bestselling novels of Alicia Giménez Bartlett and from the production company behind and Gomorrah, this crime drama centres aroundPetra Delicato (Paola Cortellesi), a solitary detective who’s shifted from her desk job in the archive department onto the front line of Genoa’s criminal investigation squad. Paired up with old-school policeman Antonio Monte (Andrea Pennacchi), Petra finds herself catapulted into a series of challenging cases.
The Killing
This innovative Danish thriller from creator Søren Sveistrup, and which first aired back in 2007 sparking a little thing we now call Nordic Noir, is back! Homicide detective Sarah Lund (Sofie Gråbøl) has called it quits on her career, ready to up sticks for Sweden when a horrific murder draws her back into the fold. With fellow detective Jan Meyer (Søren Malling), Lund must solve this case. As winter rolls into Copenhagen, the grief of the parents of the murdered young woman seems ever more impenetrable. This gripping series is a must-watch for fans of crime drama.
The Bridge
Another Nordic Noir led by a complex and intriguing female lead, is the cross-country thriller The Bridge. Season 1 begins when a woman is found murdered in the middle of the Øresund Bridge – right on the border between Sweden and Denmark. What looks at first to be one murder, however, turns out to be two. The body has been cut off at the waist and joined together with another – half belongs to a Swedish politician and the other to a Danish sex worker. Inspectors from both countries join together in a desperate search for the killer. With so many twists and turns, this series will keep you guessing, but what will keep you hooked is the incredible character of investigator Saga Norén portrayed by Sofia Helin. This series is so popular it’s been remade four times (, , Russia/Estonia and Malaysia/Singapore) and inspired the German/Austrian series Pagan Peak.
Miss S
Following the global success of Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries comes Miss S, the exciting Chinese adaptation. Miss Su Wen Li (Ma Yili) returns to Shanghai having been invited to a dinner party by her boss. However, when her boss’s husband goes missing and is discovered dead, Miss S launches her investigation into his death. The witty socialite forms an unlikely detective duo with the serious inspector Luo Quiheng; the pair go on to tackle more cases while Miss S also looks for clues to the disappearance of her sister 10 years ago.
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Miss S vs Miss F
On The Ropes
This four-part drama series follows Iraqi-Australian Amirah Al Amir (Nicole Chamoun, also seen in SBS original drama ) who has idolised her boxing world champion father Sami her entire life. Desperate to become an elite boxing trainer, Amirah must fight not only the patriarchal boxing world but her own family and community to achieve her dream.
On the Ropes is (also available with and subtitles).
Why Women Kill
This dark comedy from Marc Cherry, the creator of Desperate Housewives is led by Ginnifer Goodwin, Lucy Liu and Kirby Howell-Baptiste. They play three women across three different decades, who all live in the same house in Pasadena, California. We meet Beth Ann Stanton (Ginnifer Goodwin) in 1963, Simone Grove (Lucy Liu), onto her third marriage in 1984, and Taylor Harding (Kirby Howell-Baptiste), who’s in an open marriage in 2019. Each era is represented with exceptional colour, design and style, there are twists and turns aplenty and wonderful performances from the cast. But the main question is, do they get away with murder?
The Hot Zone
Recounting the true story of a potentially lethal Ebola outbreak in the USA in 1989, and based on a best-selling book, The Hot Zone features Julianna Margulies (The Good Wife) as Dr Nancy Jaax, a researcher with the United States Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases. When a strange new disease breaks out among a batch of research monkeys, Jaax’s life could be on the line as she and her colleagues battle to stop the virus spreading to the human population.
The Hunting
Intense and compelling, The Hunting follows four teenagers, their parents and their teachers as they deal with the fallout from a school sexting scandal. The critically acclaimed drama series boasts a strong cast, including Asher Keddie as the mother of a teenager at the centre of the drama. The Guardian the four-part series “an electrically uncomfortable sexual minefield navigated with nuance”. The Hunting is not always easy viewing, but worth every minute.
Stella Blómkvist
Poldark’s Heida Reed is Stella Blómkvist in this crime drama from Iceland. Stella is the kind of lawyer who takes rules and smashes them, or uses them to smash her opponents. As well as being smart and ruthless, she’s also flexible with morals and her sexuality, with a taste for easy money and fine whiskey. When the prime minister’s assistant is murdered, it appears to be an open-and-shut case, but the deeper she goes, the murkier the details become, leading Stella into a maze of corruption at the heart of government itself. A thrilling ride, Reed shines in this sexy neo-Noir series.
