Do 4, 8, 15, 15, 23, and 42 ring a bell? They’re the numbers that occurred with menacing regularity throughout Lost, the labyrinthine science-fiction mystery that some of us – OK, me! – spent far too long puzzling over. The convoluted series was a huge hit in the pre-streaming era, airing between 2004 and 2010, and now it’s getting its Netflix moment. All 121 episodes of the show go up on August 15. Welcome back, smoke monster.

Lost’s return had me wondering which shows from today will be able to make a splash of sorts 20 years from now. Series such as Succession and The Bear will always be deeply appreciated, but what successful contemporary programs will be ripe for genuine rediscovery? Impromptu guesses would be Apple TV’s Severance (new season confirmed for January 17) and Stan’s underrated Made for Love. Anyone who thought I was going to say Netflix’s Dark has been a faithful reader – as ever, I was tempted to plug it.

Will any new series from this August have such a lengthy second life? It’s impossible to know, but there are certainly some promising offerings. Highlights for the month include a new Australian policing drama (Stan’s Critical Incident) and Jeff Goldblum playing the ultimate deity (Netflix’s KAOS). Your watchlist should be longer by the time you finish reading this.

As ever, feel free to send us an email and let us know what is your current show of choice, or the streaming platform that’s getting the majority of your viewing hours. Twenty years is important, but the next 30 days of watching also matters a great deal.

Netflix

My top Netflix recommendation is KAOS (August 29).

I’m in. Who better to play Zeus, a disgruntled king of the ancient gods starting to think the humans who stopped worshipping him and his kind need to be punished, than Jeff Goldblum? The idiosyncratic actor has been having the time of his life these past few years in everything from Jurassic World movies to Wes Anderson flicks, and he’s the perfect fulcrum for this wild-looking black comedy that features metaphysical massacres and insubordinate deities. The creator is Charlie Covell – who went to some strange places on their last Netflix series, The End of the F--king World – with a new story involving a trio of humans trying to save humanity from Zeus and his celestial elite. Janet McTeer (Ozark), Cliff Curtis (Swift Street), and David Thewlis (Naked) play fellow gods.

Also on Netflix: Netflix’s campaign to offer up Friday night movies with familiar stars and familiar genres continues with The Union (August 16), an action-comedy starring Mark Wahlberg and Halle Berry. Wahlberg plays Mike, a New Jersey construction worker who is unexpectedly visited by Roxanne, Berry’s long-gone high school sweetheart. Roxanne kidnaps Doug and takes him to London, revealing that she’s a spy, and he’s now her unimpeachable assistant on a secret mission. Bond, Bourne and beyond ensue. I could point out that the screenwriters have pedigree – David Guggenheim wrote Safe House, Joe Barton Giri/Haji – but this is a matter of stunts, quips and hopefully some chemistry between the leads.

July highlights: Gymnastics documentary Simone Biles: Rising offered Olympics insight; Supacell offered a fresh take on the superpowered genre; Dirty Pop: The Boy Band Scam showed the sordid underpinnings of fame; plus new movies from Eddie Murphy (Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F) and Nicole Kidman (A Family Affair).

Apple TV+

My top Apple TV+ recommendation is Bad Monkey (August 14).

The many Florida-set crime novels of Carl Hiaasen have a distinct frequency: lean prose, wise-guy dialogue and bemusement at the unscrupulous and often idiotic locals. However, the one film adaptation – 1996’s Striptease, starring Demi Moore – was a bomb. Scrubs and Ted Lasso co-creator Bill Lawrence takes his shot with this 10-part series, which is based on a 2013 book and stars Vince Vaughn as Andrew Yancy, a Florida Keys cop whose nose for trouble already has him suspended when he gets interested in a severed arm reeled in by a tourist. Moving between Florida and the Bahamas, this is a laconic black comedy that gives Vaughn a leading-man role suited to his twitchy personality. Co-stars include Rob Delaney (Catastrophe), playing darker than normal, and Jodie Turner-Smith (The Acolyte).

Also on Apple TV+: Matt Damon’s long association with the Affleck family sees him switching from Ben to Casey as a co-star for The Instigators (August 9), a heist comedy about Damon’s desperate father, Rory, and Affleck’s career criminal, Cobby, who pull a job together that goes so wrong that they have to kidnap Rory’s therapist, Donna (Hong Chau, The Whale), so he can keep it together while they’re pursued by both cops and the vengeful underworld. The two leads share a chalk-and-cheese banter, while the movie’s director is the never-sedate Doug Liman, fresh from putting a shirtless Jake Gyllenhaal to work in Amazon Prime’s Road House remake.

July highlights: In near-future Japan, a grieving widow and a household robot try to solve a mystery in the blackly comic Sunny; Natalie Portman brought star power to the period drama Lady in the Lake; and the finale of Presumed Innocent attempted a triple twist.

Binge

My top Binge recommendation is Mr Throwback (August 8).

Comic actor Adam Pally must be drawn to unconventional co-stars. Having just featured in the Sonic the Hedgehog spin-off Knuckles, in which he worked with an alien echidna that was digitally generated in post-production, the Happy Endings star is now headlining this mockumentary about a down-on-his-luck memorabilia dealer who is reunited with his high-school best friend and former teammate, American professional basketball icon Steph Curry. The NBA champion, currently at the Olympics with the American team, plays a fictionalised version of himself who is the biggest booster of Pally’s wildly flawed Danny Grossman. With a documentary crew already following Curry around, mayhem ensues as professional sports meets unprofessional behaviour. Curry, a low-key superstar, has done little more than commercials. Can he be funny? The six-part series might depend on it.

Also on Binge: It’s been a notable 12 months for deeply idiosyncratic HBO documentaries. The ranks of the truth-is-stranger-than-fiction American stories include Telemarketers and Ren Faire, with Chimp Crazy (August 19) the latest addition. It’s the story of Missouri animal broker Tonia Haddix, whose love for her chimpanzee, Tonka, was so strong that she fought authorities and animal rights groups. Adding to the chaos: Tonka was a former Hollywood star, having appeared in late ’90s movies such as George of the Jungle and Buddy. Did Buddy co-star Alan Cumming get involved in the case? He surely did. The director trying to make sense of this is Eric Goode, who got plenty of experience on Tiger King.

Here’s an unexpected half-hour-long treat. Debuting to favourable reviews at the Cannes Film Festival last year, Strange Way of Life (August 1) is a queer western from Pedro Almodovar, one of the great arthouse filmmakers of the past 50 years. The Spanish director, whose acclaimed films include Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! and All About My Mother, shot the English-language short in Spain, with the stellar pairing of Ethan Hawke (First Reformed) and Pedro Pascal (The Last of Us) as former gunslingers and secret lovers who are reunited under difficult circumstances after 25 years apart. Westerns have long had erotic undercurrents, and Almodovar is the perfect filmmaker to foreground them.

July highlights: Season two of House of the Dragon got hot and heavy (that’s a dragon reference), while the Australian courtroom drama The Twelve also returned.

Stan*

My top Stan recommendation is Critical Incident (August 12).

Stan adds to its growing catalogue of Australian dramas with this contemporary thriller, set in Sydney’s western suburbs, which tracks the bitter, untenable ramifications from the intersection of police officer Zilifcar ‘Zil’ Ahmed (Akshaye Khanna) and a young woman he mistakenly pursues through a train station, Dalia (Zoe Boe). When a “critical incident” – to use the police terminology – occurs, both parties are forced to deal with scrutiny and their own guilt. Creator Sarah Bassiuoni (The Secrets She Keeps) was inspired by her real-life experiences as a lawyer in the juvenile justice system, so this series should have both a timely friction and telling personal dynamic.

Also on Stan: From St Trinian’s to Hogwarts, boarding schools are a favourite setting for adolescent chaos, and Boarders (August 23) continues that trend. Looking like a mix of social satire and teenage excess, the British series is set at an exclusive centre of learning whose privileged students have made headlines for all the wrong reasons. When the principal tries to spin the scandal by offering scholarships to five “disadvantaged” – read black – students, a fish-out-of-water experiment begins. The show should have plenty to say about race and class, but it’s going to be couched in adolescent plotting, petty hijinks and plenty of partying montages. If Heartbreak High feels a little staid to you, this could be the answer.

July highlights: The 16th-century intrigue of Catherine de Medici was even more twisted in the new season of The Serpent Queen, while the young adult crime drama A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder was a fizzy teenage mystery.

Amazon Prime

My top Amazon Prime recommendation is The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (August 29).

The first season of this fantasy prequel, set thousands of years prior to the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s revered book and the blockbuster Peter Jackson adaptations, was a success for Amazon Prime, which reported record viewing numbers, but it never had a breakthrough moment. The show did a serious amount of legwork setting up numerous realms and hardy relationships, but too often it felt like it was preparing for something better. That something should be the show’s second season, which will give us more of the newly revealed villain, Sauron (Charlie Vickers), and the forces starting to array against him. As demonstrated by House of the Dragon, fantastical epics need a lengthy runway before take-off. It’s make-or-break time for this revered franchise.

Also on Amazon Prime: Action comedies flourish or fail based on the dynamic between their often mismatched protagonists, which means Jackpot (August 15) might not suck. The new feature from filmmaker Paul Feig (The Heat, Bridesmaids) puts together wrestler John Cena (Fast X, The Suicide Squad) and the wisecracking Awkwafina (Crazy Rich Asians, The Farewell) with a cheerfully dystopian plot. In 2030 Los Angeles she’s Katie, a struggling actor who wins a different kind of lottery: whoever kills her gets first prize. He’s the foolhardy cop trying to keep her alive. The trailer’s tone is goofy as opposed to gory, with Awkwafina getting to dunk on the musclebound Cena, who thankfully remains an unexpectedly kooky comic presence.

July highlights: Those About to Die provided a new taste of ancient Rome’s blood sports and political machinations; Sausage Party: Foodtopia was a very adult animated sequel; plus the rebellious pleasures of the fantastical My Lady Jane.

Disney+

My top Disney+ recommendation is Only Murders in the Building (August 27).

They’re back! Getting a new season of this giddy, delightful comedy every August is one of the true pleasures of the streaming era. Steve Martin, Selena Gomez and Martin Short return as the New York neighbours turned true-crime podcasters turned best pals, whose misadventures are a mix of whodunit sleuthing, fraternal teasing and sweetly sharp satire. The fourth season of Only Murders will further stretch the show’s title, as the central trio decamp for Los Angeles, where their previous exploits are now the possible subject of a Hollywood movie. Will there be a murder they have to investigate along the way? Almost certainly. Will Martin Short be outrageously funny? Definitely. Unsurprisingly, the LA setting means a raft of notable co-stars, among them Melissa McCarthy, Eugene Levy, Eva Longoria and Zach Galifianakis.

Also on Disney+: Despite having, let’s see, three more Avatar movies to make, Hollywood filmmaker James Cameron cannot quit his passion for exploring the bottom of the planet’s deepest oceans and designing submersibles that will get him there. Cameron, who in 2012 was the first person ever to solo descend 11 kilometres to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, is the executive producer and narrator of OceanXplorers (August 19), a National Geographic documentary series about a team of experts dedicated to revealing previously unseen aquatic environments and solving long-standing mysteries about sea life. Given Cameron has his name and reputation attached to the series, expect to see some boundaries pushed.

July highlights: New episodes of The Bear took one of the best shows on television to new heights, while Brats was the movie-star documentary that mattered as 1980s Hollywood stars looked back on their contentious youth.

ABC iview

My top ABC iview recommendation is The Assembly (August 20).

Leigh Sales, who knows a thing or two about asking tough questions, steps into the mentor role for this documentary series about a group of autistic journalism students who undertake lessons in reporting and interviewing. As well as the professionally designed studies, each episode features the diverse group interviewing a famous figure, with those appearing including actor Sam Neill, former AFL champion Adam Goodes, musician Delta Goodrem, comic and TV host Hamish Blake, and the nation’s Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. Neurodivergent people have attained a greater profile in recent years, but gaps in both the public’s understanding and career opportunities remain. Hopefully, with some dedication and feel-good empowerment, this show can help improve both.

July highlights: A much-loved Australian kitchen icon had a new series with the debut of Maggie Beer’s Big Mission, while there was a new opportunity to check out Martin Freeman’s unyielding family comedy Breeders.

SBS On Demand

My top SBS On Demand recommendation is Rebus (August 1).

In crime fiction circles, Ian Rankin is revered. Since 1987, the Scottish author’s Inspector Rebus series has enjoyed literary praise and commercial success, with each book detailing not just a case involving Detective Inspector John Rebus, but also the broader change moving through his hometown of Edinburgh and greater Scotland. Between 2000 and 2007 the BBC made four seasons of a Rebus series, with John Hannah and then Ken Stott in the title role. Rankin was not a fan of the latter seasons, but having reacquired the rights he’s authorised this reboot, which stars Richard Rankin (Outlander) as a 40-year-old Rebus who is struggling with his place in the world professionally and personally when his brother crosses a line in a violent criminal conflict. Done right, this could be a bracing crime drama.

July highlights: The British comedy Dinosaur earned its laughs with empathy and an understanding of how we face life’s changes; Under the Banner of Heaven was a fierce true-crime drama; plus a successful franchise had a soft reboot in Bosch: Legacy.

Other streamers

My top recommendation for the other streaming services is BritBox’s Witness Number 3 (August 22).

While it was produced in 2022, this British thriller hasn’t previously been available on a subscription streaming platform in Australia. Nor has the passing of time lessened the story’s grip. One morning hairdresser Jodie Packer (Nina Toussaint-White, Bodyguard) opens the blinds of her salon just as two men walk past, one of whom is murdered shortly afterwards. When Jodie answers the police request for witnesses to come forward, her information leads to an arrest, but soon after the accused’s criminal associates start terrorising both Jodie and her family. This is a thriller with horror undertones that gets to the core of what “doing the right thing” really means.

Also: Produced by the New York Times and based on the newspaper’s own reporting, DocPlay’s Sorry/Not Sorry (August 12) is a documentary about the aftermath of comedian and television auteur Louis C.K. being accused of sexual misconduct in 2017. The creator of Louis promptly admitted the accusations were completely true, but his contrition didn’t endure. Within a few months C.K. was back touring as a stand-up comic, and he’s worked non-stop ever since his supposed “cancellation” – in 2022 he won a Grammy for Best Comedy Album. The feature-length documentary’s central subjects are three of the female comedians C.K. used his position of power to abuse, who detail what happened at the time and what hasn’t happened since.

July highlights: With Asher Keddie and David Wenham giving exemplary performances, Fake was one of the best Australian dramas of recent years, while DocPlay’s In Restless Dreams was a compelling documentary about the musician Paul Simon.

* Nine is the owner of Stan and this masthead.

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